Business, General, Space, Technology and Society

Iridium Last

10 Comments

SpaceX had a successful flight of a used booster this morning from Vandenberg, delivering the final birds of the new Iridium constellation. It was socked in in LA, so I couldn’t see it, but it looks like it was beautiful up on the central coast. Michael Baylor got a gorgeous shot, his first from a remote camera.

[Update a while later]

Here’s another one.

10 thoughts on “Iridium Last”

    1. Amazon, Blue Origin, the Washington Post… there’s a whole bunch of companies. Divorce is normally complicated, but this would be a nightmare.

      A lot of lawyers are going to make a lot of money.

      However, the companies will likely go on as before. This isn’t the first CEO to get divorced.

      1. This isn’t the first CEO to get divorced.

        Elon’s been divorced many times. Heck he divorced that Tallulah lady twice!

    2. No significant impact, I think. The soon-to-be-ex Mrs. B will take her half and – if she has any brains at all – keep hands off and let Mr. B continue to run it and run up its value. This may bump both of them down a notch or two or three on the World’s Richest list now that they are separate entries, but I suspect both will once again share the top spot before too much longer. Amazon is a runaway freight train. I think it’s possible Elon may surpass both of them before he turns 60, but he’s got a bit of a stern chase before doing so.

  2. Beautiful photos. Thanks for posting. Looks like Iridium will have a life after all. Can LEO Internet be far behind? Don’t think so. AFAICT Comcast could use some competition. Also I’d like a backup Internet provider for when my utility power goes off. Comcast believes in UPSs but not backup generators.

    1. I read that the Dragon 2 test flight is being delayed by the shutdown. I don’t know whether that’s because NASA needs to certify it for carrying crew, or because LC-39A is owned by NASA and they are responsible for some logistics at that pad.

  4. I wonder how much they saved by going with SpaceX and how much this constellation cost vs the last one in same year dollars.

  6. In my past life I was required to carry and maintain a Sat. Phone for our company. As the fleet aged we finally were consulting a Web site to find optimum windows to make our monthly test calls. As the windows grew smaller I sat down with my boss and explained we were far better off using regular cell phone text services to get information our in emergency situations. At the time I was puzzled how such an advanced technology could be allowed to crumble from lack of infrastructure. Glad to see them back and hope to see at least civilian air start using them for location information.

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