58 Starlinks scattered across sky, Rocket Lab aims for back-to-back launches, and Skyrora hops 6km above Shetland

It was a busy weekend for lovers of rockets: SpaceX launched another Falcon 9 from the US, Rocket Lab dodged the New Zealand wind with an Electron and in the UK Skyrora reached 6km altitude from Shetland. More Starlinks take to the sky as SpaceX nails another landing SpaceX lobbed another 58 Starlink satellites into orbit last …

[Yet Another Anonymous coward]

Cape Shetland

> launch to 6km from the Fethaland Peninsula at Shetland's North Roe...... mission was aimed at collecting meteorological data

This mythical "sun" everyone is theorising about ?

[J. Cook]

Re: Cape Shetland

Well, mythical for you, possibly- we've got buckets of sunshine here in Arizona.

[89724102172714182892114I7551670349743096734346773478647892349863592355648544996312855148587659264921]

If enough satellites contained it's own black hole, we'd get gravitational lensing and could fly

[duhmb]

Musks new alloy

Transparent Aluminum surely?

[Julz]

Re: Musks new alloy

You'd be able to see how full the tank was from the outside! Well, if a whale didn't get in the way.

[Phones Sheridan]

It would be interesting to know what material they have made the switch from. If it was 316ti, then they have sacrificed corrosion resistance and a bit of tensile strength for increased ductility and weldability, i.e. it can be deformed more before failure and the welds are more likely to hold. Not to sure about making their own alloys though. We pretty much know how all the various grades of steel perform in pretty much all circumstances now and it's been a long time since anyone came up with a new steel alloys. We've had improvements in Armox, Hardox Strenx and the third party compatibles, but they tend to be incremental improvements after a 10 year development cycle, i.e. the last Armox improvement reduced the thickness of 9mm material down to 6mm over 10 years while maintaining the same ballistic resistance and relative weight. Then again some bright spark might have had the idea to solve a problem with a new material, and patent the results to block out all the other Thunderbird 3 wannabes.

[Phones Sheridan]

A quick google answers my question. They were using 301, which has less corrosion resistance than 304, a higher tensile strength, but less ductility. It's also a lot cheaper. So they've solved the problem by spending a bit more money :)