SpaceX

SpaceX’s Joyous Blowing Up of Rockets While Mars does seem much further away than 2024, I think it’s often overlooked how powerful Musk’s vision for reshaping the near-Earth infrastructure is. A fully *rapidly* reusable launch system, truly land-load-and-go like an airliner, could legitimately reshape how humans live on (and near) Earth. Who needs Mars when […]

Starship Completes High-Altitude Test Flight, Explodes During Landing People just don’t seem to understand how SpaceX has changed the space industry. Almost all our early space work was done by traditional aircraft companies like Boeing and McDonnell-Douglas. Obviously, when it came time to set up a test program, the people involved with aircraft testing would […]

SpaceX’s latest Starship prototype exploded during landing following a successful high-altitude flight test on Wednesday. The uncrewed prototype, serial number 8 (SN8), flew for 6 minutes 42 seconds, completing a series of planned maneuvers and returning to the landing pad before the crash. The test took place at SpaceX’s facility in Cameron County, Texas. “Successful […]

SpaceX To (Maybe) Send Starship To 50,000 Feet Love him or hate him, Musk has revolutionized the space launch industry. And, he has done it in full view of the general public, failures and all. Things are about to get even more interesting. A new launch complex is under construction at the Kennedy Space Center […]

Assuming the weather cooperates in Florida, tomorrow’s launch of the SpaceX Crew Dragon capsule on a “demo” flight to the International Space Station will mark an important resumption of U.S. space travel capability. Late on Tuesday, the prediction had improved to a 60 percent likelihood of acceptable weather on launch day; a few days ago […]

FAA Approves Seatless Airliners For Freight Reminds me of the QC 727’s of the early 70’s. Slide out the seats and slide in containers. It’s gonna be a while before these airplanes will have paying passengers on board. Instead, keep them flying with paying boxes instead of paying passengers. It could lead to a new […]

NASA has announced that it is planning to launch the first crewed mission using SpaceX’s Crew Dragon spacecraft at 4:32 p.m. EDT on May 27, 2020. The Crew Dragon will launch on a Falcon 9 rocket from Launch Complex 39A at Florida’s Kennedy Space Center with NASA astronauts Robert Behnken and Douglas Hurley onboard. According […]

After a day’s delay, SpaceX successfully placed another 60 of its Starlink satellites into orbit, but it was unable to recover the first stage to its customary floating platform. Video depicts the rocket returning from its mission but does not show that it “landed softly next to the platform,” as SpaceX representatives claim. Nevertheless, the […]

SpaceX’s Starhopper launch vehicle prototype completed what is likely to be its last test flight on Tuesday evening. The hover test lasted about a minute and the vehicle reached an altitude of approximately 150 meters (about 500 feet) before touching down on its landing pad. The test, which took place at SpaceX’s facility in Boca […]

Although it didn’t make for especially dramatic video, SpaceX made a big step toward its goal of visiting Mars with the first flight test of an early version of its Starhopper reusable spacecraft late Thursday. The odd-looking device, which even SpaceX CEO Elon Musk jokes looks like a water tower, hovered for about 20 seconds […]