Rakaydos

Tides already account for more than +/- 1m from average sea level. Those islands already have to deal with tides, but it's probably gotten worse as (checks source) 425 billion metric tons per year melts and joins the oceans.

Yes, all the early predictions of ice melting assumed it would melt from the sunward side. That was wrong. But they're melting from the inside out, which has the same net effect. How about this: https://climate.nasa.gov/vital-signs/ice-sheets/ Note that it's measuring total mass, not approximation like extent or thickness.

If your measurement is in "thickness" you need to look up the definition of "rotting" again. It's true that the ice sheets are not getting thinner. But they are getting hollower, having less water per volume.

Sea level rise is dependant not in any old melting ice, but melting of ice that isnt already floating in water. The largest of these masses of land bound ice are in greenland and antarctica. If both melt completely, sea levels will have risen 10m, compared to when we first started measuring these ice sheets 50 years ago. Going back to these ice sheets in the last few years, researchers have found them in the process of melting bit by bit, "rotting" is the term I've seen. it's looking like sea level rise is a more gradual process than initially feared, but there's still the possibility of a sudden surge if a section breaks off one of the sheets and slides into the sea.

But chomper refers specifically to the aligator style reusable fairing, as shown above. Put shuttle doors or a cargo hatch on it, that's not a "real" chomper.

Chomper prototype. SpaceX never expects to get things right on the first try. (though sometimes they do anyway, and have to scrap the spares) unless that's just a spar of the building with a nosecone-shaped curve.

Elon had a hard lesson with the Tesla factory about relying on overautomation. Some people in the loop make things much more reliable.

This has come up whenever someone discovers a green monolith. T6 parts are all good, and the T6 with the improved relay antenna is considered to be prime real estate that's basically required for monolith hunting outside Kerbin SOI. for the record

I consider it more of an inditment of pre-spaceX launchers.

Indeed, cyclers are great... when they're servicing planets that can provide the same enviro plant and hab volume not landed by the cycler. I'd put that about 10 years into colonization, about 20 years from now. I would say that early missions would be more focused on building up surface infrastructure, (which gets no benifit from cyclers) than on optimizing crew size. (no 100-person colony ships until there's a cycler for them to stretch their legs during the trip, and apartments waiting for them on mars)

Personally, I see cyclers as a late-colonization optimization. It actually takes more DV to reach the cycler orbit than to go to mars directly, and all it does is provide facilities that cannot be landed and used on mars. If you already HAVE space capacity on mars, that's fine, but in the early synods they can use all the pressurized volume they can land. I flat disagree with the choice to use expendable upper stages to launch cycler components, though. At the very least, you want them to be refuellable "starkickers" to get the assembled cycler into it's solar orbit once completed.

If we are assuming a plantlike dialation of perceved (not actual) time, then the actual gravity of kerbin is significantly lower than what we have been led to believe, as we erronously assume 1 kerbal-perceved "second" is equal to a human, x million vibrations of a cesium atom second, and so assume that 9.8 kerbal meters per k-seconds per k-second is the same as our familiar earth gravity. But is a k-second is actually, say, an earth minute, the gravity of Kerbin would be 9.8m per minute per minute, or about 1/360th of an earth gravity.

We don't make humans that don't require maintenance, either. Zero maintenance is a trap that needs to be avoided. Instead, you design for automated maintenance- parts being replaced of off the shelf plug in parts, which can be installed by another (or even the same) robot.

This is how your complaint comes off.

How expensive would it be to build in orbit at 200 dollars per ton?

How about two air force ones flown near each other, with weekly inter-ship videogame tournaments? The important part is that starship has the volume for a wide variety of services and a dozen people at the same time. And heavy equipment that doesnt get used until you're on mars, gets sent on a cargo flight in the same convoy.

Not all at once, but it does have the habitable volume of Air Force One.

The best way to "mine" venus might actually be by asteroid impactor. you're already set up to process ambient particulates, so drop a dinosaur killer and mine the dirt out of the air.

These things are trivial to calculate. They already have it figured in, guarenteed.

What problem? The engines work just fine for 3 minutes, there's no problem for them to look into.

What do you mean by "massively increased dependence on a single platform not having a catastrophic failure"? Each Starship and each superheavy will have it's own flight history, meaning most flaws can be identified as being vessel specific. The chances for a class-wide failure requiring remedy to affect a synod launch, without getting a waiver for at least resupply, (sunk cost FTW!) is slim, but is also the reason the mars base keeps supplies on hand for a missed synod. The chances of two sequential synods both being obstructed by critical, class wide failures... AFTER successfully getting a significan population to mars, is ridiculusly small. But Falcon Heavy can still throw the most essential supplies to mars if that happens. "going with the full intent to stay rather then visiting to learn *how* to stay" I dont understand the difference. Nothing is going to be perfect on the first go. every problem that arises is a learning experience, one more thing that needs to be mastered for an independant mars city state. Going to stay IS learning how to stay. You also seem to be positing that there will be some diffictlty that is completely insurmountable, no matter how much mass they can sling to mars. I do not buy your arguments here. Even something as fundamental as gravity can be compensated for with spinning carousels. And building said carousels out of martian iron, makes it that much easier. (carousels are not in the current plan, because they probably wont be needed. But they are an option if they are.) But hey, if you have a functional fuel plant, which the first crew will set up, you can always bring everyone home packed in like sardines. If you cant get a fuel plant, it's the same problem whether the intent is a city or a research outpost.

mars pressure is more like 35+ KM up, IIRC. But they did do mars pressure retroburns in the early days of F9 reuse, and that data is still valid. SN20, if it survives entry, will also test upper atmo descent. They already know they can do landing thanks to SN15.

@GoSlash27 why would a slow expansion be less problematic than a "minimize imports ASAP" approach, if the risk is sunk cost and supplying these people forever? A research outpost would be just as vulnerable to spaceX going under, and would require more imports per person than even a partially sustainable mars city. One advantage to the mars rush approach is the same advantage SpaceX has when it's willing to test to destruction when oldspace believes failure is not an option. When something goes wrong, you know exactly what actually went wrong. They key aspect is to allow for failures of this sort without risking lives by having backup supplies ready to go, as they did in Biosphere 2 (though the biosphere 2 management hid it, and the various resupply mission from the press- another flaw of "failure is not an option" thinking) This kind of high-pressure feedback on research and development is exactly what's needed to make advances quickly.

The biggest problem with a venus colony is coming home. Earth equivilant gravity and pressure means you're going to need a superheavy to get starship back to orbit, and the logistics of superheavy launch and landing from an airborn, floating platform boggles the mind. Not to mention SSTOing a superheavy into space to get it to venus in the first place.

I said replace, not create. Feel free to give the list of basic elements you believe are not present on mars- dont bother with transuranics, since they want to focus on solar power. We do have a machine that makes nitrates- most fertilizer is artificial, and a significant portion of it uses methane as a feedstock, which the rocket fuel plant will have plenty of. Soil bacteria may be impossible to easilly replace- it's literally natural organic nanotech- but is self replicating, meaning that you only have to import some and keep tabs on it's growth through native growth media. Plants, animals.... look up Aquaponics, it's an interesting field. Vitamins and minerals, a part of this healthy breakfast.... Fried chicken is not a requirement for self sufficency. Meat substitutes are a developing field, rendering livestock obsolete. The trick is to break down the big problem into manageable sub problems. Gruel and water will keep the body together, even if earth imports make life worth living.