MUSK'S STARSHIP CRASHES

SpaceX's Starship crashed.  Was that just the other day?  Yes, but there have also been others. Read this article in Space.com that was published 5 days ago entitled, Every SpaceX Starship explosion what Elon Musk and his team learned from them.  At the site you can watch them all.  Time magazine explained why another explosion is no big deal.  

Well, if you fail, try, try, again.  That apparently is Musk's attitude.  The U.S. space program began ignominiously.

• In 1955 the U.S. announced plans to put a satellite into orbit, targeted for the International Geophysical Year in 1957-58.
• But the Soviet Union on 23October1957 placed Sputnik 1 into orbit.

• 

  Embarrassed, we swiftly tossed together on 6December1957 our first package, called by Nikita Krushhev as a grapefruit, and on live television, we saw the the effort rise 4 feet, fall over and explode.  
• Our grapefruit landed in bushes near the pad and began transmitting signals.  Dorothy Kilgallen remarked, Why doesn't somebody go out there, find it, and shoot it!
• The American press called it Kaputnik.
• I remember this all too well because I was a senior in high school, and this fiasco convinced me to major in chemical engineering.
• The third launch in March of 1958 was successful, and of the 11 Vanguard launches, 8 failed.
• The fact of the matter is that the U.S. had two defense developed rockets that could have beat the Soviets.  
• 
  No doubt this beginning spurred President John F. Kennedy to,  in a 1962 speech, the year I graduated from college, propose to land a man on the moon before 1970.  A Gallup poll indicated that 58% of Americans thought this was folly.

• 
  Neil Armstrong became that first man, in 1969.  I had started my graduate work at LSU, and on a visit to Florida saw Apollo 11 on the pad at the Kennedy Space Center.  A couple of days later, success.
• I have two Armstrong/Moon films awaiting play on this cruise.  I'll try to watch them.

But back to Starship and the Mission to Mars.

• Starship was the largest rocket ship ever, standing taller than the Statue of Liberty.

• Was launched from the Starbase spaceport on the southern tip of Texas along the Gulf Coast east of Brownsville, and made it to about a quarter of the projected 90 miles, with a scheduled return at sea close to Hawaii.

• 
  Owner of Tweeter Elon Musk twitted:  Congrats @SpaceX team on an exciting test launch of Starship! Learned a lot for next test launch.
• Spent around $33 million to get SpaceX going in 2002, and has since no doubt expended "hundreds" of millions.

• 
  Had sold Zip2 for $307 million in 1999 and eBay for $1.5 billion in 2002, so chump change.
• Last year bought Twitter for $44 billion.
• Still has more than $200 billion as the #2 richest in the world to Bernard Arnault of France, worth $226 billion.  He owns Louis Vuitton, Christian Dior, Moet & Chandon, Sephora, Tiffany, etc.

• 
  Musk has plans for Man on Mars by 2029 and a colony by 2050.  Cost?  Maybe $100 million.  More probably, $10 trillion.  He would then be 79 years old.

• 
  My Blue Revolution Ocean City, to host the 2050 World Ocean Expo, should only cost $150 billion.  I would need to be 110-years old to see that.  At least it's 67 times cheaper to set the stage for Man on the Ocean, remediation of global warming and who knows what else.
• A few months ago I was on the Maldives, where they have several floating city concepts.  The one to the right above is a creation of Italian Pierpaolo Lazzarini, Pangeos.

More about space, a total solar eclipse occurred two days ago, best seen in Exmouth (to the extreme west of Australia), a town of 2,800, joined by another 20,000 coming to watch.  What is this town famous for?  Ningaloo Reef and whale sharks.  Called the Ningaloo Eclipse, to the left is a photo from Indonesia.  But from Exmouth:

Of course you didn't see anything because:

To close this subject, the lecture today will be by Tim Runyan.  He will speak on Captain Cook and the Pursuit of Venus.  This was his first Pacific voyage on the HMS Endeavour from 1768-81 where a primary purpose was to observe this phenomenon from June 2-4 in 1769.  I'll say more tomorrow about why this was so important way back then in time.

Coachella 2023 is into weekend #2.  Just on Sunday, April 23, will be 47 performances.  I barely recognized one name, Bjork.  More than 50 acts on Saturday, headlined by Black Pink of South Korea.  I am familiar with them only because I once headlined the group in one of my postings.  Friday is headed by Bad Bunny among another 50 or so. He is a noted DJ.

How many of you know where Coachella is located?  I didn't, although a few years ago I was close when I golfed at La Quinta and Indian Wells. 41,941 live in this city, with 90% speaking Spanish.  Three casinos in the valley.  It is 68 feet below sea level, with record highs above 120F from June to September.

Not much of a sail day on the Seabourn Odyssey.  A pasta lunch.

The talk yesterday was by Jim McLay on the early history of Polynesia and the coming of the Europeans.

Whoops, only remembered to take an in-room dinner photo after eating most of it.  We watched Anthropoid.  Only 67/71 on Rotten Tomatoes, but brutally realistic about the assassination of Nazi officer Reinhard Heydrich, third in command, and the architect of The Final Solution.

Hitler himself described Heydrich as the the man with the iron heart.  He was a key organizer of the 1936 Berlin Olympics.

Only 3195 steps today

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