ThatGuyWithALongUsername

Yes. Yes I am sure Starship SN1 is going to come together very quickly. Yes I know this is a 6 month window, and it assumes they don't run into any big problems on the way there (which they will), but if they think they can have a ship ready to fly in a month then things are going to have to be assembled quite quickly. I'm sure it won't actually fly in march, they'll have to sort through all the issues that pop up first, but they are expecting to have it assembled by then. Can't wait for this thing to fly in... well, based off of StarHopper, September or so. *ominous music* And so, the age of Starship began...

Well... SpaceX is already the cheapest, so they can afford a 178% upcharge with little to no impact on customers. It's getting worryingly close to a monopoly. Fortunately, other launch providers are closing in SpaceX prices and soon they will have better competition. Ariane 6, Vulcan, H3, and New Glenn are specifically trying to compete with the Falcon 9 and Heavy. Unfortunately, they usually seem to be trying to undercut the $50M launch price SpaceX seems to charge for the Falcon 9. SpaceX could easily lower it to $40M or even $30M and still make money. Even less fortunately, Starship is (hopefully) coming and everyone might be toast. Starship is supposed to ultimately have launch costs of as low as $2M, and nobody else is developing anything even close to that with a payload capacity of over a couple tons (unless BO is doing something, which they probably are, but still... they'll be late). SpaceX is developing the most objectively cool rocket in the history of spaceflight, and I'm sure that this increased access to space and interplanetary travel will be amazing and have more positives on, well, the entirety of human history than negatives, but still... it would be a monopoly in the end, and that... does really worry me. I think this is a conversation that should be had after Mars, though. The innovation here is incredible, and I really wouldn't want to mess with the best chance of getting people to Mars that we've ever seen.

Someone noticed something... interesting from that presentation that was taken private on YouTube earlier today (screenshot from jpo234 on NSF forums, brightened by me). I felt it was worth mentioning here because what: Just at the beginning, as the intro faded away, this rendering was found, hidden behind the fade: It looks like cargo Starship being used for the Artemis program, with a more conventional crewed lander accompanying it. Not saying this isn't a good idea or even that this plan is surprising- there is no way NASA would be easily convinced that Starship would be safe enough for crew, and of course politics- but it looks really strange seeing these two very different craft next to each other. And with Artemis slipping, SpaceX really should have crew Starship ready by 2028, so uhh... the crewed lander seems a bit out of place here, just saying Well... too late now lol

Kinda looks like they're making it into a proper VAB... don't think the're gonna stack it out in the open anymore.

That suggests that they're farther along with SN1 than it looks... those didn't appear until pretty late with Mk.1... I've heard speculation that part of the changes in their construction method involves outfitting all the pieces *before* welding them together, avoiding the elaborate scaffolding and all that in Mk.1 (see pics of Elon *inside* Starship tanks). So, individual parts are worked on in the tents that sprung up, and welding them together should take a lot less time. By the time we actually see the rocket take shape out in the open, it may already be practically finished. If this total speculation is true, than it really looks like they have most of the components ready. Elon tweeted directly that the domes/bulkheads are done, the Raptor appearance suggests that the thrust structure is finished enough to do fit checks, and now one of the fins have arrived. Elon's timeline for SN1 could also hint at this. Now, I know, I know, factor for Elon time and all that. But Elon said in December that "flight is hopefully 2-3 months away." And while I can't find solid dates for these, with mk.1, Elon thought flight was 2-3 months away pretty much at the presentation in September with the thing fully built behind him (Nov.-Dec., I think he said somewhere). This suggests that SN1 is at the same level of completion as Mk.1 was at the presentation- just instead of putting it together first and then outfitting the interior, they're outfitting the interior first and then putting it back together. Starship SN1... *may* be closer to flight than we think... and I am so dang ready. I hope it, y'know, actually flies this time.

"Cheaper and faster..." I'm not so sure about that

I assume you meant *isn't metastable, right? Also, given that this is, what, the third or fourth completely unconfirmed discovery, I'm not sure if it's really "pretty clear." But yeah, I'm not getting my hopes up. Even if it is metastable, mass production would be... uh, difficult.

Cool, wonder how long it's gonna be until this thread turns into another argument over KSP2 (Seriously though, for real life purposes, metallic hydrogen would be really cool to have please)

60 satellites per launch helps with costs, too. Less launches. Although still a lot of course.

*glances at uncrewed Soviet/Russian probes* AAAAAAH WHY do you have to make these things look like that?! What's wrong with just a mannequin?

It would melt More accurately, I'm guessing the Nitrogen would sublimate and the water ice would melt, but eventually (or immediately, not sure if the atmosphere would be enough) the lack of a magnetosphere would strip away the nitrogen atmosphere and start evaporating the water Or something like that IDK but it wouldn't end well for Pluto

That reminds me of another cool one- this. Triton lander that uses nitrogen ice to refuel and "hop" long distances, able to cover the entire moon with all it sa diverse features. The team specifically mentions Pluto as a possible follow-up since it's icy, too. In fact, we need more landers in general! It's kind of sad to think that- counting Earth- we've only landed on 5 of the solar system's "worlds" (planets, dwarf planets, large moons), and even then only 3 of those with some kind of moving landers to see more than just one small part of the surface (hopefully we'll get Titan squared away by 2034 on that front, and in the coolest way possible, too!). Preliminary plans exist to add 2 to that first number (Laplace-P for Ganymede, Europa Lander for... well, Europa), but neither are guaranteed and face serious budget challenges. Out of... at least 32, perhaps more than 40 depending on how many dwarf planets there are. Geez, we really have a lot of exploring to do, don't we?

