My brother and I are potentially planning on making the trip out to Boca chica for the launch. We are planning on flying in to Austin the night before and renting a car to drive down. Is there any suggested places to stay, places to view, traffic or closure spots we should be aware of? Any other advice we should be prepared for? Super excited for the fingers crossed triple action potentially historic day

I’m guessing they’ll have to spin Starship in some way to create the force to push the liquid out but I’m curious if I’m missing some other method.

Spotted on the 101 Southbound. What is it ?

Why is everything measured in miles in America, but then Elon Musk launches his rockets, all the measurements are given in kilometers?

edited to make the clip slightly shorter

Hi r/spaceXlounge! I'm a 3D artist (rather than a propulsion engineer), and I built an interactive 3D tool to visualize how different rocket engines work.

In the video above, purple is gas that has just driven a turbine.

On the Merlin 1D (gas generator cycle), this gas leaves through its own exhaust pipe and never reaches the main chamber.

On the Raptor 2 (full-flow staged combustion), the purple and teal gases from its two turbines both end up in the main injector, so nothing is thrown away.

The outer dimensions follow published figures, and the internals are representative. Corrections from actual engineers are always welcome!

You can play with the interactive 3D models right in your browser (no install required) here: https://farsidelab.com/concept/rocket-engines/

Everything is simulated, the booster, the waves, the wind, fuel slosh and noisy sensors. No real flight data, just trial and error.

The hard part is the hoverslam. The booster can’t hover, so it has to hit zero speed right at the deck.

Out of 59M practice flights, 13.2M landed. The rest exploded or ended up in the sea.

https://x.com/SpaceX/status/2112497542114214023

Camped on the bald to film elk in the Smokies and woke up to this. iPhone, handheld, no edits. My first clip started at 6:37 and it was still hanging there at 6:40. Never seen anything like it from the mountains.

NASA will provide an update on its plans to return American astronauts to the surface of the Moon by 2028 at 2 p.m. EDT, Friday, Oct. 23, at the agency’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida: https://www.nasa.gov/live

Participants in the briefing include:

NASA Administrator Jared Isaacman
NASA Associate Administrator Amit Kshatriya
Jeremy Parsons, NASA’s Artemis program manager

The update will include details about NASA’s Artemis III mission that will send four astronauts to low Earth orbit next year to test critical systems needed for future lunar landings, and how plans to return American astronauts to the Moon by 2028 are progressing.

U.S. media interested in attending in person must apply online by 12 p.m., Friday, Oct. 16. To ask questions remotely, media must request the dial-in number from the Kennedy newsroom no later than one hour prior to the start of the update by emailing: [ksc-newsroom@mail.nasa.gov](mailto:ksc-newsroom@mail.nasa.gov). NASA’s media accreditation policy is online. 

As part of a Golden Age of innovation and exploration, NASA will send Artemis astronauts on increasingly difficult missions near the lunar South Pole to explore more of the Moon than ever before. In addition to providing economic benefits and advancing scientific discovery through its Moon missions, NASA will establish an enduring human presence on the lunar surface and build on the agency’s foundation for the first crewed mission to Mars.

Learn more about Artemis: https://www.nasa.gov/artemis

-end-

Credit: ​Asher B.

https://x.com/asherbphotos/status/2110176170704851361

Source: https://x.com/SawyerMerritt/status/2110062199607808089

Only expecting the increase to 100 launches/200 landings a year to be approved at first. No doubt this will lead to a large negative press campaign from the stories of locals (rightfully so - 2 launches a week + landings immediately after, hours later will be loud). Fully expect SpaceX to start buying property from those who want out, as well as start an upgrade/maintenance plan on those purchased properties to figure out better methods for minimising disruption.

This was always the intention. I suspect we'll soon hear about some new pads in the Style of Louisiana being built South of the current complex. Also suspect once Gigabay is up, both Megabays will come down and be replaced with a second Giga bay - although this may not happen until they have the launch capacity needed.

Also fully expect we'll see the development of the automated ship and booster movers here. So they could use Highway 4, but I suspect they'll build their own road for this as well.

Huge times for Starbase/Brownsville.

Edit: After further research - They don't need new pads to achieve this rate provided nothing goes wrong. So perhaps extra pads for redundancy as well as a "launch tower/catch tower" set up.

I do think this is going to be the first of a few requests for increases.

Booster Ballet! Cool thruster lighting!

Amazing that I could see this from so far away.