March 2024

SpaceX Starship
Photo: SpaceX

Today, the US Space Force (along with the Department of the Air Force) held the third of three in-person meetings in Cape Canaveral to provide information about a Proposed Action that would ultimately see SpaceX’s Starship launch and land at Cape Canaveral Space Force Station.

At these meetings, the public was able to ask public affairs officials about the ramifications of SpaceX using launch pad SLC-37 or building a new launch complex, SLC-50, between current pads SLC-37 and SLC-40 on the Cape Canaveral Space Force Station. Either of those facilities that could be used for Starship operations if they are chosen and later constructed.

Public Information Session at The Radisson today in Cape Canaveral
Photo: Charles Boyer / ToT

Officials from the Department of the Air Force, US Space Force, the Federal Aviation Administration, US Coast Guard, NASA, and the US Coast Guard were present today to answer questions from a large number of members of the public interested in learning more about the DAF / SpaceX proposed action. Visitors could also submit their comments in person, which many folks took the time to do in the past three days.

At today’s meeting in Cape Canaveral

Online Meeting Coming Soon

For those who could not attend the information sessions in Cocoa, Titusville or Cape Canaveral in person, there is one remaining meeting, this time online:

March 12 6:00 PM EDT: at spaceforcestarshipeis.com, under “Public Meetings.”

A registration link has not yet been posted, and is labeled as “Coming Soon.” It will be activated closer to the date of the meeting.

What’s An EIS Again?

An Environmental Impact Study takes a look at multiple factors that could be affected by a project like a re-engineered or new launch pad at Cape Canaveral.

  • Those factors include:
  • Airspace and maritime resources
  • Air quality
  • Climate change
  • Noise
  • Cultural resources
  • Biological resources
  • Water resources
  • Hazardous materials and wastes
  • Land use
  • Infrastructure and utilities
  • Geology
  • Socioeconomics
  • Environmental justice
  • Safety and occupational health
  • Section 4(f) of the Department of Transportation Act of 1966

The American Bar Association explains it this way:

“[An] environmental impact statement (EIS) is a government document that outlines the impact of a proposed project on its surrounding environment. In the United States, these statements are mandated by federal law for certain projects. Environmental impact statements are meant to inform the work and decisions of policymakers and community leaders.

“In the United States at the federal level, an EIS is a report mandated by the National Environmental Policy Act of 1969 (NEPA), to assess the potential impact of actions “significantly affecting the quality of the human environment.” This requirement under NEPA does not prohibit harm to the environment, but rather requires advanced identification and disclosure of harm.”

American Bar Association

New: The Role of the FAA

The Federal Aviation Administration is responsible for commercial spaceflight as well as its traditional roles in aircraft such as private planes, and commercial airlines, among others. One thing that was not included in the EIS public handouts was specifically what their role is in terms of Starship launches from the Cape:

The role of the Federal Aviation Administration in Starship potentially flying from Cape Canaveral was illustrated in a display at the EIS Public Meeting in Cape Canaveral on March 7, 2024.

Notable: the Environmental Impact Statement will fulfill the FAA’s obligation for an environmental review, and any mitigations deemed necessary will need to be completed in order for the FAA to issue SpaceX a launch license (after the pad is constructed.)

In-Depth Looks

Below are two links that can provide a great deal of information about the Proposed Action. First, the official site for the EIS has a great deal of information, and in particular, a PDF file of the information displayed at the in-person meetings can be downloaded. The second is our informational article published earlier this month. In it, Talk of Titusville gives additional information regarding Starship, Starship’s propellant and the risk of pollution from them as well as a look at the Proposed Actions.

Official Site: Starship-Super Heavy Operations At Cape Canaveral Space Force Station Environmental Impact Statement

Talk of Titusville: The US Air Force Is Studying Space Coast Launch Pads For SpaceX Starship

Timeline:

After the final Public Meeting on March 12, a relatively quiet period will follow where studies will be conducted and a draft Environmental Impact Statement is created.

After next week, work will be done behind the scenes where many of the factors that affect the project are studied, public sentiment from the meetings will be gauged and a draft EIS released by the end of the year.

Then, in December of this year, that Draft Environmental Statement will be publicly released, and a Public Hearing will be conducted. Public comments on the Draft EIS will be solicited, and finally, in the summer of 2025, the preferred altenative will be identified along with the release of the Final EIS.

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Thousands of people pass this by every day, yet few take real notice of it. Workers at KSC and visitors on bus tours see it on the right as they get close to the security gate, or maybe they need to get a badge at the badging office beside it. It’s a wonderful artifact and one well worth a close examination: a Mercury-Redstone rocket that were the beginnings of human space flight from Florida.

