SpaceX launched its Falcon 9 with 48 Starlink satellites aboard to low Earth orbit Wednesday. During the countdown, a SpaceX controller during a satellite launch said "Time to let the American broomstick fly and hear the sound of freedom," in a jab at Russia.

The comment was in reference to a recent statement by the head of Roscosmos, Dmitry Rogozin, who claimed that a ban on Russian exports of rocket engines would force the U.S. to rely on "brooms" to get to space.

Starlink is a space-based system that SpaceX has been building for years to bring internet access to underserved areas of the world.

Your video, Morgan Super 3 | Launch Trailer, has made it into the Top 15 New Videos listing. Congratulations on your achievement. For your contribution you have been awarded 1 Power Point.

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https://www.businessinsider.com/trump-americans-wearing-masks-show-disapproval-not-as-preventive-measure-2020-6

https://apnews.com/article/health-donald-trump-ap-top-news-virus-outbreak-understanding-the-outbreak-227fa2d005b3923157b9eb736c12e6c5

https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/donald-trump/trump-tells-allies-his-wearing-mask-would-send-wrong-message-n1202001

https://www.thedailybeast.com/cdc-recommends-americans-wear-cloth-masks-in-public-white-house-says

Coronavirus: Why is there a US backlash to masks? - https://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-52540015

https://time.com/5815615/trump-coronavirus-mixed-messaging/

https://abcnews.go.com/Politics/mandatory-mask-rulestrump-insists-personal-choice/story?id=71519019


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And right around this time,
https://www.nbcnews.com/news/world/trump-launch-opening-our-country-task-force-global-deaths-pass-n1181796

April 11, 2020
President Donald Trump said that his “opening our country" task force would start work next week, ...the virus has as of Saturday killed more than 20,000 people in the United States

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Hey @bobknight33 ! Here's a question for you: Can the GOP successfully gerrymander its way out of killing large swaths of its own constituency ?

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Pro-Trump counties now have far higher COVID death rates. Misinformation is to blame - December 5, 2021
https://www.npr.org/sections/health-shots/2021/12/05/1059828993/data-vaccine-misinformation-trump-counties-covid-death-rate

"People living in counties that went 60% or higher for Trump in November 2020 had 2.73 times the death rates of those that went for Biden. Counties with an even higher share of the vote for Trump saw higher COVID-19 mortality rates."
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I'll just leave this here, let me know if u see anything they all have in common https://www.reddit.com/r/HermanCainAward/
(BESIDES being fucking idiots)

You're absolutely right, my comment should have targeted the live launch, sorry.
Still, that covers about 20 (shaky cam) seconds of the launch before they switch to an animation (!) of the launch.
Which brings me back to my original gripe: The Ariane 5 is an old vehicle which doesn't have onboard cameras. Private rocket launch companies have eclipsed it. And I think The European Space Agency is not keeping up.
As to cameras on the JWST itself, it looks like they didn't attach any for a reason: https://www.space.com/james-webb-space-telescope-no-cameras-reason
Didn't know that...

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You get that's just a "preview" right? It's in the desc. It was done & shown before the launch, and I assume you knew the launch date (granted, it was postsponed several times, so admittedly not easy to keep track unless you have a passing interest about it). The actual live broadcast is at: https://youtu.be/7nT7JGZMbtM

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Voyager 2 was one of the first rocket launches I experienced in person. Good times for it's time.

At those g forces, with few exceptions, it seems it would be useless to launch most satellites, and it’s definitely not for live cargo.
It would be great on the moon….as a super weapon to blackmail earth with. It could launch all the rocks the Moon Master desires at any earth target….like a moon mortar with unlimited ammo.

I’m thinking Mt Chimborazo in Ecuador…at over 20000 ft, it’s peak it the farthest from the center of the earth (while not being the highest above sea level thanks to the equatorial bulge).
Sure, it doesn’t remove air resistance or friction, but halving it, even cutting it by 1/3 is a massive leap in efficiency and negates much of the extreme engineering and materials needed to overcome the friction….plus, as you mentioned, there’s the rotational speed advantage from launching on the equator vs Florida.
Also, while extremely minor, there’s also a slight reduction in gravitational pull at those heights. A joule saved is a joule earned!

Using a mountainside might help with structural integrity, but it's not likely to give much air resistance advantage if I'm reading the math correctly. The 5 highest peaks in the US are all in Alaska and and range from just under 5km to just over 6km. Commercial jets using air resistance/density for lift fly at about 10km and even at 38km aerodynamic lift still carries 98% of the weight of the plane (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/K%C3%A1rm%C3%A1n_line)

Air density is halved at 5km compared to sea level, but air resistance doesn't diminish as quickly (due to it being multiplied by velocity squared and drag coefficient), and only becomes irrelevant (for short-term purposes) around 100km at the Karman Line.

If we had a 5km peak in Florida, the lack of logistical costs might make the benefits worth it, and if we could build on one of Equador's 5km peaks, then there's the further advantage of equatorial location for optimal rotational advantage (part of the reason we launch from South Florida)

To be fair, it’s only meant to throw stuff to the point second stage rockets normally fire. Only 10000g….no problem, right?
Rail guns seem much more reasonable IMO. So does launching from a mountain top to avoid air resistance.

I don't know, but there's a few things that concern me:

1. Underestimating your advisory. We did this with Japan in the lead up to WW2. Great powers always fight the last war they won. In our case, that's WW2. China learned from the war they lost as well: WW2, and they're not going to make the same mistakes twice.

2. Ambiguous defense posture. This is how England got dragged into WW1 due to an uncertain position if Germany invaded France. Germany gambled that England wouldn't get involved because it had no spoken mutual defense agreement with France. Had the defense pact been made readily clear, it's possible Germany wouldn't have invaded.

2. Use it or lose it weapons. In WW1, one of the main issues with the initial invasion was train schedules. Things had to go perfectly to get men and material to the front line and any hiccup could delay a military victory. Once the very first German troop train left the station, there was no way to stop the invasion. Now we've got a situation where a war over Taiwan would be won or lost in about an hour of the first shot. China knows that should the US get involved, China's military assets are going to be blown up and fast. This puts China in a situation where they might choose the launch everything in a maximum impact first strike. Faced with overwhelming damage, the US would be forced to make some hard choices about how to respond. Would it go nuclear? It's according to how much Taiwan means to us.

"It won't happen". Go to Europe and see how many tombstones bear that inscription.

I'd say 50/50.

The guy trying to get the train to stop by jumping around and hollering is not something you generally see and hear in these type videos. The truck launching into the air is almost movie like.

why education should be one of our highest priorities. on the same level as national defense.

as a comedian once said (about Reagan cutting educational funding), it does not seem too smart to cut back on education. after all, we are relying on most of our service people, who protect this country, having some quality of education. would hate to see this scenario play out...

"OMG! WHY! Why did you launch those missiles!!!"
"Well...I got hungry, so I pressed the button with "Lunch" on it?"