That's fair

2.5 years is also a pretty long Mars transfer time, it may take some extra dV but 2.5 years is by no means the fastest possible Mars transfer. You can get there in 6 months with current technology... granted, it varies a bit for crewed missions depending on whose proposal you pay attention to, but the point remains.

Starship 100% because again it just enables so much- pretty much every mission yoiu could list here would benefit from it. Besides it's just cool as heck- the first proper "spaceship" by scifi standards! Though that kind feels like cheating, since it's not a specific mission and it's kind of just an "all of the above" option (besides people have said it already), so I'm going to say something new: a giant space telescope (>10m) specifically to characterize exoplanet systems by taking direct images of the whole system. I wanna see exoplanets really badly, and honestly I think people don't always realize jsut how incredibly exiting this would be, and I'll explain in a moment why. Our current understanding of exoplanets is enough to know that we can expect a planetary system around any individual star, but not the exact details of each planetary system- the transit method is extremely limited to only a small number of systems, and long-period planets are hard to find by any method, no matter how big the planet may be. All except direct imaging. We have directly imaged planets before, but not at this scale. I'm talkin' all the way down to Mars-size planets at Venus-sized orbits (around G-type stars, smaller orbits around like Red Dwarves obviously) (Mercury sound too ambitious). Unbelievably, this may be coming relatively soon- LUVOIR and HabEx in particular are very promising, very real proposals for a telescope that fan do this. HabEx is even specifically focused on imaging whole exoplanet systems like I mentioned. So Yes, this IS a current technology thing. Just ask the HabEx team. That's what they want to do. (I'd settle for LUVOIR, but if the decadal study was up to me I know what I'd choose) Why is this such an amazing idea to me? Imagine dozens of different Voyager-style family portraits showing hundreds of tiny dots. Every single one of those dots is an entire physical world. Every one of them is unique. We can surmise that they exist now, but we can't see it. This would give us something concrete to think of and truly appreciate the sheer diversity of the universe. Not only would we know for a fact that that all of these individual worlds exist but we would actually be able to know details about them! Size, color, mass, composition, atmosphere- all of these we can actually figure out from these observations and all of them can help us actually imagine what these worlds are like. There would just be so many details to learn. It would be great for science fiction, too- it would reignite the sense of wonder from the dawn of the space age for our own solar system, but multiplied by a hundred (assuming 7 planets per star- which could be wrong- that's 100 stars, which is a sphere with a radius of only 18 ly). Just imagine that for a moment. Hundreds of worlds, each revealing their own mysteries to solve, and each open for imagination. The general public would be captivated as news of especially astonishing exoplanets- WITH IMAGES (even if they are just dots)- hit the press. Perhaps it would motivate some to look at these not only as distant worlds, but as destinations- it would be the best motivator to work on some technology capable of interstellar travel than just about anything else (obviously that can't count as my chosen mission because that's future technology). And, of course... there's always a chance... maybe- just maybe- one of those hundreds a dots will be a certain... very familiar... pale, blue color. That might not be a very likely scenario, but it would be... something else. Had to mention it. TL;DR: We know we're just one planet in one planetary system out of trillions... but we can't see it. Those are just numbers right now. With this... they'd be worlds. Real places. Distant, but so incredibly tantalizing. You would have to learn more from there. TL;DR Alternate: Play SpaceEngine. If that's too much can we just send a Cassini-style something to Uranus already? It's got a whole moon system and everything. And there's not even any PLANS for this? It's a shame. Just don't let the internet know you're sending something to Uranus for the first time in decades and you'll be fine.

And as if SpaceX isn't having a busy enough week: Another road closure in Boca Chica. What are they up to this time? I mean, probably just moving something to the launch site, but what? A new bit of launch pad? A second "bopper" test?

There were a couple of pictures of the trunk while it was still on the recovery ship and it was still missing that part, so I think it's the latter.

OH WOW YOU'RE RIGHT I didn't notice him almost directly mentioning KSP the first time! That's awesome! I still really want to see video of Elon playing KSP sometime. Just pair up with some YouTuber and talk about SpaceX while Elon builds a a Starship replica in the background.

Farewell B1046 2018-2020 First Block 5 booster First Block 5 booster to fly twice First booster of any kind to fly 3 times First booster to fly from all 3 SpaceX launch pads Launched first Bangladeshi satellite Last test of the Crew Dragon capsule before crew 4 flights... 100% successful That was quite the show.

"In fact, forget the Mars base!"

Wait, I thought the header tanks were suppose to use the nosecone as a bulkhead? Did the design change again?

Not sure why I have't posted here. Used to do train simulation all them time. Railfanning (basically U.S. English "trainspotting") too. I'll probably come back to it at some point. I do have a YouTube channel on this stuff though: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCh_WpWDsSX_y1eHSpE9VMsQ? (Honestly it just serves to practice video editing and apparently graphic design most of the time- I don't interact with the community much. I am STILL happy with that logo though, it's kind of a shame I've only used it on 2 videos. Just don't have enough time or interest to film or edit more things.)

Oh right I had video Uh... here's the NG-12 launch but a whole month after the launch (I was busy. And... it's not much to look at Some idiot left autofocus on)

It appears to be delayed?