In my lifetime, space exploration has gone from Sputnik to multiple launches each week.

[Ptah]

I am in awe of the magnificent machines we build.

Sputnik flashback

SpaceX Starship Expectations vs. Reality: Is There a Problem?

Welcome back my friends to an intriguing week. We have so many great things to finally dive deeper into around Starbase and Starship updates as they prepare for flight 4. Many have been asking about the 40-50 tonnes to orbit for the current Starship design which came as a surprise to all of us (including me) from Elon's presentation last week. What are the SpaceX Starship Expectations vs. Reality? Is There a Problem? Raptor is the key, and it is complicated. Do we also have a dry mass problem? Are they running engines at lower thrust for safety? Lots to speculate about today. We have Falcon 9 action as always. Also, Boeing Starliner is ready to fly, and we are finally getting ready for action, with Gilmour Space and their Eris rocket preparing to take its first flight from Queensland Australia!

[Warpy]

1. Plus remotely exploring planets and moons in our own system

so that we know what it would look like to stand on them and look around. In addition, we're finding planets in other star systems and are able to find out what their atmospheric chemistry is like. And the Hubble gave us a clue about just how immense the observable universe is how many more galaxies there are, each with billions of stars that most likely have planets and moons.

We've also discovered organic chemistry wherever we look, although exoplanets wold be highly unlikely to produce the kind of life we'd recognize as such and none that would be compatible with ours. IOW, if you want to explore other worlds, pack a lunch.

When I was a kid, we knew about the Magellanic Clouds and Andromeda, but we couldn't tell the difference between clouds of dust and gas and other galaxies. Now we can. That is mind blowing, the universe having gotten so much bigger and we can't see beyond the point the CBR gets so dense it forms a barrier to the instruments we have now. We've gotten smaller but bigger at the same time, big enough to be a part of this immense universe looking at itself.

Even if that was all that happened in my lifetime, it would be astonishing. So ,much has changed, it would take a wall o text to list it.

[coprolite]

2. My first memory of US space travel was

Neil Armstrong walking on the moon. Dad came down from his project of nailing cedar shingles on the roof. We watched the Lunar Lander on our black and white TV. I would have been about 8 years old.

[Warpy]

3. I had "advanced science"

that was taught via TV. They'd cut to tests of the Vanguard rocket systems, so my first memory of space exploration is of those things falling over or blowing up at the launch pad. That's how far we've come.

Love the guy smoking rapidly as he stares at an old tape deck, perpas expecting it to get up and dance at any moment.

[GreenWave]

4. Soon exoplanet discoveries will be coming in by the droves on a daily basis!

[lastlib]

5. I was born a week before Sputnik I was launched.

My first memory of a TV event was John Glenn's Mercury flight. But I was hooked from that day on. I think I watched every launch until the space shuttle; saw every moon-walk. And I have to say I'm astonished at how far we have come in my lifetime--from barely able to get off the ground to sending probes to interstellar space, to finding planets in other solar systems and galaxies born almost at the dawn of time itself. It is mind-boggling, really.

[Wonder Why]

6. I remember reading Willy Ley's book in 1957 when he foretold that, with an effort, we could send a man to the moon

in 12 years - that was long before JFK's promise. He was right on. I was 10 when I read that book.

Boeing Starliner is finally "ready to fly" years later than was promised and at much higher cost. Wonder if the door will fall off on the way.