The FAA has granted SpaceX permission to launch its Starship rocket | Hacker News Reader

The FAA has granted SpaceX permission to launch its Starship rocket

arstechnica.com

397 pointsChickeNES171 comments

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April 17 is the anniversary of Apollo 13’s splashdown, if anyone was wondering.

Edit: in case anyone wasn't aware of the coolest website on the internet

https://apolloinrealtime.org/13/

Very cool. Thank you for sharing this.

https://apolloinrealtime.org/13/?t=055:55:00

^^ The moment everyone is probably trying to find :)

This is really excellent and just a great example of the niche side of the internet I miss so dearly!

This brought back all those old-school stumbleupon vibes, where suddenly, you find something magical

I certainly wasn't and appreciate you posting it, great site! A little intimidating initially, but after a minute curiosity has you flicking between the different controller channels and stages in the mission.

I wasn't aware of this website! It's great, I'm following Apollo 11 right now.

Wow thats incredible, thanks

Yea, but 4/20 is 4/20. I'd put my money on that.

-4 karma? should be +420 for being right

The license itself: https://www.faa.gov/about/office_org/headquarters_offices/as...

As someone who has been waiting since the ITS presentation in 2016, I've very excited :)

Edit: they reuploaded with additional info: https://www.faa.gov/about/office_org/headquarters_offices/as...

I've been following it since even before that point when it was still called the "MCT", but without any explanation of what the acronym meant. A long time coming. This is the beginning of a new era in space exploration.

I remember it being called BFR, which stood for Big F**ing Rocket, lol

That came later after the MCT and then ITS acronyms. There's a history here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SpaceX_Starship_development

> That came later after the MCT and then ITS acronyms

I believe there was a BFR originally [1], and it just returned later. But the real old one was the Falcon X and Falcon XX [2], which were to use the "Merlin 2" engine (giant RP/LOX engine a la the saturn V).

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SpaceX_Mars_program#Early_heav...

[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Falcon_X&oldid=38...

Big Falcon Rocket, to be spoken with only the straightest of faces.

Really wish they'd kept the BFR/BFB terminology, as that's what my shirts say. ;)

MCT was Mars Colonial Transport

It later became that but when MCT was first mentioned it was left up to the fan community to interpret what the acronym meant. Note also there was no images at that time, just a couple of fan artist conceptions on an imagined SpaceX made mars vehicle.

You and be both, I'm jumping out of my skin!

i was at south padre island for the first starship landing. even though it blew up a minute or two after it landed, i consider it the first landing. i had seen pretty much every major launch from spacex on their livestreams but i was still taken aback at seeing starship. its as odd as watching a skyscraper slowly levitate upward into the sky. and to see it standing after the dust settled was unreal. and after it was over people shuffled away and even i was halfway to my car when we heard the explosion. i thought it was a sonic boom or something and only later realized it had blown up because by that time the landing pad was well out of sight. i got a crazy sunburn.

im not sure if im even going to attempt to see the next launch in person because i think it will be absolutely thronged. finding a hotel room, parking, even a good spot in the grass come launch time. its going to be a fucking mad house. if some people here want to split a hotel room then i might consider it. hotels can really add up because they can scrub or cancel or whatever and youre just stuck there. i think there were a couple scrubs on my last go too. my advice to anyone who goes: bring sunscreen and a really good pair of binoculars and a tripod for the binoculars.

ive made a reservation with another user. show up at the lighthouse inn on south padre island the night of the 16th for a raging party and to save money on a room

Now this is what the internet is all about.

I'm down to share a room, my email is in my profile.

My email's in my profile, I'm trying to figure out how to get down there. Looks like the flight and renting a car is going to cost more than the hotel room...

Tim Dodd just released an excellent guide on how to visit Starbase.

https://youtu.be/aWvHrih-Juk

Thanks for the link.

Thank you, such a nice inspirational and personal writeup! Keep it up!

Drive don't fly. Rent van or large jeep. Sleep in it.

Do it in style. Rent a Tesla. Sleep in it.

