Space In General

Rumor has it that SpaceX has nearly 500 employees temporarily transferring to Starbase to help get the orbital flight done. I guess local hotels are booked out.

Still no response on my application, wondering if no news is good news. The last time I applied I received the rejection email within 24 hours.

 
Launch table is being installed as I type this.

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From Spaceweather.com:


UNUSUAL MONSOON RAINBOW: Rainbows are shaped like a wheel. On July 29th, Gregg Ruppel saw the spokes. "A few rays of sunlight pierced the clouds as a powerful monsoon storm approached Tucson," explains Ruppel. This is how it looked:

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Spokes are simply the shadows of clouds interrupting the rainbow's normal arc. Sometimes, when clouds are moving fast across the sky, the rainbow wheel appears to rotate. That would be amazing to see. Maybe the next monsoon...
 
Lots of posts but things are moving very quickly right now in Texas. Road closure today at 3pm CST, possibly to move Booster 4 to the pad for fitment checks.

 
From Spaceweather.com:

DENSE SOLAR WIND SPARKS GEOMAGNETIC STORM: A dense wave of solar wind gently crashed against Earth's magnetic field on Aug. 2nd, sparking a G1-class geomagnetic storm. It may have been a ripple from a passing CME--one of several "near miss CMEs" that left the sun in late July. Twilight auroras mixed with noctilucent clouds were seen in Norway. Aurora alerts:SMS Text.

SOLAR MAX MIGHT COME A YEAR EARLY: Solar Cycle 25 is heating up faster than expected. The latest sign may be found in sunspot counts from July 2021. Continuing a trend that started last year, they overperform the official forecast:

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Issued by the NOAA/NASA Solar Cycle 25 Prediction Panel in 2019, the official forecast calls for Solar Cycle 25 to peak in July 2025. However, a better fit to current data shows Solar Cycle 25 peaking in October 2024. This is just outside the 8-month error bars of the Panel's forecast.

July 2021 was a remarkable month. Solar Cycle 25 crossed multiple thresholds, including its first X-flare and, at one point, 6 sunspots on the solar disk. The last time so many sunspots were seen at the same time was Sept. 2017 (SWx archive). One farside CME in July was so strong it affected Earthdespite being on the "wrong" side of the sun. A handful of other CMEs narrowly missed our planet.
If solar activity increases apace, some of those blows will soon begin to land. Stay tuned. Aurora alerts: SMS Text.
 
The largest, most powerful rocket has been temporarily stacked for fitment checks. Now they will de-stack and both vehicles will go through preflight testing.



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Alright, last post for a bit. Starship 20 is on its way back to the production site as I type this for final TPS installation and other items. Now we wait for the GSE to be finished and individual tests for each vehicle to get started.

 
Blue Origin continues to dig themselves into a PR black hole, and things continue to get uglier as they prepare to sue NASA over the HLS contract decision.

 
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