True. And I guess the likelihood of there being much left to look at, let alone any actually useful visible clues, is not high. (Bearing in mind the RUD seems to have been destructive enough to have incapacitated 75% of the satellites.)
I wonder if they considered sacrificing one of the contactable satellites, trying to send it back towards the 2nd stage in the hope of getting some useful camera views, or anything like that.
In recent months it became clear that if Maezawa's mission happened, it would not occur until at least the early 2030s—at least a decade after the original plan.
The original target was 2023, so is Berger saying he already had inside information that it wouldn't fly before 2033?
If, yesterday, you'd told me 2027, I'd have believed you!
We might actually find out, because there was a 2nd circumlunar tourist trip planned. If that's still going ahead, maybe it'll just be promoted to the 'slot' that was previously allocated to Dear Moon?
23:23 "Most of the IVA suits have an inseam zipper ..."
Just checking that everyone (who wants to) has seen this in action. Here's Sultan Al Neyadi putting on his IVA suit without assistance while on the ISS. (32:49 to 38:12.)
Is anyone aware of a better video of the suit than that?
Neither your comment, nor the article you are commenting about, mentions Elon Musk once! What am I supposed to think?
And if it's him you're talking about, then what does your term "disgusting extravagance" apply to? All those super yachts and private islands he owns and spends so much time on? /s
Are all rocket missions a "disgusting extravagance" or just the SpaceX ones?
The dozens of launches to the ISS? The Intuitive Machines moon lander from couple of months ago? All those TV satellites servicing various parts of the world? The hundreds of communications satellites?
I actually genuinely prefer when the SpaceX commentators accidentally say "norminal", precisely because "nominal" does NOT mean 'normal'. It's closer to the opposite.
If Alice was thinking of buying a car from Bob and I told her "the vehicle I bought from Bob works fine, nominally", she would rightly take that as a warning.
If my family member was in space and I heard on the nets "safety systems nominal", I'd be bricking it!
AFAICT it's only the space industry that gets this wrong.
That's actually what worries me about this. If they are thinking of reusing 2nd Stages from the Falcon 9, does that suggest we need to start being more pessimistic about Starship timelines?
Not necessarily, of course. I think they're committed to continuing to fly the Falcon 9 as long as customers want it? So extra F9 reusability could still be worth the investment, even if they were predicting Starship to be operational very soon.
Also, this could just be recovery for inspection, not for reuse.
Thanks for posting. I suggest considering adding "Unofficial" to the title of this post.