Starship Asterisk*

SpaceX Falcon 9 to Orbit

Explanation: Birds don't fly this high. Airplanes don't go this fast. The Statue of Liberty weighs less. No species other than human can even comprehend what is going on, nor could any human just a millennium ago. The launch of a rocket bound for space is an event that inspires awe and challenges description. Pictured here, a SpaceX Falcon 9 V rocket lifted off through a cloud deck from Cape Canaveral, Florida last July to deliver cargo and supplies to the International Space Station. From a standing start, the 300,000+ kilogram rocket ship lifted its Dragon Capsule up to circle the Earth, where the outside air is too thin to breathe. Rockets bound for space are now launched from somewhere on Earth about once a week.

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My first thought was, wow, what a sun pillar!

Ann

My first thought was, are Aliens destroying the White House?...

Wonderful image...

:---[===] *

My first thought was, astronomy is looking up!

What now, when Trump cuts the NASA budget, though?

Tsukalos wrote:What now, when Trump cuts the NASA budget, though?

My guess is that Trump won't cut the budget, or not by much. He's likely to gut a lot of the Earth monitoring part of NASA, and might pull even more of the budget away from science and push it towards something like manned Moon or Mars landings, because that kind of stuff fits in so well with his grandstanding.

Hopefully.

Tsukalos wrote:Hopefully.

I don't really view that has hopeful. The Earth monitoring mission of NASA is its most important function, followed by its robotic exploration of the Universe. Pouring money into something like a Mars mission is effectively the same as shutting the agency down, but still consuming resources. The only real advantage is that most of its infrastructure would remain in place, awaiting saner leadership.

Well, with the Flat Earth Society taking over the US government, we'll see.

Instantly recognisable copy:
https://apod.nasa.gov/apod/ap010723.html

Excellent images, both