pigeonberry

joined 1 year ago
[–] [email protected] 3 points 11 months ago (1 children)

The licence has been approved, the NOTAM and marine warnings published, closure announced.

[–] [email protected] 8 points 11 months ago

Fish and Wildlife's comments were published yesterday. I gather that the document was deleted from the original location, but as I recall, it was pretty much copied and pasted into the body of the final FAA determination WRITTEN RE-EVALUATION OF THE 2022 FINAL PROGRAMMATIC ENVIRONMENTAL ASSESSMENT FOR THE SPACEX STARSHIP/SUPER HEAVY LAUNCH VEHICLE PROGRAM AT THE BOCA CHICA LAUNCH SITE IN CAMERON COUNTY, TEXAS. I remember the bit about "Per the table above, an average summertime thunderstorm at Boca Chica would deposit more water over the landscape than any single or all combined activations of the deluge system".

 

The Hyperbola-2 methane-liquid oxygen reusable verification stage rose to a height of 178 meters during its 51-second flight. It performed a powered descent and soft landing, supported by four landing legs. The 3.35-meter-diameter, 17m-long test stage is powered by a variable thrust Focus-1 engine.

The vertical takeoff, vertical landing test marks progress towards a reusable medium-lift rocket to debut in 2025. It is also the latest marker in Chinese efforts to emulate the success of SpaceX and its Falcon 9 rocket.

 

Tory Bruno spoke.

“If I were buying a space business, I’d go look at ULA,” Bruno said. “It’s already had all the hard work done through the transformation. You’re not buying a Victorian with bad plumbing. It’s all been done. You’re coming in at the end of the remodel, so you can focus on your future."

I have some skepticism.

 

[insert obvious comments here]

 

In an Oct. 9 letter to the FAA and Congress seen by SpaceNews, SpaceX principal engineer David Goldstein said the report relied on “deeply flawed analysis” based on assumptions, guesswork, and outdated studies.

The article contains details.

In 2021, the FAA commissioned the Aerospace Corp., a federally funded nonprofit focused on space, to provide a technical assessment of the rise of LEO constellations and the risks posed to aviation and people on the ground by unplanned and controlled reentries of these satellites and the upper stages that launch them.

Someone from Aerospace mentioned the difficulties in such an estimate, and Goldstein's letter points out more problems.

 

At about 1 p.m. Central,

ISS: In the last few minutes, MCC-Houston asked the ISS crew to go to the cupola and look for any signs of "flakes" toward the aft of station; Jasmin Moghbeli reported "yeah, there's a leak coming from the radiator on MLM;" the MLM is the Russian Nauka multi-purpose lab module

 

Good analysis, from all I've heard.

Anyone who keeps track of Elon Musk knows the world's richest man has a penchant for setting aspirational schedules for his companies....So, if you have an opportunity to interview him, why spend time asking Musk to prognosticate when one of his companies will do something years in the future?

and

SpaceX's brilliant engineers certainly have creative ideas and novel plans to get Starship to the Red Planet, so why not ask Musk about them when you have him for a rare hourlong one-on-one conversation? It's the how that is most interesting now, not the when or why, especially for an audience interested enough to tune in at the IAC.

and

But Mowry's questions missed the mark at a time when the Starship program is at a critical point, and he didn't probe with follow-up questions to tease out more insightful answers.

The whole article is worth a read, really.

 

Well, that was an unimpressed review from Eric Berger, though Bob Smith has stuff to be unimpressed about. Eric also mentions Glassdoor reviews, an ex-employee group letter, and anonymous citations of current and former employees.

the company's new chief executive will be Dave Limp, who stepped down as Amazon's vice president of devices and services last month.

 

Starlink @starlink Sep 23, 2023 · 9:29 PM UTC:

Starlink is available on all 7 continents, in over 60 countries and many more markets, connecting 2M+ active customers and counting with high-speed internet!

Thank you to all of our customers around the world 🛰️🌎❤️ → stories.starlink.com

The significance is as u/Obvious_Parsley3238 pointed out: "250k last march, 1 mil last december, 1.5 mil in may, 2 mil now".

 

I love this video.

 

I'd seen the story about a spacecraft making a drug in microgravity and planning to land it in the US.

However, the recovery of Varda's capsule is on hold after the Federal Aviation Administration and the US Air Force recently declined to give Varda approval to land its spacecraft in a remote part of Utah. TechCrunch first reported the FAA turned down Varda's application for a commercial reentry license.

