Successful excursions and soft launches are to be celebrated this week. Enjoy the eye candy for the rocket and space addicts
Starship Launch: Mostly Successful, Including Soft Landings for Both Vehicles
DAVID STROM – HotAir.com
Yowza. It was amazing to watch the fourth test flight of SpaceX’s Starship. If you didn’t catch it live, don’t worry. You will see these images countless times over the coming hours and days.
The launch was nothing short of stunning, in some ways rivaling the launch of a Saturn V launch vehicle and in other ways far more impressive.
Of course, the craft doesn’t carry men to the moon–yet, at least–and it is only in its test phase, so at this stage the emotional charge is hardly comparable.
That may change, though, if Starship fulfills its intended mission, which is to bring men to the moon from orbit and eventually get men to Mars.
First, let’s get a few things out of the way for those who haven’t been following the development of Starship as closely as us geeks: unlike the Saturn V and pretty much any vehicle made by the US government (through contractors, of course), SpaceX’s development strategy is vastly different.
NASA designs its spacecraft to work the first time they fly, so they are exquisitely engineered from the beginning. This has the advantage of making a craft that doesn’t tend to blow up for all the cameras to see, but also means that they are wildly expensive to develop, can take forever to build, and never meet budget targets.
Boeings Starliner – WATCH: Astronaut gives pro-America message before blastoff
Butch Wilmore gives stirring speech alongside Suni Williams before Boeing’s Starliner lifts off
By WND Staff
The Boeing Starliner on the launch pad moments before liftoff Wednesday, June 5, 2024, from Cape Canaveral, Florida.