Mitchz95

That's book two, Ultima. Proxima is book one.

This is pretty much the plot of Stephen Baxter's Proxima. Really good book.

Does anyone else remember when statements like these were hypothetical? We are already taking first-stage reuse for granted.

I'm reminded of the HMS Dreadnought, which revolutionized naval battleships to the point that all prior battleships were referred to as "pre-dreadnoughts". If Elon does name the first BFR Heart of Gold, perhaps rockets will be divided into pre-Gold and post-Gold vehicles.

We're not out of the woods yet.

Wait, already? (Most of the article is behind a paywall. )

I've been experimenting with warships lately. Would anyone be willing to critique my design? Weapons: 32 missiles which consist of I-beams with attached Sepratrons and a tiny decoupler. The armored prow allows ramming. Engines: one Nerv (interplanetary drive), two Swivels (combat drive). Thrusters can fire in any direction.

Got bored, built a space warship. Not a *big* one, granted. It's just 16.5m long and crews two Kerbals. But in KSP scale that's equivalent to 165m and 20 Kerbals, so it's like a frigate or something. Aft view. The big engine in the middle is the interplanetary drive, and the two on the sides are the combat engines. Excellent for zipping around the battlefield and dodging enemy fire. The cockpit, buried deep within the armored plating. Much of the ship's interior is just storage for the missiles, which are contained within the narrow tubes in the center and on the wings. View from the cockpit. Visibility is a bit limited, but it's easy to tell when an enemy ship is in your sights. There are also targeting "lasers" on the bow that light up targets when they're in range. If it's glowing red, you can hit it. The prow on the front isn't just for looks: if necessary, it's designed to ram enemy ships and emerge relatively unscathed. Still a risky move, so best not to do it unless you're out of missiles. You can also see two of the three missile launchers in this picture. The ship has 32 missiles overall, as many as I could squeeze inside. They all fire in pairs for simplicity, and to keep the center of mass symmetrical. Firing a pair of missiles in Kerbin orbit. Docking port and RCS thrusters on the bottom. The thrusters are distributed so they can fire in any direction, allowing for relatively rapid maneuvering. Perfect for tracking enemy ships. Aerobraking over Duna. No damage, and a lot of fuel saved. I'll probably make a cruiser next. Much bigger and more badass.

I wonder if someday we'll have a BFR serving as Air Force One.

Knowing Elon, I highly doubt he'd go for something "boring" like General Transport Vehicle. Maybe he won't go all-out like with The Boring Company, but a sci-fi reference seems very much appropriate here.

I suspect they'll use Heart of Gold, or Gold-class for short. Perhaps they'll let the first Mars colonists name the individual ships.

To be perfectly fair to Armageddon... 10. The asteroid is the comet, and the asteroids it dislodged are the ones raining down on Shanghai and Paris. That's still bad, but at least it kinda-sorta justifies why nobody's discovered that Texas-size asteroid yet: it's a rogue comet from outside the solar system. 12. They mention that they're drilling onto a fault line, which would presumably have carried the effect of the detonation to the core. Still bad, again, but not quite as bad as it's made out to be.

In a nutshell: the Moon is going to crash into Earth because a neutron star (which the writers consistently mix up with a brown dwarf) got wedged inside during a meteor shower. And its immense gravity causes things to randomly start levitating on Earth in the meantime. The United States tries to blow up the moon with nukes, which fails (duh), so they solve the problem by sending an Apollo lander to the moon and use technobabble to eject the neutron star, which causes no further damage once it's free of the moon.

I'd rather have a disco ball in space than a ****ing advertisement any day of the week.

I wonder, would something like this be visible in KSP? With the Distant Object Enhancement mod, of course.

"CONFIRMED" "to have moved to Thursday" "12 seconds"

Nothing new on Twitter.

Uh oh...

Missed the launch to watch Star Trek: Discovery, but managed to catch the landing during a commercial break.

If Zuma launches at 8:00 I'm probably going to miss it. Hopefully a wayward boat or plane will delay things for about an hour...

"Stage 1 has splashed down"

Someone just said "Stage 1 entry burn." And then "entry shutdown"...

I thought it had exploded for a second there.

Looks like a loading screen for a KSP-ish game.

There was a module with a centrifuge planned for the ISS, but it got cancelled because of cost overruns. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Centrifuge_Accommodations_Module