I’ve done tours like that through Europe with the S, the 3 and the X. Can sleep comfortably in all of them as one person. In the X, it even worked with my wife and kid (plus baggage for a one week tour).

Can’t speak about the charging situation though down there. If you have to wait in line at chargers while depending on running the A/C all day it might be less fun.

Only under 400 mi after that it is cheaper to fly & rent. Current gas prices it's probably 350.

Inflatable mattresses are available at Walmart for like $10 :)

older model s came with free lifetime supercharging. I have mine. I'm tempted to go. S Padre Island isn't going to let you sleep on it in your car, I would guess. Are there campgrounds nearby? Only 2 70kwh superchargers on the island. I will watch that video.

im sharing a room with another HN user. 3 ways would be even cheaper.

so what did you do after the 3 day delay? I ended up not going all the way there from the west coast. I need a one week delay, then I could torture myself with considering it.

just booked more nights

Get/make some magnetic window covers. I couldn't find any when I drove cross country spontaneously so I just got a bunch of the cheapest black pillow cases and some binder clips.

Park literally anywhere not obvious, it is only one night. I am not sure how charged up you need to be to maintain a comfortable temperature. 5%? Just go and problem solve on the road. You'll be fine.

I wonder if you could head over to Matamoros and give a fisherman $50 to take you out on the water. The launch tower is maybe 500yds from the beach.

Probably a bad idea. Rocket launches tend to have exclusion zones for sea traffic and they will scrub the launch if some boat wanders into the area, and speaking as someone who likes to watch rocket launches on stream, I’m confident in saying that lots of people will be mad at you for doing this.

Edit: Oh, you said Matamoros, which is in Mexico and presumably out of the FAA's jurisdiction. Everyday Astronaut seems to think Matamoros is one of the more dangerous parts of Mexico[1] but I'm not one to talk anyone out of adventure travel. Just be wise to what you're getting yourself into.[2]

[1] https://everydayastronaut.com/how-to-visit-starbase [2] https://www.reuters.com/world/us/mexican-cartel-says-sorry-a...

"Wayward boat" is the term for when someone does this and they're forced to scrub the launch as a result. Please don't.

There is a marine exclusion zone:

https://twitter.com/VisitBocaChica/status/164693832218955776...

Looks like you can get like half a mile north or south (based off some crude eyeballing) & be out of the easterly-directed exclusion zone. I have no clue how that compares to where people can be on land to watch, how far up rt 4 people are allowed. It seems like it might be a good option.

Also the launch should pivot & head out more your-a-way too, which could be cool.

https://twitter.com/johnkrausphotos/status/16470015572111605...

The green areas are the closest you can get by boat. Which is basically just as close as viewing from South Padre Island. You might have a slightly less obstructed or crowded view from a boat versus parking and standing with everyone else on South Padre.

I'm surprised how greatly this differs from the marine exclusion zone that Boca Chica posted.

This reads a lot more optional than a NOTAM.

I'm not saying it's a good idea, but, i think if you're sufficiently motivated you can still go inside the exclusion zone.

Boats in the exclusion zone can and have caused launches to scrub. I can't speak as to whether you will face legal consequences, but there may not be a launch to watch if you violate the safety perimeter.

Matamoros is INSANELY dangerous. It is impossible to overstate that.

But the best (only) surf in Texas

Matamoros is.. not in Texas?

The Texas side of the border is way safer than Matamoros.

I had a similar thought about watching it crash down into the Pacific off of Hawaii. If it makes it that far, they plan to sink it in a naval graveyard about 50 miles north of the island. Watching it attempt to soft landing and then sink below the waves would be remarkable

This second stage is going to slam into the water at terminal velocity (per FAA filing). No mock landing flip and burn. The two after will break up on re-entry (no "wings", people suspect they are for payload or propellant transfer tests).

The booster, however, will do a mock landing over the water a ways out from the launch facilities (40 miles I think it was).

I imagine because of ITAR etc they particularly want to have very little to be able to recovered by foreign parties.

That area is restricted during launch. If you head out there you'd end up canceling/delaying the launch. https://twitter.com/johnkrausphotos/status/16470015572111605...

