Month: June 2023

2023 SL Puppetry project week #23 summary

Posted on by Inara Pey
Puppetry demonstration via Linden Lab – see below.  Demos video with the LL comment “We have some basic things working with a webcam and Second Life but there’s more to do before it’s as animated as we want.”

The following notes have been taken from chat logs and audio recording of the Thursday, June 8th, 2023 Puppetry Project meetings. Notes in these summaries are not intended to be a full transcript of every meeting, but to highlight project progress / major topics of discussion.

Meeting And Project Overview

  • The Puppetry User Group exists to provide an opportunity for discussion about the development of, and feature for, the upcoming Second Life Puppetry project(see below for details), bugs, and feature ideas.
  • These meetings are conducted (as a rule):
    • On Aditi (the Beta grid) at the Castelet Puppetry Theatre, commencing at 13:00 SLT.
    • Those encountering issues in logging-in to Aditi should contact Second Life support for assistance.
    • Generally on alternate Thursdays to the Content Creation meetings.
    • Comprise a mix of text and voice – attendees can use text only, if preferred, but should enable to hear comments / responses given in voice.
  • These meetings are open to anyone with a concern / interest in the Puppetry project, and form one of a series of regular / semi-regular User Group meetings conducted by Linden Lab. Dates and times of all current meetings can be found on the Second Life Public Calendar, and descriptions of meetings are defined on the SL wiki.

General Project Description as Originally Conceived

LL’s renewed interest in puppetry was primarily instigated by Philip joining LL as official advisor, and so it really was about streaming mocap. That is what Philip was interested in and why we started looking at it again. However since Puppetry’s announcement what I’ve been hearing from many SL Residents is: what they really want from “puppetry” is more physicality of the avatar in-world: picking up objects, holding hands, higher fidelity collisions. 
As a result, that is what I’ve been contemplating: how to improve the control and physicality of the avatar. Can that be the new improved direction of the Puppetry project? How to do it?

Leviathan Linden

  • Previously referred to as “avatar expressiveness”, Puppetry is intended to provide a means by which avatars can mimic physical world actions by their owners (e.g. head, hand, arm movements) through tools such as a webcam and using technologies like inverse kinematics (IK) and the  LLSD Event API Plug-in (LEAP) system.
    • Note that facial expressions and finger movements are not currently enabled.
    • Most movement is in the 2D plain (e.g., hand movements from side-to-side but not forward / back), due to limitations with things like depth of field tracking through a webcam, which has yet to be addressed.
  • The back-end support for the capability is only available on Aditi (the Beta grid) and within the following regions: Bunraku, Marionette, and Castelet.
  • Puppetry requires the use of a dedicated viewer, the Project Puppetry viewer, available through the official Second Life Alternate Viewers page.
  • No other special needs beyond the project viewer are required to “see” Puppetry animations. However, to use the capability to animate your own avatar and broadcast the results, requires additional work – refer to the links below.
  • There is a Puppetry Discord channel – those wishing to join it should contact members of LL’s puppetry team, e.g. Aura Linden, Simon Linden, Rider Linden, Leviathan Linden (not a full list of names at this time – my apologies to those involved whom I have missed).

Additional Work Not Originally In-Scope

  • Direct avatar / object / avatar-avatar interactions (“picking up” an apple; high-fives. etc.).
  • Animations streaming: allowing one viewer to run animations and have them sent via the simulator to all receiving viewers without any further processing of the animations by those viewers.
  • Enhanced LSL integration for animation control.
  • Adoption of better animation standards – possibly glTF.
  • Given the project is incorporating a lot of additional ideas, it is likely to evolve into a rolling development, with immediate targets for development / implementation decided as they are agreed upon, to be followed by future enhancements. As such, much of what goes into the meetings at present is general discussion and recommendations for consideration, rather than confirmed lines o development.

