Orbit & Volts

Rockets & EVs explained in 60 seconds 🚀⚡ Starship, Starlink, FSD & the numbers behind the headlines. No hype. NFA. Not affiliated with Tesla/SpaceX.

[Orbit & Volts @OrbitAndVolts]

Tesla is 55 cars from passing Waymo on Texas's official robotaxi list 🚕

Texas DMV: Waymo 1,259, Tesla 1,204 (573 are Cybercabs with no steering wheel).

Since June 11: Tesla +1,135, Waymo +639.

Registered isn't the same as carrying riders. Does Tesla pass Waymo this year?

[Orbit & Volts @OrbitAndVolts]

Turns out I was nervous about the wrong catch. Super Heavy got diverted to a splashdown in the Gulf instead of coming back to the tower. Ship 42 finished its ascent burn though, and SpaceX is checking whether it's good to go to orbit.

[Orbit & Volts @OrbitAndVolts]

If Starship flies tonight, the booster tries for the tower arms within minutes. Ship 42 doesn't get its turn until more than 22 hours later, after 14 orbits. That second catch is the one I'm nervous about.

[Orbit & Volts @OrbitAndVolts]

@NASASpaceflight Normally the FAA license lands the day before a Starship launch, so no word this late is pretty unusual. Flying the ship home over northern Mexico can't be helping.

[Orbit & Volts @OrbitAndVolts]

@SpaceflightNow Another day of waiting, and not just for Amazon. The Space Force is holding its own Vulcan launches until it sees how the redesigned booster nozzles do on this flight.

[Orbit & Volts @OrbitAndVolts]

Last night's Falcon 9 carried USSF-627, and SpaceX already has two more Space Force missions lined up from the same Vandenberg pad, Nov 14 and Nov 18. Add USSF-432 on Nov 6 and that's four in 12 days. Pretty wild pace for one pad.

[Orbit & Volts @OrbitAndVolts]

@baddestonthepnt Right, and the Flight 9 booster wasn't only the same body. SpaceX said 29 of its 33 Raptors had already flown on Flight 7. Reusing the engines too is what makes the days goal feel real.

[Orbit & Volts @OrbitAndVolts]

SpaceX's window for Friday's Starship launch runs 4:45 to 6 PM Central, and the sun sets at Starbase at 5:41. If it goes late, Booster 22 would come back to the tower in twilight. Kind of a perfect setting for the first try at catching both stages.

[Orbit & Volts @OrbitAndVolts]

@NASASpaceflight Still kind of amazing that this flight made Hadfield the only Canadian ever to go aboard Mir. First Canadian to run the Canadarm in orbit too, on the same mission.

[Orbit & Volts @OrbitAndVolts]

@baddestonthepnt Yeah, and it's moving faster than people think. The first tower catch was only October 2024, and a caught booster already flew again on Flight 9. If that turnaround drops from months to days, it's a totally different game.

[Orbit & Volts @OrbitAndVolts]

@baddestonthepnt Agreed, that's the real bottleneck. Catching the booster on the tower is supposed to help a lot there, since it lands right back where it needs to be stacked again instead of on a ship far away.

[Orbit & Volts @OrbitAndVolts]

@baddestonthepnt Thanks! I saw NSF's shots of the speed loader rolling out too. 26 V3s in one go is a lot of satellite.

[Orbit & Volts @OrbitAndVolts]

Buzz Aldrin trained for Gemini XII in a school swimming pool, the first astronaut to practice spacewalks underwater. It launched 60 years ago today, after three rough Gemini spacewalks, and he logged a record 5 hr 48 min outside. NASA still trains this way.

[Orbit & Volts @OrbitAndVolts]

Funny thing in Ookla's new data. Starlink is slower than T-Mobile, AT&T and Verizon home 5G, yet 9 in 10 new US Starlink users came from DSL, cable or fixed wireless. Ookla thinks the cheap 100 Mbps plan is pulling them over.

[Orbit & Volts @OrbitAndVolts]

SpaceX's Kiko Dontchev says one Starship launch from Florida could add up to 20x the Starlink bandwidth of a Falcon 9. Falcon 9 still throws away its second stage every flight. Starship wants to catch both, maybe as soon as Friday.

[Orbit & Volts @OrbitAndVolts]

Starlink finally put a battery in the Mini. Mini 2 gets up to 4.5 hours on a quick-swap pack, per Starlink, while the first one needed a power bank or a car plug to go off grid. Preorders are invite-only in the US for now.

[Orbit & Volts @OrbitAndVolts]

@Erdayastronaut @NASAAdmin @rookisaacman Kinda bummed NASA says the VAB doesn't actually make its own clouds. The fog people see in there just drifts in through the 456 ft doors.

[Orbit & Volts @OrbitAndVolts]

SpaceX launch VP Kiko Dontchev said Grok now spots debris inside rocket parts better than trained inspectors: on the same borescope video, people catch about 94% and Grok catches 99.9%. That's roughly 60 misses per 1,000 versus about 1.

[Orbit & Volts @OrbitAndVolts]

@Starlink @flyslate Slate's jets use Gogo Avance L5 today, which gets its signal from towers on the ground across the US. Starlink swaps that for satellites, with installs starting in December.

[Orbit & Volts @OrbitAndVolts]

@SawyerMerritt Europe has allowed adaptive beam headlights since 2006. The US only legalized them in Feb 2022, nine years after Toyota first petitioned NHTSA. Should the US just copy Europe's rules?

[Orbit & Volts @OrbitAndVolts]

@SawyerMerritt At the Nov 2019 unveil, the top tri-motor Cybertruck was promised at $69,900 with 500+ miles of range. The Cyberbeast now starts at $109,990, about $40K more. Would you still buy one at that price?