Spaceflight news

— Superheavy (twitter.com/elonmusk)

— Raptor 2 will produce 230+ tons of thrust (twitter.com/elonmusk)

— McGregor will only perform Raptor 2 testing (twitter.com/elonmusk)

— B4/SN20 will be used for the orbital flight test (twitter.com/elonmusk)

— A guess about Starship stretching (reddit.com/r/spacex)

— Possible tank volumes (HT Birkeland: forum.nasaspaceflight.com)

Short & Sweet

— JWST delayed (blogs.nasa.gov) (spacenews.com) (spaceflightnow.com)

— Stoke Space receives funding (spacenews.com) (sbir.nasa.gov)

Questions, comments, corrections

— From the intro: PSP’s inside the Sun video (planetary.org) (youtube.com) (nasa.gov)

— Jon P via email: Apollo CM was a sphere section, not biconic. (en.wikipedia.org)

This week in SF history

— 24 Dec, 1979. First launch of Ariane 1, first of the Ariane family. (sci-hub.se) (sci-hub.se) (en.wikipedia.org) (en.wikipedia.org)

— Next week (1/4 - 1/10) in 1973: Smash the scram button