Earlier this week, SpaceX (aka Elon Musk’s other company) was granted approval from the Federal Aviation Administration to build a 56.5-acre spaceport along the Gulf of Mexico. While the company will still need approvals from local agencies before it can begin construction, the FAA’s decision is a monumental step forward on the path to making the long-planned spaceport a reality. This is major win for SpaceX, since the proposed spaceport will allow the company to launch from private property, rather than from Air Force facilities it currently uses for rocket tests and missions to the International Space Station.
On Wednesday, the FAA, which oversees all commercial space launches in the US, issued SpaceX what’s known as a Record of Decision that states the agency will grant launch licenses to the company to operate at a private location along the Texas-Mexico border near Boca Chico State Park — about 20 miles east of Brownsville, Texas. Under the FAA decision, SpaceX may conduct 12 commercial launches per year through 2025, specifically ten Falcon 9 rockets and two Falcon Heavy rockets.
This definitely isn’t the last hurdle that SpaceX needs to overcome before it can start building (it still needs approval from various state agencies in order to build roads start construction on the site), but this should be the last federal obstacle the company will face before it breaks ground on the spaceport.
After 13 suborbital test flights and more than $15 billion in development costs, SpaceX's Starship has finally reached orbit. The 407-foot megarocket, the most powerful ever built, lifted off from Starbase, Texas, on Monday and delivered its first real payload on it's 14th attempt. The celebration came with an asterisk, though, since SpaceX had to cut the planned 10-hour mission to roughly three hours.
https://twitter.com/SpaceX/status/2104601695711904180
SpaceX is finally ready to give Starship its biggest test yet. The company says the massive rocket's 14th test flight is scheduled for September 22, when it will attempt to put the upper stage into Earth orbit for the first time. The launch is currently pending regulatory approval, with a 75-minute window opening at 7:15 a.m. CT.
Starship has 26 Starlink satellites to deliver
For decades, humanity has looked up at the Moon and wondered what it would be like to live on it. Think sprawling cities, factories, research centers, and permanent human settlements. Unfortunately, there is one fairly fundamental problem with that vision.
A new study published in Frontiers in Space Technologies argues that even the Moon's potentially enormous reserves of frozen water may be nowhere near enough to support city-sized populations sustainably. Researchers Martin Elvis and Jonathan McDowell estimate that the permanently shadowed regions near the lunar poles could contain roughly one billion tons of water. It sounds like an extraordinary amount until you put a million thirsty humans next to it.