Meecrob

Publishers have to announce release dates for a game. There are marketing campaigns, reviews, game expos, etc. that are integral to this, and nearly all other industries. Even if we pretend all that stuff doesn't exist, the info will leak as the games need to be distributed somehow. The idea of zero communication until the game is 100% finished is a recipe for bankruptcy, since any semi-competent competitor will simply announce their game early and take the majority of sales before the consumers figure out the first game is even for sale. Another point - Don't buy into the hype. Don't lose context because you have a yearning for a product. Stop and think: How many games have been produced in the last say 10 years that have A) lived up to the hype and B) have NOT been delayed? Its a weakness of human nature that is hard to fight. I fall prey to it just like everyone else. Just step back and try to think of the bigger picture. They aren't making KSP2 so that I, meecrob, can play the game, and I want to play the game NOW! This is a project that is trying to hit a certain spot with millions of players. They are currently burning through tons of money and if they don't get the balance right, those millions of players will say "meh" and years of work, millions of dollars, and possibly careers are all down the drain.

The demo is on Steam. Its a ripoff of Buzz Aldrin's Space Program Manager, not KSP

What is the issue with bolt on aside from slightly increased weight...This is roughly a thousand(? hundred?) kilograms on a ship classed in hundreds of tonnes? This is a prototype. The issue is rapid debugging, not efficiency right now. In all honesty, this ship (or a subsequent SN) WILL crash and the real question is "how much refinement do we pay to make this wreckage more efficient, or should we save it for SN 30(-ish)?" The difference is that you are calling them 'wings" but they are not. Wings provide lift based on their angle of attack to the relative airflow. These fins are aligned with the airflow and yes, they will give a bit of drag, but if angled parallel to physical motion, they will provide exactly zero lift. You can check me by looking at a cross section of them compared to an actual wing. Or you can check in KSP...toss on some passive fins in 2x symmetry and aim up...then tell me how those fins changed your trajectory without your input. Remember that these fins move perpendicular to the fins you imagine in KSP. They "tilt" rather than "rotate." So I guess the next question is as the gravity turn is executed, don't the fins provide lift from their angle of incidence? aside from the fact that the "grip" on the atmosphere lessens with altitude, they can simply fold the fins. Wings don't work pointing down kinda thing. I can't find the "strike-through" button, but I didn't answer your question with what I said and I am factually wrong that zero lift is created by the fact that a gravity turn is needed. The best answer with regards to not typing a novel is that you need to screw around with those aerodynamics for probably 90% more time than you built the rest of the rocket...there is an angle that they generate zero lift during the gravity turn and it is dynamic. There is no one solution...you can optimize the rocket for certain trajectories though. An extreme example would be launching straight up, then 90* over at the Karman line. In atmosphere though, there is a bunch of mathematics way way above my level that predicts this behavior...so the question is really "how much percent efficiency do we sacrifice in this stage of the launch to gain efficiency at this other stage? We lost say 5% overall, but we can launch three times the mass that our competitor can do...and not need to literally build a new one to do it again. I think we are on the exact same page as far as thinking "there's no way they are launching with that aerodynamic stability...a gust of wind will love it up" but it will only love up if those lift vectors are aligned in a certain direction. Again, a KSP example...mess around with a craft with the centre of lift display on, then change the fins' angles...you will be sure to find an angle where the fins cancel eachother out. Mathematically we can jump to 90* and it turns into an issue of how strong do the fin mounts need to be to counteract the outward force, and not detach from the body. Of course, drag and weight is in play here, but the simple answer is that its still cheaper to re-use a rocket than to gain like 2% in fuel burn efficiency. ULA might disagree with me on that last point haha.

I can be sure about death, taxes and the fact that the first Starship flight will not go according to plan. The reasoning is simple. Its a prototype. It would be operational if they knew it would not crash.

Additionally, the flow rate of propellant when re-fueling the ISS is entirely too low to use the same method for larger tanks.

The flaps will get hot, but that's ok, similar to Falcon 9's grid fins. Its the main body that is critical for temperature control as it contains all the pressure vessels, sensitive electronics, etc. When comparing with KSP, remember that parts in KSP are some random "space-grade" pseudo material probably similar to aluminum or CFRP, and Starship is steel. I forget which STS mission it was, perhaps the first flight after Challenger, where some tiles came off similar to Columbia. The orbiter made it back in one piece because the tiles just happened to be protecting a bit of steel structure. The steel was able to absorb the re-entry heat and maintain strength. Having said that, I'm sure everybody collectively crapped their pants when they did the post flight inspection. Additionally, I recall the re-entry profile for Starship will be shallower such that it spends more time at high temperature, but the peak temperature will be much lower than more conventional re-entries. Edited to add: I'm not saying there will not be tiles on the flaps - I have no info on that. I was trying to explain why KSP behaves differently

Careful guys, I heard a rumour the devs push the release date back a month every time someone asks this question. Game has been done for a while, but you won't shut up about free stuff.

