We've never seen anything like this recording of a landing on another world. @fireflyspace

I feel like I need to apologise to Astra for this.... but it was too good a joke to ignore.

HOLY SHITBALLS THEY CAUGHT IT!

Oh boy, it just gets worse and worse

A mysterious expert in submersibles was interviewed by the Coast Guard during the Titan investigation. His name is redacted, but we barely get into the interview before it becomes obvious who it is.

Congratulation ISRO! (“Iterally just woke up, and grabbed my phone to check on status)

A great day for engineering:

Does google's Pixel phone have a special feature where it looks like an iPhone in reflections?

Flashback to 3 years ago when I predicted this catch mechanism in Kerbal Space Program

Less than a week ago NASA had to stop working with SpaceX on HLS development because of protests from The National Team and Dynetics. This is how SpaceX reacts.

Watch as air traffic clears the debris zones

In yesterday's video I lamented the fact that the only X-38 footage on the internet was in 1999 era 240p quality. Well, someone who worked on the project hooked me up with something better:

NVIDIA are pushing a graphics future where the GPU renders at low resolution and uses AI to interpolate more detail. This is basically what we did as kids in the 80’s, the graphics were blocky but our own neurons imagined detail that wasn’t there.

Just witnessed an awful plane crash at novato. No survivors.

ISS was in the right place at the right time, can't wait to see real pictures

Aaaaaaand success!!!!

Yeah this looks like it's in a phugoid oscillation - as the nose drops it gains speed causing it to pitch up, then as it slows it pitches down. This is the kind of thing you see when trying to steer using engine thrust only, it's possible they had a complete hydraulic failure.

I know who was flying Starship today

The warheads are coming straight down, this is a missile that was launched on a lofted trajectory because it's being used at a much shorter range than intended. Whether it's an ICBM, MRBM, or IRBM doesn't matter, it's being used against civilian targets in a nation who refuses to be part of Russia's control.

Clearly, SpaceX needs to mount a mission to recover that flap so it can be given a medal

That looks like a successful soft landing. DAMN WHAT A LEGEND!

China demonstrating a prototype tailless next generation stealth fighter feels very much like a 'Sputnik Moment' because the US could have built something like this a long time ago but has chose other procurement strategies. Without a tail it has some pretty complicated trailing edge control surfaces - looks like 5 on each wing. It looks like there's 3 air intakes for 3 engines, with one air intake on the top. This could mean a low speed stealth cruise capability using just the center engine with the underside intake closing to reduce radar returns. Of course people say 'fighter' because the wing sweep suggests supersonic capabilities (with 3 engines it has plenty of power), and the fact that it has intakes on the bottom which are needed in high AoA maneuvering. It could easily have some other roles. Also I keep seeing 'space capabilities' which somehow people are construing to mean 'can fly in space' rather than the more realistic 'can communicated with satellites for domain awareness'.

Raptor designs are becoming less Star Wars, more Star Trek.

So…. After a wild day, traveling a hundred miles across the country to an unfamiliar airfield I no longer have my pilot certificate. Because I have a new one, that doesn’t say student any more.

So how are the ‘orange rocket bad’ folks right now?

Look at the booster engine relight sequence:

Starlink skeptics kept telling me it wouldn't provide worldwide access because it was priced for the US. I just saw this article that compares Starlink vs competitors in a number of african nations showing it's now cheaper than local providers in many places restofworld.org/2025/starlin…

So to sum up my commentary on the Starship/Superheavy test launches: IFT1 - 'Holy Shitballs! It's Moving!' IFT2 - 'Holy Shitballs! It's staging!' IFT3 - 'Holy Shitballs! It's burning up!' IFT4 - 'Holy Shitballs! They landed!'

I think @elonmusk enjoys watching rocket nerds making guesses about construction at Boca Chica.

As of right now The National Team, led by Blue Origin has received more HLS development funds than the current winner, SpaceX. $579 million for National Team $135 million for SpaceX. Further funding for the winner is awaiting results of protest.

It only flew at Mach 3 - fast enough to reach space for a moment, not fast enough to stay in space. For that you need Mach 25. As you can imagine there’s a huge difference in the kinetic energy between those speeds.

We have arrived

Given how photogenic the starship debris trail was, I think we should get @NASA to insist that the ISS deorbit happen in twilight, if we're spending a billion dollars to do this we need to make it look as good as possible.

This clip is never not cool. Showing an Apple MacPortable ejecting a floppy disk in Zero g. But at this moment in time, for me it’s especially appropriate as I’ve just left Apple after 15 years, and maybe it’s time for me to go full time as a content creator.

