Rakaydos

If you'll excuse me quoting and reponding to just one part of your post... The website Atomic Rockets suggests that methane as an NTR fuel is sooty. The heat breaks the methane down into elemental hydrogen (awesome NTR fuel) and elemental carbon. (which cakes the reactor walls) So at the very best, a methane NTR will require frequent cleanings, very close to/inside the reactor, which will drive up the service costs. this could make "just use more chemical methane rockets" the better choice over the long run.

I see Co/Lox as the martian equivilant of lunar Al/Lox- a local propellant useful for local purposes, but not useful for greater transport architecture.

You said yourself, bases come after we've gotten ISRU reliable. The first dig sites dont need to be where the permanent base is established.

Or the first BFR could just land on the edge of the ice cap and drill to the h20 layer. We've surveyed mars enough, we know where there's plenty of water. SpaceX already picked out landing sites for Red Dragon, and presumably those same sites will still be on the table for BFR.

If the BFR ever fully booked it's cargo bay, how many tugs would you say would be needed?

So, a tug using a single raptor vac (possibly even more overexpanded than the normal raptorvac) with the delta V to bring a BFR load (150 tonnes) to gto, and aerobreak back down to LEO, with a reserve. Ideally should be fillable by a single tanker load (150 tonnes of methalox?)

The engins dont HAVE to throttle as deeply at the moon, because the rocket (refueled in eliptical orbit) is still going to have half it's fuel when landing on the moon, lowering it's TWR.

What about japaneese pod-hotel beds? Or bunk beds?

Also keep in mind, every one of those "commercial terminals" for point to point transport is fully capable of sending people to earth orbit.

"That's not a typo. ... though it is aspirational.'

And now the falcon 9. still look big?

Officially, it's "Big Falcon Rocket" Any similarity to a common obscenity is ridiculous and you should be ashamed of yourself.

I;ve always felt that the GEO Graveyard orbit would be a prime canidate orbit for a garbage collection scow. Not only is there a lot of trash there now, but every satelite in GEO is programmed to put itself into the graveyard orbit before it dies.

00:30 PST is 930 PM. As for landing a falcon upper stage... I say nose heat shield, shuttlecock control surfaces adjacent to the MerlinVac, parachutes, and a floating inflated crash bag.

Except they needed something like a NOVA-class rocket just to get into orbit, and every mission takes orbital assenbily, geosynch is too far away to be economically useful, and they give up the whole thing as a bad deal.

If they're from a super earth, their rocket programs would be even more expensive than ours. They might never have gotten offworld at all. (or if they did, they did a flag and footprints on the nearest body and forget the whole thing)

Reuse-optimised falcon 9. Titanium grid fins, extra power, ect.

Any bets on the crush shocks saving the stage again? Those legs look a LOT flatter than other landings.

Stage survived, looks tilted.

Why not? Sure, it's not how things are done NOW, but if they can get the lifespan and reliability of the booster really up there, like they plan, what's wrong with having 3 boosters on 3 pads, plus a maintinance pad at McGregor, reached by suborbital hop? Rotation can be done by the booster's RCS before landing.

The Heavy Core.

Also, the DIRECTION of it's eccentricity means it spends most of it's orbit backlit by the galactic core. It's hard to make out in the glare.

Isnt the 10 ton limit a horizontal integration limit? The payload adapter can only handle 10 tons of shear force, but can push more than that in line at whatever acceleration the falon needs?

Since the outer mold line of the recovery module is clean sheet, why not have it mount the fairing?

and yet people are talking about using the kerlox main tank for fuel "to save tank mass."