I think a distinction needs to be made between "freefall" and "parabolic trajectory." Its not as if the cats were taken to altitude and dropped at 9.8m/s while the plane also descended at 9.8m/s. The cats are in a state more akin to being shot out of a cannon and at the top of the ballistic arc trying to "fall" - gravity is countered by their upwards velocity so they experience no acceleration on the Y axis, and thus cannot "fall." I'd bet that you could put a VR headset on a cat that shows video of weightlessness, but dropped them in regular gravity, their inner ears would determine which direction was "down." The inner ear is a hard thing to fight without training. VFR pilots suddenly in IMC can attest to this.

Presumably reducing their induced drag as that results in noise...and looking at their high aspect ratio wings, the loud owls died out.

I'm just busting your balls, but its not like there were fossils found that were non-life in origin. If life happened, it would be expected that they "appeared suddenly." Its life! It suddenly dominates everywhere that is conducive to life...at least where we can observe life exists. I am not going to bet on a bunch of rocks to kill off microbes.

Its so cool you can see the airflow with the small feathers close to the owl's wingroot. The owl seems to be turning camera left by looking at the (small) amount its feathers are deflected. It feels weird talking about a living creature as if it was a mechanical object.

The problem is not how much unwanted roll would be generated, but how do you counteract the unwanted roll? The windward side needs to reliably be kept windward. You could use RCS, but I don't see that bringing any benefit to the design...in fact, as @sevenperforce mentioned above, it removes a redundancy.

Haha, an astute observation Elon! Seriously though, I can't wait to see what they come up with.

...which is a fairing.

But release it on VHS just to mess with us.

What I am saying is the act of changing attitude puts you off course no matter when you do it, and you will need to expend fuel to compensate. Using engines to minimize this transition time will then put you less off course. I very much doubt they will purposefully tanker more fuel for "good training". SpaceX has shown that they aim for high accuracy, not bringing enough fuel to fix being off-course. I agree they will utilize the header tank in the nose, but because that moves the CofG towards the nose enabling a faster attitude transition, not for abort purposes.

They may be concerned about the time it takes to transition from belly flop to vertical orientation. I'm guessing the more time Starship spends transitioning orientations, it is travelling off course. I could be totally wrong, I'm just extrapolating from aviation.

Nah, they forgot to change control point from the payload to the booster. I'd bet the navball was minimized for screenshots. (this is the accident they installed the gyros upside down, isn't it?)

But the blast clearly was kilotons in energy. People whose jobs it is to figure this stuff out have done the math based on the after photos and arrived at similar conclusions as the people who did the math based on the initial amount of AN stored in the warehouse. Of course their numbers are estimates, but they are much closer to each other than your suggestion that the blast was 1 to 2 orders of magnitude smaller than officially reported. What would be the purpose of exaggerating the size of the blast? This isn't a military test where deterrence may be a psychological factor in deploying a weapon.

You might be right, its hard to tell, but most of the livestream cameras are not level. At least that's what I know I want the answer to be!

I'm not sure that a satellite constellation to provide high speed internet is Elon's idea. Kinda like the Wright brothers didn't come up with the idea to fly. If SpaceX didn't start Starlink, you would be complaining about Amazon and Project Kuiper. In fact, you might even say Elon is late to the game. Check out the options currently available if you want Satellite internet in Canada that isn't Starlink: https://www.canadasatellite.ca/Satellite-Internet-Canada-Internet-Satellite-Providers-s/411.htm

You could, but you would still need to bring "an absurd monolithic monster of a rocket" to actually move the fuel/comet. Thrust to Weight ratio is the killer here.

Hard no from me. KSP is based on science. X amount of fuel, Y mass and Z thrust should always give the same results. The thing that draws me to this game is being given a set environment and a set group of parts and having to engineer a vehicle to get around those limitations, just like real life. The type of bonuses you describe seem like something to add to an arcade game with an online High Score Board and dwindling player base to entice players to go back and grind to be #1. Additionally, if these bonuses were implemented, it would kill the community being able to give tips to other players because nobody would be playing the same game as one another; One player's Mainsail will NOT perform the same as another player's.

I second this. Aerodynamically they are too large for their moment-arm from the CofG and will introduce twisting forces. For example using the pic you provided - when you pitch downrange, lift will be generated by the fins on the boosters to point the nose where you want it to go. It will also pitch both boosters' noses further downrange (closer to 0*/horizon) than the core of the rocket AND will make the boosters rotate towards the "dorsal" side of the craft.

No, you aren't trained in how to fly fighter jets and jamming inputs to the limits is not how you fly them. The reason I picked this quote out is not to be a jerk, but to point out that flying smoothly and having the lowest possible AoA and thus the lowest induced drag is how you fly them. Speed is life/the cobra maneuver is an airshow trick. Games do not have enough fidelity to go down into the weeds on the physics behind them/gamers for the most part want to hop in and fly, not sit down for ground school. KSP is a good example. If I said "I'm coming over from Apollo-style rockets" an astute observer might tell me "but KSP doesn't even have N-body physics." Tell me, do any of these flight sims teach you coordinated turns, sideslips/forward slips, the power curve and slow flight? Hell, do any of them teach you to fly VFR by looking out the windscreen instead of at your instruments? If not, I would suggest that they are just games and taken as pieces of entertainment, they are great, but there is a reason not one single flight school on this planet uses commercially available "flight sim" games as a training aid. Same way NASA does not make its astronauts play KSP: its fun, but not what its really like flying a spacecraft.