PakledHostage

Myself, I don't think Barking Sands is too out to lunch for Starship catch testing, if they're going to do it somewhere other than Texas. They initially talked about having Starship come down near there anyway, so clearly it's close to their existing testing trajectories. It also has thousands of kilometers of empty ocean to the west and south of it. It is a Naval facility, but it has been used for 3rd party testing in the past, such as for some of the Pathfinder aircraft missions.

I have my PPL and checking NOTAMs is something I have to do every time I go flying, but I have been having a heck of a time finding anything about this launch. Admittedly I don't ever fly in US airspace or in oceanic airspace, so maybe it would be easier to find for someone with different/more experience, but this is the best I could find: ATCSCC Advisory ATCSCC ADVZY 065 DCC 01/16/2025 ZSU ZMA ZNY AIRPORT DEPARTURE DELAYS MESSAGE: EVENT TIME: 16/2340 - 17/0100 USERS CAN EXPECT DEPARTURE DELAYS FROM WITHIN ZSU, ZMA, ZNY AIRPORTS TRAVERSING ZMA AND ZNY OCEANIC AIRSPACE OF UP TO 60 MINUTES DUE TO DEBRIS RESPONSE AREAS (DRA) 3 AND 4 ACTIVATION. UPDATES WILL FOLLOW IF NECESSARY. EFFECTIVE TIME: 162347 - 170130 SIGNATURE: 25/01/16 23:47 I couldn't find where (or when) DRA 3 and DRA 4 were defined, but the text suggests that they were established in advance as contingency in the event of a launch problem, and then activated 23:47 UTC on Thursday. Presumably they are the two areas outlined in yellow in the maps above? Also, the idea that debris wasn't a hazard to aircraft because anything that made it down to the flight levels would be light weight is silly. Apologists will downplay the hazard, but hitting even something light weight while flying at Mach 0.8 will cause damage.

What about Barking Sands Missile test range on Kauai? It's on the northwest coast of that island and close to the trajectories currently in use for Starship tests.

For the record: This is not some clickbait crap. VASAviation is a very informative aviation channel.

More nice footage: https://www.instagram.com/reel/DE6GXMtMiJF/?igsh=MXQzbm5sM3g1YWlzYQ==

Over on Reddit, someone claiming to have been flying in the area at the time posted that ATC broadcast "attentional all aircraft due to space vehicle mishap, we have a debris field from xxxx to xxx to xxx, standby for individual instructions to vacate the debris field". It's in the same thread where the video that @Minmus Taster posted above was posted by the guy who claims to have filmed it.

I don't understand the relevance of the corridor? I looked for NOTAMs and TFRs and didn't see anything. The fact that aircraft were demonstrably in the vicinity suggests that there weren't any restrictions, so evidently the authorities weren't concerned enough about a launch failure to issue anything? We know that several aircraft were forced to hold or divert after it happened, but it seems to have been a reaction rather than pre-planned.

Yeah. I expect it will delay further launches pending an investigation. It's hard to say that it's inconsequential when aircraft are being held and diverted in a large area north of Puerto Rico to avoid raining debris. Even a G5 out of Teterboro was delayed. I expect it's owner will be having a chat with Elon. Those billionaires all socialize in the same circles, right?

Venus at 60 km is no more immediately dangerous than the surface of Mars. It's arguably less so. You could go outside on a balcony or to work on the exterior of the habitat in what amounts to scuba gear (e.g. a neoprene suit and respirator). And many common materials like plastics (e.g. HDPE, PVC), Teflon, glass, some stainless steels, etc are unaffected by sulfuric acid. Structures can be protected from it. You would also build redundancy into the station, just as you would have to on Mars. Gravity wells and ISRU are a different matter, but given a choice between moisture farming on Tatooine Mars, or living in a cloud city on Bespin Venus, I would choose Venus.

Counterintuitively, Venus has the most habitable environment in the solar system, other than Earth. It's just not on the surface. The habitable zone is about 60 km up in Venus' atmosphere, where gravity, pressure and temperature resemble those of Earth. Earth air is also a lifting gas for a balloon in that atmosphere at that level. Maybe one day, we'll build an outpost there with rockets arriving by propulsive landings on the floating station.

Some years ago on this forum, there was an overly ambitious effort to put up a cube sat. The thread included lots of debate about what the satellite should do. It devolved into some weird "science objectives", but one of the other ideas was to just launch a camera and downlink images of Bob, Jeb and Bill in Earth orbit. Well now, more than a decade later, it seems YouTuber Mark Rober has given anyone the opportunity to do just that with his upcoming "Sat Gus" launch. Donate 30 USD to their charity (providing underprivileged kids STEM exposure) and you can upload a photo to serve as a foreground image for a picture taken from orbit.

Just in time for the holidays.

I love rocketry. In what other industry can you end a test with two hulks of burning wreckage floating in the ocean and regard the test as successful?

[Wrings out blanket]