Month: June 2021

Enlarge / The GPS III SV-05 vehicle is encapsulated in the Falcon 9 rocket's payload fairing. (credit: Lockheed Martin)

A few years ago one of SpaceX's earliest employees, Hans Koenigsmann, told me one of the company's goals was to take the "magic" out of rocket launches. It's just physics, he explained.

As its Falcon 9 rocket has become more reliable and flown more frequently—18 launches so far this year, and counting—it seems that SpaceX has succeeded in taking the magic out of launches. And while reliability should definitely be the goal, such regularity does distract from the spectacle of watching a rocket launch.

But there are still some special Falcon 9 missions, and that's certainly the case with a launch expected to occur at 12:09 pm ET (16:09 UTC) on Thursday from Cape Canaveral Space Force Station in Florida. With the launch of a next-generation GPS III spacecraft, SpaceX will fly a national security mission for the first time on a reused booster.

Enlarge / The Ohio Statehouse in Columbus. (credit: Getty Images | Joseph Sohm)

Ohio's Republican-controlled legislature is on the verge of imposing a state law to dramatically restrict the rights of cities and towns to build and operate municipal broadband networks.

The Ohio Senate on June 9 approved a budget bill that contains an anti-municipal broadband amendment. It's not a done deal yet, and advocates for public networks are urging the legislature to strip the amendment from the final budget. The budget bill is expected to be hammered out within the next two weeks.

If passed, the proposed law could kill existing broadband services and prevent new ones from being deployed. There are reportedly 30 or more municipal broadband providers in Ohio that "would not be allowed to operate so long as there is a private-sector company operating in the area, as there are in most, if not all of the cities."