Tesla gets a $94 billion reality check as EV winter sets in
Elon Musk’s automaker has lost more than $94 billion in market valuation in the first two weeks of 2024. It’s not hard to figure out why.
SpaceX lights up Cape Canaveral with Starlink launch
SpaceX sent up another Starlink launch from Cape Canaveral on Sunday night.
A Falcon 9 carrying 23 of the internet Satellites lifted off at 8:52 p.m. from Canaveral’s Space Force Station’s Space Launch Complex 40 on a southerly trajectory lighting up the Florida coast.
Liftoff! pic.twitter.com/ChcZ89flRh
— SpaceX (@SpaceX) January 15, 2024
The first-stage booster flew its 12th mission and made a recovery landing on the droneship A Shortfall of Gravitas downrange in the Atlantic.
This was the fourth launch from the Space Coast in 2024, all from Cape Canaveral so far. SpaceX has flown three of those while United Launch Alliance flew the debut mission of its new Vulcan Centaur.
This week’s Axiom Space flight to ISS marks 1st crewed launch of the year
SpaceX has Kennedy Space Center’s first launch of the year lined up for Wednesday evening. The Axiom Space Ax-3 mission with a crew of four flying on a Crew Dragon is also the first of what could be a banner year for crewed launches from the Space Coast with as many as six human spaceflight missions planned before the end of 2024.
Builders pushing mega-development in east Orange are back again
Familiar foes find themselves in a fracas again over a proposed mega-development in rural east Orange as residents hope to block a plan for 1,800 homes on ranchlands in the environmentally sensitive Econ River Basin.
Developer Sean Froelich’s proposed project also has a familiar sounding name, Sustanee, a spelling tweak of “Sustany,” the tag by which an earlier iteration of the plan was known in 2016 when it last fired up neighbors’ rancor. In rapidly-growing Central Florida, you can slow a development like this one, but given the economic stakes, it’s next to impossible to kill it.
“It’s like Groundhog Day,” east Orange homeowner Jessup Daniel, 32, said, referring to the 1993 movie about a TV weatherman forced to live an unpleasant experience over and over and over. “It never ends. These guys never quit.”
Neither do the project’s opponents.
More than 200 of them, some wearing the same red “Stop Urban Sprawl” t-shirts they wore to fight Sustany eight years ago, packed the Corner Lake Middle School cafeteria Thursday for a community meeting and lambasted the project.
This week’s Axiom Space flight to ISS marks 1st crewed launch of the year
Commercial astronaut trips from the Space Coast are becoming commonplace with Axiom Space about to send up another crew from Kennedy Space Center this week.
In what is slated to be the first of up to six human spaceflights from Florida this year, Ax-3 is contracting with SpaceX for a ride up to the International Space Station. The mission is set to send its four crew aboard the Crew Dragon Freedom atop a Falcon 9 rocket from KSC’s Launch Pad 39-A, targeting liftoff at 5:11 p.m. Wednesday.
Flying to space for the sixth time and the second time as commander of an Axiom mission is former NASA astronaut and current Axiom employee Michael López-Alegría, who said he’s not getting tired of the gig.
“It’s a dream come true for me. I will gladly continue to fly … the soul is willing as long as the body is willing to do so,” he said. “This is really a privilege for somebody in my position to be able to go back to space first of all, but especially to lead this very well prepared and expertly trained group. And it never gets old.”
‘Manhattan’-size costs: Orlando condo community sues contractor for inflating Hurricane Ian repair bill
Facing a crippling bill to repair flood damage to their homes, board members of an Orlando condo community sued their contractor this week for inflating his cost estimates — just weeks after that same contractor was arrested in Lee County for alleged overbilling.
The arrest and lawsuit — along with a companion legal filing against former board members for awarding the contract — marked the latest chapter in the horror story gripping residents of the Dockside at Ventura Condominium. Suffering some of the region’s most dramatic flooding from Hurricane Ian, the residents were hit with as much as $1,000 a month in assessments for repairs, leading to an uprising that deposed the condo board.
No sooner did a new board take over than residents became aware of the legal troubles faced by the principal owner of SFR Restoration, who was allegedly hired on a no-bid contract by the previous board and is seeking $27 million in repair bills and interest — a bracing total considering there are 266 units in the condo complex.