How do we not yet have a general thread about space exploration and related activities? With so many private launches & missions, in addition to the likes of NASA, there’s plenty to discuss.
Unfortunately, the first topic is a sad one. Humanity’s first extraterrestrial aerospace mission has come to an end, following a forced landing by Ingenuity:
SpaceX hinted that Starship (in the distant future) will have a slight spin on route to Mars to
simulate artificial gravity.
As to Lunar landings - there is an excellent video on YouTube regarding the Surveyor missions in the sixties - highly successful soft landers using the very basic technology of the time.
Back when Starship was being dreamed up, there were plans of having multiple Starships that could dock together once in orbit and then great a station of sorts that could spin during Martian transits to give a small amount of gravity. There was talk of a ‘butt-to-butt’ style docking, suing an umbilical type system to essentially rotate two of them around a much bigger circle.
Anyone just watch Space X nail their 4th Starship Superheavy test flight? Camera feeds all the way down to the ocean on both the booster and the ship. Incredible.
The flap that could! I expect the others were in the same state. Feed looking down on left aft flap showed plasma leakage through hinges early on in the reentry too.