Over three years ago, SpaceX performed the first southeasterly Starlink launch out of the Cape, landing the booster to the northeast of Bahamas. That mission went into a 53º incl. orbit and needed a quite substantial dogleg to go around the islands. Tonight that won't be needed.

https://twitter.com/SpaceOffshore/status/1478473548314390540

Tonight's launch, Starlink Group 10-12, will see a booster landing on a droneship right in the middle of the islands, preventing the need for any dogleg maneuvers. It's interesting to note, however, that SpaceX could easily launch this mission to the north.

I've stumbled upon so many comments recently claiming that Starship emits some crazy numbers of CO2 like some even saying it is 100,000 tonnes of CO2 that I really never understood where that's coming from.

Rant ahead... Direct emissions from burning methane can't be that high because, well, the rocket has only 4,600 tonnes of propellant so it can't emit 21 times its own mass in CO2 unless you put a particle accelerator inside of it.

It looks like the FAA has closed out earlier today the Written Reevaluation of the 2022 PEA for Flight 5. This includes the larger sonic boom levels, the modified splashdown area for the hot-staging ring, and the use of the water deluge for the booster landing. Link at the end. Looking through the document, this process was finished in the last couple of days with the Fish and Wildlife Service and the National Marine Fisheries Service ESA Interagency Cooperation Division signing off on the modified plan for Flight 5.

SpaceX applied yesterday for a communications permit for Starship's next flight. As expected, SpaceX leaves the possibility for this mission to feature a booster catch. However... there's more information attached to this that's very interesting.

Here's a🧵(links at the end)

SpaceX added an exhibit for this permit explaining why this permit has additional communication frequencies for the Ship. It indicates that this flight and the next (5 and 6) will feature a similar set of radio controllers as to the ones we've seen on the Booster

Falcon 9 made its first flight 14 years ago today🚀♥

📸 SpaceX Long list of Falcon 9 milestones:
- June 4th 2010, first flight.
- December 8th 2010, first Falcon and Dragon flight.
- May 22nd 2012, Falcon 9 launches its first ISS-bound Dragon.
- September 29th 2013, Falcon 9 v1.1 debut flight and first propulsive landing attempt - 6th F9

Welp I was going to sleep but instead spent about an hour reading through this 122 page PDF that came out today along with the license. This is a re-evaluation of the PEA specific for the flight profile of the first few flights of Starship, cool stuff.

faa.gov/media/27236 Some of the stuff that I found interesting:

- Second and Third flights of Starship will be with S26 and S27 (expected but now comfirmed)

- Super Heavy will be landing on the surface of the ocean. SpaceX will NOT recover it and will instead try to sink it in any way possible

It appears that the marine notices for Starship’s first orbital flight have been released!

The daily windows run from April 6th to April 12th and are open from 7:55AM CDT until 12:10PM CDT.

A reminder that this is, of course, pending the FAA’s launch license and other closures As I mentioned in the NSF stream for Ship 24 rollout () this is just the FIRST set of marine notices. As the vehicles come together for launch preps and final paperwork is readied, it's likely these will get cancelled and new ones will go out for later days

Based on marine exclusion zones the next possible attempt would be on April 3rd but that will depend on SpaceX solving the issue that led to the abort yesterday on time for that opportunity.

https://twitter.com/SemperCitiusSDA/status/1641768072263368705

Looks like we will have to wait for another month to do this 😅

https://twitter.com/Alexphysics13/status/1641183269076205568

I've seen a lot of people complaining that the Starbase PEA only sees a cadence of 5 launches a year from there and some people even think this will never ever allow SpaceX to complete their HLS contract so Jeff Bezos must be super super happy about it.

Here goes a🧵 There's something all are missing: Comparison. What did it look like for Falcon 9's first EA? Well...

"The goal is to launch up to six Falcon 1 vehicles and up to six Falcon 9 vehicles per year starting in 2008, with the goal of achieving up to 12 launches per vehicle."