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Watch: SpaceX Gears Up For Another Starship Launch Attempt

SpaceX canceled Monday’s Starship/Super Heavy test flight (Flight Test 8) after failing to resolve technical issues with the mega-rocket in the final minute of the countdown. Now, Elon Musk’s rocket company has announced that Flight Test 8 has been rescheduled for Thursday evening. 

“Counting down to Starship’s eighth flight test. Weather looks favorable at the pad, and the 60-minute launch window opens at 5:30 p.m. CT,” SpaceX wrote on X late in the afternoon. 

Counting down to Starship’s eighth flight test. Weather looks favorable at the pad and the 60-minute launch window opens at 5:30 p.m. CT → https://t.co/alyJTRtOIP pic.twitter.com/EWUCtBhojH
— SpaceX (@SpaceX) March 6, 2025
 

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Just over six weeks after SpaceX’s Starship-Super Heavy Flight Test 7 lifted off from Boca Chica, Texas, ending in a dramatic spectacle—the massive booster successfully caught by ‘Chopsticks’ while Starship itself was lost in a fireball over the Atlantic Ocean—Elon Musk’s space company is set to conduct Flight Test 8 of the world’s largest rocket this evening. 

Starship’s launch window opens at 1730 local time at SpaceX’s Starbase facility in south Texas. The primary goal of this launch is to test Starship’s ability to deploy Starlink “simulator” satellites into low Earth orbit. 

Summary of Flight Test 8:

Launch Details:

Scheduled for Monday, March 3

60-minute launch window opens at 5:30 p.m. CT

Live webcast starts 40 minutes before liftoff on SpaceX’s X account and X TV app

Post-Flight 7 Investigation & Upgrades [upgrades made after Flight Test 7’s firey demise of Starship]: 

Hardware and operational changes made to increase upper stage reliability

Forward flap upgrades reduce reentry heating exposure

Propulsion system enhancements include a 25% increase in propellant volume

Avionics system redesigned for added capability and redundancy

Flight Objectives:

Follows same suborbital trajectory as previous missions

First payload deployment test (four Starlink simulators)

Multiple reentry experiments to improve upper stage return and catch capabilities

Super Heavy booster launch, return, and catch attempt

Key Experiments & Tests:

Starlink simulators to be deployed, but expected to burn up on reentry

Single Raptor engine relight in space test planned

Reentry stress tests: Tiles removed to test vulnerable areas, Metallic tile alternatives tested, including active cooling, and Structural stress tests on rear flaps at max reentry pressure.

Catch fitting thermal performance test

Radar sensor accuracy tests on chopsticks for improved vehicle retrieval

Super Heavy Booster Enhancements:

Upgraded avionics, including a more powerful flight computer

Improved power/network distribution and smart batteries

Booster Return & Catch Criteria:

Safety measures in place: Healthy systems required on booster tower and Final manual command needed from Flight Director before boostback burn. 

If conditions are not met, booster will soft splashdown in the Gulf of Mexico

The crypto-based online betting marketplace Polymarket has nine bets on today’s test flight, including the following: Will “Chopsticks catch Super Heavy?” Those odds stand at 78%. 

Watch Test Flight 8 Here:  

. . . 

Tyler Durden
Thu, 03/06/2025 – 18:00…

China Acknowledges ‘Sporadic’ Human Bird Flu Cases

Authored by Lily Zhou and Luo Ya via The Epoch Times (emphasis ours),

“Sporadic” cases of human avian influenza infections have been identified in China, the regime has said, after staying quiet about outbreaks in poultry.
Rescued chickens gather in an aviary at Farm Sanctuary’s Southern California Sanctuary in Acton, Calif., on Oct. 5, 2022. Mario Tama/Getty Images

The announcement comes after two workers in China’s disease prevention and control sector told The Epoch Times the regime had covered up the severity of respiratory disease outbreaks in the country. One of the workers also said there had been limited human-to-human transmission of H5N1 avian influenza, or bird flu.

On Feb. 27, Beijing Daily, which is under the control of the Beijing Municipal Committee of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP), cited the regime’s infectious disease prevention and control unit, saying there had been a rise in outbreaks of norovirus disease; hand, foot and mouth disease; tuberculosis; and other diseases.

