tater

Maybe closer to Shuttle with RCC?

That other beam they had on the crane by the launch site was stenciled with text that said: Working Load Limit 63.77 for fixed configuration 216.57 with sling rigging Makes me wonder what counts as sling rigging (I was assuming it was more of the spiderweb they have used before, but I'm completely clueless about cranes).

Tomorrow. Liftoff is 1:20 EDT.

I'm unsure. Shuttle had SSMEs to pick up any variability in thrust due to temperature regimes I suppose, so it might just be a margin thing. Shuttle had decent margin for variability (and throttleable engines), and perhaps Minotaur I is much tighter margin wise due to not really being designed as a launch vehicle.

True enough. Life vs burnout. People usually get to an age where they realize the life part is the important bit. I'm not bashing on them, but the difference is stark.

It's to chill the booster even though it is a solid. The Minuteman missile was housed in solos that were underground (cool), and air conditioned. Wasn't designed to sit out on a pad in the sunlight.

Sunday at BO in FL (from a flyover): Guess they don't work much on weekends. Or at night.

Me, too.

Also:

Early grid fins don’t need to actually survive, they are going to be fish habitat.

What is the total spacecraft mass and dv? An expended SH would likely add ~20% to the payload to LEO for SS/SH assuming it mirrors F9.

I suppose the questions are: 1. When would such a notional upper stage be available. 2. When would an SLS be available to put the stage in #1 on top of it. 3. Does this include the issues Europa Clipper has with the vibration environment WRT SLS (apparently it would add ~$1B to the spacecraft cost to deal with). 1+2 would be some number of years relative to when the EC spacecraft is ready to fly. If that number equals 3, the shorter flight time doesn't matter, both are 6 years, since FH is already good to go the day the spacecraft is ready. If 1+2>3, then the SLS launch actually takes longer to reach the target. Also, WRT time, as soon as we are out more than a couple years into the future, SLS becomes completely obviated by Starship/Super Heavy. Musk has already said that an expendable upper stage is a possibility for outer solar system probes. A "starship" that is just a cylinder with a conventional fairing could be made of thinner steel (3mm or less vs 4mm), and be low enough mass that it can easily exceed SLS throw. A 16 dry upper stage (a 3mm SS tank section is ~16t) ) has 13.46km/s of dv with a 16.6t EC with lander. That leaves ~6km/s for the transfer, still low. 2mm steel adds about 1km/s. #3 obviously adds cost, which might impact mission duration. Regarding a lander, while that would be awesome, that's also a cost issue since presumably the lander is some hundreds of millions at the very least. Also, it looks like C3 for Europa limits EC to ~6t for SLS Block 1B, right? While a better upper stage can help, the same upper stage could be added as a third stage to SS/SH, and indeed a smaller once, since a stripped SS upper stage can do most of the work. Note that this assumes no refilling of the SS upper stage, if that capability exists at all... use SS, the tanks need not even be filled.

There could be hooks that deploy, or a wide metal guide, wider than grid fins.

It looks like it's literally gonna have an arrestor hook. They could also avoid anything that needs deployment, and add a wide, curved guide. 100% passive.

True. These are tighter to the tank than previous renders—the sort of squashed hexagon version—perhaps for that reason (also easier to fabricate). I have to assume they have a metric ton of data on gridfins at this point, though.

LOL. Will be interesting. Actually, wonder what the cross sectional area in the airflow is folded vs deployed. You'd need to take average angle of attack into account for deployed, but they are pretty thick folded, and most of the cross section is empty space deployed. The min value being the sum of the metal thickness they used (1/2 steel? times the grid pattern).