There's the old saying "Anything that is not nailed down is mine; anything that can be pried loose is by definition not nailed down". Now there's "Anything that is not bolted down is flight-capable; anything that can work itself loose from its clamps is by definition not bolted down".
Glad to hear a comment on the Chandra X-Ray Observatory. It would be a true shame to have a functioning space telescope canceled because of budget issues and not actual hardware issues.
We have seen the Ariane 6 APU failture from Győr, Hungary. We were at the Hungarian Asztronautical Scosiety's Space Camp. We were watching the stars that night. It looked amazing!
It was a spectacular launch! I'm still happy for Ariane & ESA, even though it's so disappointing they couldn't relight the APU. That's an awesome rocket!
Oh my god.. Oh my god I can't believe my eyes. I used to watch your old KSP videos all the time and now you appeared in my recommended feed after.. god.. what 8 or 9 years now?? I'm really happy to see you're doing well!!
I remember previous instances when there seemed to be clusters of unrelated launch failures, the first half of 1986 comes to mind, and there was a similar period in the late 90's.
Also that first big SpaceX failure (was that AMOS?), there was the explosion of that transporter (I forget the name), and didn't Sojus also have a mishap around that time? Or was that when SpaceX lost that docking adapter? Three launch providers for ISS, three failures. That was ... _interesting._
@@KaiHenningsen Amos-6 was the second big F9. It was the CRS-7 in-flight failure you are thinking about. Antares had a failure launching Cygnus in Oct 2014, Progress had a failure in April 2015, and Dragon CRS-7 failure was in June 2015. 3 resupply mission failures in a row.
Another difference between rockets and ICBMs that contribute to price is that a rocket needs to be in a sound state or launch through a short period of time, while an ICBM needs to sit ready and in mechanically sound condition for decades (honestly in the hope it NEVER launches).
@@_TeXoN_ I like your sense of humor. But I have questions. Germany's 1942 launch of an A4 (later V2) went beyond the US definition of space, 80 km, when it hit 85 km. It was also beyond the German definition at that time, they celebrated going into space (Wikipedia). A 1944 launch went well above 100 km, to ~180 km. But both launched from Peenemunde in Germany. V2 test launches were being made from Poland from late 1943 after Germany shifted a lot of V2 stuff to Poland to escape Allied aerial bombing. So one could have reached one of the altitudes I mentioned, although I haven't found anything specific.
Ariane demonstrated the ability to put stuff into orbit just fine. The problem was on the third engine light up which was supposed to deorbit the second stage, along with the reentry payloads. Still disappointing, but no concerns about the upcoming launches in the near future.
While using lava tunnels on the Moon for habitation is very cool. I've yet to hear anyone postulate these being cold traps for volatiles, similar to the craters on the poles which are in perpetual darkness. Perhaps H2O, Methane, and CO2 have deposited in the tubes and it might be much more pure due to not having impact dust mixed in.
Please *keep* talking about Starlink launches even those that don't fail- the fact that they are becoming so mundane and routine is actually amazing and so the launches deserve to be documented. It's a good reminder that access to space has improved so much so quickly.
The SpaceX failure is the most significant as it may interrupt other launches/missions, possibly even those to the ISS. The US doesn’t have a good alternative ready to go without asking the Russians for help, which is obviously problematic with the war in Ukraine. On the plus, I’m really stoked for the next Starship launch! At the least we should get to see some cool ‘virtual’ catch’s over the water and at best we’ll get to see a full catch test of the booster! (I say all this as a SpaceX fanboy)
Falcon 9 was completely without alternatives last year. I am happy to see that H-III, Vulcan and Ariane 6 are now entering service and slowly distributing the risk in the western launcher market.
If the US had an urgent need to launch in the next couple of weeks NASA or the DoD would authorize it. (The FAA only has authority over commercial payload launches.) They'd certainly do that before relying on Russia. Nothing else is that urgent, even the next Cargo Dragon and Crew Dragon missions. If by some vanishingly small minute chance F9 was grounded for months then a NASA or DoD authorization would be more likely, still before Russia. Any purely commercial launches will just have to wait. By law they can't go on Soyuz and Vulcan will make only 2 flights by the end of the year, if lucky.
I was annoyed when you said they were going to beam hip-hop music into space, but since they're aiming at Venus, which is almost literally Hell, I'm ok with that.
I love that the launch of mutliple superconstellation satellites on a rocket that lands tail first on a boat in the middle of the ocean makes you go "yeah boring".. how far we have come in the last few years!
15:48 ooh, the flaps on New Zealand's tail fin has a similar design to the shuttle's, where the tail flap is 2 pieces, they both pop out to slow down the aircraft on landing.
