RealKerbal3x

Highly doubt it's an actual component, the obvious resemblance to a turtle shell suggests to me that this buggy belongs to SpaceX's environmental team (given the abundance of turtles in the area).

Probably too busy flying the spacecraft, only Jeb could recover from multiple thruster failures and still successfully dock.

Best 0g indicator ever

Rocket Lab is a US company, despite currently only launching from New Zealand. I think it's set up that way so that they're eligible for US government launch contracts.

Not too bad of a delay it seems, thanks for keeping us updated guys! If anything, I'd interpret this as good news. 'Early 2023' and not just '2023' suggests to me that they're confident that it'll be ready for that relatively short release window.

At least in my understanding, 'fairing' is colloquially used in the context of spaceflight to mean the disposable aerodynamic cover that surrounds payloads, but the general definition means just any aerodynamic covering. So I think Starship's nosecone still counts as a fairing, though I think referring to it as a 'payload bay' would probably still make more sense.

The wording is interesting, though: Maybe I'm reading into this too much, but this seems to suggest that the PEA is largely complete, and a mitigated FONSI is the expected outcome. I don't think "mitigations" would be explicitly mentioned in this manner if the outcome was still unsure, or the FAA expected to grant SpaceX a regular (non-mitigated) FONSI or an EIS.

That's basically what the colony VABs/launchpads already are.

KSP is already a decade old, it turned 10 in June last year.

S20 is incompatible with Raptor 2, and changes to the stage separation design make it incompatible with B7+ boosters as well. There's a small chance that it could conduct a solo suborbital flight, but I wouldn't count on that. It's an old design now, SpaceX probably wants to move on.

BFR was essentially the placeholder name for the older proto-Starship designs. Officially it stood for Big Falcon Rocket, but it could also be interpreted as something a bit more rude

Note that we haven't seen an overpressure notice, which means that they can't use CH4. They should still be able to load LOX.

Unexpected, but not surprising

I believe at least one of them has had its deck cleared of unnecessary equipment, but they seem to be at a low priority right now.

Probably so B4 can begin static fires, if something goes wrong they don't want to take S20 out as well.

They probably painted them for rust protection, I don't think any conclusions about B4's fate can really be drawn from painting the bells.

Raptor is still very much an in-development engine. SpaceX didn't build the first Raptor 1, say 'yeah, this is fine' and produced 50 more identical to it. With every Raptor, they've been improving and optimising things, with the goal being to produce the most powerful, efficient, compact and mass-producible engine they can. That's why, up to now, they've needed that rat's nest of sensors, because almost everything about the engine is a moving target. I find it helpful to think of Raptor 2 as the 'production' version of Raptor. They're still tweaking things and making changes - as Elon said they're still working on increasing thrust - but the engine is enough to get Starship working, and they can focus on producing as many of these as they can, as fast as possible. They're going to need a lot.

Check yo stagin

Welcome! I think you'll like it here.

230t thrust is for the new Raptor 2 iteration, the wiki thrust is for the previous version. The current version of Starship has 6 Raptors (3 sea-level, 3 vacuum), increasing to 9 engines later on (3 sea-level, 6 vacuum). All engines will be running during the second-stage ascent to reduce gravity losses. Most upper stages have a TWR < 1 and get to orbit just fine. Starship is no different.

That was for fully expendable ITS, a very different and much larger vehicle.

When Starship's max reusable payload mass is quoted as 150t, that doesn't include the mass of the vehicle itself. It can put itself + 150t of payload into orbit.