Schools (where I am in the Uk) aren't back till Tuesday next week, so I'm looking forward to being able to watch this with my kids. However it goes it's going to be an incredible sight.

Launch window opens 1pm BST (7am ET).

Good luck to everyone at SpaceX!

In response to various people asking "why aren't they also trying..." (starship hover landing on water, booster catch by the tower, etc), remember that the plan has to be approved by the FAA.

The more complex the test, the more things they can ask for changes about or deny the request over.

Keep it simple and approval is easier.

FWIW no I don't think it has anything to do with the FAA. They don't care about it blowing up on landing and taking lots of SpaceX's extremely expensive infrastructure with it, it wouldn't be any worse then it blowing up at lift off full of fuel which naturally has already been accounted for as part of the safety and environmental review. SpaceX though very much cares, and it's cheaper for them to expend an SS+SH (the whole point of which is to mass manufacture and next version is improved already) then tower, fueling infra etc. Geographic constraints have forced them to have a lot of stuff much closer to the pad than might otherwise be ideal. An explosion at launch would be legitimately painful, would easily be months of delay not due to regulations but just in raw rebuilding, and set back their whole schedule and moment they can start putting it to work. Wouldn't kill it or anything, but it'd suck, which is why "minimum goal" has been stated to be getting high enough above the tower before blowing up to not hurt anything on the ground, then its gravy (obviously everyone would prefer it do much better than that). So they're being quite deliberate, pushing but not reckless gambling. They're running a hardware rich program, they can afford to do that, it's part of their competitive advantage. They'll start trying to land SH for real once they're confident the odds of avoiding any serious tower damage are sufficiently high.

They could still do the re-entry burn and behave as if they would catch the booster/starship but over water without any infrastructure nearby.

I’m a bit surprised they don’t because seeing if the heat shield survives the re-enrty maneuver would have been quite interesting.

If the two stages survive long enough to do a splashdown, will SpaceX attempt to hover them over the water until they run out of fuel?

Will there be splashdown video?

According to the flight plan published by SpaceX, the booster is going to attempt a hover in the gulf to simulate a landing, while the Ship isn’t going to slow down at all after reentry and will impact the ocean at a high velocity.

I wonder why they don't plan to execute the flip and landing burn with the ship, just for additional test data. So far it fully worked only once (and _almost_ worked a couple more times), surely it can't hurt to have another go at it, even if the ship is ultimately not being recovered. I guess propellant margins may be a cause, but then they'll likely want to have a "nominal" amount of leftover fuel onboard anyway to have a proper mass distribution for the first re-entry test...

> I wonder why they don't plan to execute the flip and landing burn with the ship, just for additional test data

There's been a lot of speculation about this over the last week, and consensus seems to be they decided they were trying to do too much on the first launch, and they should limit the scope down to just the "essentials" and learn from that.

They don't want to over complicate things.

I think the chance that the second stage survives reentry on the first attempt is almost zero anyway.

IIRC Musk said something like that in his second interview with Tim Dodd.

True, but remember he only gave falcon heavy a 50/50 shot of getting high enough before exploding to not damage the launch site on its first launch.

Musk is incredibly optimistic about schedules, and pessimistic about launches.

It would be hard for him not to be pessimistic about launches given the early years of SpaceX. Not even their 150-odd successful Falcon 9 launches/landings would erase the scar tissue.

“We will launch very soon and it will explode very big”

Perhaps the version of the upper stage they're launching is not equipped with whatever the relevant control surface hardware (ailerons / grid fins / etc..) is?

It has everything.

But they're obsolete. S24 uses hydraulic actuators, S27 uses electric actuators.

Mass distribution consistency is important. They can't just lop them off and change the design ad hock.

Just fyi, “ad hoc”. Latin.

I would also expect them to want to inspect the heatshield.

I remember Elon saying that flight test 1 would attempt to do a soft touchdown in the water.

It's been interesting to see SpaceX shift from hardware-rich to a more traditional process the last year. I suspect a lot of it is due to the sheer cost of what they are doing, but a lot of it is PR management as well... Plus it's obvious that the US government is doing everything in their power to have Musk on as short of a leash as possible.