Booster was clearly close enough to the target that they had people with cameras ready.

I just completed an important space history video restoration project, there's an often shared video showing a Mac Portable ejecting a floppy disk in zero G, but it's painfully low quality, so I found a better source and cleaned it up.

Don’t use floating point numbers for monetary transactions

Suicide burn was a little late, RIP SN8

I’m on a date with my wife right now and need to apologize for staring at my phone instead of being a loving husband.

In 650 years we’ll know whether this tweet needed a community note.

Does that look like fire in places where it shouldn't be?

Not sure the attitude control is working......

And the 6th Astra launch vehicle goes the wrong way:

And that looks like a succesful landing burn! And RIGHT ON TARGET because they had a camera there waiting:

Bad news.... I don't think the Banana made it.

As I expected: the booster came down vertically away from the tower and only once it was on 3 engines in a good configuration did it translate towards the tower for the catch:

After flying F-14's for the aerial stunts in Top Gun, Scott Altman became an Astronaut, here's him landing the shuttle. I think he planted that nose wheel like he was landing on a carrier.

Meanwhile - India have demonstrated docking with their SPADEX mission.

There's now a record number of humans in orbit - 14 in total - 7 on ISS, 3 on Tiangong and 4 on Inspiration4

So... is this some pyrotechnic to nail the legs to the deck?

The infuriating thing about creator monetization is you can tweet something so utterly wrong and If I reply to it to point out how wrong it is the original poster gets rewarded.

Commercial flights are turning around to avoid potential debris.

Judging by the movement of the shadows ISRO spent a long time checking out the rover before going ahead and rolling through that crater

So that'll be the largest thing ever sent to orbit in one launch.

It takes too long to keep typing 'Blue Origin New Glenn'. I should just use the acronym BONG instead, we're hoping to see the BONG lit tonight if the weather cooperates. In my timezone it's easy for me to stay up late get my hit of BONG coverage, so I can take it all in and be 'inspired'.

I’m sure that when the ‘hire on merit only’ crowd find out that women are generally better candidates for long term Spaceflight they’ll tell NASA to stop hiring men. Equal performance, but lower mass, requiring fewer consumables and better radiation shielding around reproductive organs. If they’re going to ignore the multitude of good reasons for a diverse astronaut corps then it’s time to start factoring in these advantages, otherwise NASA is wasting money by putting big men into space.

Aircraft squawking 1200 over USA right now

Parker Solar Probe's view of its sundive in August, peeking over the edge of the sunshield to see streamers of plasma.

SN15 Flew safe. Landing legs look better than any previous landing.

I give more respect to a failure of a space mission in public than to a success in secrecy.

To get into the spirit of what JWST has to do next, try unwrapping all your presents without tearing any paper.

Really awesome to see this, even if it's probably dying

So do we start asking you for an Edit Button?

Important notice to developers of software that's going on Mars spacecraft. If you're developing a Daemon, try and name it something like 'Mars Automated Telemetry Transmitter' so that when you upload it you can say you've just sent MATT Daemon to Mars.

I watched the coast guard press conference and I heard a lot of journalists asking about recovering bodies. I don't think most people understand what happens to flesh and bone when these kind of forces are involved.

I was so sure that the damage to the forward flap would have lead to a nosedive, but the control software managed to adapt, and the flap operated despite missing a huge chunk of it.

Something about the state of education in this country.....

With New Glenn & Starship expected to launch within days of each other I'm seeing a lot of people saying that New Glenn is too late and already redundant. However, New Glenn's much delayed launch is intended to be a fully operation launch system, Starship is still in development. Starship 100 ton payload and 9 meter wide cargo are massive compared to other rockets, but New Glenn gets 45 tons and a 7 meter wide fairing, also bigger than anything else out there right now. And consider that Starship is still working with a Pez dispenser satellite system which limits its use until they figure out how to put a big door on the side. Even then I suspect it'll maybe accommodate payloads of up to 8 meters. If anyone needs anything bigger, starship would need to be rebuild, while New Glenn could more easily adapt to add a hammerhead style fairing like Falcon 9. Just in case anyone wants to launch a 10 meter telescope mirror 😉 For delivering higher energy payloads on interplanetary trajectories, Starship would need to carry an upper stage into orbit and then deploy that. New Glenn already has a high performance hydrogen upper stage capable of sending spacecraft to GTO or beyond before it needs to think about adding a third stage (which is something that was certainly talked about at BO). SpaceX of course can continue to expend falcon Heavy cores if it needs to do this, it's just not being revolutionized by Starship any time soon. On the reusability front we know that the core and fairings are intended to be reusable and while the current second stage is expendable Blue Origin had a team working on 'Project Jarvis' which has laid the groundwork for a fully reusable upper stage, it's within the realm of possibility this capability comes to New Glenn And then there's already customers, at the very least Amazon has a lot of payloads it wants to fly on NG rather than alternatives. So while the mass to low earth orbit and 100% reusability capabilities of Starship are going to be game changing in the coming decades, they're not the only metric by which a launch system is judged by potential users.

