Starship Asterisk*

Wow!

I did not know, and who would have thought, that hard-nosed businessman Elon Musk is a fan of Iain M. Banks', "The Culture"!

That he has named his, so-far three, drone landingships,
"Just Read The Instructions"
"Of Course I still Love You"
and
"A Shortfall of Gravitas", all names of AI Minds that run Culture spaceships in the books, is IMHO an enormous compliment to Banks, who as a lover of the dram and the craic, would have enjoyed it very much!

John

Caramba !

[url=https://apod.nasa.gov/apod/ap181011.html] [img]https://apod.nasa.gov/apod/calendar/S_181011.jpg[/img] [size=150]West Coast Launch and Landing[/size][/url]

[b] Explanation: [/b] A SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket [url=https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3WEiZ4Eh6Nw]launch dazzled[/url] viewers [url=https://www.google.com/search?tbm=isch&q=spacex+launch]along the U.S. west coast[/url] after sunset on October 7. [url=https://www.space.com/42058-spacex-spectacular-nighttime-rocket-launch-saocom-1a.html]Rising from[/url] Vandenberg Air Force Base, California, planet Earth, the Falcon 9's first stage then returned to a landing zone some 400 meters from the launch site less than 8 minutes after liftoff. Both [url=https://www.johnkrausphotos.com/]launch and first stage landing[/url] (left) are captured in the frame of this two image stack, recorded by a stationary, sound-activated camera set up on a nearby hill. This Falcon 9 rocket delivered its payload, an [url=https://earthobservatory.nasa.gov/]Earth-observing[/url] satellite developed by Argentina's national space agency, to low Earth orbit. Of course, the [url=https://apod.nasa.gov/apod/ap180421.html]Falcon 9 first stage[/url] had flown before. Following a launch from Vandenberg on July 25 it was recovered after landing on the autonomous drone ship [url=https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Autonomous_spaceport_drone_ship#Just_Read_the_Instructions]Just Read the Instructions[/url].


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