Man, the carnage that thing caused on liftoff is akin to what a MOAB explosion would look like, I'm assuming.

RIP minivan.

I thought it was a QR code..

Makes you wonder if all the shit flying up from the carnage is what damaged the engines.

100% what I think happened, the debris caused some engines to fail

But how could any debris make it back up through the force of the exhaust?

Tons of forces at play there. One possible explanation is that they start up the engines in a sequence rather than all at once, so there would be "dead spots" in the force where the ricochet might be strong enough to get back up in there.

Watch the impacts/splashes in the Gulf. Not sure the distances involved, but dang...

<iframe width="560" height="315" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/LxhqFVfgbMo?start=260" title="YouTube video player" frameborder="0" allow="accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture; web-share" allowfullscreen></iframe>

Closer shot:

<iframe width="560" height="315" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/LxhqFVfgbMo?start=160" title="YouTube video player" frameborder="0" allow="accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture; web-share" allowfullscreen></iframe>

Bummer!

https://www.msn.com/en-us/money/comp...b5ece9c3&ei=37

A mission to the moon has apparently ended in failure

A Japanese startup appears to have failed in its effort to become the first to achieve a privately funded moon landing.
Tokyo-based ispace was attempting to land the Hakuto-R Series 1 lander on the surface of the moon at 9:40 p.m. PT on Tuesday, April 25 (1:40 a.m. on Wednesday, April 26, Tokyo time), but it lost contact with the vehicle at around that time.

“At this time, our Mission Control Center in Tokyo has not been able to confirm the success of the lander,” ispace tweeted about 90 minutes after it had hoped to set down the lander.

It added: “Our engineers and mission operations specialists in our Mission Control Center are currently working to confirm the current status of the lander.”.................

Time for another Falcon Heavy launch!! Today at 4:29pm PDT. All three boosters are expendable for this launch.

SpaceX is targeting Thursday, April 27 for a Falcon Heavy launch of the ViaSat-3 Americas mission to geostationary orbit from Launch Complex 39A (LC-39A) at NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida. Also on board this mission is Astranis's first MicroGEO satellite and Gravity Space’s GS-1 satellite. The 57-minute launch window opens at 7:29 p.m. ET (23:29 UTC). If needed, a backup opportunity is available Friday, April 28 with the same window.

One of the side boosters on this mission previously supported Arabsat-6A, STP-2, COSMO-SkyMed Second Generation FM2, KPLO, and three Starlink missions, and the second previously supported launch of Arabsat-6A and STP-2.

A live webcast of this mission will begin about 15 minutes prior to liftoff.

Aww, no dual booster landings? How sad.

Should still be fun, though.

There was a successful Falcon 9 launch of 34 Starlink satellites at 6:40 PDT this morning from Vandenberg AFB. Unfortunately, the marine layer prevented a view of the launch.

They never should have called the lander the Kamakazi.

Weather is looking pretty iffy for FH tonight. Just had a lightning bolt at the pad.

<blockquote class="twitter-tweet"><p lang="en" dir="ltr">With stormy weather continuing to impact Florida&#39;s Space Coast, SpaceX is now targeting the end of tonight&#39;s launch window at 8:26pm EDT (0026 UTC) for liftoff of a Falcon Heavy rocket on the ViaSat 3 Americas mission. <a href="https://t.co/bnKR6bILaD">https://t.co/bnKR6bILaD</a> <a href="https://t.co/oZ97aCHRvL">pic.twitter.com/oZ97aCHRvL</a></p>&mdash; Spaceflight Now (@SpaceflightNow) <a href="https://twitter.com/SpaceflightNow/status/1651714301818728454?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">April 27, 2023</a></blockquote> <script async src="https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js" charset="utf-8"></script>

Scrub a dub dub.