Recent content by ecarfan

Impressive. China’s Chang’e-6 probe lands on far side of the moon aiming to return first samples to Earth Article includes a video of the landing that China posted on X. Congrats to the Chinese rocket scientists who made this happen! Now for the hardest part; returning lunar samples to Earth.

Okay, but if SpaceX is going to meet its goals for Artemis it could need to launch every one to two months and it does not seem like the FAA is going to be able to keep up.

Well, by now the FAA is getting familiar with Starship launches and acknowledged many days ago that IFT-3 did not pose a threat to human safety and that the mishap investigation does not have to be completed before the next launch license is issued. The FAA process seems very slow.

Seems odd that the FAA has still not issued the launch license.

Just read this by Eric Berger: Here’s why a Japanese billionaire just canceled his lunar flight on Starship Elon and his wildly unrealistic timelines; but Berger explains that since the 2018 announcement, with Starship selected for Artemis that deprioritized dearMoon and created new priorities...

I recall that at the Dear Moon mission announcement event, years ago now, Elon seemed to say that Maezawa had made a large financial investment in Starship development. I wonder if he now wants his money back.

Stephen Clark in ars Technica: Boeing’s Starliner test flight scrubbed again after hold in final countdown One of the three launch computers didn’t boot up properly.

Interesting how after destacking the ship was moved quite a ways away from the booster before the FTS was installed in both vehicles.

Eric Berger will be doing an “Ars Live” livestream discussion on YouTube on June 11 2PM ET, this is just an article announcing the stream. How profitable is Starlink? We dig into the details of satellite Internet.

@JB47394 posted in another thread: Why would the Ground Launch Sequencer software not indicate the reason for the hold?

Sad for Tim Dodd and all the others selected. I guess Maezawa got tired of waiting. Realistically that mission is still several years away.

As per Tim Dodd’s recent video (that you linked to in another thread) SpaceX appears to be trying to reduce the number of seams in recognition of the difficulty they are having with securing tiles in those areas.

Shows all the good bits; the two DSS tests, a “low pressure” water deluge test, the WDR with all tanks reaching full, the high pressure deluge test. Still a few tiles missing.

Elon tweeted: Does he mean that the loss of a single tile will result in a total reentry failure and the ship disintegrating?

Thanks for your report. I agree with your strategy, I’ve found the same.