Bugs, Feature Requests and Code Submissions

  • For those experimenting with Puppetry, Jiras (bug reports / fixes or feature requests) should be filed with “[Puppetry]” at the start of the Jira title.
  • There is also a public facing Kanban board with public issues.
  • Those wishing to submit code (plug-ins or other) or who wish to offer a specific feature that might be used with Puppetry should:

Resources

Meeting Notes

  • The viewer remains at  version 6.6.12.579958, issued on Thursday, May 11th.
    • This update includes access to Rider Linden’s experimental attachment point tracking & forwarding to the server feature.
    • It also includes various incremental improvements to handling puppetry, such as support for parsing binary LEAP data from the LEAP script.
  • Work has slowed a little due to Linden staff being out-of-office recently (hence why no meeting since May 11th), and personnel on the Puppetry project also working on other simulator projects.
    • This has notably impacted Leviathan Linden’s work on Inverse Kinetics (IK), which has had a knock-on impact slowing Rider Linden’s work on LSL support for driving puppetry.
    • However, progress has resumed on the IK work and while described as currently “not stable”, and problems are still to be solved in situations where a target position is too far away for a joint in the skeleton to reach, or where multiple joints (e.g. 5 or 6) are involved.
    • One issue that is proving difficult to handle is the default avatar mesh joint weighting is incorrect along the forearm and wrist. What is required is two distinct joints at the forearm to do mesh bending correctly: a hinge at the elbow and also a twist constraint along the forearm bone, toward the wrist, rather than (as is currently the case) treating the wrist as a ball joint. This may be the subject of further internal discussion at LL as Leviathan gets more of the IK work nailed down.
  • WRT IK:
    • Leviathan is looking to solve the targeting issues first, then work back to ensure that there are no collisions between a limb and avatar body (e.g. reaching across the avatar’s body to pick something up, and the avatar’s elbow / part of the arm appears to go through the body).
    • Forward And Backward Reaching Inverse Kinematics (FABRIK) – which is the fundamental algorithm for suggesting new joint positions in a range of applications, including 3D modelling – is the route of choice of the Lab; however, adopting to FABRIK is taking some trial and error.

Additional Notes

  • Aura Linden is here but she is working on the Animation importer project which has been split off from the Puppetry project. Currently, the status is animations can be import import animations from some tools/formats, but others aren’t working yet.
    • It was noted at the last meeting, that for animation import, LL is looking towards using / supporting Assimp (github: https://github.com/assimp/assimp), which supports some 30-40 animation formats, converting them to it ownformat for ease of import to multiple platforms. Notably, it supports .FBX and glTF, so it fits with the Lab’s goal of utilising glTF for materials, mesh imports, etc.

Date of Next Meeting

  • Thursday, June 22nd, 2023, 13:00 SLT.

A Summer’s return to Missing Melody in Second Life

Posted on by Inara Pey
Missing Melody, June 2023 – click any image for full size

For those of us in the northern hemisphere, summer is rolling around again with its promise of sunny skies, green fields and lazy walks along riverbanks, idling under the shade offered by the outstretched boughs of a tree, enjoying an afternoon tea or coffee in an easy-going café and more.

More particularly for me, this time of year marks the passing of almost 12 months since the last time I dropped into to Missing Melody, making it high time for a revisit.

Missing Melody, June 2023

Missing Melody is, alongside of the equally eye-catching Longing Melody, presented by Bambi (NorahBrent) as a place of comfort, retreat and relaxation; a place which is never far from thoughts and where a welcome is always waiting. Or to use Bambi’s words, as they are so apt:

What is a Missing Melody? It’s that song in your head that you can’t get out but not sure how it really goes. It’s that temptation you want to have in your life so you can fight to resist. It’s that place in your heart that is always waiting to be filled.

– Bambi (NorahBrent)

Missing Melody, June 2023

For this iteration, Bambi offers a setting which reflects all of my descriptions of summertime above: a rural location rich in the delights of summer, from a stream bubbling and tumbling from a pond high on a hill to follow the curve of the land as it steps down the slope in a series of rocky drops to finally vanish within a culvert, through to the cattle content to stroll the broad grasslands, mingling with horses who also appreciate the rich grazing, even if the local sheep are a little stand-offish!

As a regular supply of fresh water, the pond and stream have attracted much of the local flora over the years, such that the pond is now guarded by the weeping heads of willows and a curtain-like surround of shrubs and bushes which seem determined to protect the secrets of the ducks and geese happy to splash about in the water, and offer the local deer a private place to drink. However, it is a secret that has been penetrated, as the gabled boardwalk reaching out over the pond (but not reaching its opposite number on the far bank) shows.

Missing Melody, June 2023

This gabled boardwalk reaches the pond from a small gathering of garden outhouses sitting alongside a well. Looking a little careworn but still with potted plants being tended, even if the porch swing could do with a little TLC, this little garden space seems to also be a place of play for youngsters going by the tricycle and scooter waiting the return of their owners. How long they’ve been here is hard to say, but the presence of goslings playing in a tub of water, a cat happily sleeping in the sun and a deer and fawn close by, suggests the erstwhile owners of these wheeled means of transport have been gone some time.