The Ariane 6 launch was great. So some engineers and agencies are actually still capable of building a whole new rocket and getting it right first time. What an achievement, well done ESA. Exploding rockets is getting pretty boring these days. Now Europe has a great new medium to high power independent launch capability. Perfect for the politics of the current era and half the price of Ariane 5. I just hope they stay away from manned spaceflight, a huge waste of money for boring missions. It'll be nice to get some good Ariane launched scientific exploratory missions launched to continue their previous great achievements including launching the James Webb Space Telescope.
Lots of rockets got it right first time, e.g. Falcon 9, Falcon Heavy, Vulcan. Starship has a different development process (hardware rich rapid iterative) because it's pioneering into the unknown on the bleeding edge of space tech. Ariane6 also is not half price of Ariane5. Even if we take away the 300 million per year subsidies for assured access, the 4B dev money rightoff, the free new launch site, Ariane64 (which is the one comparable to A5, 62 is comparable to Suyuz) is still only about 10% cheaper.
long time since I got notifications for your videos. Recently got kerbal space program up and just needed to binge watch your videos again. Love your stuff
Scott, I'd love to see some videos on the new Sentinel nuclear missile. You know both rockets and nukes so I'm sure you could give some interesting commentary on it.
Good stuff as usual, Scott, except for the part starting @ about 3:32 when you said, "...we were able to see it where I was...137 degree inclination orbit which meant it kind of flew East over the Pacific..." I didn't know you had gone to Panama, the only place on the Pacific coast in the Americas, south of Alaska, where anything CAN go East over the Pacific. 😊
You need to look more closely at the geography of southern California. The coast curves hard to the east approaching Mexico, where it is conceivable to look east-southeast and be looking at ocean.
The Chinese nature has always been secretive. Yes they copy, and no they don't want anyone else copying them. Specifically they want to keep all of their launches as far away as possible from prying Western eyes around the coast. You might also have noticed that in the last month or two they've been giving the world less and less notice of their launches - IIRC the last one went up just 4 hours after they announced it. I think all spacefaring nations are worried about someone else's on-orbit assets inspecting and potentially sabotaging their upper stages during launches...which makes me wonder mightily about those mysterious sudden upper stage problems of Ariane and the Falcon... 🤔
What direction is "leeward"? Online dictionaries don't help; they all say "In the direction of the wind" but don't clarify if it's the direction the wind is going towards, or the direction it is coming from.
In nautical parlance, the usual origin of aviation and space terminology, the lee is the side of a ship or a shore where the wind is blocked by the object. On a boat, with wind blowing directly from the left across the boat, the right is the lee side. Same for an island - land reduces the effect of wind on the lee (vice windward) side
Great Video ! My brother has seen a previous launch in 2024 of the Falcon 9 from the California SFB from the foothills on the East side of Albuquerque with NO clouds in the way ! I may have to go to a higher elevation to see if I can see Starship launch from Texas if the weather is clear to the South ! New Mexico has some Lava Tube Caves in western NM on the South side of I-40 ! tjl
Not to take away from this excellent video, but something exciting happened in Rocketry. An AI completed its first 3d print of a working rocket engine, and I would rather hear the details from you. Will you be doing that video soon?
First: Scott, thank you for your awesome, easy to understand videos. Second: It look like Falcon 9 are back in game (at least, by the Next Spaceflight app), do you know something more?
Something about the FAA completely grounding SpaceX rubs me the wrong way. A rocket that doesn’t have an issue until it’s already outside of earths atmosphere is more important while the FAA continues to let Boeing fly planes that aren’t constructed correctly.
It's standard procedure unfortunately. Besides, I don't think SpaceX or it's customers (manned or unmanned) want F9 to fly anyway until they figure out what is wrong.
I've been saying this for years. Spacex hiccups and the faa / fcc shuts them down, meanwhile boeing having multiple hull-loss level problems every flight and they just go "aww poor boeing, did you need us to ask congress for another two billion for you?"
Those are completely different situations and not comparable. Firstly flying is much more important for day to day needs and you can’t just ground all Boeings Boeing planes have taken hundreds of millions of flights with something like
A pit might lead to a lunar lava tube but is nonsensical cos the bottom is out of direct reach and communication with Earth is impossible from down there anyway. A horizontally accessible lunar lava tube is the only practicable way to go for a protected Moon base and to maintain communication.
"Other customers for SLS." What garbage. SLS was built specifically for NASA. SLS, regardless of the politics of using Shuttle parts, does one thing well: Launch heavy payloads in one go into high energy orbits. No other rocket we currently have is capable of sending large payloads as far or as fast. If Congress wants it to be cheaper they could always buy thirty of them.
Elom said it was an engineering upgrade for this flight. Rolled back the upgrade for the next. Also the starlink Sats managed to raise their orbits except for 7
Google isn’t doing a thing so what can any uploader do? You have to realize fighting BOT and scams are customer service and the less Google can spend on customer the more profit they have
