Southwest USA: Starliner Launch from Florida, Landing out west

[tx2sturgis]

I'm hoping this goes well, and if so, in about a week from tonight, give or take a day or two, this capsule is sceduled to land 'somewhere' in New Mexico or maybe Arizona next week.

https://www.boeing.com/space/starliner/launch/index.html



5-6-2024 Launch scheduled for tonite.

I'm watching the live feed as I type this.

 

[tx2sturgis]

Launch scrubbed!

Some sort of oxygen relief valve problem.

 

[INTJohn]

The Space X Falcon 9 launched ok tho earlier in the day. Would’ve been a launchpad double header.

Over the years I’ve been fortunate enough to be in the Titusville Fla area to witness several big time rocket liftoffs.

Always kinda kool
jonny boi

 

[tx2sturgis]

Yep a 'double header' would have been cool....

 

[tx2sturgis]

Well they had a sucessful launch and wow did it look cool!



If everything goes according to plan they will be landing in about 10 days, somewhere in the SW US...Maybe southern Arizona...

 

[Gr8ful]

SpaceX was paid for with PayPal, That same year, Musk co-founded X.com, a direct bank. X.com merged with Confinity in 2000 to form PayPal. In October 2002, eBay acquired PayPal for $1.5 billion. Using $100 million of the money he made from the sale of PayPal, Musk founded SpaceX, a spaceflight services company, in 2002.

 

[tx2sturgis]

Yeah but this one was Boeing Aerospace. First crewed flight of the Starliner capsule, and riding atop an Atlas V and Centaur second stage.

But similar to the SpaceX Dragon, it's headed for the Space Station.

 

[tx2sturgis]

It might be a bit confusing, but Starliner is a capsule that Boeing has built for carrying astronauts and supplies to the space station.

Dragon is the SpaceX capsule that is intended to do (and has done) the same job, more or less. NASA wants to have at least two reliable ways to service the Space Station with crew and cargo. These normally launch from Florida.

Starliner capsule is intended to parachute land on the ground in the SW USA. Dragon capsule parachutes into the ocean and is recovered there.

SpaceX launched another Starship this morning, this one is still in 'beta testing' mode, and both the booster and the starship made it back into the oceans.

Starship is a rather large rocket and orbital vehicle built by SpaceX, launched from South Texas and still in testing (no humans on board) and it is intended to eventually be refueled in orbit after launch and then head off to the Moon and possibly Mars at some point in the future. That's the plan anyway.

Of course, China, Japan, Russia, the EU, and India all have space programs in varying degrees of capabilities. There are a handful of smaller countries working on rockets, missiles and various other bits of high-flying hardware.

It is an interesting time to be alive and see all of this.

 

[Happy Camper]

I'm glad SLS finally flew successfully. We need more than one option to get to space. They need to keep moving it forward and find a way to have it not cost so much. Hopefully they remove the cost plus aspect of the contract sooner than later. They need to start getting things done right and within costs and deadlines.

But I'm glad we finally have extra options. It is a great time to be alive if you're into space exploration.

 

[tx2sturgis]

SLS and Artemis-1 (with its Orion capsule) had an un-crewed test flight back in November of 2022, that one went around the moon and came back to earth.

First manned flight of SLS is set for September of 2025. We shall see.

 

[rruff]

But I'm glad we finally have extra options. It is a great time to be alive if you're into space exploration.

You might like the series "For All Mankind". It's a little bit thick with woke tropes, but I still thought it was interesting.