Just read the Instructions is due for a $40M retrofit in January, so timing could not have been better. Scheduled to make its next capture in February

nortex97 said:

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Bump, the remains;

Views of B1058 on the deck of Just Read the Instructions. Starlink 6-32 was the 19th launch and landing of this booster. The crew encountered rough conditions not far from Port Canaveral. Farewell old friend. @NASASpaceflight SCL views:https://t.co/lIR57w4WqB pic.twitter.com/6rew5JDySI

— Julia Bergeron (@julia_bergeron) December 26, 2023

Fair winds and following seas.

Following rough conditions in the Atlantic after the Starlink 6-32 mission, Falcon 9 first stage B1058.20 became unstable and tipped over on drone ship, Just Read The Instructions.

📸 - @NASASpaceflight

📺 - https://t.co/AFdPuCYKLR pic.twitter.com/clEGaxpeeR

— Max Evans (@_mgde_) December 26, 2023

So the answer is no, they won't be repairing this one, though maybe/plausibly an engine or two might get re-used?

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Just saw in Scott Manley latest video, this booster was the iconic booster that returned NASA astronauts to the ISS for the first time in Crew Demo 2.

19 launches. I would say they got their moneys worth out of it.

Mathguy64 said:

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19 launches. I would say they got their moneys worth out of it.

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Musk wouldn't.

View from my room tonight...

Been here awhile but this was just a great pic.

Is this gonna work? Tonight's FalconHeavy launch

FALCON HEAVY TRANSITS THE MOON: Tonight’s launch of the USSF-52 mission with seventh mission of the Space Force’s X-37B spaceplane. pic.twitter.com/gvOZSQDVR7

— John Kraus (@johnkrausphotos) December 29, 2023

MemphisAg1 said:

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Just here to post that I recently installed Starlink in my remote cabin that doesn't even get a reliable phone signal. Absolutely incredible! Download speeds averaging around 140 Mbps, sometimes as high as 200, and sometimes as low as 50. I guess it depends on the number of satellites in range and proximity.

But absolutely cool to have reliable internet in a remote place. Streamed the Aggie football game last night. Would have liked a better outcome but it was surreal to be able to watch it. It also enables great phone service -- where I previously had none -- if you enable wireless calling on your phone.

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Another option as well is to get your cell carrier to get you a "mini cell tower". It enables 4g/5g using your internet connection. Then if someone visits you, and they have the same carrier they would have service through your mini cell and you don't have to let them on your wifi.

We have it offshore now and it is absolutely amazing.

Starlink really is well on the way to revolutionizing the entire telecom industry.

I think if Biden gets another term, he may push for the breakup of SpaceX, calling it a monopoly.

TexAgs91 said:

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I think if Biden gets another term, he may push for the breakup of SpaceX, calling it a monopoly.

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He can push but there's no reason for the courts to do that, other than obama-biden judges who operate on the basis of feelings alone. We have a much more diverse space launch industry than ever before, and SpaceX has been willing/able to competitively price launch services for their competitors to starlink as well.

ULA is trying to sell itself off, which is sort of funny/sad, but even with Vulcan Centaur operating next year they really aren't competitive but for government launches. Rocketlab, Firefly, Blue Origin and others might give F9 a run for its money in the future, but there's no way to make the market provide a starship alternative.

X-37B on its way aboard the Falcon Heavy. Here's a primer on why this flight is different, including the use of a much more powerful rocket, and its potential implications.

X-37B Headed Deeper Into Space With Falcon Heavy Rocket’s Help:https://t.co/gHNXx7U8KC

— The War Zone (@thewarzonewire) December 29, 2023

Quote:

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The X-37B has previously been referred to as a component of an emerging Space Force "orbital warfare" remit. While details are extremely scarce, this mission falls within the remit of Space Delta 9, a unit known to be tasked with keeping track of potentially hostile activity in space, as well as deterring threats and even potentially defeating them.

Developments of this kind are of growing interest to the United States, especially in light of Chinese and Russian activities in space. Russia, for example, has a number of what it calls "space apparatus inspectors" in orbit, which the U.S. government and others warn the Kremlin could use to gather intelligence on other satellites or function as "killer satellites," using various means to damage, disable, or destroy those targets.

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NSF:

Quote:

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In addition to NASA's experiment, the X-37B can and does carry military experiments and payloads of various kinds, and even launched small satellites like the US Air Force Academy FalconSat-8 in the past. Notably, the vehicle's orbital path would take it over several regions of the world where tensions are high or have broken into active warfare, including southern Ukraine, the Middle East, Taiwan, and Guyana.

