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Starship Flight 10: first payload deploy, controlled splashdown — and a curious nudge at the airlock
Last night’s Starship flight test achieved its core goals: clean ascent and staging, first-ever payload-bay operations with eight Starlink V3 mass simulators, re-entry experimentation with intentionally “bad” TPS conditions, and a flip + landing-burn to splashdown in the Indian Ocean captured on buoy-cam. It’s a major step toward routine payload missions. Quick…
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Starship Flight 10, Part II: Boom, Bust, or Breakthrough?
Well, excited? Starship’s 10th test flight is blasting off tonight from Starbase, Texas, with a launch window kicking off at 6:30 p.m. CT—weather’s a coin flip at 45% favorable, so fingers crossed for no cosmic curveballs. This one’s all about pushing reusability: the Super Heavy booster (Booster 16) will flip, boost back, attempt a two-engine…
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“Try SCE to AUX”: three words to save a Moon mission
It’s one of engineering’s great anti-climaxes: no swelling music, no heroic speech—just three unglamorous syllables uttered on an open loop that turned chaos into “carry on.” Scene: November 14, 1969. Apollo 12 climbs into a gloomy Florida sky. Thirty-six seconds after liftoff: zap. Consoles in Mission Control fill with numeric gibberish. The crew’s caution panel…
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Enabling Competition in the Commercial Space Industry: Implications and Global Context
In August 2025, the White House issued a Presidential Executive Order “Enabling Competition in the Commercial Space Industry”. Its objective is clear: remove regulatory bottlenecks, accelerate innovation, and strengthen the United States’ position as the leading commercial space power. The order addresses longstanding industry complaints about slow environmental reviews, outdated licensing rules, and unclear pathways…
