Things To Do In SW Florida

SpaceX returned to flight with its Falcon 9 rocket Monday sending up the Hera probe for the European Space Agency on its way to a pair of asteroids, but SpaceX and NASA have called off plans to launch the Falcon Heavy later this week on NASA’s Europa Clipper mission to Jupiter’s moon because of the approaching Hurricane Milton.

SpaceX got the OK from the Federal Aviation Administration to launch Falcon 9, which had been grounded since the late September launch of the Crew-9 mission because of an issue with the Falcon 9 second stage missing its intended reentry target.

Liftoff of @ESA’s Hera! pic.twitter.com/mMoNPzX0b6

— SpaceX (@SpaceX) October 7, 2024

The FAA on Sunday, though, announced it was approving just the Hera mission since its launch was going to not feature a second stage reentry.

That Falcon 9 lifted off at 10:52 a.m. from Cape Canaveral Space Force Station’s Space Launch Complex 40.

The first-stage booster flew for the 23rd and final time since it needed to be expended to get the payload to an interplanetary transfer orbit. The booster had previously flown both the Crew-1 and Crew-2 human spaceflight missions. read more

DEAR TRAVEL TROUBLESHOOTER: I need your help with an insurance claim. I recently damaged a car I had rented through Enterprise while I was in Germany. In a nutshell, my car insurance company has been requesting a repair invoice from Enterprise for the past two months in order to close the claim and determine how much to pay them.

Enterprise wrote that they will not share additional documentation as requested by my car insurance and instead demands immediate payment.

My insurance company is giving me two months to get those documents from Enterprise. If I don’t obtain them, the claim will be closed, and the insurance company may not pay for it. Can you help me?

— Michael Roehricht, Austin, Texas

ANSWER: I normally handle complaints from car rental customers who claim that they’ve been falsely accused of damaging a rental car. It’s nice to hear from someone who wants to own up to the damage and is trying to do the right thing.

And when I got your case, I wondered why Enterprise wasn’t helping you. After all, isn’t it in the company’s best interests to get you to file a successful insurance claim? (I’ll have the answer in a moment.) read more

Suppose the Epcot International Food & Wine Festival was set up cafeteria-style. What if park visitors went down the line and took one of everything it has? What would that fest feast cost at the current prices?

That’s been a fanciful math exercise for the past few years, but so far Walt Disney World hasn’t introduced this as Figment’s Fantastical Festival Buffet ticket offer.

For these calculations, use the food and beverages listed in the official festival passport, which does not list the prices. Once those are posted at the festival, number crunching can being.

When there are menu duplications, count only one flavor. For drinks, include individual glasses but not beer flights, and go with the smaller of the servings when there are options. When there’s a drink that the park can add alcohol (The passport calls these “spirited”), take the virgin version. And don’t count merchandise such as souvenir flutes in the grand total.

Pencils down and trumpets, please. If an Epcotter purchased one of every food item – including desserts – at the 2024 Epcot food fest, they would owe $639.75. That’s an average of $6.81 per plate. read more

What can you do with a penny in Seminole County? Add trails, improve roads, alleviate flooding and upgrade schools and classroom equipment.

Those are some of the projects leaders use to make their case for voters to renew the county’s extra penny atop the state’s 6 cent sales tax for another decade. The money generated — $1.8 billion countywide since 1991 — can fund constructing and maintaining infrastructure and capital expenditures.

“It’s probably one of the fairest ways to create revenue to help pay for these things,” Commission Chair Jay Zembower said in support. “None of us like taxes — myself included — but it really comes to a quality of life issue for Seminole County residents.”

If approved Nov. 5 in a countywide charter referendum, that penny will keep raising about $100 million annually. Half would go toward county projects, one-quarter for city initiatives and one-quarter for school construction and improvements.

Two other referendums on the ballot ask voters to toughen protections for rural and natural lands, by requiring a supermajority — four votes of the five-member county commission — to withdraw property from or otherwise modify those areas. The rural area covers nearly a third of Seminole County and there are about 7,300 acres of natural lands. read more

The Federal Aviation Administration on Sunday announced it was approving just one SpaceX Falcon 9 mission, although SpaceX has submitted its mishap report into why the second stage from last week’s Crew-9 mission failed to hit its planned target on reentry.

The FAA is giving the OK for the launch of the European Space Agency’s Hera mission, a followup to NASA’s DART mission that impacted an asteroid in 2021 as part of a planetary defense test to see if a potential Earth collision could be avoided through human intervention.

“The FAA has determined that the absence of a second stage reentry for this mission adequately mitigates the primary risk to the public in the event of a reoccurrence of the mishap experienced with the Crew-9 mission,” reads a statement from the FAA.

That Falcon 9 is slated to lift off Monday from Cape Canaveral Space Force Station’s Space Launch Complex 40 at 10:52 a.m. with a backup on Tuesday at 10:46 a.m.

The first-stage booster is flying for the 23rd and last time as it will be expended to get the payload to an interplanetary transfer orbit. The booster had previously flown both the Crew-1 and Crew-2 human spaceflight missions. read more