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NASA astronaut candidate Kayla Barron is seen after donning her spacesuit, Friday, July 12, 2019 at NASA’s Johnson Space Center in Houston, Texas. She has since spent spent 177 days in orbit as members of the Expedition 66/67 crew.
Photo Credit: (NASA/Bill Ingalls)

When a lot of us were kids, when we were asked what we wanted to be when we grew up, we had the same answer: an astronaut. For some of us, that dream may be about to become a reality: NASA is taking applications for its next group of astronauts, and are inviting the public to apply.

The requirements for selection are of course quite high. According to NASA:

  1. Be a U.S. citizen
  2. Have a master’s degree* in a STEM field, including engineering, biological science, physical science, computer science or mathematics, from an accredited institution.
  3. Have a minimum of three years of related professional experience obtained after degree completion (or 1,000 Pilot-in-Command hours with at least 850 of those hours in high performance jet aircraft for pilots) For medical doctors, time in residency can count towards experience and must be completed by June 2025.
  4. Be able to successfully complete the NASA long-duration flight astronaut physical.
*The master’s degree requirement can also be met by:
– Two years of work towards a doctoral program in a related science, technology, engineering, or math field.
– Completed Doctor of Medicine, Osteopathic Medicine, or related medical degree
– Completion (or current enrollment that will result in completion by June 2025) of a nationally recognized test pilot school program.

In addition, they are looking for candidates with a proven track record of “leadership, teamwork and communications.”

NASA adds that “Artemis Generation astronauts will explore and conduct experiments where humans have never been: the lunar South Pole.”

Not bad work, if you can get it. Only 12 people have been to the moon thus far, and this new group of astronauts will join other current astros in job assignments that are quite literally out of this world. And on top of that, experienced astronauts who remain with NASA may well be selected for a US effort to land on Mars at some point in the future.

The application period is March 5 – April 2, 2024, and after that, NASA’s Astronaut Selection Board will review all applications, narrow them down to a smaller group and invite them for in-person interviews to take place in Texas.

NASA also says that potential candidates of any age are allowed to apply: “There are no age restrictions for the program. Astronaut candidates selected in the past have ranged between the ages of 26 and 46, with the average age being 34.” Ostensibly, if you are older than 46, meet the education, experience, leadership and of course physical requirements, you have as good a chance as anyone.

The pay rate is approximately $152,258.00 per year, according to NASA, or about what a typical mid-career manager in a typical Fortune 500 company would earn.

If you’re interested, and you qualify, you can do so here: https://www.usajobs.gov/job/779261100

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Cavum or “Holepunch” clouds seen January 30, 2024, from using MODIS data from NASA EOSDIS LANCE and GIBS/Worldview.
Photo NASA

Famed fine-arts photographer Clyde Butcher once said of Florida, “Out west they have their mountains. We have our clouds.” Butcher’s observation was spot-on, the Sunshine State is home to some incredible sights in our skies — be it the setting sun illuminating a far away thunderstorm, a wall cloud from an approaching tropical storm, or even just a regular day where the clouds take on shapes where they appear to be animals or something else familiar.

An almost typical summer sunset over the Indian River in Cocoa, Florida: a thundercloud, backlit by the setting sun rises and casts shadows on the sky above. These are the “mountains of Florida” that photographer Clyde Butcher was speaking of.

Every in once in a while, we see something incredible that looks other-worldly: “holes in the sky,” or cavum clouds — something that some folks have claimed were caused by extraterrestrial spaceships, or by “weather control” experiments by some anonymous and nefarious government agency. Apparently, alien life-forms have nothing better to do after travelling trillions of miles to Earth than make donut holes in the clouds.

No Super-Secret Government Agencies Needed

The truth is far simpler than that, cavum clouds are a natural phenomenon that is caused by “mid-level clouds are composed of liquid water droplets that are supercooled,” according to NASA’s Adam Voiland at the agency’s Earth Observatory website.

Supercooling is relatively common in our atmosphere — altocumulus clouds, for example, are supercooled and they cover at least eight percent of the Earth on the average. In simple terms, that’s when water droplets in the sky — the things clouds are made of — remain liquid even when they are below their normal freezing point.

A pretty common Florida sight (or anywhere) are altocumulus clouds — they are “supercooled.”
Photo: Wikimedia Commons

Voiland goes on the explain further how that relates to cavum clouds, “Supercooled clouds have their limits. As air moves around the wings and past the propellers of airplanes, a process known as adiabatic expansion cools the water by an additional 20°C or more and can push liquid water droplets to the point of freezing without the help of airborne particles. Ice crystals beget more ice crystals as the liquid droplets continue to freeze. The ice crystals eventually grow heavy enough that they begin to fall out of the sky, leaving a void in the cloud layer.”

An F-22 at an airshow in Titusville in 2022 created an example of “adiabatic cooling” as part of its exhibition.
Photo: Charles Boyer, ToT

So, basically, a cavum cloud is usually created by a common airplane flying through a typical cloud structure and setting off a cascade of ice formation inside that creates this “hole in the sky.”

