I'm a little surprised. Who knows what they consider the main dev tree vs a distraction for Starship, and I don't really see what this agreement adds that they wouldn't have already gotten from NASA through the human landing system contract. It sounds like SpaceX really phoned it in when they bid a Starship station as an ISS replacement, so, to me, that signalled that Starship stations weren't on their main path. I'm glad this is happening, but, yeah, I'm kinda surprised.
If you told me during the capture-the-flag days that SpaceX would fly Crew-8 before Boeing flew their 1st, I would have called you insane, but, here we are.
I think there's still a world where they get through their teething issues, finish 6 ISS Crew missions, and send some Starliners on Vulcans to commercial stations. That would only be because of some customers who will pick anyone but SpaceX.
The biggest hole in that plan would be if another crew vehicle comes online, like crewed Dreamchaser, whatever Blue Origin's hush-hush capsule is called, or even Gaganyaan.
The KSC firing rooms are pretty iconic, but they've also been around since Apollo. I guess it isn't super surprising that SpaceX would want their own brand new launch control center, especially given their launch rate lately and projected increases once Starship gets to KSC.
I think the reddit streams pages (RIP /r/nbastreams, /r/soccerstreams, etc) were the peak of stream accessibility and quality for me. I have some go-to sites now, but those subreddits were so convenient and easy.
I'm a little surprised. Who knows what they consider the main dev tree vs a distraction for Starship, and I don't really see what this agreement adds that they wouldn't have already gotten from NASA through the human landing system contract. It sounds like SpaceX really phoned it in when they bid a Starship station as an ISS replacement, so, to me, that signalled that Starship stations weren't on their main path. I'm glad this is happening, but, yeah, I'm kinda surprised.