"Varda Space Industries launched its vehicle into space without a reentry license," an FAA spokesperson told Ars on Wednesday. "The FAA denied the Varda reentry license application on September 6 because the company did not demonstrate compliance with the regulatory requirements."

[–] [email protected] 3 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

The FAA has repeated multiple times: there is no launch licence yet for a second launch. Since the FAA asked the Fish and Wildlife Service to look into the matter, I think it's highly unlikely that the FAA would issue the licence before FWS says it's O.K.

I don't know that there has been a definitive statement of the exact ending date. The Xeet summary provided included "The FWS has up to 135 days to submit the final biological opinion to the FAA (Started in August)." If it's 4 months including weekends and holidays, it could be up to December 1 to December 31ish. But it could be handled before then, or if the FAA agrees, the deadline could be extended, or maybe it's working days only. Also, the FAA would likely need time to digest it and issue its own ruling.

But there have been other reports that the FAA hopes to be done with it by October. So maybe they have inside knowledge.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 1 year ago

I posted here about the FWS environmental re-assessment due to the booster bidet.

 

I don't have a transcription to hand and shouldn't take the time to do it myself. The image alone:

https://nitter.net/pic/orig/media%2FF6VfGnVWYAAB5tv.jpg

The FAA asked the Fish and Wildlife Service for "re-initiation of Endangered Species Act consultation" due to the booster bidet. FWS has 135 days to give a final biological opinion.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 year ago (1 children)

I'm sorry, but I don't follow what you're referring to. I think the new render is near the top, showing Starship and Super Heavy stacked. I didn't look at the page before, so I don't know what else might have changed.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 year ago

Just wanted to point out a glamor video of Starlink deployment.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 year ago

Eric Berger quoted a tweet from the FAA here, but it was in the form of an image. A text transcript was kindly provided by World Spills @WorldSpills here:

SpaceX conducted a test flight of the Starship/Super Heavy at Boca Chica, TX on April 20, 2023. As a result of that launch, SpaceX completed a mishap investigation with FAA oversight; this investigation analyzed the launch, mishap events, and corrective actions. Before it is authorized to conduct a second Starship/ Super Heavy launch, SpaceX must obtain a modified license from the FAA that addresses all safety, environmental, and other regulatory requirements. As part of that license application determination process, the FAA will review new environmental information, including changes related to the launch pad, as well as other proposed vehicle and flight modifications. The FAA will complete a Written Reevaluation (WR) to the 2022 Programmatic Environmental Assessment (PEA) evaluating the new environmental information, including Endangered Species Act consultation with the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service. If the FAA determines through the WR process that the contents of the PEA do not remain valid in light of the changes proposed for Flight 2, additional environmental review will be required. Accordingly, the FAA has not authorized SpaceX's proposed Flight 2.

It was followed by untranscribed

The FAA will provide updates with notification of any license determination or results of additional environmental review.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 year ago

When the major problems from your first test can be illustrated by Heath Ledger in 2008 -- debris zoom but boom no boom -- it's not surprising.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (2 children)

An easier way to reach the app in Android is the Google Play store. It's named Austin 311 from City of Austin. Some negative reviews, though, like (20 Jan 2023) "You can't report when your trash doesn't get picked up - easily 99% of the reason I ever call 311" and (9 June 2022) "App sucks. The categories are very limited and hard to locate. I should be able to search on a keyword and your app suggests appropriate categories. Where do i report a malfunctioning pedestrian cross signal, for example. Very disappointing!"

I just checked out the Web page. That has a search capability (I don't see one in the app), both built in via a Search text box, and the browser's own facility (except there are not many items per page). I think I prefer it, even on my phone.

But the Android app at least has a map of recent reports, which is a nice feature; I don't see it in the web page. It also has one central place to enter the reporter's info; it looks like the Web page has it on each request.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 year ago

I got the impression from reading the few posts about it that it's going to start as a backup for the existing crew Dragon tower. Whether it could ever become Son of Mechazilla in the long run I don't know, and I doubt it. I suspect, though on no evidence other than prior practice and the 5-step algorithm, that SpaceX would rather debug the first model some before building a second.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 1 year ago

This is a link to my separate story post: "(Reuters) US could advance SpaceX license as soon as October after rocket exploded in April", including a bit of interpretation.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 year ago

Thank you for the pointer. Fixed.

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