Posted on 10/14/2025 9:08:32 PM PDT by SeekAndFind
SpaceX did it again. At 6:23 p.m. local time — eight minutes late, but who's counting? — the most powerful rocket in history, launched on a column of flame from Starbase, Texas, delivered its second stage to a hot separation, then minutes later made a perfect water landing in the Gulf of America.
Even before the Super Heavy first stage had successfully completed its part of Integrated Flight Test 11 (IFT-11), the Ship second stage's six engines moved it to near-orbital velocity, initiating a series of flight, deployment, and engine tests before making its own water landing half a world away in the Indian Ocean.
"Starship's eleventh flight test reached every objective, providing valuable data as we prepare the next generation of Starship and Super Heavy," the company posted to X, one of SpaceX founder Elon Musk's other companies.
Musk shared a stunning view of the booster's return, along with a little context:
The rocket came back from space at hypersonic speed and then hovered at a precise position https://t.co/Bzc9rz5htj— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) October 14, 2025
Of last night's Super Heavy booster (known as B15-2) 33 Raptor 3 engines, 24 were "flight proven" — i.e., they were reused from previous launches. Super Heavy is rapidly achieving the rapid and inexpensive reuse necessary to make possible both the Artemis missions to Luna and SpaceX's missions to Mars.
(Excerpt) Read more at pjmedia.com ...
:)
I see what you did there.
Good days / good people!
My favorite movie is "The Right Stuff", which I first saw on a Friday night at Baybrook Mall right near Johnson Space Center, in a theater filled with "space people".
My first day on the job they gave me a dictionary of NASA acronyms (every other word in every conversation was an acronym). I remember sitting in my cubicle listening to conversations taking place around me while digging through that little book in an attempt to understand what was being said.
On my second day one of my new engineer friends took me to see the actual motion base SMS simulators. An IBM contractor on the other side of this giant room yelled at me asking me to "IPL the GPC" - he might as well have been speaking Latin.
I later learned that "IPL" was "Initial program load" and "GPC" was "General Purpose Computer" (the computers that ran the Shuttle). So, basically he was asking me to "reboot the computer".
The main SMS simulation ran on a Univac 1100 mainframe, while the payloads were simulated on Perkin Elmer 3250 mini-computers. All programs were written in Fortran 77. All variables were part of Fortran "common blocks" and with names that could be no longer than six characters in length.
If you needed a global variable for your program you had to go through a formal request process to get it added to a common block, and that process took a couple of days. If you were a junior engineer and waited too long to get in your variable request, then you could miss your scheduled simulator testing time (estimated value of SMS simulator time was $25k/minute, because facilities around the world were also online testing). As a result, the senior engineers kept variables in reserve and would "sell" them to the junior engineers in exchange for a lunch or dinner out. Business was brisk! (If you needed an entire array then it was going to cost you dinner - with desert.)
Good days!
Reasons?
Regards,
Ditto..absolutely beyond ugly - a product of Communist indoctrination and its' war on culture!
"Culture drives politics" - Andrew Breitbart
From 45 Communist Goals entered into 1963 Congressional Record
22. Continue discrediting American culture by degrading all form of artistic expression. An American Communist cell was told to "eliminate all good sculpture from parks and buildings," substituting shapeless, awkward and meaningless forms.
23. Control art critics and directors of art museums. " Our plan is to promote ugliness, repulsive, meaningless art."
24.Eliminate all laws governing obscenity by calling them "censorship" and a violation of free speech and free press.
25. Break down cultural standards of morality by promoting pornography and obscenity in books, magazines, motion pictures, radio and TV.
“”From 45 Communist Goals entered into 1963 Congressional Record””
***
Which number is the ‘goal’ of destroying faith and trust in all government, medical systems and our fellow man? Obama’s infamous speech about “disinformation” seems to lay it all out as to how the left ‘did it’ in America.
https://www.youtube.com/shorts/pnyoKeVPOek
17. Get control of the schools. Use them as transmission belts for socialism and current Communist propaganda. Soften the curriculum. Get control of teachers’ associations. Put the party line in textbooks.
18. Gain control of all student newspapers.
19. Use student riots to foment public protests against programs or organizations which are under Communist attack.
20. Infiltrate the press. Get control of book-review assignments, editorial writing, policymaking positions.
21. Gain control of key positions in radio, TV, and motion pictures.
“”21. Gain control of key positions in radio, TV, and motion pictures.””
And the main one the commies have succeeded in... gain control of at least one political party .... ie the Democrats. Mission accomplished.
“And they were mostly Caucasian..”
Virtually all Caucasian males back then, particularly the decision makers. But one of the big advantages SpaceX has over government-funded (or government-run) operations, like NASA programs, is that they don’t have to play the DEI game, which is very, very, expensive. I have some friends who work there and they tell me when they visit SpaceX facilities, it’s like Idaho, except with a decent number of Asians too.
Super Heavy and Starship ARE the Artemis program ... SLS is/was only for the first few flights.
Crap - they even allow ‘Asylum seekers’ & ‘refugees’ (i.e., basically Illegals) to at least apply to work at SpaceX. I realize that this is required of SpaceX by the Biden bunch, so not the fault of SpaceX, but it does mean that Trump has a lot more work to do.
“To conform to U.S. Government export regulations, applicant must be a (i) U.S. citizen or national, (ii) U.S. lawful, permanent resident (aka green card holder), (iii) Refugee under 8 U.S.C. § 1157, or (iv) Asylee under 8 U.S.C. § 1158, or be eligible to obtain the required authorizations from the U.S. Department of State.”
Communist Goal Number 46:
Convince Conservatives that “There’s no difference between the Parties” so that Democrats (i.e., Communists in drag) can slip into power, judgeships, etc. while Conservatives sit out elections.
From what I’ve seen here for the past 20 years, there’s still a lot of work ahead in the country, but Conservatives are FINALLY starting to realize that Democrats must be prevented from winning ANY OFFICE, without regard to who they’re running against...although it took the Democrats years of screaming to the Conservatives “We’re really Communists, you Idiots!!!”.
Amazing. Fantastic. Inspiring. Praise God. Thank you Elon.
I watch SpaceX Starship test flights like I used to watch sports. Get very nervous and excited to cheer for MY team. I know there is another team cheering against success.
15. Capture one or both of the political parties in the United States.
My son is working there now. Very busy.
And those people aren't always living in a foreign country.
I can understand our enemies and envious foreigners who wish to see failure in our space industry. Sometimes it is an enemy like Communist China. Sometimes it is a foreigner who hates America. That kind of thing.
But we have people in this country, even on this very forum who wish to see SpaceX fail.
And so on. And we have examples of all of them present here on Free Republic, too.
I find it disconcerting, yet interesting as well.
I have to tell you-those “45 Communist Goals” from Dr. Cleon Skousen’s book “The Naked Communist” (written in 1958) are downright creepy to read.
As you might see from my FReep Page, I am an acolyte of Senator Joseph McCarthy...as another FReeper simply states in his tagline: “McCarthy was right.”
I would love to witness a launch in person. That would be amazing. The world’s largest rocket…….
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