It's Thursday, October 9 as I type, and around the space community big, flashy, loud things are moving, especially from a couple of big stories we've talked about.
Big One First: Starship Flight 11 Booster Rolls to the Pad
On Wednesday, Oct. 8, SpaceX announced they had rolled the (already flown and flight tested) SuperHeavy booster for the next flight test. They posted photos on X showing the giant booster, posed for photographs along the way and then being placed on the launch pad.
SpaceX rolls the Starship Flight 11 Super Heavy booster to the launch pad at its Starbase site in South Texas. Photo posted on X, Oct. 8, 2025. (Image credit: SpaceX)
As has been covered before the launch is currently scheduled for Monday, Oct. 13 at 7:15 PM EDT. The plan for Flight Test 11 is similar to August's FT-10, which was very successful. This booster is a flight-proven vehicle, having flown on FT-8 last March. On that flight, it was captured by the tower "chopstick arms," which is not planned for this flight. It will fall into the Gulf of America near the launch site in Boca Chica.
This is also expected to be the last flight of a Version 2 Starship and a short description of the mission is to test the "corner cases" of the ship and booster like FT-10 did, but more aggressively.
Meanwhile in Florida, Blue Origin rolls their next New Glenn to the pad
As mentioned yesterday, Blue Origin is preparing for the November launch of their second New Glenn rocket to orbit, this time lifting NASA's two ESCAPADE satellites to an escape trajectory to head to Mars. That's right, this isn't a test flight for Blue Origin to learn more about their vehicle, it's for paying customers.
The two ESCAPADE ("Escape and Plasma Acceleration and Dynamics Explorers") orbiters will be sent to the Red Planet, where they will study the Martian atmosphere and how it's affected by the solar wind and space weather.
Blue Origin rolls the first stage of its powerful New Glenn rocket to the pad at Cape Canaveral Space Force Station on Oct. 8, 2025. (Image credit: Blue Origin)
Comparatively, Blue Origin's story is lower priority because their earliest launch date is November 9, while Starship test flight is this coming Monday, just a few days away.
I'll not hold my breath over BO. (heh, that's actually kinda funny...)
ReplyDeleteAm looking forward to Monday. Will be interesting to see if SpaceX makes all its goals.
x2 very much so
DeleteYeah, x3 and I'm sure there are many more.
DeleteI'm really looking forward to watching Starship launches from the Cape - having missed the Saturn V days.
Falcon 9 sometimes rattles the windows a bit. I can't wait for starship.
DeleteYeah, when my patio doors' windows rattle from a launch, that's a feature and not a problem.
DeleteSo, either this https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mYKup4uBDXA is very concerning or it is pure BS. There could be no middle ground. What is your opinion?
ReplyDeleteOf course there's a possible middle ground. It could be they're honest but wrong.
DeleteOne of the first things that "triggered me" was referring to the comet having an anti-tail, as if that's something that's never happened. I remember for sure having seen a comet with what looks like a tail pointing in the wrong direction but not which one was the best example. I even recall thinking "they all do that" at some point. They're really not that uncommon. Some places even joke about it.
Of all the things they mentioned, the only one that stood out to me as unusual was having a high nickel content in spectra that were taken. It's not enough to convince me its made by an intelligent species somewhere, just to prove it's "not from around here" - which we already know because it's an interstellar comet.
Why do I think it's just another rock? Because it's acting like a rock. It's on a purely ballistic trajectory. It's moving fast compared to things we're used to observing - which is, after all, the last few years of human history - but it's not moving fast compared to the speeds required for the distances it has come. Good old Wikipedia says it's moving at 58km/sec or 0.000193c. We don't know where it came from, but even if it came from the closest stars at 4 light years away, that means more than 20,000 years to get here. Who's going to launch a system that slow, and why? What kind of system could work over 20,000 years without failing?
Look, if you're Avi Loeb and you think that there's some chance, they're going to land and do the whole, "Klaatu barada nikto" thing and you want to look like you did your best to warn everyone, you've got to do what he's doing. Well-meaning but wrong.