Across a bridge spanning the tumbling stream, a path leads down form this little hideaway to reach the Oh Deer Café where refreshments and “sweet yummy moments” await, either indoors or served on the terrace overlooking the sloping growth of wild flowers washing upslope from the stream to counter the neatly-growth flowers in their planters along the edges of the terrace.

Missing Melody, June 2023

The café and the little hidden garden corner aren’t the only places of retreat / refreshment here.  Cross the stream and take a walk over the shoulder of the hill and past the grazing cows and horses, and you’ll spy brick walls and a small out sitting up on the flank of the setting’s uplands. The route to it will take you back past the pond, allowing you to join with another path that links it with the red brickwork. Within the high walls and shaded by trees still wearing their springtime blossom sits a fountained pond dominated by a flower-draped statue. Here, as koi swim in the clear waters, a couple might find a place to sit and sample a glass of burdock and wildflower wine.

For those who prefer to remain close to the babbling chatter of the stream, there is a tree house waiting at the end of a pair of rope ladders. With a bench seat / swing (I’d perhaps not try swinging it too far!), it allows a peaceful watch to be kept over the horses and cows below.

Missing Melody, June 2023

Finished with a pleasing sound scape (albeit one in which the café can sound like the Lunchtime Hordes have descended upon it), it really doesn’t need to be said that Missing Melody is, as ever, highly photogenic and makes for a genuinely easy-going visit … even if I just go a say it anyway 🙂 .

SLurl Details

2023 SL SUG meetings week #23 summary

Posted on by Inara Pey
Sunnmøre, April 2023 – blog post †

The following notes were taken from the Tuesday, June 6th Simulator User Group (SUG) meeting. They form a summary of the items discussed and is not intended to be a full transcript. A video of the entire meeting is embedded at the end of the article for those wishing to review the meeting in full – my thanks to Pantera for recording it.

Meeting Overview

  • The Simulator User Group (also referred to by its older name of Server User Group) exists to provide an opportunity for discussion about simulator technology, bugs, and feature ideas.
  • These meetings are conducted (as a rule):
  • They are open to anyone with a concern / interest in the above topics, and form one of a series of regular / semi-regular User Group meetings conducted by Linden Lab.
  • Dates and times of all current meetings can be found on the Second Life Public Calendar, and descriptions of meetings are defined on the SL wiki.

Server Deployments

  • On Tuesday, June 6th, the SLS Main channel servers were restarted without any user-facing changes. Those regions within the channel which still supported LSL XML-RPC functionality had that capability switched off.
  • On Wednesday, June 7th the RC channels should be updated with a simulator release providing support for the new inventory thumbnails viewer capability soon to be forthcoming. See my recent TPVD meeting summaries for more on this capability.
    • This project – or at least the simulator element – is apparently known as “Manicure” internally at the Lab!).

Viewer Updates

No changes to the crop of official viewers for the start of the week, leaving the list as:

In Brief

  • The long-requested Linkset Data (LSD) functions llLinksetDataDeleteFound and llLinksetDataCountFound should be going to LL’s QA team for testing in the upcoming week, and so could be appearing in a maintenance simulator update Soon™. Although it will first go to Aditi for testing.
  • BUG-233832 “llCreateLink LSL function sleep time might be excessive” is due to be addressed in a simulator update due to go to RC in week 24.
  • BUG-202560 “Allow us to pass list data between links to vastly reduce script time” is currently under consideration. Rider Linden’s thinking is that, rather than send the 3 predefined int, string, and key data items, it would be possible to send an arbitrary list.
    • He also noted that at some point he “would love” to add JSON as a first class datatype. Ding so would vastly reduce the time spent parsing and the memory usage, as it would remove the need to keep playing with strings and substrings.
  • The latter pert of the meeting includes a discussion on sensors (and sensing avatars), which touches on BUG-233784 “Add sensor type LOW_SCRIPTED as an option”, and BUG-4329 “Feature Request: New sensor functions that are not bound to a prim’s position & rotation plus inclusion of an Owner filter”. Refer to the video below for details.

† The header images included in these summaries are not intended to represent anything discussed at the meetings; they are simply here to avoid a repeated image of a rooftop of people every week. They are taken from my list of region visits, with a link to the post for those interested.

