Yeah, they slipped-in a blink-and-you’ll-miss-it “sci-fi/fantasy” bait-and-switch just before getting to the list (which shockingly isn’t a slide show!) ...

Yeah, I doubt there was an FTS active if even installed for a static fire. Best they could do was messily shut down the engines and watch the thing plummet.

It looks like they’re doing a virtual flyback test to a specific point in the Gulf, running through the same landing procedures that would happen at the tower, just without the actual tower. So it’s not really on a back burner, just a front burner at a lower setting ;-)

SpaceX had to destroy the booster during its failed landing attempt, with the Super Heavy exploding 1,515 feet (462 meters) above the Gulf of Mexico.

It is outright false to say that Starship development isn’t being funded by taxpayers.

NASA has awarded a contract modification to SpaceX to further develop its Starship human landing system

SpaceX has failed spectacularly pretty regularly.

They do have many contracts, but none for Starship/Superheavy development. To say that a RUDing engine that has zero to do with, say, Falcon 9 missions, which NASA and the government *do* contract for, is burning taxpayer money is inaccurate. To my knowledge, the only government contract SpaceX has that is even…

Well, it’s a kind of silly, pedantic discussion, but at least with IFT3, you can’t definitively state that the vehicles blew up, because no one actually knows what their fates were after telemetry was lost. And when it was lost both were basically intact at the time (although both wildly out of control ;-)

Starship/Heavy Booster development isn’t taxpayer funded, so in this case the only money they’re blowing up is SpaceX’s.

It is, relative to other unmanned Moon / Mars missions whose landing radii were often measured in kilometers

Depends on the context, I think — in this case I believe they’re referring to the turnaround time between launches at a specific pad. They do this all the time when speaking of turnaround times for Falcon 9 launches at, say, pad 39A, where they’re flying different vehicles for each launch ...

Because in context of the EU regulators, this particular designation is not about connectivity between ecosystems, but whether a service is an important gateway between businesses and consumers. As I mentioned elsewhere, I doubt any messaging service would qualify beyond possibly Customer Service ...

Honest question: what PR value is there in NOT explicitly mentioning the satellites will burn up in the atmosphere? “Deorbit” and “controlled descent” are actual terms with actual meanings — why would a PR team choose them over other terms? What other terms would you use instead to report more accurately?

Max: Hahahahahaha! Your core service doesn’t have to be regulated — what losers! How uncool! How does it feel to be irrelevant???

Yep. The heat death of Kinja continues. Sad.

Ah! Thanks for that info — I did a bit more digging and yes the larger “hopper” rover has direct-to-earth capabilities and appears to be communicating independently at the moment. Also, apparently one of its tasks was to record the lander’s descent, so hopefully we’ll get to see that later in the week =) Maybe JAXA…

The thing deployed two rovers before it crashed that are supposedly now working.

Yeah, if NASA had failed as many times in as many missions as space daddy

...thanks to stripping funding from NASA because “private enterprise”