tater

I think they integrate the payload inside the fairing, then put the whole thing on top, maybe... good question.

They do their "static fire" right before launch, so... (ie: if the engines are going well, they light the SRBs and go).

Email I got from BO this morning:

He'll go to space at some point, his goal is not to put himself in space, it's to make humans a multiplanetary species. Ideally before the end of the century. Commercial launch probably tops out at $3-$4B/yr. If they can capture ~3% of internet would be more like $1T/yr. Revenue stream for SS and Mars. Best case F9 marginal cost (reused) not counting overhead, etc ~$15M for 15t. Marginal cost for SS could be <$1M/launch. A lot to learn on the Moon, and "frickin cool." Analogous to Antarctica science labs. LSS does 8-10 times as much as NT lander for half the price.

The NG launch projection is Q4 2024, BTW. We all know that Q4 = NET the next year.

Sky full of balloons. Down side is that when I leave the house, the road up here will have a traffic jam of people going to the tram. Erm, ground-clutter full of balloons, for the moment, they are aloft, but still probably 1000 ft below my house.

Also a fair take. Obviously any such letter is going to be as self-serving as possible. From a culture standpoint, the buck really stops with Smith.

Yeah, it seems like an entirely reasonable response. I absolutely think he's a big part of the problem with BO (not the harassment claims, I have zero information aside from that article), but what's he supposed to do, say nothing?

Thrust simulator removed, Raptors to pad for SN20.

https://www.cnbc.com/2021/10/01/blue-origin-ceo-bob-smith-email-response-to-toxic-workplace-essay.html

Looks fake, lol. Very cool.

Except they do simulate everything, they don't just slap a rocket together then try it, they slap it together in the computer, if it looks like it's worth finding out how good the model is in the real world, then they fly to validate it. This isn't fanboy talk, there have been presentations at conferences (not by Elon) where the engineers show off their CFD code, for example. There was that interview with the NASA guy who worked on COTS with them, he mentioned it as well I think (EDIT: probably not). It's not just that they are willing to try/break things. I mean, why would anyone trying to cut costs not first use lower cost simulation, then bend metal? I have "faith" in exactly nothing. It simply makes sense. Center of pressure, mass, and thrust are all rockets 101 stuff they have to have down pretty well to be able to land. The sensitivity of the vehicle to payload mass and location has to be understood by them at some level. For all we know the only return mass to start will be the vehicle (plus landing props). Since they plan on a crew version (I'm not willing to be the ballast mass on that one until it's flown many thousands of times with zero failures) there must be some mass above the tanks that can land in their sims, because people/ECLSS/etc have nonzero mass. EDIt2: Yeah, just got to actually rewatch that (still skimming) he doesn't mention computer models, but loads of real life testing of things before building the actual vehicle. Still, it's pretty clear they are not just eyeballing stuff—as we have seen with parts delivered for the various SS iterations. Some very early looked rough, but every quickly the plumbing in particular looked very designed as it showed up on site.

First there would need to be a compelling reason for it I think. We can all argue about what SS can return to Earth, but it's not like SpaceX hasn't done all sorts of simulations of exactly that. We'll find out soon enough. If they get it working, and down mass has commercial value, I would expect to see it eventually on the Starship User Guide (P2P cargo is mentioned, but no mass). Dragon has a listed 3000kg return payload mass on their page.

True, though the aerodynamics are substantially different. Not sure if they still have room for large cargo pods under the skirt.

I'm personally fine with any comments. There are repeated comments on both sides of all the various vehicle/company/program debates that are dead horses, or unproductive... meh, so what. It's something to talk about. The SS will never leave Earth SOI comment is pretty much requires SS to fail to ever reach LEO, fail reuse, then fail propellant transfer for it to be an accurate prediction. All are possible. I think reaching orbit is certain at this point (might take iteration). Reuse is a long pole, highest chance of failure. I think refilling needs to happen for humanity to ever do anything at all interesting in space, it's not easy, but I think the probability of figuring it out is high. Reuse is the tough one. We'll see soon enough. Yeah, certainly a valid question, but I think that along with P2P cargo, it's out there in the future, it's not really a current use case. They're designing this to take cargo to Mars, not Earth. Return relatively empty. At hte point where the up mass justifies down mass, they could make a variant designed for that use case, right? The SS form factor might not be ideal, or maybe it can be altered, I dunno.