SpaceX moved beyond what they could test without the launch (and catch) tower. They've spent a lot of time and money developing the ground systems - in comparison the early crude Starship prototypes were comparatively cheap and easily replaced - and I would imagine they really would prefer not to accidentally demolish the tower again.

If I recall correctly after this Methan explosion 9 month ago they got more cautious and slower:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PjbjXTomxqI

And they also have previous painful experience of destroying a Falcon 9 pad. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_BgJEXQkjNQ Really can't afford to repeat that if they are to make the timeline for using Starship as NASA's next lunar lander.

How much does Mechazilla cost? I read it's 1 billion. Also news is Elon said destroying nearby infrastructure would be a 9 month setback at the least.

Wow that’s like 2.5% of a Twitter.

Almost sounds like a bit chicken/egg, you can't try landing without a certain amount of confidence, you can't build confidence without trying.

Considering the hover capability of the booster (can be throttled to <1G) we might see an unprecedented amount of touch and go testing before the first real attempt?

From the booster's point of view, the catch is a target location and speed. Plus a set of tolerances: however much the arm can swing to catch it, and horizontal speed has to be really low because it needs to drop down vertically into the arms. I would expect that the target on the ocean, even for the first test, is very specific. Once the booster can hit a phantom target, they can change the target to the tower and go for a catch attempt.

I imagine that lack of stable reference points would be an issue on the ocean. Both for the algorithms under test and for validation. (I liberally use "algorithm" here as the superset of both algorithm and the hardware it runs on, I think in reality these tests are mostly for correcting parameters that are hard to determine with sufficient accuracy on paper)

If you want to write off an entire booster, adding a dummy tower somewhere in the desert would not add much to the bill and could well be worth it. Or maybe even a not-quite-so-dummy tower, but off-site, where the booster would be scrapped on location (instead of reflown) even in the best case, no matter how hypothetical?

Good GPS in ideal conditions (no trees or buildings blocking/bouncing signal) has accuracy on the centimeter scale: https://www.gps.gov/systems/gps/performance/accuracy/

But in a real landing, they wouldn't want to be accurate relative to some GPS goalpost, they need to be accurate to whatever physical reality turns out to be. Reconciling expectations about were the landing location was supposed to be and where sensor input says it is must be of major importance.

That link tells us that the signals are intended to be sent with an accuracy better than 200 cm 95% of the time. Using more frequencies only really helps avoiding errors from bad/misleading reception, so it's hardly relevant in "ideal situations".

Long term stationary receivers can resolve to millimeters, but dropping rockets from orbit isn't exactly a thing that would be considered "stationary" in this context.

The slowdown of testing is not a change in their methodology. It was because they succeeded in all suborbital testing. The orbital testing has been held up by bureaucracy, heat tile iterations, and launch tower refinement.

The costs of test articles are pennies on the dollar compared to the launch value of these vehicles once operational.

By now they have 2.5 stacks ready, and surely have enough raptor engines saved up to rapidly launch 5+ starships this year, assuming they have the heat tile stuff figured out to a degree that the tests would be meaningful.

That’s a very charitable interpretation. Testing slowed because of flaws in the Raptor which required a complete redesign. We’ll see if their chaotic development process produces something safe and reliable.

I hadn't heard that Raptor 2 was a complete redesign as a results of flaws discovered (I hadn't heard anything at all about why they made Raptor 2). Do you have a link where I can read more about this?

From what I observed (reading the normal Reddit fluff, listening to NSF banter, and Tim Dodd the EA's interview with Musk) the issue with Raptor was being able to produce it reliably and rapidly. In the EA interview with Elon you can see how much less plumbing and paraphernalia there is on V2. I think both versions "worked" (they have been running lots of full duration tests at McGregor) for quite a while. One of Elon's many insightful sayings is something like "The best designed part is no part"

Not a complete redesign, but substantial. Even the head of the propulsion department was changed.

