SpaceX delays 6th Starship/Superheavy launch one day to November 19, 2024
In a tweet yesterday SpaceX announced that it is now targeting November 19, 2024 for the sixth orbital test flight of its Starship/Superheavy rocket. The thirty minute launch window opens at 4 pm (Central). Though SpaceX will provide a live stream on X, X does not provide a standby service, so I am embedding below the feed of SpaceX’s live stream provided by Space Affairs.
From SpaceX’s webpage for this mission:
The next Starship flight test aims to expand the envelope on ship and booster capabilities and get closer to bringing reuse of the entire system online. Objectives include the booster once again returning to the launch site for catch, reigniting a ship Raptor engine while in space, and testing a suite of heatshield experiments and maneuvering changes for ship reentry and descent over the Indian Ocean.
Starship’s landing will be in daylight this time in order to allow for better observation.
On Christmas Eve 1968 three Americans became the first humans to visit another world. What they did to celebrate was unexpected and profound, and will be remembered throughout all human history. Genesis: the Story of Apollo 8, Robert Zimmerman's classic history of humanity's first journey to another world, tells that story, and it is now available as both an ebook and an audiobook, both with a foreword by Valerie Anders and a new introduction by Robert Zimmerman.
The print edition can be purchased at Amazon or from any other book seller. If you want an autographed copy the price is $60 for the hardback and $45 for the paperback, plus $8 shipping for each. Go here for purchasing details. The ebook is available everywhere for $5.99 (before discount) at amazon, or direct from my ebook publisher, ebookit. If you buy it from ebookit you don't support the big tech companies and the author gets a bigger cut much sooner.
The audiobook is also available at all these vendors, and is also free with a 30-day trial membership to Audible.
"Not simply about one mission, [Genesis] is also the history of America's quest for the moon... Zimmerman has done a masterful job of tying disparate events together into a solid account of one of America's greatest human triumphs."--San Antonio Express-News
In a tweet yesterday SpaceX announced that it is now targeting November 19, 2024 for the sixth orbital test flight of its Starship/Superheavy rocket. The thirty minute launch window opens at 4 pm (Central). Though SpaceX will provide a live stream on X, X does not provide a standby service, so I am embedding below the feed of SpaceX’s live stream provided by Space Affairs.
From SpaceX’s webpage for this mission:
The next Starship flight test aims to expand the envelope on ship and booster capabilities and get closer to bringing reuse of the entire system online. Objectives include the booster once again returning to the launch site for catch, reigniting a ship Raptor engine while in space, and testing a suite of heatshield experiments and maneuvering changes for ship reentry and descent over the Indian Ocean.
Starship’s landing will be in daylight this time in order to allow for better observation.
On Christmas Eve 1968 three Americans became the first humans to visit another world. What they did to celebrate was unexpected and profound, and will be remembered throughout all human history. Genesis: the Story of Apollo 8, Robert Zimmerman's classic history of humanity's first journey to another world, tells that story, and it is now available as both an ebook and an audiobook, both with a foreword by Valerie Anders and a new introduction by Robert Zimmerman.
The print edition can be purchased at Amazon or from any other book seller. If you want an autographed copy the price is $60 for the hardback and $45 for the paperback, plus $8 shipping for each. Go here for purchasing details. The ebook is available everywhere for $5.99 (before discount) at amazon, or direct from my ebook publisher, ebookit. If you buy it from ebookit you don't support the big tech companies and the author gets a bigger cut much sooner.
The audiobook is also available at all these vendors, and is also free with a 30-day trial membership to Audible.
"Not simply about one mission, [Genesis] is also the history of America's quest for the moon... Zimmerman has done a masterful job of tying disparate events together into a solid account of one of America's greatest human triumphs."--San Antonio Express-News
Can’t wait to see the launch
Other than Elon, is there a single person in charge of the Starship program? Fascinating and worrying at the same time, that Boeing and Blue Origin can’t get things right. Yet SpaceX is expected to pull off another successful test while the guy in charge is also negotiating, sometimes face to face, with world leaders, establishing a new government oversight department which is intended to make unilateral decisions to improve federal government efficiency, sitting in on meeting after meeting which evaluates who will run federal departments, attending publicity events with the president elect. Young children, multiple wives. Junk food diet, not very fit, inclined to self medicate.
“If something cannot go on forever, it will stop.” Stein’s law. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Herbert_Stein
Just blow everybody’s mind and send the upper stage to Mars.
Steve Richter,
Elon has his own bizjet and Starlink. He can run all of his companies from anywhere he happens to be. Among the many other things he’s very good at, time management is way up the list. A lot of this seems attributable to his ability to multi-task. As was famously revealed recently, Elon is perfectly capable of simultaneously running a virtual meeting of his Starship engineers and defending his top 20 ranking as a player of Diablo IV.
Who runs the Starship program day-to-day on-site? That would be Kathy Lueders who is General Manager of Starbase. She was the long-time head of Commercial Crew at NASA.
And don’t forget Gwynne Shotwell, President and Chief Operating Officer of SpaceX. Another helpless woman enslaved by the evil Musk! /s
Cold front blowing through South Texas tomorrow, with strong winds above safe levels for launch. By Tuesday, it will have blown through and winds will be light out of the North with blue skies for perfect visibility. Get thyselves down to SPI!
Remember, Mahi Nic has the best Fish Tacos on the Island, and be sure to get a toe ring at Karen’s!
And to add to what Mr Eagleson says….Elon has been present on site for every Starship test launch to date. I have to assume he will be present for this one, too.
Not that he is *needed*, save as a moral presence – he has a great team in place at Starbase.
A lot like Bobby Fischer?
Ray Van Dune,
I would never forget Gwynne Shotwell. But Shotwell runs everything at SpaceX with the five biggest such things being the Falcon, Dragon, Starlink, Starshield and Starship programs. Lueders runs Starship and Starbase and is one of Shotwell’s key deputies. Elon runs engineering for everything. The management structure of SpaceX seems to be a modified version of so-called matrix management. To borrow a bit of verbiage from our PRC opponents, SpaceX is matrix management with Elon characteristics. That appears to be the case with Elon’s other enterprises as well.
Jeff Wright,
Bobby Fischer was a misanthropic loner and one-trick pony. No resemblance to Elon at all other than perhaps also being on the autism spectrum – but in a decidedly different place on it. Fischer was close to being what used to be referred to, in pre-PC times, as an idiot-savant. Elon, in contrast, is the closest thing we’ve seen in quite awhile to the paradigmatic Renaissance Man.