SpaceX

NASA has reassigned astronauts Nicole Mann and Josh Cassada from missions aboard Boeing’s Starliner to the SpaceX Crew-5 launch. Mann was previously assigned to NASA’s Boeing Crew Flight Test while Cassada was scheduled for the Starliner-1 mission. NASA noted that the change was made “to allow Boeing time to complete the development of Starliner while […]

Called “the world’s first all-civilian human spaceflight mission to orbit,” Inspiration4 launched successfully from NASA’s Kennedy Space Center at 8:02:56 p.m. EDT on Wednesday. The three-day orbital flight, which is using SpaceX’s Dragon spacecraft and Falcon 9 launch vehicle, was booked by Shift4 Payments founder and pilot Jared Isaacman earlier this year. As previously reported […]

SpaceX wrapped up the fifth high-altitude flight test of its Starship prototype with a successful landing on Wednesday evening. The prototype used for Wednesday’s flight, SN15, is the first to avoid what SpaceX CEO Elon Musk has termed “rapid unscheduled disassembly” during testing. While the testing procedure was similar to that of the four previous […]

This Is Why We Can’t Have Nice Things As an A&P of over 50 years experience, I URGE your non-A&P readers to stay away from cylinder base nuts and don’t go buying cylinder base wrenches to see if things are tight. Mike Busch has a LOT to say about this sort of thing and even […]

NASA’s SpaceX Crew-2 mission launched from Kennedy Space Center on Friday morning and is en route to the International Space Station (ISS). On board Crew Dragon capsule Endeavour are NASA astronauts Shane Kimbrough and Megan McArthur, Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA) astronaut  Akihiko  Hoshide  and European Space Agency (ESA) astronaut Thomas  Pesquet. Endeavour is expected […]

Already Had My Electric Airplane, Thank You Eventually pilots flying piston aircraft will be like pilots flying taildraggers now. Some will respect the extra skill required, while many will be puzzled why people still bother with old technology when there is the magic of one switch, one handle, electric flight. My goal is to be […]

SpaceX Starship Explodes After A Near Perfect Landing What’s being missed here… especially by this community… is really more interesting than the landing difficulties. All three of these flights have successfully demonstrated using areo surfaces to glide this massive booster back to a precise spot on the surface. That was the major unknown for SpaceX […]

After a successful and visually impressive launch, SpaceX’s deep-space Starship SN9 prototype crashed on landing at the launch site in Boca Chica, Texas. The final seconds of the flight appeared similar to the SN8’s, which impacted the pad when a header tank issue caused a power interruption leading to the vehicle losing control near the […]

Shift4 Payments and Draken International founder Jared Isaacman has booked a trip with SpaceX that is being called “the world’s first all-civilian mission to space.” Named Inspiration4, the multi-day orbital flight is currently being planned for the fourth quarter of 2021. Isaacman, whose accomplishments as a pilot include two around-the-world speed records and over 100 […]

SpaceX CEO Elon Musk announced last week that his company is making plans to attempt to catch its reusable Super Heavy rocket with the arm of the launch tower. Currently in development, the Super Heavy is the first stage of the company’s Starship system. While SpaceX hasn’t yet tried anything quite like the launch tower […]