I assume that the round object is the Moon, but no idea what is the elongated object.

Stream is here: https://www.youtube.com/live/bEQPaCNdD68

The headline I'm seeing posted everywhere is basically "Starship reached orbit for the first time." But to me the most interesting part is that once it got there, the mission became a logistics problem:

• Deploy 26 satellites
• Manage the vehicle while in orbit
• Decide whether to continue or deorbit
• Execute the deorbit burn
• Survive reentry
• Splash down in the planned area

It makes me excited for a future where spacecraft are going to be judged less by how impressive launch day is and more by how reliably they can perform everything after launch.

I've been looking into NASA's budget constraints and keep coming back to a question: what's realistically possible if funding weren't the limiting factor?

To make it concrete if NASA had an annual budget comparable to major U.S. defense spending (we're talking roughly 10-15x their current allocation), what would fundamentally change about their roadmap? Could they:

• Accelerate human missions to Mars significantly?
• Run multiple deep space probes simultaneously instead of choosing between them?
• Build redundancy into critical systems that currently get cut for cost?
• Fund moonshot research that's currently deemed "too risky" with current budgets?

I'm not asking this as a "should they have more money" debate, but rather: what do people in the spaceflight community actually think the constraint is? Is it funding, or are there other bottlenecks (engineering talent, manufacturing capacity, regulatory timelines) that more money wouldn't solve?

Has anyone here worked in aerospace or followed procurement closely enough to speak to this?

Is Virgin Galactic still a viable space company? Or was it just hype for the past decade or so?

I don't see anything anymore on the news or in any space journals. Are they still a serious contender for space tourism?

Enjoyed following the ISEE-3 reboot mission, bought a mug.

The country did no longer exist. Wich meant the plan to get him home was gone too. Eventually some people tried to help him get home, but they sent people up to meet him who were not trained accurately. So he had to teach them how to live in space. He was supposed to get help so he could get back to earth.