NSEP

Im not a rocket scientist, but geussing the antimatter rocket you are describing is called a Beam Core, which uses equal amounts of matter and antimatter to smash them together and generate tremendous amounts of energy. Its one of the most efficient rocket engines on the Atomic Rockets Engine List, so it must be a good, maybe not exactly for surface to orbit travel, but whatever. Beam core engines have around 100 million m/s of exhaust velocity, which is extremely fast (like 33% the speed of light) If we throw these numbers in this calculator, a spacecraft with a dry mass of 97000t would need 9t of fuel to get 9278m/s of Delta-V, which is enough for orbit. Thats like roughly 0.01% of the total ship mass being fuel.

Im crossing my fingers and holding my breath. I really hope we are getting alot more new information about Starship.

I don't really have one specific favourite movie, but i like Blade Runner, Saving Private Ryan and Pink Floyd, The Wall (yes, they made it into a movie, if you didn't know already). Also, Fantastic Planet (La Planète Sauvage) is very interesting.

It not a 'large leap from a rocket' at all. Its days away from being ready for its first untethered flight. It already has been released from its umbilicals and the Raptor engine should arrive soon. The road is closed from June 17th to 19th, which means they will likely start flying starhopper like an actual rocket within those windows, although it could be delayed. Starship development is going quite fast.

One and a half months ago they did a 40s test of a full scale Raptor Engine. Im quite sure they did longer tests after that but i can't be 100% sure. https://forum.nasaspaceflight.com/index.php?topic=39182.640

Im pretty sure they will begin construction on the Super Heavy booster this year. I think i read they were planning to construct it in August but i can't confirm. They could have a Starship/Superheavy stack ready by next year at the pace they currently build these things, but it all depends on how well the development goes.

I graduated.

Starship has two full scale orbital prototypes under construction and one (almost) functioning hopper vehicle. Sure, Starship has a long way to go and is obviously behind SLS, but its not nothing.

I once jettisoned the heatshield before the parachute opened. Air drag threw it back at the capsule and completely obliterated it.

He could very well be screaming in agony and fear, but because of a misconfiguration in his brain he instead smiles and laughs.

The movie is forgettable, and if it wasn't for it being a meme i would have likely had zero memory of existance at all. But like any bad or mediocre or joke of a movie, you can over-analyze it to be a commentary about the problems with our modern society, which im not going to.

big sphere hand nebula

So Elon says they could launch Starlink Satellites modified to be interplanetary probes in the aft cargo section of an expendable Starship (or just Super Heavy upper stage?), to get high quality images of distant worlds and maybe send science experiments along with them? Sounds like a cool idea. I'd love more HQ images of the outer-outer Solar System worlds, like Uranus' Moons and Neptunes moons. Those worlds haven't been visited in a while.

SpaceX and Blue Origin are the most likely i think. Commercial spaceflight doesn't have the same amount of budget cuts and political stuff going on that could slow down their development. I think China might have the first governmental Moon Landing. Their space program, suggesting from recent events is going quite smoothly. NASA, maybe, but not without the help of commercial spaceflight.

I support this idea. Starship should already have solar panels, a micrometeorite shield, and thermal protection from the sun already, so converting it into a space station shouldn't be that hard, just send another Starship or other spacecraft there with equipment and furnite and you have 2000+ cubic meters of volume to play with.

HOLD ON? HEX TILES? THIS THING IS COOLER THAN I THOUGH! I absolutely love it when Elon tweets about Starship.

It can, but it has to use the fuel if the Orion SM to kick it into a higher orbit, which means it doesn't have enough fuel to get into orbit, but EM1 and EM2 don't need to do that anyways. I already posted it in the SpaceX thread, but i tried it in Kerbal Space Program (Realism Overhaul of course) As you can see here it has around 12.8km/s of Delta-V, which is enough for a circumlunar mission. You need around 12.7km/s (9.5 for orbit and 3.2 for TLI burn) to go to the Moon so we have 100m/s left.

Probably three, but they are going to use just one right now just for testing, i assume. Also, some special juice has arrived. (photo by Bocachicagal on the NSF forum)

I tested the concept of using an Expendable Falcon Heavy and the Orion SM to boost it to do a lunar flyby in RO/RSS, and geuss what, it works! You can see here the Delta-V of an expendable FH carrying an Orion spacecraft would be 12.8km/s while you need around 12.7km/s to reach TLI from the surface (9.5 is for orbit, 3.2 is for the TLI burn). I ended up with around 100m/s left in my fuel tanks to spend on correction burns, wich is more than enough. This is just speculation, its still sort of a crazy idea but i just couldn't resist.

Hmmmm *Opens RSS/RO* I think i did a Falcon Heavy/Orion in RSS/RO once, but i will have to redo it, maybe make a YouTube video.

Doesn't the Orion SM only push the spacecraft 1.8km/s of Delta-V? The Apollo SM gives a 2.8km/s kick though. Anyways this wouldn't make much of a difference for the extra orbital kick.

If SpaceX would launch Orion on Starship it would be the biggest joke in spaceflight history. Probably not going to happend.

Something is happending!