Vox Sentences: SpaceX just did something really, really cool

A new era in spaceflight starts not with a launch, but with a landing; Americans keep dying in "non-combat" operations in Afghanistan; and a US airstrike kills 10 Iraqi soldiers.

Vox Sentences is written by Dylan Matthews and Dara Lind.

TOP NEWS

A BFD for private spaceflight

Elon Musk/SpaceX

• The private spaceflight company SpaceX successfully landed the first stage of one of its rockets on land last night — marking the first time that a rocket stage has successfully landed on Earth after launching satellites into Earth orbit.

  [The Verge / Loren Grush]

• The stage split off before reaching orbit, so the part of the rocket that landed didn't technically reach orbit. But the satellites the rocket was designed to launch did.

  [NYT / Kenneth Chang]

• Spaceflight company Blue Origin, backed by Jeff Bezos, had landed a rocket earlier this year — but that rocket didn't fly as fast or as far as SpaceX's, and it isn't designed to launch satellites; it's more intended for space tourism.

  [The Verge / Loren Grush]

• Here's why successful landings matter: most rockets can only be used once. This makes it extremely expensive to launch a rocket into space. But landable rockets are reusable.

  [Vox / Libby Nelson]

• That's especially important right now, when private companies are competing to provide support services to NASA and other national space agencies, largely by coming up with cheaper alternatives.

  [Vox / Joseph Stromberg]

• SpaceX's technology could make a lot of currently unaffordable satellite projects suddenly viable — like putting 700 satellites into low orbit to build an Internet network.

  [Quartz / Tim Fernholz]

• As science-fiction author Charlie Stross points out, though, the more things that get sent into space, the more debris they give off — even if parts of the rockets are reusable. Eventually, unless preventative steps are taken, the field of space debris will be too thick to safely launch a rocket into.

  [Antipope / Charlie Stross]

Non-combat operations in a combat environment

John Moore/Getty Images

• 6 Americans were killed in Afghanistan on Monday in a suicide bombing which the Taliban has taken credit for.

  [NPR / Laura Wagner]

• Combat operations have ended in Afghanistan. But the American soldiers were patrolling the air base in Bagram — something they do every day.

  [Washington Post / Dan Lamothe and Pamela Constable]

• There have been lots of attacks on Americans conducting "non-combat" operations lately — creating an odd situation in which Americans aren't engaging in combat, but are still living in a "combat environment."

  [Washington Post / Dan Lamothe]

• Meanwhile, in southern Afghanistan, the Taliban is making a play for Sangin, a key city in the province of Helmand.

  [FT / Amy Kazmin and John Murray Brown]

• Helmand has serious strategic importance: it's the heart of the Afghan poppy industry, which is to say, the Afghan opium industry.

  [BBC / Inayatulhaq Yasini]

• Sangin in particular was something of a symbol of the UK's war in Afghanistan, and it's sending soldiers there now to fight the Taliban. This BBC article features some terrifically depressing quotes from soldiers returning to the city they thought they'd left forever.

  [BBC]

Friendly fire

STR/AFP/Getty Images

• The US has admitted that it killed 10 Iraqi soldiers in an airstrike over the weekend near Fallujah, in an incident of "friendly fire."

  [NYT / Michael R. Gordon]

• 10 is the number provided by the US itself, for what it's worth. The Iraqi Defense Ministry initially said one soldier had been killed, although Iraqi soldiers said over two dozen were killed.

  [Washington Post / Loveday Morris and Mustafa Salim]

• Defense Secretary Ash Carter says "both sides" — the American and Iraqi governments — were responsible for the mistake, but hasn't explained how it happened.

  [Washington Post / Mustafa Salim and Missy Ryan]

• This is not great timing for American/Iraqi coordination. Iraqi troops are currently fighting to retake Ramadi — a key ISIS stronghold, and one of the three most important goals of the US' current anti-ISIS policy.

  [NYT / Omar Al-Jawoshy, Sewell Chan and Kareem Fahim]

• If ISIS loses Ramadi, it will cap a year in which it lost tremendous amounts of territory — and turned to terrorism outside the Middle East as a way to compensate.

  [Vox / Zack Beauchamp]

MISCELLANEOUS

No one will be indicted in the death of Sandra Bland, who died in a Texas jail cell this past July after being pulled over for failing to signal a lane change. [Vox / German Lopez]

• Ketamine isn't just a tremendously promising depression treatment. It suggests that the biochemistry of mental illness is rather different than psychiatrists once thought.

  [Nautilus / Taylor Beck]

• Johns Hopkins is conducting a rigorous IV study of the cancer-fighting effects of … mistletoe.

  [National Geographic / Becky Little]

• The Washington Post's original review of Star Wars is a riot: "Lucas creates a romantic triangle between Luke, Han Solo and the haughty, bossy, indomitable Princess that seems perfectly resolved by not being resolved at all … Could this mischievous hint of a menage-a-trois in-the-making, which is about as racy as the byplay between Hope, Crosby and Lamour in the 'Road' comedies, have been as responsible for the PG rating as the fighting, which is abundant but scarcely realistic?"

  [Washington Post / Gary Arnold]

• On the "Yaaas kweeeen"ing of Hillary Clinton's campaign.

  [Slate / Amanda Hess]

VERBATIM

"It is a fact universally acknowledged that a woman in possession of an opinion must be in want of a correction." [Lithub / Rebecca Solnit]

• "There is a lot to hate about first dates but near the top of the list is wasting time on ones that are mediocre but not unbearable. At least the unbearably bad dates give you a story that can be repurposed for comedic effect after the horror of the encounter passes."

  [NY Mag / Alana Massey]

• "The thing about Rey, and characters like her, is that she subverts the actual awful trope that is ruining everything: the female character who is badass until the final act of the movie."

  [io9 / Charlie Jane Anders]

• "Why are we so okay with Drake and why do we hate Childish Gambino? Why is Drake "cool?" I mean, Drizzy is a guy who has lyrics about passive aggressive text-messaging."

  [Vice / Eric Sundermann]

• "Medicare for All cannot offer itself as the replacement of our depressing health politics. It would have to arise as another product of that very same process, passing through the very same legislative choke points, constrained by the very same path dependencies that bedevil the Affordable Care Act."

  [Journal of Health Politics, Policy, and Law / Harold Pollack]

WATCH THIS

SantaCon's surprising roots in Danish performance art [YouTube / Estelle Caswell, Carlos Waters, Phil Edwards]

Vox/Getty Images

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