SpaceX Starship

[General Ceel]

Caught and awesome, successful launch of SpaceX's massive Starship this morning. The ship is in space now and getting ready for reentry and splashdown in the Indian Ocean. 

Mars in our lifetime has never felt so close! 

Love this stuff!

[Danster]

A few years ago we were driving at night down to a hotel (ahead of a trip to Disneyland Paris). As we drove down we saw a really weird pattern of what looked like big bright stars, but they seemed to be moving a little bit as we watched. My missus Googled it and it transpired that was a launch of some of the SpaceX satellites. It was a weird thing to witness.

[General Ceel]

Yeah, right after they launch they're all close together in a line like that. But they spread out afterwards as they maneuver into their final intended positions. Once Starship is fully ready they'll start launching them in larger quantities. That thing has a massive payload capacity.

[Danster]

I could see myself buying a big old telescope and getting into gazing at the stars when I'm older. Totally fascinating.

I grew up in a village a good few miles away from any urban centre. Now I live close to a city centre, one of the biggest things I missed is going into the garden and gazing up at a clear, star-filled sky. Light pollution means my view of the night sky isn't anything like as impressive as it was as a child in a village.

When I was 20 I went on holiday to Egypt. We were in a hotel on the Red Sea coast with no major urban environment for hundreds of miles. There was a small town called El Quesir but it was very undeveloped and not a significant source of light pollution. One evening whilst out there I walked about half a mile or so inland, into a massive expanse of nothing, and looked up into the night sky. It was incredible, like nothing I had ever seen before. The sky was as much lit up by stars as it was black.

[General Ceel]

I grew up in the middle of nowhere. No neighbors within sight. When you turned off the pole light out in our driveway everything would become absolute darkness with incredible views of the stars. I miss that. I live in town now. Its a small town, and I can still see some stars... but its just not the same.

[Danster]

Yeah, I live about a mile and a half from the very centre of a city. It's small in terms of cities, population of 200,000, but it still gives out a good bit of light pollution. I sometimes lie on top of my kid's climbing frame in the garden and look at the night sky. When I looked in the direction of the city it's almost always got a sort of faint orange light haze, whereas when I look east in the opposition direction out into the rural areas, the sky is so much more impressive.

[General Ceel]

200,000 is like 4 times the population of the entire large (in terms of size) county where I live. To me that's huge!

[Danster]

I think counties must be a little different here, as the county I live in is massive. There are only 40-something counties in England, and my one is one of the largest and most rural. It has a population of just under 900,000 but has an area of over 2,000 square miles.

[General Ceel]

The county where I live is just over 3,000 square km, or 1.2 thousand square miles. But within my state, Pennsylvania, my county is rather large and relatively sparsely populated.