Cecil Rhodes.

It looks Musk had read him in the past, of someone told him. It's good there's no martians to enslave...

Apollo 12 quite happily flew though a thunderstorm and tanked a lightnight strike on the way up.

Apollo 12 was famously extremely *unhappy* about flying through the thunderstorm and would have been aborted if it wasn't for the quick thinking of John Aaron who knew the systems for which he was responsible inside and out. "try SCE to Aux" forever a reminder that the Mark I Human Brain[tm] is capable of feats of recognition and intuition that very likely can't ever be matched by LLMs and their ilk. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Aaron

Very good point, at the same time, do have a look at the re-entry phase of flight test 4. It maintained effective command authority even as the forward flaps were turned to plasma.

It took SpaceX the better part of 12 years (2004-2016) to develop the Falcon 1 into a (useful) Falcon 9 v1.2 and later Falcon Heavy that exhibit the perfected reusability, reliability and streamlined operations we have come to expect from SpaceX and that are a precondition to get anything man-rated.

I find the development of the SuperHeavy booster and its return capability absolutely fascinating, however, there is still a chance that Starship problems might not be correctable at all within the available mass/weight budget, especially since every flight seems to hit different problems, ends in an explosion and root causes need to be guessed.

I see pretty strong parallels between Starship and Falcon 1 in terms of reaching a reliability/capability plateau well below expectations before being abandoned for a modified design.

So my money is on HLS based on Starship Block 3 going nowhere, especially not within any near-term schedule.

Does anyone really care about resuming manned missions to the moon?

Personally, I'm glad to see any mission pulled for technical reasons rather launching and watching it go bang. But this is a bit new for SpaceX which has so far been happy watch things explode and exclaim loudly about all the data collected. If I were a cynic, I'd be suggested to say that accounts called and said money is tighter than it used to be.

Can we have more news about other rocket launches around the world?

SpaceX is a LOSER company headed by a LOSER CEO! If they can't LAUNCH because of a few CLOUDS, we'll look at launching with my new BEST MATE, Vlad. Thank you for your attention to this matter.

SpaceX have already said that they plan on expanding the weather tolerances for Starship, much like they did for F9. Early days at the moment, plenty of testing needed first before looking at weather tolerances.

As for Soyuz, being based on a R-7 ICBM design means better weather tolerance from day 1. Can you imagine trying to respond to a first strike and saying we are waiting for the clouds to clear.

I'm no [1]rocket scientist but it seems to me that, given the amount of leaking pipes, lines and tanks on the Block-II Super Heavy, SpaceX could do with a good plumber or two. Pipes or tanks rupturing, fittings popping loose and LOX spills are not a failure of the rocket science itself, it's pretty much a plumbing issue.

[1] https://xkcd.com/984/

Containing and plumbing cryogenic liquids is, however, pretty much rocket acience

The COPV was a communications issue. There is a long list of handling requirements for COPVs that SpaceX/Florida are well aware of when assembling Falcon 9s. That knowledge did not reach SpaceX/Texas until it was too late.

Issues with the ground support equipment is not much of a surprise as they have had to rebuild it several times. Discovering faults while commissioning a new large complex system is not something to be ashamed of. On the other hand, the reasons why they have had to rebuild multiple times...

When I was at school, swivel-eyed members of the Scripture Unions used to tell me how great it was that Christ had died for our sins. Would it have been better, I would ask them, if everybody had accepted Jesus' preaching and he hadn't been put to death. This invariably flummoxed them.

In a similar way it is always fun to ask Musk's fanboiz - the ones who say that every exploded Starship is a Great Leap Forward - if it really would be worse for them not to blow up[1].

And the plan is now, apparently, to use a spacecraft which has failed in every single launch attempt over two years to land humans on the moon in eighteen months, without even considering minor details like "refuelling in orbit" and so on. Yeah, right.

[1] Some of them are made[2] so they don't blow up at all.

[2] Cardboard's out.

I had a lovely conversation with a colleague who is a very devoted follower of religion.

He insisted his time of birth and death were predetermined by his god to a grand plan but could not accept that I would be working to god's plan and doing god's will if I decided to murder him.

It's odd how their minds (don't) work sometimes.

Faith trumps logic every time.

Some of the testing scenarios deliberately push the envelope, so failures are almost expected. However they gain valuable info from telemetry before the RUD experience. However the Starship RUDs recently seem to have been rather unexpected. Nevertheless they get useful data. The booster is mostly meeting milestones as far as I can see.

I prefer testing for failure as opposed to Boeing's approach.