Rakaydos

We've been saying that about the Senate Launch System for years. Fortunately there's another player in town now.

Noone. (insert dig at their progress) Or if you prefer, Senator Shelby.

The RU based billionare would either get appointed to head Rocosmos, or be shut down. Depends on if he's part of the "in" crowd or not.

United States' Ship, actually. And they,ve found out what happens when they DONT rent one to a dot com millionare with dreams of mars- they lose the entire commercial launch market in 15 years.

Concrete usually has problems with vibrations, and rocket engines usually have a lot of rattle. Have you run the numbers for how much vibration your concrete spaceships can take?

While generally a good habit, the specifics here is off. Elon made millions selling his share of paypal, then later he gambled with his paycheck at TESLA, that if he could short squeeze the tslaQ crowd, he'd become one of the richest people in the world, but if he didnt, he'd get nothing. And he did. Seriously, check out that compensation package, people thought he was crazy. This is speedrun strats, not general "money attractor" behavure. Luck had everything to do with it, money grubbing capitalist behavure had nothing to do with it.

My problem is, I am stalled at expendable to low kerbin orbit. I need enough science to either go further, to mun flyby, or to get another science expiriment and probe cores. This run, I've got .8 science that I cannot expect to get in another run. Which is why I grinded out 10 double VIP missions today. 40 rep got me above -890 rep, so about 3 more days of that to get into Orange rep, and presumably a crew price drop. Then we see how much more I need to grind to afford them.

This is literally why Starship has a heat shield at all- before they ran the numbers, they thought they might be able to get away with bare steel. The heat shield they have now is at the "might work" level- not because they CANT build a "guaranteed to work" heat shield, but because they'll never know how little they can get away with unless they try... And because they dont want to recover this obsolete ship anyway, because it would just take up museum space.

This is why spaceX isnt publicly traded. Only mars believers are allowed to give them money. This gives them the flexibility to be public about failures on the road to mars without their funding suffering. So, it doesnt matter if one or two or nine boosters and/or ships "fail", they are literally mass producing improved versions, and didnt want to find a place to park the obsolete ones anyway.

Starship isnt a product yet. Neither is SLS. It's Falcon 9 block 5 and Falcon heavy against the oldspace stable, and SpaceX is winning handilly. Starship on the horizon is a future threat that, if it works, seals SpaceX's dominance for 2 decades at least.

I mean, clearly it cant be the ONLY reason, because SpaceX's products are better AND cheaper AND more responsive to demand.

Lost both Jeb and Val to exploration failures. I dont want to reset because of the Flying at KSC scans, but I'm going to need a few hundred manually-flown tourist flights to have enough money and reputation to hire a new pilot.

restarted the NCD run. up to 24 science with Island runway, mountains, highlands, desert, space high, and space above science theoretically available. I need the 45 point matsci/probe core node before I make a serious bid for orbit, or I'll run out of money again. I was extremely fortunate during my rollers, though- I got crew reports for Flying at Flagpole and Flying at VAB, for almost an extra science point.

It's less that it's a pothead joke, and more that it's a meme number. Elon is considered quite the "memelord" on twitter, which is one reason some people find it difficult to take him seriously. ...and if you didnt know the context, "drone ship of course I still love you" would sound quite random too. But Elon has been know to push for pop culture numerology. So ship 20/booster 4 probably isn't a complete coincidence.

"As simple as possible... and no simpler." Guess they need a cowl over the plumbing after all.

*whine* but it's not 12m diamiter carbon fiber! Elon LIED to us!

After final preflight weld inspections, probably.

Splashdown, anyway. It's explicitly going to be a water landing.

It works if you put the decoupler on upside down.

Nuclear is in an awkward place, classification wise. Technically, mined uranum is not a renewable resource, but because it isnt formed from compressed carbon products, it isnt a "fossil fuel". If green is defined as "not contributing to climate change", then nuclear absolutely IS a GREEN technology. But it still is NOT a RENEWABLE energy source, only a long-lasting one.

Hot for a flesh and blood individual, sure. But at no point are the bells going to be hotter than the melting point of copper, which is what they build those channels out of. The outside of the bell, made out of sterner stuff, is going to be cooler than that, and the outside of the next bell over, if it doesnt have a flame running, will be cooler still.

"Um, no." These arnt radiatively cooled nozzles, so radiative cooling, by definition, isnt their way to stay cool. As the person you replied to said, the nozzles have tiny pipes milled into them, with subcooled liquid methane going in one side, and hot methane gas coming out the other, with the nozzles not getting much hotter than the coolant fluid. This used coolant gas is then pumped into the preburners to run the pumps to push more subcooled liquid methane into the nozzle and combustion chamber liner. THEN the exaust enters the main combustion chamber in typical staged combustion fashion. This is basic stuff. But admittedly not stuff Kerbal teaches us.

Who said it was a test problem? given SpaceX's agile approach, it could well have been an actual problem they encountered that needed to be solved on a short deadline. In this case, "hiring for their skills" includes the ability to work under that kind of time crunch, because SpaceX actually tries to move fast enough that it matters.

There's a concept involving an "air" breathing ion drive, at the upper edges of the exopshere, that can compensate for the drag of flying that low, while scooping atmospheric gasses and storing them to be delivered elsewhere once the tanks are full. The earth based version of this concept would orbit at around 150-200 km- I do not know what the equivilant would be for gas giants.

Which is why SpaceX preferentially hires those with no lives to break, no marriages to ruin. Let them give the best years of their life to an inspirational cause, and let them sort out their social situation when they're ready to slow down.