Also, I think the starship crashes and their frequency were really freaking out the authorities and potential customers. I remember Elon saying “we need to stop making craters”.

It is still a hardware rich process from a Aerospace standpoint. They have three more built at the moment and another three in production. Musk said that they are Manufacturing engines at the rate of 1.8 per day which is absolutely insane

>Plus it's obvious that the US government is doing everything in their power to have Musk on as short of a leash as possible.

What are you referring to?

>Plus it's obvious that the US government is doing everything in their power to have Musk on as short of a leash as possible.

What do you mean by this?

Some people are confused and think the government is against Musk in some way like the public is. The government quite likes SpaceX.

And the parts that might be annoyed at him for Twitter are entirely unrelated to those dealing with space.

Sadly "The government" is hundreds of separate organizations, agendas and politicians all with separate cover their ass agendas, NASA probably want this to succeed, I doubt the others are as enthusiastic.

“Sadly”? Would the alternative of a monolith be preferable in a pluralistic society?

What reason would the other parts of the govt have to want Musk to fail?

NASA, the military and security services

The public isn't though. Most people outside of twitter don't have any opinion on him.

Here are the TFRs. Two on the 17th and 18th from 6am to 9am MDT. The yellow section. About 15 miles long and averages 7 miles wide.

https://ibb.co/H41P6Md

If we don't launch the 17th then the 18th is likely a scrub because of the forecast on that day. Depending on how long rain sticks around it could be another day or two for an attempt.

Just look at skyvector.com anytime for TFR’s.

Say what you will about Elon Musk, but this is the kind of human creativity that should know no bounds. Here's getting very excited about the species' chase for other worlds.

Gwynne Shotwell often does not get enough credit for making sure SpaceX doesn't implode. She's killing it.

I am so looking forward to watching this behemoth fly.

Behemoths are tiny compared to this :)

Sounds like they are not planning on testing the booster catch yet, I wonder what's stopping them

That's correct, there will be no catch attempt this launch. They're going to simulate a landing by attempting to do soft land it in the Gulf of Mexico.

The reason is pretty straightforward: this vehicle has never flown before and a lot can go wrong. There is a lot of ground equipment including propellant tanks very close to the launch tower. If anything goes wrong hundreds of tons of metal + propellant is going to cause a lot of damage, and they'd likely end up having to rebuild a large portion of their launch area. Best to see how the booster behaves first before risking all that infrastructure.

It can’t be that hard to not land it in your launch area right? Can’t they have a separate land and crash area (preferably separated by a few tens of kilometers)?

You would need to build a second tower with catch arms there. The booster does not have landing legs and will not touch down on the ground, the plan is to have it settle on the same "tower arms" that are used as a crane to stack the booster and the ship for launch, with engines still well above ground.

They managed landing legs and they decided to up the level of difficulty a few notches or something?

Pretty much. Catching it with the launch tower means in theory you can have much faster turnaround between flights, since you don't need to transport it from the landing site to the launch site.

It's true that SpaceX's previous landings have used legs, but that's either been Falcon boosters (much smaller/lighter than Starship boosters, AKA "Superheavies"), or for Starship's upper-stage (again, much smaller/lighter than Superheavy boosters).

The catching system looks crazy, but it might actually be easier than landing a Superheavy on legs. The ground is a larger target than the catching arms; but its maneuverability and shock-absorption are famously low.

It means less hardware/weight on the actual rocket.

And crucially more room to absorb shock.

Landing legs are heavy, because they need to absorb a big shock. They also need actuators. "The best part is no part"; if there is a way not to drag this extra weight from the sea level up to the stratosphere and back, it counts as an improvement.

It's a good question, and I don't have a great answer for you other than my understanding is that the ground space they have to work with in Boca Chica is not really that large. And there are a lot of environmental concerns (+ the chances of blowing up on landing is greater than blowing up on liftoff).

But I've heard speculation that they might build a dedicate landing tower around their Florida launch site for that reason. No idea how accurate that is though.

