and so theorizing a trinary would like ‘kill’ them?
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“late guy here…” (thats the pressure fed astronaut)
“it was not an orbital flight, stop lying about that!..raptor doesnt work!..I think SpaceX is ill-equipped to actually do this program…SpaceX overestimated their ability to build Starship and this is what were seeing…”
hes way more brutal than usual in his evaluation and the last 4 minutes is him basically just ranting.
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SpaceX faces $663K FAA fine for Musk’s alleged launch impatience
[…]
The proposed penalties are for two incidents a couple of months apart that, from what the FAA’s press release suggests, make it look like Musk just didn’t want to wait for FAA approval to use new launch facilities, so SpaceX used them without the okay to do so.
In one instance, the June launch of an Indonesian communications satellite was handled from a launch control room at Hangar X, which SpaceX had requested FAA approval for only a month earlier. However, the FAA had not granted approval by the June 18 launch date.
Additionally, SpaceX informed the FAA it intended to skip the mandatory T-minus 2-hour readiness poll in its launch preparations and proceeded without conducting it, despite this being an FAA requirement. These two violations together resulted in a $350,000 penalty, according to the agency.
The other incident, involving the July launch of the EchoStar XXIV satellite, saw SpaceX employ a similar apply-but-don’t-wait tactic. This time, the issue was a newly constructed rocket propellant farm at Kennedy Space Center. SpaceX had submitted a request to revise its explosive site plan in July but went ahead and used the unapproved propellant farm for the EchoStar XXIV launch on July 28. For this violation, the administration is proposing a $283,009 fine.
[…]
I wonder what SpaceX’s insurance company thinks about this.
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The last paragraph in that article is most troublesome
Meanwhile, for the laser communication experiments, the SDA is using a pair of missile-tracking satellites built by SpaceX and launched in April 2023.
This implies that sensitive missile signature data has been shared with SpaceX. Awesome.
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Right? SpaceX is a defense contractor. Which is while it’s still here without Leon Twitter having to dump a lot more of Tesla shares to keep it alive.
And I think SpaceX is approaching the point where something’s got to give; either that guy is removed from SpaceX (probably somewhat tricky because It’s private) or SpaceX is removed from the list of approved contractors. Leon is a security risk; writing “keep the idiot well away from the sensitive stuff” into contracts will go only so far.
There a are competitors like ULA (well-versed in the art of lobbying!), Rocket Lab and Blue Thingy who could pick up SpaceX’s market share without much ado, plus a couple of smaller companies who could step up as well once they get the cash they need.
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When the richest man in the world does it; it’s not illegal.
Apologies to Nixon.
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Honestly these fines were so small that I’m sure that it was still in SpaceX’s financial interest to just pay them as a cost of doing business rather than wait for the approvals. Waiting longer to launch the rockets certainly has costs associated with it as well.
If fines are to actually serve as a deterrent for this kind of thing they need to be much larger, so that they outweigh the financial gains that the company makes by blowing off the government approvals. Otherwise they’re basically just fees paid for expedited approvals.
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oh well…
Elon Musk threatens to sue FAA after feds propose fining SpaceX $633,000…“SpaceX will be filing suit against the FAA for regulatory overreach,” Musk said.
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Intuitive Machines shoots for the Moon with NASA’s $4.82B lunar relay jackpot
[…]
According to Intuitive Machines, the award is a Near Space Network (NSN) contract for missions in the near-space region, which extends from the Earth’s surface to beyond the Moon. It will also mark the debut of Intuitive Machines’ lunar satellite constellation.
[…]
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I think almost half a billion isn’t really “millions of years ago”, also, an asteroid falling into the Earth-Moon system of that time would coming in with escape velocity. (Unless there’s an orbital mechanics way of sneaking up on a gravity well? And with some of the bank-shots NASA uses, there probably is. 
) They, or the science writers, need to do more work explaining how it (or part of it) would be captured.
Is it too late to contribute to the Trilobite Asteroid Defense Fund? (Asking from the peanut gallery. /s)
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Wow! My job supports the NSN, although in a way less glamorous role than this… (sadly I don’t know if/how we’ll be involved with this Lunar portion)
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I think the short answer would come down to something like ballistic capture/low-energy transfer/weak capture. A weak stability boundary problem, although that’s defined for the three-body problem, and a large asteroid captured in a near miss encounter just inside Earth’s Roche limit could be slightly more complicated. What I like to call insane maths.
The big difference is that a spacecraft can actively make slight course corrections at the right times to tweak its trajectory.
But it happens; Earth is about to gain an extra mini Moon for two months or so (see above). This one will leave again after one orbit. Others have stayed for years. If the composition and the trajectory is just right to be pulled apart by tidal forces, boom, ring system.
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