Through Their Eyes in Second Life

Posted on by Inara Pey
Nitroglobus Roof Gallery, June 2023: Caly Applewhyte – Through Their Eyes

Now open at Nitroglobus Roof Gallery, curated and operated by Dido Haas, is an exhibition by Caly Applewhyte (Calypso Applewhyte). Entitled Through Their Eyes, it opened of June 5th and is the second exhibition I’ve visited of late (the first being Yes Her, which I reviewed for both itself and a possible wider context here) seeking to make a valid statement about women in society, and the unfair bias all too often demonstrated concerning our right simply to be who we want to be in societies – including, increasingly, even within so-called liberalised nations in the west – and not to be subject to uneven demands / expectations.

As Caly offers her own very clear and concise description of the focus of Through Their Eyes, I won’t bore you with my own subjective ramblings; instead, I’ll quote Caly directly.

Women have long been an integral part of society, but their experiences and perspectives are often ignored or undervalued. When we look at the world through women’s eyes, we see a complex and multifaceted reality.
In many societies, women are expected to conform to certain standards of behaviour and appearance, which can be restrictive and limiting. These societal expectations can have an impact on women’s self-esteem, confidence and sense of worth. Women often face a double standard, where they are judged more harshly than men for the same behaviours or actions. Despite these challenges, women have shown incredible resilience and strength, and have made significant contributions to society in a variety of fields.

– Caly Applewhyte, on Through their Eyes

Nitroglobus Roof Gallery, June 2023: Caly Applewhyte – Through Their Eyes
Through women’s eyes we can better understand the challenges they face, the unique perspectives they bring and the importance of promoting gender equality. By recognizing and addressing these challenges, and promoting women’s unique perspectives and contributions, we can work towards a more just and equitable society for all.

– Caly Applewhyte, on Through their Eyes

Thus, the exhibition presents a series of individual studies representing women of many ethnicities and backgrounds, even one a focused head-and-shoulders portrait in which the colour of skin, style of hair, mode of dress (where visible), is not intended to be the primary focus (although they clearly have a role to play in reminding us that women are global citizens who come from many backgrounds and social groups and who aspire to many things – just like the male of our species). What is important in these images are the subject’s eyes.

Nitroglobus Roof Gallery, June 2023: Caly Applewhyte – Through Their Eyes

Whether looking directly at the camera or focused on something unseen from the perspective of the camera’s lens, the eyes of the women Caly has created / drawn together for this series all speak to matters of intelligence, vitality, hope, strength, desire; the emotions and drives that play such a key role in the lives of men, often to high levels of peer praise and adulation, but when shown by women are discounted – or worse, derided or subjected to passive-aggressive responses that (truth be told) perhaps speak to the fragility of the male ego than anything else.

These are eyes that speak of a wish to be free to express, to strive, to achieve; they present each individual in these portraits as an individual. At the same time, they offer a window by which the the world might be seen as women are too often forced to regard it: as a place of struggle simply to be accepted as an individual with needs, wants, drive and desires. In considering the world the eyes in these portraits are looking out upon, some might be encouraged to better understand the constant uphill struggle women face to simply gain a foothold of equitable respect within societies which are still the world over, driven by a patriarchal expectation of position and privilege rather than equality and openness.

Nitroglobus Roof Gallery, June 2023: Caly Applewhyte – Through Their Eyes

SLurl Details

2023 SL viewer release summaries week #22

Posted on by Inara Pey
Logos representative only and should not be seen as an endorsement / preference / recommendation

Updates from the week through to Sunday, June 4th, 2023

This summary is generally published every Monday, and is a list of SL viewer / client releases (official and TPV) made during the previous week. When reading it, please note:

  • It is based on my Current Viewer Releases Page, a list of all Second Life viewers and clients that are in popular use (and of which I am aware), and which are recognised as adhering to the TPV Policy. This page includes comprehensive links to download pages, blog notes, release notes, etc., as well as links to any / all reviews of specific viewers / clients made within this blog.
  • By its nature, this summary presented here will always be in arrears, please refer to the Current Viewer Release Page for more up-to-date information.
  • Note that for purposes of length, TPV test viewers, preview / beta viewers / nightly builds are generally not recorded in these summaries.

