Rakaydos

That's not a solution, that's delaying the inevitable. You cant build up any significant angular momentum in the ring that way.

Doesnt work. Friction will despin the ring as the bikes come to a stop. You'd have to keep the bikes running continuously, and the spin rate isnt going to be enough for significant gravity.

Just dont get thrown.

Speaking of Lunar sports, Lunar Blitzball Waterpolo.

ZeroG drone quidditch.

The short explanation is that heat shields dont fold well, without a lot of difficult and expansive (and heavy) extra engineering. It's easier to have a 1-sided door open 90 degrees, set decoupler strength to 0 and rotate out of the way.

Not really, if we find a strain of bacteria eerily similar to one found in the environs of JPL, Kennedy, Baikonur, or Boca Chica, we can be confident that it's not a martian strain. Genetics research can easilly tell if life diverged millions of years ago, or decades ago.

You just know that the first Mars landing testbed will be literally shrink-wrapped on the launchpad, sterelized, launched, and cut free in orbit

Would you be any less skeptical if it said 30 years instead of 10? I prefer they post accurate projections, with the understanding that climate predictions will never be precise.

Are you assuming the rate of melting will remain constant, and not vary as temperatures rise as as more ice breaks off and is exposed by cracks and rotting? The article is about a specific glacer that is going to break lose and start dumping land locked ice into the sea "in the next 5 years", so that's in addition to the current rate of melt. (reminder that landlocked ice entering the ocean doesnt NEED to melt for sea level rise, as it displaces it's mass of water as soon as it enters.)

This was on NPR this morning... https://www.cnbc.com/2021/12/13/a-major-antarctic-ice-shelf-could-shatter-within-five-years.html

Fundamentally, this is the difference between a linear accelerator and a circular one. It doesnt matter if we're talking bows vs slingstaffs or rail launcers vs spinlaunch A circular accelerator trades having to deal with (the illusion of) Centripetal Force (which isnt a force but is an artifact of a rotating frame of reference blablabla) in exchange for only needing to build one loop, and not hundreds of kilomoters of track. The circular launcher still needs the equivilant of hundreds of KM of track to get up to speed, but it uses the same track over and over.

7m max diamiter, but Peter Beck called it a "5m class fairing", so it only fits payloads that fit in "normal" 5m fairings.

Note that there's nuthing fundamentally preventing Rocketlab from constructing an upper stage with Starship Quick-Disconnects, that's able to use any Methalox tanker in orbit.

The statistics of starlink are such that if he builds it, people WILL come. The problem lies in the vast gulf between "beginning construction" and "steady state profitability." And from the sound of it, the Ver2 Starlink sats were designed from the ground up for Starship's capability, are already gearing up for production... and the raptor manufacturing apparently isnt keeping up.

Oh, is Porche making an all-electric Tank Destroyer?

"That doesnt sound too hard. My car can go 500 km between recharging/refueling..." -the public

Sounds like a job for a full cargo variant. The aft cargo pods (in the engine bay) are always open to space but protected on launch and entry, so in my mind they make a better place to have utility arms equipped.

Couldnt you just use a standard crew starship, with utility arms in the aft cargo? I'm already assuming that the Depot has a fueling arm that mates with other vessels QD ports, tucked in the aft cargo.

It doesnt. By coincidence, the right recipe of stainless has a good strength at low temperatures, and ALSO has a high melting temperature.

The "base model" is much more flexible than you seem to understand. There's heat shields on all the ones that will return to earth, but depots will have cryogenic insulation instead, and Lunar Starship is a customized build for NASA's HLS program that's built on the same line as Starship, but has a bunch of one-off features and will never return to earth's surface.

Please make yourself aware of the Artemis plan of record regarding Lunar Starship, Tanker Starships, and Depot Starships before continuing this line of questioning.

Send Kimbal as the head botanist. (Elon's brother, who's been working on hydroponics-related stuff)

I suspect it will be an asymetric approch. Tanker has arms in the skirt that can connect and brace against standard quick disconnect ports.

So how much of that gets through a space suit?