The Rocket Round-Up

Issue #2

99% of the livestreams you are going to see on this newsletter have a celestial origin. That is to say most will be broadcasting live around the world or pointing up from Earth to the skies above. Yet one of the first major livestreams with over 18M views to date had a decidedly other-worldly presence. in February of 2018 Elon Musk launched his personal Tesla Roadster to Space on the maiden voyage of the Falcon Heavy rocket system.

Millions tuned in live to see his Roadster orbit Earth with StarMan riding shotgun. The first ever dual landing of Falcon 9 boosters back home was icing on the cake (Elon running out to see it live went viral).

SpaceX's inaugural launch of the Falcon Heavy in 2018 captivated the worlds attention and setup a cottage industry of livestreamers documenting SpaceX's every move.  

Since then a small community has sprang up in Boca Chica, TX, the site of SpaceX's Starbase, just to watch the development of their next-gen Starship rocket platform. They have thousands of dollars worth of camera equipment with ultra-long range lenses trained on Starbase 24/7. The Youtube channel LabPadre was one of the first to start broadcasting live from Boca Chica. He now has over a dozen live cameras going at any given time with a few limited to his paid subscribers.

The Falcon Heavy is currently the worlds most powerful rocket, capable of over 5,000,000 pounds of thrust. However at approximately 1:04am ET on November 16 NASA will be launching the first Artemis 1 mission on its maiden flight around the Moon. It will be flying aboard NASA's latest generation rocket propulsion system, the Space Launch System, capable of over 8,300,000 pounds of thrust or 15% more than the previous record holder the Saturn V. With several hours to go before the launch there are already multiple livestreams broadcasting live from Cape Canaveral in Florida's space coast.

Watching Artemis 1 LIVE

The Everyday Astronaut routinely features one of the highest quality 4K live-streams of launches from the Kennedy Space Center. He will be going live at 5pm ET, approximately 8 hours before launch.

The Launch Pad just recently celebrated over 100k Youtube subscribers. They usually start streaming 24 hours before big launches. 

With over 634k subscribers NASASpaceflight has become on of the top SpaceStreamers on Youtube. Their livestreams of major space events even rival the production quality of Nasa TV with great streams and insightful commentary. 

The NASA Youtube channel is the O.G SpaceStream broadcasting their Nasa TV cable channel 24/7. 

What else is going on this week? 

WebCam of the Week

The NamibiaCam channel on YouTube has a quarter million subscribers with 2 live feeds going 24/7. Have you ever seen a Giraffe drink water? A recent highlight from their watering hole cam had a herd of 8 Giraffes including a few babies getting their drink on with cameos from Gemsbok's and warthogs. Riveting background content.