No aliens or super-secret government agencies needed, but a cool thing to see if a cavum cloud passes overhead.

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Crew-8 lifts off aboard Crew Dragon Endeavour and a Falcon 9 on March 3, 3024

It’s often said that the third time is the charm. For Crew 8 commander Matthew Dominick, co-pilot Michael Barratt, Jeanette Epps, and cosmonaut Alexander Grebenkin, the third launch attempt was the one that lifted them off of Pad LC-39A at Kennedy Space Center late Sunday evening.

Twice in previous days, adverse weather had forced mission managers to call off a launch attempt: first, on Friday due to high winds and rough seas beneath the planned ascent corridor. On Saturday, conditions hadn’t improved for a launch attempt, but by late Sunday they were acceptable and the Crew-8 liftoff and journey to the International Space Station was cleared to proceed. The reason for the weather aborts was simple, if a little counterintuitive to the average person: in the case of a launch abort, the crew would have into seas as high as 20 feet in the Atlantic.

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A Falcon 9 lifts off from Pad SLC-40 at Cape Canaveral Space Force Station
File photo by Charles Boyer / ToT

On the heels of the successful launch of Crew-8 from LC-39A at Kennedy Space Center late last night, SpaceX is planning to get back to it quickly this evening when they launch the Starlink 6-41 mission from Pad SLC-40 at Cape Canaveral Space Force Station. The launch window extends from 6:56 PM – 10:54 PM EST.

Weather for tonight’s launch looks good according to the 45th Weather Squadron: only a one-in-five chance of a weather-related delay, meaning that there is an 80% chance of acceptable weather conditions throughout the launch window. According to them, the primary concerns are the “Cumulus Cloud Rule and the Anvil Cloud Rules.”

Trajectory

A southeasern trajectory is expected, with a booster landing in the Atlantic Ocean just east of the Bahamas.

Booster

SpaceX has not announced which booster will be used for this flight at the time of this writing. When that information becomes available, we will add it here.

Landing

Landing will occur on ASDS (Automated Spaceport Drone Ship) A Shortfall of Gravitas, which will be stationed offshore and downrange. After Falcon 9’s booster lands safely aboard the vessel, it will return to Port Canaveral and then to SpaceX’s Hangar X facility at Kennedy Space Center for inspection and presumably refurbishment and preparation for its next flight.

Launch Viewing: Online

SpaceX generally provides live launch coverage starting fifteen minutes prior to launch on their account on the X platform. Click here

Spaceflight Now will provide launch coverage one hour prior to liftoff on their YouTube channel. Click here

Launch Viewing: In Person

Tomorrow’s launch is from SLC-40 at Cape Canaveral, which means that the best direct views of liftoff are at either the Banana River Bridge on FL-528 W near Port Canaveral, or the southern parks on US-1 / S. Washington Avenue in Titusville.

The ascending rocket will also be visible on the beaches after liftoff when Falcon 9 clears any obstructions.

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SpaceX Falcon 9 lifts off of LC-39A at Kennedy Space Center at 10:53 PM EST on March 3, 2024
Photo: Charles Boyer / ToT

It’s often said that the third time is the charm. For Crew 8 commander Matthew Dominick, co-pilot Michael Barratt, Jeanette Epps, and cosmonaut Alexander Grebenkin, the third launch attempt was the one that lifted them off of Pad LC-39A at Kennedy Space Center late Sunday evening.

A few hours before liftoff, the astronauts of Crew-8 greeted friends and family as they left from the Neil Armstrong Operations and Checkout Building on their way to the launch pad.
Photo: Charles Boyer / ToT

Twice in previous days, adverse weather had forced mission managers to call off a launch attempt: first, on Friday due to high winds and rough seas beneath the planned ascent corridor. On Saturday, conditions hadn’t improved for a launch attempt, but by late Sunday they were acceptable and the Crew-8 liftoff and journey to the International Space Station was cleared to proceed. The reason for the weather aborts was simple, if a little counterintuitive to the average person: in the case of a launch abort, the crew would have into seas as high as 20 feet in the Atlantic.

Late Countdown Concerns

After a seemingly uneventful countdown that allowed the astronauts and ground crew to get ahead of schedule, late concerns were raised about a crack in the hatch seal of Crew Dragon Endeavour that was discovered after it was sealed. According to SpaceX and NASA commentators, there were concerns that the crack could cause an atmospheric leak during re-entry, which of course would be unacceptable and potentially cause a scrub to facilitate repairs.

With Falcon 9 being loaded with propellants and the countdown clock inexorably ticking down to zero, engineers responsible for this aspect of the spacecraft were consulted, and with ten minutes left in the count, the astronauts were informed by ground control that the crack was too small to pose a threat. Engineers also stated that the crack would seal itself during re-entry heating, was on the “side” of Crew Dragon as it was re-entering, and would not be a problem. The countdown was cleared to continue.