It's about weight. The landing legs on the Falcon 9 first stage make up 10% of the dry weight if I remember correctly. 10% is huge savings for a booster. They've already proven they can do pinpoint landings so moving the hardware to the ground makes a lot of sense. Also, the booster should be easier to control because it can hover (the Falcon 9 booster has to do a suicide burn because its near empty thrust to weight ratio is > 1 even with only one engine). They wouldn't want to hover because it's a big waste of fuel to rely on that but it is an option while they are still practicing the catch maneuver.

They are building a tower at the Cape (it's fully erected already) but people have noticed the arms on it are shorter leading some to speculate that it might not be used for catching.

Long term it’s better to have launch and landing on the same tower, if the goal is to rapidly reuse the rocket.

The falcon 9 did several "hover over water" landings in the ocean to prove out safe landing on... land, and also to alay fears that it might miss it's target and hit a population center. Even now, falcon 9 do a ballistic reentry that would hit the water, and then propulsively adjust the landing target towards land, after the engines have safely started.

Given how much larger, and how much additional fuel is onboard, it's not surprising that they're following a similar strategy this early in the program.

The hardware at the launch site is hundreds of millions of dollars (or more). They won't want to test that till they are sure they can fly the thing.

The Flacon 9 did a fair few simulated landing over water before they tried on land or risked and barge.

Need to verify that they can successfully launch and guide it back to a specific point before they aim a guided missile at US mainland.

Risk of damaging their only launchpad, I would assume.

They haven’t launched and recovered it at all yet, have they? Presumably they want to test out to sea where it won’t blow up the only launch tower if it comes in hot.

The booster has not yet flown, no. The closest it came was a all-engines static fire (during which 2 out of 33 engines didn't fire, but it was still enough of a success to continue with the program apparently).

I hope they get a shot of it externally in orbit, that would be cool

It won't get to orbit, just "nearly orbital" as the article states.

"(...) the Starship vehicle will attempt to ascend to an altitude of 235 km and become "nearly orbital." Starship's engines will shut down at 9 minutes and 20 seconds into the flight, after which the vehicle will coast for more than an hour before entering Earth's atmosphere over the Pacific Ocean. It will not complete a full orbit and is expected to make a high-velocity splash down about 225 km north of the Hawaiian island of Oahu. On the nominal timeline, this will occur 90 minutes after liftoff"

It will only complete a fractional orbit, but it will reach orbital velocity so it will prove that it can reach orbit.

I see... yeah I just imagine it over Earth probably from renderings.

Would be cool if it had a little buddy it released to get above/behind it to take a 3rd person view picture.

7:00 a.m. CT, kinda early, but ill wake up for it :)

I was betting on April 20 for meme reasons (and Musk likes the 420 reference) but next Monday works as well. I am very excited about it.

He already tweeted a joke about delaying the launch three days.

New rockets rarely launch on their first launch day. There will likely be at least a few days of delays.

SpaceX previously tweeted that the launch could occur roughly a week after the Wet Dress Rehearsal (WDR) which still has not happened.

In fact the rocket is not even stacked at the moment, so 4/20 is more probable than 4/17 imo.

I believe they have stated or otherwise insinuated that the WDR from January 23rd is sufficient, and they will not be performing another prior to the initial launch. As for the de-stacking of Ship 24 that has occurred only to enable the Flight Termination System (FTS) after which Ship 24 will be restacked. This is in line with an April 17th launch date.

"Starship fully stacked at Starbase. Team is working towards a launch rehearsal next week followed by Starship’s first integrated flight test ~week later pending regulatory approval"

Literally what I said is what spaceX said.

https://twitter.com/SpaceX/status/1644044484026716160?s=20

I'm glad your "belief" got my factual account downvoted

HUHHHHHH

HUH

Tragically off-topic, but following the link I see that SpaceX has an online shop.

The shop sells a SpaceX sticker pack, and one of the stickers looks like a bunch of cats in a satellite dish.

I'm not a SpaceX follower, so can someone who is explain what it means: https://shop.spacex.com/collections/featured-products/produc...

Feline friends always love it when humans put out nice new warm beds for them! Certainly a warm heated spot in the cold could serve no higher purpose :):

https://www.smithsonianmag.com/smart-news/outdoor-cats-are-u...