The Falcon Heavy for this mission used B1084 as the core vehicle for its first and only flight. While the core, specially built as a Falcon Heavy core vehicle, is expended, the side boosters B1064-5 and B1065-5 returned to the launch site for touchdowns on Landing Zone-1 (LZ-1) and Landing Zone-2 (LZ-2) concrete pads.

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Sneaky ! but I got it 😇
During the SpaceX USSF-52 launch broadcast they showed a 2 second clip of X-37B OTV-6 with the service module during deployment on-orbit !

(the big structure sticking out is FalconSat-8 btw)#X37B #OTV6 pic.twitter.com/zMf19vFvp0

— DutchSpace (@DutchSpace) December 29, 2023

The simultaneous Falcon Heavy booster landings never get old.#SpaceX #X37B #USSF52 #OTV7 pic.twitter.com/FO4cl4c9GH

— vmudream 🛰 (@vmudream) December 29, 2023

They also put up another batch of starlinks last night. The center core of the FH wasn't recovered but if you count the FH as 3 cores, and the F9 launch, that's actually 4 boosters going up last night from the cape. Fun video as usual; one of them looked to be leaning heavily after landing.

Watch Falcon Heavy launch the USSF-52 mission to orbit https://t.co/zrk4JcZ9Pt

— SpaceX (@SpaceX) December 29, 2023

Bregxit said:

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Is what going to work?

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I was trying to post the twitter link/pic on mobile.
At first i was trying to just imbed the pic and not the full X link

The super heavy booster can be used more frequently than the ship, as it returns in about ~6 minutes and can theoretically be ready for reflght in an hour.

The ship needs to complete at least one orbit, but often several to have the ground track line back up with the launch…

— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) December 29, 2023

Nice. The 3 year old ars Technica piece by Berger is still good.

Well, apparently they just did an engine test down at Boca Chica...

We're packing up to check out and heard a LOUD rumbling noise, looked out and there it was...



ETA: Caught a quick pic after it was done. Didn't have my phone on me when it fired.

nortex97 said:

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The super heavy booster can be used more frequently than the ship, as it returns in about ~6 minutes and can theoretically be ready for reflght in an hour.

The ship needs to complete at least one orbit, but often several to have the ground track line back up with the launch…

— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) December 29, 2023

Nice. The 3 year old ars Technica piece by Berger is still good.

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It can theoretically be ready within an hour assuming major upgrades to Stage 0 and the tank farm. And these major upgrades won't even cut it for refueling HLS when they will have to launch 8 flights at Starbase within 48 hours and another 8 at Kennedy during the same timeframe. I'm surprised we aren't seeing that happen yet.

I am not in the know at all but respectfully just see starbase as a proof of concept/R&D facility. I don't think they plan to really do routine launches as such from land other than Florida and then it will be sea-based, but they have to refine the infrastructure components first.

If I'm right-ish, they'll wind up with 8 to 12 floating 'oil rig on steroids' types of facilities for launching (and landing) scattered roughly along the equator and a small fleet of tankers to bring methane/Lox to them as well as the required upper stage transport/inspection/re-fit ships. Manned flights will no doubt need to be from KSC for a while but ultimately the goal is to move offshore and get away from a lot of the restrictions (and attendant risks) around land based infrastructure.

I am just guessing, could be completely wrong of course. Just basing that off some of the transport/military mission speculation around a military base near Hong Kong/Singapore etc. from a couple years back.

Lol, no it's an incredible photo though. The light reflecting off the bottom of the moon being refracted by the shock waves is incredible

It's going to take at least 15 flights within 48 hrs to fuel one HLS ship. I thought I heard NASA say that logistically they would have to launch from at least both KSC and Starbase. Either way they have a lot of work to do on the infrastructure to support that many flights.

nortex97 said:

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I am not in the know at all but respectfully just see starbase as a proof of concept/R&D facility. I don't think they plan to really do routine launches as such from land other than Florida and then it will be sea-based, but they have to refine the infrastructure components first.

If I'm right-ish, they'll wind up with 8 to 12 floating 'oil rig on steroids' types of facilities for launching (and landing) scattered roughly along the equator and a small fleet of tankers to bring methane/Lox to them as well as the required upper stage transport/inspection/re-fit ships. Manned flights will no doubt need to be from KSC for a while but ultimately the goal is to move offshore and get away from a lot of the restrictions (and attendant risks) around land based infrastructure.

I am just guessing, could be completely wrong of course. Just basing that off some of the transport/military mission speculation around a military base near Hong Kong/Singapore etc. from a couple years back.

