Things To Do In SW Florida

Kamala Harris’ presidential candidacy has gifted the Democratic Party a tropically themed social media buzz.

In a viral video of remarks the vice president made in May last year, Harris recalls her mother saying, “You think you just fell out of a coconut tree?” Harris laughed, then said, ”You exist in the context of all in which you live and what came before you.”

The chairperson of the Biden-now-Harris campaign said in June that Florida is not a battleground state. But for what it’s worth, the state ranks second in the nation in sightings of coconut palms, now a key symbol in the social media trend supporting Harris’ campaign.

That’s according to data from the Global Biodiversity Information Facility, which places Florida just behind Hawaii for the number of reported sightings of coconut palms.

Coconut palms are most common in South Florida. In fact, Palm Beach, where former President Donald Trump’s Mar-a-Lago home is located, is so named because early settlers claimed coconuts from a shipwreck and planted them to try to launch a commercial coconut industry, according to the town’s website. There’s also Miami neighborhood Coconut Grove, the Broward city of Coconut Creek and shopping centers with names like Coconut Point. read more

After more than two weeks grounded by the Federal Aviation Administration, SpaceX returned to launching its workhorse Falcon 9 lifting off early Saturday from Kennedy Space Center.

The rocket took off at 1:45 a.m. carrying 23 of the company’s Starlink internet satellites from KSC’s Launch Pad 39-A.

The first-stage booster made its 17th trip to space and managed another recovery landing on the droneship Just Read the Instructions stationed downrange in the Atlantic.

Falcon 9 lifts off from pad 39A in Florida! pic.twitter.com/ozYLYUxCss

— SpaceX (@SpaceX) July 27, 2024

It was the 51st launch from the Space Coast for the year, with all but three coming from SpaceX. Including California, it was the 71st operational mission for SpaceX, not including two test launches of its Starship and Super Heavy rocket from Texas.

The company’s frenetic launch pace this year was ground to a halt by the FAA after a July 11 launch from California ended in a failure of the Falcon 9’s upper stage.

The failure was due to liquid oxygen leak that caused its second stage engine to ice over in between its initial burn and a planned second burn to raise its orbit before deploying its payload. No second burn occurred, and the 20 Starlink satellites on board, which did manage to be deployed, were at too low an altitude and ultimately burned up on reentry in the Earth’s atmosphere. read more

KENNEDY SPACE CENTER — The launch clock isn’t set yet, but the hardware is lined up for what would become the most powerful rocket to ever send humans into space during a moonbound trip the likes of which has not happened in more than 50 years.

The biggest piece of the Space Launch System rocket, the 212-foot-long core stage, crept its way into the massive Vehicle Assembly Building on Wednesday where work will begin to prepare it for the Artemis II launch set for no earlier than September 2025.

“The clock’s already started,” NASA SLS program manager John Honeycutt said. “We’ve got a great deal of work to do to get the rocket ready to go fly.”

The core stage sports four RS-25 engines converted by Melbourne-based L3Harris’ Aerojet Rocketdyne from the retired stock of the Space Shuttle Program. Two of the engines have previously flown on a combined 20 shuttle missions while the other pair are making their debuts.

Engine 2047 flew on STS-135, the final launch of the program on Space Shuttle Atlantis in 2011. read more