darthgently

Space manufacturing. 100t to orbit is a great bite into economy of scale for a low g manufactory. I'm still thinking that lunar titanium, processed in the vacuum of space (hot Ti and O don't play well) is a possible winner. Aluminum also. Both require a lot of heat to process, which is in theory there for the taking: maybe too much. Bezos is likely correct in thinking that moving manufacturing off the surface is a win long term. Especially if orbital, lunar, and Martian habs, factories, and facilities take off as they would be a large part of the market for many of the materials and products space manufactured so the deep gravity well could be avoided

TBD. Could be underground with the sandtrout.

They don't need to be completely thought out yet. That is all still in the brainstorming visionary phase. I feel like our culture is becoming less and less appreciative of how success typically emerges iteratively in a fairly decentralized manner as new discoveries across far-ranging fields and individuals emerge rather than being centrally preplanned based on current information. I partially blame gaming where multiple generations of players are "god" and control every aspect. Sim City and Civilization will be seen as a seminal bad things overall some day, lol. That is not how cities and civilizations work at a very fundamental level. Broken messaging for several generations now

I think engine failure is becoming a smaller and smaller percentage of commercial aircraft failures. I could be wrong but I remember airframe failures and control systems failures are an increasing fraction while engine failures are a decreasing fraction. Sadly, intentional crashing of perfectly good aircraft is on the list for suicidal or ideological reasons

This has been addressed. The plan is to get the reliability on par with commercial aircraft long before humans fly on Starship. Hundreds of test flights and Starlink/other launches will provide the iteration to achieve this reliability. Musk has stated up front many times it may not be doable, but they are going to try. Do you ask for a parachute and seat near the door when boarding a commercial flight? Finally, there is a lot of flexibility given outcomes. For the lunar missions, SpaceX could launchb Starship with no humans, refuel, then have Crew Dragon rendezvous the crew later. With 100t to play with, a LES could surely be worked out down the road if the crew were to launch on SS. With that much payload elbow room, on return, one could have a tile encrusted, parachute slathered separable crew compartment inside the Starship cargo area that could provide all the protection one could desire on decent of a lunar crew. But honestly, I don't think any humans will be present for LEO refueling so why launch a small crew with SS given a separate crew launch would be required anyway?

Wow. FUD much? I fail to see the rational foundation or available information for such an involved opinion. But that is probably just me not being in the know on some crucial consensus

As Musk is defining success for this, not exploding like N1 will be a success. "The payload is information [ gathered ]"

Not very technical interview below, but reiterates the tone Musk is trying to set for this upcoming attempt. I'm thinking of it as Starship Early Access now, with no expectations of it being smoothly playable in the short, or medium, term. https://twitter.com/esherifftv/status/1647754805413138438?t=e8n_o7mvZxcym542F5YW8g&s=19 The big upside, of course, is Ellie finally got that interview with Musk

What is that word where the state and private corporations work hand in hand in a centrally planned way? There is a word for that, dang it. If only Mussolini were here to jog my memory, lol

And we all know Kerbals would launch no matter what the weather or wind shear. Moar boosters, moar fins, more struts, and moar TWR! Release the clamps! The game is afoot!

Yep

Time to hit Google Translate for edutainment purposes

Ok, but game economies aren't real economies. Maybe computer games are behind so many people wanting to play Sim Earth IRL with everyone else relegated to sockpuppetdom. Who knows?

But the price is all the kerbals are then mere serfs/sockpuppets. Multiplayer will add a bit more emergent solutions from other players I suppose. But if all but the dictator/player is a sockpuppet I'm not sure any realistic bar for success can be met

I've never seen the Kerbal economy as centrally planned. I'm not sure how to measure it's success either. A true conundrum

Tech is providing governments ways to attempt to centrally plan the world economy. I can't find a single success story of a centrally planned economy. Decentralized emergent economies are antifragile and a natural extension of evolution

Thanks for the debunk. I will sleep better tonight now, ha

Can't find it now, but apparently good source tweeted that FAA source stated May at earliest for Starship launch. Looking for debunk or confirmation Found the article the tweet referred to. Opinions? Hope it isn't true https://www.investors.com/news/technology/spacex-faa-blows-out-candle-on-company-starship/

Maybe because after charging $50 they thought it would be a bit much to also start giving them assignments as if they were employees. I'm thinking a true beta, with no entry fee, involving a vetted, but large group of *organized* volunteer testers would have been better. That way they could do testing in a more thorough way and deal with less whinging from people who paid $50

Any shop that doesn't have scripted and automated regression tests for things like basic keyboard input is stuck in the last century. Not creating new bugs while fixing bugs is that important. It can make or break the entire endeavor More to your, and my, points, where is the script for players to follow to verify previously working things didn't break after a patch? If left to chance, something could be broken and not discovered for months

"For the benefit of Jeff Who"

Regression testing seems sorely lacking

I've done this editing the vessel record in the savefile with a bounded search and replace only on the lines for that vessel ( VESSEL {...name = <vessname>...}). How to do this conveniently depends on your editor of choice. MAKE A BACKUP OF YOUR SAVEFILE. In vi/vim, find the vessel ( search for "name = <vesselname>" that has a VESSEL open brace a few lines prior ), go back to the preceding open brace '{' of the VESSEL record, press 'v' to start a block, press '%' to go to the matching close brace '}'. You now have a block highlighted. Now do a ':s/autostrutmode = None/autostrutmode = Heaviest/i'. Same general approach in any editor. Especially the MAKE A BACKUP OF YOUR SAVEFILE part.

Got a recovery contact for a Kerbalized Dragon Trunk. Klaw won't grab it on centerline. Passes right through bulkhead. In fact, my entire tug floated through the solid appearing bulkhead and out the open end of the trunk. I used cheat screen to complete the contract and terminated the trunk from the tracking center. Model is not very complete collision wise apparently. Not a bug report. Merely venting

I see now. That glares