Off to Europa
Oct. 15th, 2024 04:40 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
krpalmerA long-standing habit of trying to post to this journal within seven days after my last post to it went awry this month. The explanation for that is going to wait, but with that left out I was left wondering just how to pick up the habit again, or indeed if I was going to at all even if I hadn’t sworn off web browsers.
It did get my attention (through a text snippet in my RSS reader) that the fifth test launch of SpaceX’s “Starship” rocket iterated again, this time to the point of making use of the elaborate feature of its launch tower that hadn’t been used the first time around because a much simpler feature of most launch pads had been left out. Catching a first stage to save on the weight of landing legs seems that much more grandiose than just having it cancel out its downrange velocity and return to the shore it was launched from. However, I guess I’m just a bit more cautious about the baggage laden down on SpaceX than I once was, and didn’t quite feel like making a post just about that.
Not that long after that, though, another rocket launch I’d been aware was impending took place, and this time I saw a recap via TV news. The Europa Clipper space probe might have depended on another SpaceX rocket (if “just” a “Falcon Heavy”), but its mission is interesting in itself for all that it’s going to take quite a while for the probe to get out to Jupiter.
It did get my attention (through a text snippet in my RSS reader) that the fifth test launch of SpaceX’s “Starship” rocket iterated again, this time to the point of making use of the elaborate feature of its launch tower that hadn’t been used the first time around because a much simpler feature of most launch pads had been left out. Catching a first stage to save on the weight of landing legs seems that much more grandiose than just having it cancel out its downrange velocity and return to the shore it was launched from. However, I guess I’m just a bit more cautious about the baggage laden down on SpaceX than I once was, and didn’t quite feel like making a post just about that.
Not that long after that, though, another rocket launch I’d been aware was impending took place, and this time I saw a recap via TV news. The Europa Clipper space probe might have depended on another SpaceX rocket (if “just” a “Falcon Heavy”), but its mission is interesting in itself for all that it’s going to take quite a while for the probe to get out to Jupiter.