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'...SpaceX's plan is to make the company's Boca Chica complex its "premier manufacturing, launching and operational center for our Starship."' - Kathy Lueders

https://myrgv.com/local-news/2023/12/12/starbase-general-manager-discusses-future-plans-at-invite-only-brownsville-event/

Ship 28 Static Fired earlier in the day, and then watched its launch partner Booster 10 fire up 90 mins later.https://t.co/adhXjBYh5U

Pending SpaceX confirmation of a good test, the next milestones will include stacking for integrated testing ahead of launch (FAA approval… pic.twitter.com/3DPAZmhgpD

— Chris Bergin - NSF (@NASASpaceflight) December 29, 2023

nortex97 said:

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I am not in the know at all but respectfully just see starbase as a proof of concept/R&D facility. I don't think they plan to really do routine launches as such from land other than Florida and then it will be sea-based, but they have to refine the infrastructure components first.

If I'm right-ish, they'll wind up with 8 to 12 floating 'oil rig on steroids' types of facilities for launching (and landing) scattered roughly along the equator and a small fleet of tankers to bring methane/Lox to them as well as the required upper stage transport/inspection/re-fit ships. Manned flights will no doubt need to be from KSC for a while but ultimately the goal is to move offshore and get away from a lot of the restrictions (and attendant risks) around land based infrastructure.

I am just guessing, could be completely wrong of course. Just basing that off some of the transport/military mission speculation around a military base near Hong Kong/Singapore etc. from a couple years back.

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I think there is security in being within the US Border, particularly when they are launching sensitive government payload. Thinking 10-20 years out, they may be putting a lot of spacecraft / weapons into space for the Space Force.

Propellent load was 40 minutes for this static fire instead of the usual 60 minutes.

New tank farm infrastructure doing it's thing.

Static fire of Super Heavy’s 33 Raptor engines ahead of Flight 3 pic.twitter.com/rJqNToMCnU

— SpaceX (@SpaceX) December 29, 2023

Pad looks a little toasty but undamaged.

Premium said:

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nortex97 said:

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I am not in the know at all but respectfully just see starbase as a proof of concept/R&D facility. I don't think they plan to really do routine launches as such from land other than Florida and then it will be sea-based, but they have to refine the infrastructure components first.

If I'm right-ish, they'll wind up with 8 to 12 floating 'oil rig on steroids' types of facilities for launching (and landing) scattered roughly along the equator and a small fleet of tankers to bring methane/Lox to them as well as the required upper stage transport/inspection/re-fit ships. Manned flights will no doubt need to be from KSC for a while but ultimately the goal is to move offshore and get away from a lot of the restrictions (and attendant risks) around land based infrastructure.

I am just guessing, could be completely wrong of course. Just basing that off some of the transport/military mission speculation around a military base near Hong Kong/Singapore etc. from a couple years back.

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I think there is security in being within the US Border, particularly when they are launching sensitive government payload. Thinking 10-20 years out, they may be putting a lot of spacecraft / weapons into space for the Space Force.

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Sure. And to '91's point I think for some NASA missions etc. they will want to launch from CONUS points. Even still, 48 from KSC and BC seems like a lot to get to the moon, and after all most would just be propellant flights.

I also don't read "premier" as meaning "our highest volume and/or most frequent for all types" of launch sites. The scale and frequency of what they are trying to produce is far outside of what even educated observers consider normal or 'par' etc. at this time. The GSE at BC is simply not positioned nor capable of growing to what they want to do even mid-term (2025 etc.)

Remaining tasks before IFT-3:

1. Booster Inspection
2. Orbital Pad Inspection + repaint OLM
3. S28 TPS tile replacement
4. Possible rollback of S28 to load small number of Starlink sats
5. Full Stack WDR
6. Launch Readiness Review
7. Conclusion of FAA Post Launch Investigation…

— Zack Golden (@CSI_Starbase) December 29, 2023

Rumors of loading 10 starlink sats as a test are interesting, as well as having to repaint parts of the OLM for each launch right now. These are still, again, early days for this whole system.

The fact we've made it to a faster pad overhaul/rehab than the current systems are capable of by launch #2 is a great sign( look at the disaster that is the SLS launch pad)

Umm, what?

Not breaking, it happened over a month ago.

— TEMPVS FVGIT (@nonzerosumgain) December 30, 2023

Don't worry it's filling with more explosive gas.

https://twitter.com/BocaChicaGal

PJYoung said:

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https://twitter.com/BocaChicaGal

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They need a Lazy River next