Official LL Viewers

  • Release viewer: Maintenance S RC viewer, version 6.6.12.579987, dated May 11, promoted May 16.
  • Release channel cohorts (please see my notes on manually installing RC viewer versions if you wish to install any release candidate(s) yourself).
    • No updates.
  • Project viewers:

LL Viewer Resources

Third-party Viewers

V6-style

  • Kokua updated to version 6.6.12.50745 (no RLV) and 6.6.12.54169 (RLV variants) June 3 – release notes.

V1-style

Mobile / Other Clients

Additional TPV Resources

Related Links

Space Sunday: launches and landings

Posted on by Inara Pey
Shenzhou 16 lifts-off from the Jiuquan Satellite Launch Centre, May 30th, 2023. Credit: CGTN

Rotating crews to / from a space station is so routine here in the west that the comings and going of crews at the International Space Station (ISS) rarely gain much of a mention unless something extraordinary happens, or they happen to be entirely privately-funded, as with the Axiom Space Ax-2 mission (of which more below).

Not so for the Chinese, however, who are still adjusting to life with an orbital outpost that is meant to remain under permanent occupation and also provide a stepping stone towards the Moon. What’s more, they are gradually become more public about things as they continue to rake up successes.

Following the completion of “construction” of the major elements of the Tiangong space station with the docking of the second science module in November 2022, the Shenzhou 15 crew, comprising taikonauts Fei Junlong, Deng Qingming and Zhang Lu have been at work commissioning the module and carrying out further work in preparing the station for full-time operations, building on the work of the Shenzhou 14 crew, as well as performing a full science programme.

Chinese astronauts Gui Haichao (left), Zhu Yangzhu (center) and Jing Haipeng of the Shenzhou 16 space mission attend a see-off ceremony at the Jiuquan Satellite Launch Center on May 30, 2023 in Jiuquan, Gansu Province of China. Credit: VCG/VCG via Getty Images

On May 30th, they were joined by the crew of Shenzhou 16, who performed a “fast burn” flight to rendezvous and dock with Tiangong just seven hours after their launch from the Jiuquan Satellite Launch Centre in the Gobi Desert. This crew has garnered a lot of attention both nationally and internationally, as it includes China’s first non-military tiakonaut to fly in space: professor Gui Haichao, an aerospace researcher who has studied and taught in China and Canada.

The entire launch was covered live on Chinese national television, as was the rendezvous and docking, summarised for new broadcasts and viewing in the west in videos like the one below.

Gui is joined on the mission by commander Major General Jing Haipeng of the People’s Liberation Army Air Force (PLAAF), and rookie taikonaut Colonel Zhu Yangzhu of the People’s Liberation Army. Scheduled for a duration of 180 days, the mission will see Jing become China’s most experienced taikonaut, with four missions under his belt and clocking up over 225 days (cumulative) in orbit.

Following docking, the Shenzhou 16 crew remained with the three men of Shenzhou 15 Through until the weekend, when the Shenzhou 15 crew departed the space station late on Saturday, June 3rd (Beijing time), to commence a 9-hour return to Earth, where they touched down at the Dongfeng landing site within North China’s Inner Mongolia autonomous region at 06:33 on Sunday, June 4th (Beijing time – (22:33 UTC on June 3rd).

The landing was also covered in detail by the Chinese media, and as with the Russian approach to crew returning from long duration orbital flights, the three men were not allowed to spend time standing or moving under their own power; instead they were helped out of their craft and into waiting chairs, where they were interviewed by a China Central Television (CCTV) crew in a live broadcast. This focused on Senior Colonel Deng Qingming, quite possibly one of the longest-serving astronauts-in-waiting in the world prior to lifting-off on this mission, having been in the PLA taikonaut corps for 26 years! He is actually the last of China’s “first generation” intake of astronauts to fly into space, and his perseverance has made him an icon on the PLA space corps.

In between Shenzhou 16 lifting-off for Tiangong and Shenzhoou 15 returning, the crew of Axiom AX-2 also wrapped up their stay at the International Space Station and returned to Earth.

As the name indicates, this was that second Axiom Space crewed mission to the ISS, carried out as part of the company’s progress towards running its own space station, and delivered a crew of four astronauts to the ISS for a period of eight days. Aboard were former astronaut Peggy Whiston as mission commander, John Shoffner, an aviator and entrepreneur, Ali AlQarni, a captain in the Royal Saudi Air Force and Rayyanah Barnawi, and Saudi biomedial researcher and the first Saudi woman to fly in space.