Liftoff at 10:53 PM

An “Aurora” after stage separation during Crew-8’s ascent on March 3. 2024.
Photo: Charles Boyer / ToT

A brand-new booster to the Falcon 9 fleet, B1083, fired up at 10:53 PM EST, sending the crew to orbit and ultimately to the International Space Station. Endeavour will dock autonomously to the forward port of the station’s Harmony module about 3 a.m. Tuesday, March 5.

After staging, the return booster put on an incredible display over the Florida coastline, first, as it began its RTLS (Return To Launch Site) maneuvers then later during its re-entry burn — all of which was visible to spectators from near the launch pad at Kennedy Space Center. Some eight and a half minutes after liftoff, Booster B1083 concluded its first mission with a pair of sonic booms after it touched down, followed by the roar of the landing burn.

On to Station

Crew-8 will now catch up with the International Space Station, and autonomous dock is planned for the forward port of the station’s Harmony module about 3 a.m. Tuesday, March 5. After settling in to ISS, Crew-8 will begin a six month assignment on Station to begin a slate of more than 200 science experiments and technology demonstrations that will take place during their mission.

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Robert “Ozzy” Osband

The American Space Museum in Titusville along with the National Space Society has announced “321 Day” on March 21st to celebrate the life and legacy of local legend Robert “Ozzy” Osband — self-proclaimed “Rocket Hobo” and “Father of the 3-2-1 Area Code.”

Osband was a familar and welcome sight to local and tourists alike in Space View Park, where he gave launch updates, countdowns, and the occasional “SCRUB!” to people gathered in Space View Park to watch launch attempts at the Cape. Always the friendly sort, Ozzy was well known for coloring in the details of what was happening, giving the public a much better understanding of what they were watching.

He created the “Rocket Hobos” — someone one “who never misses a rocket launch. They have encyclopedic knowledge of the space program. They possess minutiae on the history of NASA. Their minds are like webs wherein every statistic of space trivia is forever snared. Rocket Hobos set their alarms for 3:11 am Atlas blast-offs.” Remaining Rocket Hobos patches will be for sale at Space View Park on the day of the celebration.

Osband also had the idea for the Space Coast to have its famous “321” area code. The old “407” area code was running out of numbers, and new code was going to be established for the area. Ozzy did some research, found out that “321” was available and started a campaign for its assignment to the Space Coast region.

On Nov. 1, 1999, Florida Gov. Jeb Bush placed the first official “321” phone call from Tallahassee to Kennedy Space Center, with Ozzy sitting beside the deputy director receiving the call.

“We are excited to honor our wonderful friend Ozzy in this celebration,” said Karan Conklin, ASM executive director. “We are happy the National Space Society has helped our museum create a community event to honor Ozzy’s legacy on our Space Coast. “People like Robert Osband carry the torch for the Space Age in the community and help inspire all generations to explore outer space,” said Gabriel Rothblatt, a Director of the National Space Society and Space Coast resident. “This is a special celebration for an extraordinary man, and we welcome the community to join us.”

Ozzy Osband in high school.
Photo: classmates.com

Ozzy Osband died Aug. 6, 2023 of natural causes at age 72. He was born in New York, and lived much of his life in the Titusville area. Ozzy had his own computer software company, and was well known in the ham radio community (N4SCY).  As an Army veteran, he was interred at the Cape Canaveral National Cemetery in Mims, Florida.

While honoring and recognizing all of America’s space programs and their workers, the foundation agrees with astronaut Alan Shepard, when on May 13, 1996, he said, “We need to remember the people who made it possible; so little is said of them.” The intent of the American Space Museum and US Space Walk of Fame is to honor and place emphasis on American space workers and others who made the space programs possible. 

The Celebration

  • 3:21 PM EDT: An informal gathering at Space View Park for friends to remember the life and legacy of Ozzy Osband.
  • 4:00 PM: ASM plans to broadcast, live via YouTube, a special episode in Ozzy’s honor, of the “Stay Curious Podcast” from Space View Park. 
  • 5:00 PM: Titusville Mayor Dan Diesel will read a proclamation in honor of Ozzy Osband at the Titusville Welcome Center
    • After the Proclamation, a block party with food trucks, adult beverages, and exhibitors representing causes that Ozzy worked on will be present
    • A performance by Interstellar Groove Machine, a local Space Coast band composed of aerospace employees.

Mark your calendars and plan to attend. This will surely be a great time to remember one of Titusville’s most colorful and iconic characters, a man who reflected the city and its other residents perfectly.

Related: Ozzie Osband, Originator of “3-2-1” Telephone Area Code and “Rocket Hobo,” Passes Away at 72

Editors note: this article contains quotes and text from a press release by the American Space Museum

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