The report also said that COVID-19 was spreading at a “relatively low level” and that outbreaks of mpox (previously known as monkeypox) and human avian influenza had been “sporadic” and “low-incidence,” without providing details.

Microbiologist Sean Lin, a member of the Committee on the Present Danger: China and former researcher at the Walter Reed Army Institute of Research, criticized the CCP’s failure to disclose more information.

“[The regime] had to acknowledge there are cases of avian influenza in humans,” he told The Epoch Times. “It said [the infections were] ’sporadic‘ and ’low-incidence,’ but didn’t reveal the exact numbers of cases, severe cases, or fatality. Neither did it clarify where the cases are or whether there are high-risk areas. This is very irresponsible.”

On March 3, the municipal Center for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) in China’s southwestern Chongqing city included human avian influenza in its notice of health risks in March.

The municipal CDC in Huaihua city, Hunan Province, held a training session in late February on the response to respiratory diseases including the flu, COVID-19, and human avian influenza, the local government said on March 2.

Shanghai’s municipal authorities, which banned the trading of live poultry in the city in 2024, have also extended the ban to the end of 2027.

A Shanghai resident posted a photo of a sign on social media that was reportedly taken at an emergency department in mid-February. The sign asks patients to inform medical staff if they have been in contact with birds in the past 10 days, have been in contact with COVID-19 patients, or have travel history to certain parts of the world in the past two weeks.

Lin said actions taken by local governments suggest they are very concerned about potential large-scale outbreaks of bird flu among humans.

Bird flu, which includes several subtypes, is a highly pathogenic disease caused by the influenza A virus. It has mainly affected birds and other animals. People can catch the viruses from milk, feces, or other bodily fluids from infected animals, but known human-to-human transmission of the virus has been extremely rare,…

Is Pakistan The Canary In China’s BRI Coal Mine?

Authored by Milton Ezrati via The Epoch Times,

Pakistan is failing, in large part because of its close association with Beijing’s Belt and Road Initiative (BRI).

Because coal mines tend to emit large quantities of poisonous carbon monoxide, miners in the old days would carry a caged canary into the mine with them. The bird’s more delicate constitution would succumb to rising gas levels long before the miners and signal that human life might be in jeopardy. The bird’s death cued the miners to get out. Pakistan, as an early and enthusiastic participant in the BRI, is suffering as a consequence and may well be issuing a signal for other participants to leave this particular “mine.”

Pakistan’s biggest problem centers on the power grid built for the country by the BRI, also known as “One Belt, One Road.” It was expensive from the start, and because China built considerably more generating capacity than Pakistan needs, the burden of debt Pakistan now faces is simply unsupportable.

Tellingly, the problem is not just an unfortunate miscalculation of the sort that occurs frequently when nations invest. More ominously for all BRI participants, it is a feature of how Beijing’s scheme works.

In the scheme, Beijing approaches a less developed nation and offers to build the kind of infrastructure that presumably will help that nation make economic gains. Beijing offers to arrange loans for the recipient to pay for the project, always from state-owned Chinese banks. It also arranges for Chinese contractors to do the construction and for Chinese management to run the project once it is complete.

All the advantages lie on Beijing’s side. If, for some reason, the recipient nation cannot meet the financial obligations of the loan, ownership will revert to Beijing. Even if the recipient nation can repay the loan, that recipient remains beholden to Beijing to sustain the project and make it worthwhile.

There is another source of difficulty. Because Chinese authorities choose the projects, always for political and diplomatic rather than economic reasons, the projects often miss the needs of the recipient nation’s economy or are too large or too small. Since Beijing is using the recipient nation’s money, albeit in a loan, it has little incentive to match the projects to needs. What makes matters worse is that the nations approached by the Chinese regime seldom have the ability to assess the economic needs accurately.

For Pakistan, China’s initial offer, about a decade ago, looked attractive. The country was short of electric generating capacity. China came in and built a whole series of coal, solar, and hydroelectric plants, an effort that cost the equivalent of some $25 billion, a huge sum for Pakistan. In addition to the obligation to repay the loan in only 10 years, Pakistan also had to pledge to take all the electricity generated by the array of Chinese-managed facilities for the next 40 years and further promised the Chinese state companies running them a 34 percent return on the effort.

It should have…