I fixed the camera angle.

There's a type of plasma blackout where the free electrons in the plasma block radio waves. I think starship is experiencing the second type of plasma blackout where bits of its antennae became plasma.

HOLY SHITBALLS IT'S MOVING!

* 2 Stage Launch System * Fully Reusable * Methalox Boosters With Dozens of Engines * 420t To Orbit No it's not Elon's plans for Starship 2.0 it's Boeing's Space Freighter - find out about this and other rocket concepts that make Starship look small piped.video/watch?v=1IQy5O6O…

So, I took a look at the 'encrypted' telemetry data from Starship's static fire and I figured something out.

Niiiiiice

Since SpaceX demonstrated propulsive booster recovery and reuse we wondered who would be next to achieve this. It was SpaceX refrying the world’s biggest booster, a technical feat that boggles the mind almost as much as the same people not being able to make a working door.

I have hundreds of videos…. But I’d need to reencode them since twitter is extraordinarily picky about formats.

Government procurement of software systems has a terribly high failure rate, and this isn't just the US government it's seen around the world. It's common to see the lowest bid winning, installation starting and then the backend customization required is massively greater than originally estimated, so costs and timelines explode. And then there's the problem that the coders with talent want to be at a startup where they can get things done rather than a government job where things take too long.

Given that this is disrupting aircraft downrange, I would be wanting an investigation before I let starship fly again. I'd want to know what kind of debris risk we're dealing with, starship is big and designed to handle reentry. Is the explosion the result of a tank failure or the FTS? We might reasonably ask whether trying to destroy such a large object is the best option in an emergency or whether it's safer to let it come down in as few pieces as possible.

More successful than your choice of thumbnail.

They have speeds in miles per hour and I'm not used to this for orbital launches.

SpaceX has an FCC application for a Starship orbital flight which gives a lot of important info - Booster lands offshore in gulf, Starship threads its way between islands and then performs reentry and landing about 60 miles north of Kauaii apps.fcc.gov/els/GetAtt.html…

Just remember, every questionable landing on the moon just makes Neil Armstrong look like even more of a hero.

You don't usually see panels like that from the 2nd stage

Remember, rockets are a transportation system based on a series of tubes.

Well um - I wonder if that'll still work.

Real men can cry over whatever they want, because they're real men and aren't worried about whether they're masculine enough.

So as I said, maybe Superheavy needs a flame diverter.

This is the kind of accuracy you need to do every time if you want to eliminate the landing legs.

I am in no way an expert on submersibles, but, based on what I know and what I see here, the pressure hull failed at the glue join between the carbon fiber and the titanium ring on the front of the sub, that failure propagated backwards with the water pushing everything into the rear of the cabin in milliseconds. The front just popped off, the bolts used to hold it in probably snapped due to the water rushing in, the window shot out, no idea where that is. Also I don't see where the forward ring is, it got propelled away and being less draggy travelled further. This wasn't a window failure, it wasn't titanium failure, and judging by the transcript they weren't seeing or hearing anything wrong, just dropping a couple of weights to slow the descent.

"I have a great idea for SpaceX, can you help pass it on To Elon Musk" 🚩🚩🚩🚩🚩🚩🚩🚩🚩🚩🚩🚩🚩🚩🚩🚩🚩🚩🚩🚩🚩🚩🚩🚩🚩🚩🚩🚩🚩🚩🚩🚩🚩🚩🚩🚩🚩🚩🚩🚩🚩

SpaceX has lost as much as 80% of the Starlink satellites launched on Thursday due to a solar storm, combined with the intentionally low deployment orbits used for debris managements.

For the next week @KerbalSpaceP is a available for free in the Epic game store. It’s only a game, but it’s a game that has helped start a lot of people on a career in aerospace.

SpaceX is going to destroy the International Space Station nasa.gov/news-release/nasa-s…

Damn.....

Excitement delivered! Note that the engine which didn't relight for the boostback worked fine for the landing.

As many of you know I've been posting aviation videos, and these regularly get comments warning me about being careful because the FAA might be watching and might see something showing I unintentionally violated some regulation. This morning I received a message from a FAA representative, about some recent content.... Asking if they can use it in some internal training videos on EVTOL battery engineering. 😉