That was frickin' awesome!

I have to say, this is one of the my favorite, non-Chiefs threads of all time. Thank you to all who keep it updated and please, keep posting. Exciting times we live in and this is bigger than most people realize, IMO.

Cool. As. Hell....

And I enjoyed watching the city lights a lot too. Wow!! Earth is COOL!

Any thoughts on broadening the scope of this thread vs. keeping it SpaceX? With Boeing close to their demo launch of Starliner, it seems like this is the logical place for discussion about it. Similar for Blue Origin's stuff in the next few years. SpaceX has been the sexy company to watch and probably will still be for a while, but there's lots of other interesting stuff from others not to far into the future.

We could just change it to a "Space Exploration" megathread instead I suppose.

I vote for all of them here personally. If it ever gets to be too much, then we could look at segregating things out later into sub-threads.

I also would welcome a broader scope for this thread. I have been waiting my whole life (58 years and counting) for private space enterprises and it is finally here! IMO, this is how humanity gets to space, not through governmental programs.

I like it here. One stop shopping...

I think the Mods will grant you that latitude.. LMAO

Expansion is good!

Second SpaceX Falcon Heavy flight gets April 7 launch date:

SpaceX's massive Falcon Heavy rocket is scheduled for its next launch no earlier than April 7 at 6:36 pm ET (22:36 UTC), people familiar with the plans told CNBC.

https://www.cnbc.com/2019/03/15/spac...7-sources.html

In case anyone's got some time to blow, here's a cool discussion between Jim Bridenstine (NASA Administrator), Elon Musk, and the first astronauts slated to ride on Dragon.

<iframe width="560" height="315" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/X2t4l_yMStE" frameborder="0" allow="accelerometer; autoplay; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture" allowfullscreen></iframe>

SpaceX goes all-in on steel Starship, scraps expensive carbon fiber BFR tooling

https://www.teslarati.com/spacex-all...p-super-heavy/

Realistically, whats everyonens thoughts on the timeline of getting manned missions to Mars?

2030 earliest.

So likely in our lifetimes?

Well, depends on how old you are. :)

But yeah, I think we get there in the 2030s. In theory SpaceX wants to get there sooner than that, but NASA seems to have their sights on the moon, so it'll be more of a stretch for SpaceX to do it alone. Here's the general timeline as I see it:

2020-2025 - Rapid expansion of launch vehicle capabilities (New Glenn, Starship, and maybe SLS)
2025-2030 - Manned missions to the moon to start building a base and to test out technology that would allow for long-term habitats. Also, unmanned missions to Mars that take far bigger payloads than we've ever sent there before.
2030-2035 - Manned missions to Mars, but we don't stay longer than we have to. (Granted, we might have to stay quite a while since you have to wait for the right launch window.)
2035+ - Long-term missions to Mars.

Of course, that's all just guessing. We could get there earlier or much later. Or, frankly, it's possible that we never really figure out how to live on Mars long-term. We'll see.

A tiny bit of extra info:

<blockquote class="twitter-tweet" data-lang="en"><p lang="en" dir="ltr">Meanwhile, at KSC.....<br><br>Falcon Heavy is getting closer.<br><br>*PRELIMINARY* (Dates are &quot;PENDING&quot;, but now on the Range):<br>Static Fire: NET March 31.<br>Launch: NET: April 7 - Window: 22:36 UTC to 00:35 UTC.<br>39A T/E Rollback is the next milestone.<a href="https://twitter.com/TheFavoritist?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">@TheFavoritist</a>&#39;s iconic photo: <a href="https://t.co/Z7KSVwznKT">pic.twitter.com/Z7KSVwznKT</a></p>&mdash; Chris B - NSF (@NASASpaceflight) <a href="https://twitter.com/NASASpaceflight/status/1108384751868612608?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">March 20, 2019</a></blockquote>
<script async src="https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js" charset="utf-8"></script>