> the American Veterinary Medical Association recommends keeping cats indoors to avoid dangers associated with diseases, parasites, cars, attacks from other animals, poisons and extreme weather

Now it’s not only children but cats too? I grew up in a location where cats could go anywhere they pleased (in or outside), and it’s really strange to me that some countries recommend or require them to always be inside.

Outdoor cats are a menace to birds and other wildlife on a scale that's hard to describe. It would be hard for an individual homeowner to do anything else that is even nearly as destructive to their local wildlife than keeping an outdoor cat.

Not in locations where wild cats exist anyway. If wild cats exist in your area, the bird life has already adapted to them over the past millions of years.

Obviously, if cats in your region have been introduced by humans, that's an entirely different situation.

Human feeding of cats can increase their population far above the predator-prey limits that existed for millions of years. As they say in ecology: "What you feed succeeds."

All felines aren't exactly interchangeable either. Domestic housecats are naturally extant only in the Middle East, but everywhere else they have been introduced by humans.

> Domestic housecats are naturally extant only in the Middle East

That's not really true - in most of europe, the native wild cats and domestic housecats are closely related and interbreed. see e.g., https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/European_wildcat (Iberian Peninsula, Italy, Central and Eastern Europe to the Caucasus).

Many of the types of domestic cat found across europe were already bred in antiquity as well.

So it's not that clear-cut, and local wildlife has adapted quite well to it.

Outdoor cats live much shorter lives than indoor ones.

But are they happier ones?

Maybe, maybe not. But they're definitely happier lives for the 10-50 wild birds and 50-200 wild mammals a cat would kill each year. Domestic housecats will hunt even when well-fed.

"The greatest good for the greatest number of [sentient organisms]."

https://www.fws.gov/sites/default/files/documents/keep-cats-...

https://www.nature.com/articles/ncomms2380

https://www.smithsonianmag.com/science-nature/moral-cost-of-...

Cats destroy wildlife on a massive scale.

>I grew up in a location where cats could go anywhere they pleased

And some people grew up in a location where women were not allowed to vote.

I think it is a play on words - five cats -> Cat 5

Cat 5:

https://twitter.com/Tippen22/status/1476985855981993984

You are getting downvoted, but that is literally the description on the page. Its applicable. :)

Antennas get warm. Cats like it: https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2022/jan/10/starlink-...

Starlink dishes are heated to melt snow and maintain operating temperatures during winter.

Who doesn't like to seat on a flat heated surface instead of walking in the snow during winter? Not cats.

I had seen a few pictures of it in ukrainian trenches, but apparently ot's quite common: https://duckduckgo.com/?q=cat+starlink+dish&t=fpas&iax=image...

I think it's because the dishes get warm & cats like to sit on warm things

Cats like to sleep on warm surfaces. Starlink antennas are outdoors and warm. Cats sleep on them.

There was a meme when the Starlink beta was going on that people's cats were messing up their internet because they were snuggling up to the antenna

Cool, the SpaceX team is killing it.

* Elon Musk and his Earth Boring Machine

* Elon Musk and his Electric Car Company

* Elon Musk and his Starship Rocket

Tom Swift for real?

"We're approaching the launch window," Elon said airily.

I always see him more as DD Harriman, and given that the anthology his two stories are in also contains stories about solar panels and automated roads....

Enon Musk and his Space Solartron

You know what I'd like? I'd like a launch which said

  5 4 3 2 1 lift off! All systems nominal, flight proceeding

And what were going to get is:

  5 4 3 2 1 lift off of what will be, for all humankind the first tenuous steps into the void, as mankind proves the value of endeavours against odds...

I can supply my own poetry. I don't need the emote which appears to be now mandatory.

SpaceX will typically livestream a "Technical webcast" simultaneously, which only includes audio from the ground support loop without any hosted commentary. That's what you're looking for.

Can you post a link for this or is it a simple search?

Best bet is to check the /r/spacex thread.

https://old.reddit.com/r/spacex/comments/12n02uf/rspacex_int...

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