The Axiom AX-2 crew (l-to-right): Peggy Whitson, John Shoffner, Ali AlQarni, and Rayyanah Barnawi

The mission lifted-off from Kennedy Space Centre atop a Falcon 9 rocket on May 21st, 2023, and the Crew Dragon Freedom docked with the Harmony module of the ISS a day later. During their time on the station, the crew performed public outreach activities along with scientific research, including studies into the effects of microgravity on stem cells and other biological experiments which had been agreed with the Saudi Space Commission as part of the deal to fly the two Saudi nationals on the mission.

For Whitson, it was a fourth opportunity to fly in space and add to an already impressive record: in her first mission, she spent an extended mission on the ISS, in her second she became the first woman to command the ISS (and later became the first women to complete two tours on the ISS as mission commander), she has completed the most EVAs (spacewalks) thus far for a woman, having spent a total of 60 hours and 21 minutes outside of the ISS performing various tasks; she has spent a total of 675 days in space during her career and remains the oldest woman to orbit the Earth. She was also the first woman to become NASA’s Chief Astronaut, the most senior position in the NASA Astronaut Corps.

For the rest of the crew, it was the opportunity to experience space for the first time, and for Axiom Space, a further opportunity to study managing orbital operations and research endeavours of the kind they hope to both manage and host on their own space station. The latter is due to start life as modules attached to the ISS (and referred to as the Axiom Orbital Segment) in the late 2020s, before becoming an independent orbital facility when the ISS is decommissioned at the start of the 2030s.

On May 30th, 2023, the crew re-boarded Freedom and departed the ISS, splashing down successfully in the Gulf of Mexico off the coast of Panama City, Florida in the early hours of May 31st, local time, where it was recovered by the SpaceX recovery ship Megan.

Spaceport Company Performs At-Sea Launches

Landing returning crewed spacecraft on the world’s seas – as with the AX-2 mission – has long been a thing for the United States. However, it has also been the dream of some to use the oceans as a means of launching vehicles into orbit – perhaps most famously (thanks to it being referenced in the Apple TV series For All Mankind), the simply gargantuan Sea Dragon. Planned in the 1960s but never built, this behemoth was designed to lift 550 tonnes of cargo to orbit – and to start its journey by floating in open waters off the US coast.

Obviously, Sea Dragon never came to be, but in 1999, a multi-national corporation – Sea Launch – commenced payload launches from the deck of a modified oil rig – the Odyssey, operating in the Pacific Ocean close to the equator – using a specialised version of the Russian Zenit-3SL. The company carried out a total of 36 such launches from 1999 through 2014, when Russia’s first military incursion into Ukraine (which ultimately brought an end to the company), suffering only four failures.

A sounding rocket is launched from a proof-of-concept “liftboat” developed by the Spaceport Company as part of their efforts to develop a US offshore launch platform capability. Credit: The Spaceport Company

Now a US company – the appropriately-named The Spaceport Company – has hosted four sounding rocket launches with the support of Evolution Space, from a platform in the Gulf of Mexico. The launches were the latest step of a proof-of-concept study the company is carrying out into the feasibility of conducting payload-to-orbit flights from mobile platforms operating off the US coast.

In particular, the company stated the operation – performed on May 22nd – was intended to exercise the procedures -including getting approvals from the Federal Aviation Administration and U.S. Coast Guard, clearing airspace and waters to allow for a safe launch  – before any actual rocket launch from the platform.

The company plans to plans to use the platforms – called liftboats – which can sail / be towed to a designated location before temporarily anchoring itself to the sea bed by means of four legs which can be extended down into the water to a depth of up to 50 metres, and also left the platform clear of the water. A second platform then acts as the launch control centre, freeing launches from the need of any land-based infrastructure, outside of a docking and servicing facility with the means to accept launch vehicles and move them onto the launch platform safely.

These platforms will be capable of being deployed almost anywhere of the US coast, although the company particularly hopes to leverage the increasing demand for launches out of both the Cape Canaveral Space Force Station and Kennedy Space Centre. presenting companies operating smaller rocket systems with a viable off-shore alternative.

Both The Spaceport company and Evolution Space (who providing the rocket systems for the May 22nd launches) kept quiet about the event itself, only releasing a post-launch briefing on the launches 24 hours after they had taken place.  Further test flights on the platform are expected over the course of the nest two years, and the company is targeting 2025 for its first full-scale, fully commercial payload launch.

Continue reading “Space Sunday: launches and landings” →