Lukaszenko

Please delete.

What about that whole Tesla "sustainable transport and energy" thing? And the solar energy thing? They certainly don't seem like the "screw earth" types of ventures.

It's indeed ugly and it looks old-school and like they patched it together with a hammer; it's certainly not winning any beauty contests and perhaps it never will. I'll definitely agree that sending anything to space; many-billion dollar probes on many-hundred-million-dollar sweet-looking rockets in your examples, is indeed special. I'll argue however, that sending whatevertf you want, whenevertf you want, for a tiny fraction of the price is even more so. Butt-ugly as it may be, Starship is at the very least showing that this is within reach. Besides, if SpaceX really wants to drop some panties, they can always add some bling-bling and window-dressing to the Starhip later. They'll certainly have the margin for it.

It's exactly this. Yes, it is incredibly wasteful, but of fuel, which if everything else works out is of little concern. As long as there's plenty of performance left over for launching the Starship (there should be) and it allows for rapid reusability (it should), then so be it. The math is pretty straightforward: if sacrificing 50% of a launch's payload capacity allows you to have 100000% more launches, then it's stupid not to do it (I pulled these numbers out of my ass, but that's the jist of the argument). Keep in mind that Falcon 9 already does this on missions where there's margin left over.

It's also easier to be a SpaceX fan because they made a crazy-ass promise (cheap/ easy access to space), and each success they have is a step closer to delivering on this. You can actually visually see a step-by-step growth and progression towards this goal, you can can extrapolate that it will probably happen, and it's exciting. Starliner is great and all. But, if they succeed, whenevertf that will be, then we'll....have another capsule. You know, like we did in the 60s. Not nearly as exciting.

Agreed. They should definitely make it at least as Space Shuttle, or better yet SLS. But 10x more expensive, because advanced. Make it so so expensive so as to bankrupt entire nations before the tooling is delivered, because it's a rocket dammit! And, every component should be designed to be one-time-use only, as a true rocket should be. They should make the access road to the pad out of single-crystal inconel. Why? Because rocket. And scrap it after one use as well, for good measure. Down with Gwyneth! Down with Musk! SpaceFace545 for president of SpaceX!

Yeah indeed this is getting tedious reading the same argument about why it won't work, over and over. It's an interesting argument, point taken, but we ultimately don't know and the answer is still a giant "maybe", no matter how much we keep on beating this dead horse. On one side we have kerbiloid from the internet, on the other we have SpaceX and to an extent NASA. I'd be willing to bet money that SpaceX has a better idea about this than keribiloid. I'd be willing to bet billions, in fact. Of course, I'm talking out of my ass since I don't have billions. However, some people do, and that's exactly what they did with it.

Me neither, but I'm referring to the flaw in this logic: "I wouldn't change that, especially not during an human flight, not after it worked 100+ times"

If you find a risk and just keep rolling the dice because you didn't lose 100 times, you're just asking for something to go wrong. Off the top of my head, I can think of ALL the NASA crew losses as an example.

Probably now is the time to buy ICBMs from Russia

Good explanation, but it leaves more questions than answers. For example, how did they find out about this "hole" if they lost the booster? Did they know about it BEFORE the launch?

It's not just about throwing away boosters, it's about having a reliable and robust recovery of rockets, especially if they eventually plan to expand this into a reliable and robust recovery of 100+ people.

Could be. But, the very things that allow them to perform their aerodynamic function also helps them perform their new structural function: they are thick and they are large. They are also made of titanium to contend with the heat. Even if I'm completely talking out of my ass, strengthening them up in order to take the loads would surely be less costly mass-wise than adding a bunch of legs.

I'm guessing much sooner with the catch system. What's the point of perfecting landing on legs when you can start landing on the catcher? Why not test all the things in parallel, if possible?

What's wrong with Falcon 9- type legs? Or, at least legs on the outside. Seems like it would solve a lot of problems. Why are they insisting on legs on the inside?

What do half of these things mean?? Tri-vent, recondenser, TFR... I have an idea for the other things, but not sure it's a good idea

Where are you guys seeing all this?

If the past couple months was not enough time, I'm guessing an extra few minutes won't be either. i.e. not today.

All legitimate answers which I considered myself, but for every answer I have even more questions... Again, all are legitimate but speculative answers; we don't don't what the real explanation is

I'm trying to wrap my head around the decision to remove them. If it's for more payload, do they use the capability? If not, why not leave them in, just in case? Or, maybe removing them shows confidence in success?

....which somehow looked worse than some 240p videos I've seen

Nice animation. What would be the point of landing it on a droneship though?

I especially agree with the above; airliner turbine blades experience THE most difficult environments for materials to survive in.

It's like watching the Falcon 9 rocket launches. They're getting less and less exciting by the launch, but it's not the launch itself that's interesting, it's the fact that each one represents a step on the ladder to making space cheap and accessible. I don't watch any other rocket launches, whether bigger or faster or whatever, because they don't represent progress to making us a properly space-faring civilization; they just represent the same 'ol excrements.

Is it just me, or am I hearing less and less complaints about Starlink polluting the night sky as the constellation grows?