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NASA Bottle Opener - Astro Mavericks
_d
The Rocketeer's
Daughter

by
Clinton Aldrich

Online High School
at Excel

Homeschooling Online
at Northgate Academy

NFL Betting Lines
Welcome to HobbySpace. the site that will prove to you that everyone can participate in space exploration and development in one way or another.
Space for All Blog Space Art Spotlight

Some recent postings:

 

 

 

Mars as Art
NASA
Mars crater ice
Mars crater ice

Sand dunes near the Mars north pole
Sand dunes near the Mars
north pole

Meridiani Planum
Meridiani Planum

Kasei Channels
Kasei Channels
More space art

The Art of C. Sergent Lindsey

 

 
Space Music Video of the Month

..

Interstellar
on Royal Albert Hall Organ
By Hans Zimmer

It's a Whole New Outer Space Out There

Watch SpaceX Build and Fly Starships

SpaceX is developing a fully reusable, rapid turnaround, two-stage launch system that can place up to 150 tons of payload into low earth orbit. The upper stage is called Starship and the first stage is the Super Heavy Booster. At Boca Chica Beach near Brownsville, Texas the company has built an extensive factory and launch facility called Starbase. After test flying a series of upper-stage Starship prototypes to low altitudes in 2020-2021, the company started near-orbital test flights of the full stage of booster and upper-stage in 2023.


A Starship launches on Nov.18, 2023 for the second orbital test
flight mission. Credits: SpaceX

The first orbital flight test (OFT-1) of a full-stack of booster and upper-stage took place on April 20, 2023. The end goal was to reach space altitude at near orbital speed but reenter near Hawaii before completing a full orbit. This would test all the major subsystems of the booster and the upper-stage, including the latter's thermal protection system.

While the test demonstrated operation of many systems of the launch pad and booster, there were many problems encountered ranging from severe damage to ground beneath the launch mount, engine shutdowns and fires, and failure to properly separate the booster and upper-stage. Both stages were destroyed by their flight termination system explosives.

The second orbital test flight (OFT-2) on Nov. 18, 2023 made significant progress over OFT-1. All 33 engines on the booster performed well from takeoff to stage separation. A new water deluge system and steel plates successfully potected the launch pad from damage. The booster separated successfully from the upper stage with the new "hot staging" technique in which the upper stage engines start firing while the stages are still attached to each other. The attempt to land the booster softly onto the Gulf of Mexico waters failed when something went amiss with the engines and the vehicle exploded.

The six upper stage engines on the upper stage appeared to perform well for 6 minutes of the planned 6.5 minute burn. However, the flight termination system at that point determined something was wrong and it destroyed the vehicle. A third test is now expected sometime in early 2024.

..

Several groups now provide round the clock coverage of the activities at Starbase. They provide webcams with 24/7 viewing and during special events such as engine tests, there are live broadcasts with expert commentary.

Check out, for example, NASASpaceflight.com's Youtube Channel, which offers event coverage, webcams, and reports on recent developments. Here, for example, is history of the Boca Chica Beach site for Starbase:

..

LabPadre Youtube provides several continuous webcam views of Boca Chica activites. Here is their Starbase Live Multi Plex that shows 4 webcams simultaneously:

..

Weekly summary videos for Starbase developments are posted at What about it! and Marcus House Youtube channels.

Cosmic Perspective relases beautifully made high-res videos with terrific soundtracks that hightlight particular events at Starbase. For example,

..

===

Follow the latest developments in space transportation Space Transport Roundups in the Space-for-All blog at Hobbyspace.

SpaceMissionsTM
3D Solar System & Space Missions Simulator
from BINARY SPACE
SpaceMissions - Int. Space Station
SpaceMissions - Hubble Space Telescope

SpaceMissions™ is a 3D Solar System & Space Missions Simulator from BINARY SPACE that supports most Earth-centric spacecraft as well as some selected interplanetary missions such as MSL (i.e. Curiosity rover), InSight, Rosetta, OSIRIS-REx and more:

'Travel through our Solar System, visit planets, comets, asteroids and watch critical maneuvers of interstellar probes at any time from any desired perspective.'

This application is available for Microsoft® Windows® 10 (10.0.14393 or later) and can be obtained for free from the Microsoft® Store.

A scaled-down version of SpaceMissions™ is also available as a browser-based progressive application: SpaceMissions™ (Web-Edition).

Requirements: Latest versions of Google® Chrome, Microsoft® Edge (Chromium) or Mozilla® Firefox browsers and a system that supports WebGL2 with a fast Internet connection (> 50 Mbps).


Real-Time Space Viewers
Sun & Space Weather Data
Sun and Space Weather
Real time images, charts and data displays
See the archive of previous HobbySpace homepage Spotlight items ...

HobbySpace has been providing thousands of space links, news and information daily since

January 1999.

 
 
 
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