Starlink Group 17-5 launch out of SLC-4E at Vandenberg Space Force Base in California is currently scheduled for 2025-08-18 16:26 UTC, or 2025-08-18 09:26 local time (PDT). Booster 1088-9 to land on Of Course I Still Love You.
Webcasts:
- Space Affairs: https://youtube.com/watch?v=2MmiUUuGCy4
- Spaceflight Now: https://youtube.com/watch?v=6302eanVFe8
- NASASpaceflight: none
- The Launch Pad: https://youtube.com/watch?v=M1dUttkGYOo
- SpaceX:
- The Space Devs: https://youtube.com/@thespacedevs/videos
Nominal launch, booster landing, and Starlink deployment.
Spacex and next space flight. Spacex just doesn’t appear to render future stuff. Next space flight is a mess all over the place.
The issue is nuanced but important. The use of a third party like this is normalizing a loss of autonomy that is a right of a citizen in a democracy. The long term implications of that precedent are extremely important, but people likely too stupid to see this and value it. You are being forced to trust someone that you are not made aware of. This person has all of the abilities to filter, manipulate, and obfuscate information you have a right to know as a citizen. When giving away that right and autonomy, you’ve all but already lost the right in every circumstance because legal precedent is extremely important and sets in motion an irreversible cascade in the long term. Stuff like this always starts in some little niche that people do not understand as important until much later when the effects are very painful.
Typically for Vandenberg I use:
https://spacearchive.info/Both of those websites for launch calendars rely on 3rd party script servers to show relevant information. I never trust websites to proxy like that. It is like going to the grocery store but they require you to phone a car dealership salesman to get the prices of all items. Not your fault, just say nominalized criminals are still criminals even when they get away with it unnoticed by most people. I have a firewall that makes it blatantly obvious when anyone does this, so I avoid them.
Both of those websites for launch calendars
Which ones? Dateful and…?
Are there significant risks to the end user? I think it somewhat unlikely that a website whose sole function displays a date could be engaged in criminal activity.
Are there any alternative sites you would recommend?
Not sure what the problem is, but I’ve been using https://rocketlaunch.org/launch-schedule/vandenberg-sfb