Things To Do In SW Florida

With the OK to fly from the Federal Aviation Administration, SpaceX lined up three Falcon 9 rockets this weekend from three launch pads on two coasts and got back to work.

First early Saturday, it managed the first of what were all Starlink missions from Kennedy Space Center. It followed that less than 24 hours later with a launch from Cape Canaveral Space Force Station, and finished up less than four hours later with a launch from California.

Starlinks skyward with liftoff of Falcon 9 pic.twitter.com/ACUno6c3Ie

— SpaceX (@SpaceX) July 28, 2024

The Space Coast launch early Sunday came from Canaveral’s Space Launch Complex 40 with a Falcon 9 carrying 23 more Starlink satellites to low-Earth orbit lifting off at 1:09 a.m.

The first-stage booster was making its 14th flight to space making another recovery landing, this time downrange on the droneship A Shortfall of Gravitas.

Falcon 9 first stage lands on the A Shortfall of Gravitas droneship pic.twitter.com/wD4fhHcCpp

— SpaceX (@SpaceX) July 28, 2024 read more

Bill Marchant of Satellite Beach, a customer of state-owned Citizens Property Insurance Corp., was surprised when his agent called him last October with an offer from a private insurance company to take over his policy.

He was paying $3,200 for his current policy with Citizens. The private company, Tampa-based Slide Insurance, was offering to renew Marchant’s policy for $16,000, Marchant wrote on Facebook. Would he be willing to pay 400% more to leave Citizens, his agent asked.

Marchant didn’t just tell his agent no, he wrote in the post. He told him, “HELL NO.”

Marchant was far from the only Citizens policyholder who received a confusingly high renewal offer from Slide last year as part of Citizens’ aggressive effort to reduce its policy count.

As the largest participant in Citizens’ depopulation program, Slide sent hundreds of thousands of letters that Citizens policyholders could have easily overlooked among piles of junk mail. Ignoring those letters — and crucial deadlines to respond — put them in jeopardy of being automatically transferred to Slide, where many faced renewal premiums far higher than what they were paying Citizens. read more