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I seriously doubt that there is any material that is capable of contracting at hypersonic speeds while remaining intact. Furthermore, steps must be taken to stop the "bowstring" from shooting out with the projectile and then getting pulled back into the "bow", because hypersonic collisions are not something you want to have happen to your launch infrastructure.

by the time those boosters fly, inflation will bring the value of the dollar down more than 3x

starlink stream has started, using old launch profile to accomodate black sky imaging sats

nominal deployment

Liftoff!

Staging complete

Liftoff!

hold at t-8:38 due to stuck groundside valve

That was a good call, just had a scrub

Q&A going on on the stream right now, the rocket is designed to be able to be launched from anywhere with a concrete pad and an internet connection

Dubious candidate found in old IRAS data, doesn't show up in later surveys and not a great orbit though https://www.sciencealert.com/historical-data-reveals-what-may-be-a-decades-old-detection-of-planet-nine full paper https://arxiv.org/pdf/2111.03831.pdf

Nelson released a statement saying that he was "outraged at this irresponsible and destabilizing action" https://www.nasa.gov/press-release/nasa-administrator-statement-on-russian-asat-test/

US and UK have confirmed it was an ASAT test, and released statements condemning the test https://spacenews.com/russia-destroys-satellite-in-asat-test/

Virgin Orbit is now working on launching from japan https://spacenews.com/virgin-orbit-japanese-airline-team-up-for-air-launch-system/

Kosmos 2551 underwent destructive reentry over Michigan https://www.space.com/russian-spy-satellite-kosmos-2551-fireball-video

The test flight of KSLV2 "Nuri" failed to reach orbit after the 3rd stage shut down 46 seconds too early https://spaceflightnow.com/2021/10/21/south-korean-rocket-fails-to-reach-orbit-on-inaugural-test-flight/ As far as first launches go, I feel like this went fairly well compared to some of the other new entrants who didn't get to stage separation

First flight of a full KSLV2 will go up tomorrow with a mass simulator, team expects 30% chance of success https://spaceflightnow.com/2021/10/20/south-korean-satellite-launcher-set-for-first-test-flight/

This actually seems reasonable, it does not mention grabbing the comet, simply rendezvousing with it, in the paper linked at the bottom of the article they show a graph with the delta v from Jupiter, and the highest point is 0.14 km/s, an order of magnitude below what it takes to get from a GTO to GEO, the main concern I have is more related to surviving the debris from the comet as it forms

One of the solar arrays may not have latched properly https://spacenews.com/nasa-investigating-issue-with-lucy-solar-array/

looks like LUCY will have a clear window on saturday https://spaceflightnow.com/2021/10/13/first-look-weather-forecast-favorable-for-launch-of-lucy-asteroid-mission-saturday/

New crew dragon named endurance https://spaceflightnow.com/2021/10/08/astronauts-choose-endurance-as-name-for-new-spacex-crew-capsule/

The UAE space program has announced a mission to visit seven asteroids, culminating in a landing on the last one. The target asteroids and spacecraft instruments have yet to be announced. https://www.space.com/united-arab-emirates-asteroid-mission-2028

OCTO was a thing before this mission, however, some of the newer parts (magnetometer boom, MPO probe, MTM stage, 2.5 m tank decals, 1.875 m SRBS) were made in collaboration with ESA so that you could recreate this mission in KSP

First Mercury Flyby to occur today, images planned to be released tommorow https://www.esa.int/Enabling_Support/Operations/Navigating_a_very_close_approach

Kuaizhou and LM-3b launched within 2 hrs, the satellite on the LM-3b seems to have failed https://spacenews.com/status-of-satellite-unknown-after-china-conducts-pair-of-launches-in-2-hours/