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Joined 2 years ago
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Cake day: July 1st, 2023

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  • The second stage of a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket remained in orbit following a launch Saturday from Vandenberg Space Force Base, California. The rocket successfully deployed a new batch of Starlink Internet satellites but was supposed to reignite its engine for a braking maneuver to head for a destructive reentry over the Pacific Ocean. While airspace warning notices from the FAA showed a reentry zone over the eastern Pacific Ocean, publicly available US military tracking continued to show the upper stage in orbit this week. Sources also told Ars that SpaceX delayed two Falcon 9 launches this week by a day to allow time for engineers to evaluate the problem.

    3 in 6 months … This is the third time since last July that the Falcon 9’s upper stage has encountered a problem in flight. On one occasion, the upper stage failed to reach its targeted orbit, leading to the destruction of 20 Starlink satellites. Then, an upper stage misfired during a deorbit burn after an otherwise successful launch in September, causing debris to fall outside of the pre-approved danger area. After both events, the FAA briefly grounded the Falcon 9 rocket while SpaceX conducted an investigation. This time, an FAA spokesperson said the agency won’t require an investigation. “All flight events occurred within the scope of SpaceX’s licensed activities,” the spokesperson told Ars.

    Again? Damn that’s concerning.












  • Sorry I haven’t been able to watch the video you linked yet, but I thought the Wikipedia article was fascinating.

    I’m curious what you mean by starship “working”. They’re seemingly close to booster reuse, upper stage recovery, going orbital, payload deployment, and propellant transfer. There’s no fundamental reason the technology wouldn’t work, right? Landing on the moon or Mars does seem like a challenge, but it’s sort-of on the horizon. Return from Mars, however, now that really would be pretty crazy. Even so, doesn’t this open-up new capabilities?