Nuke

having a third stage in an internal bay would impinge on the amount of fuel the second stage can carry. the possibility of having the second stage deliver to a high eccentric orbit seems too good to pass on. im talking from other sources. leo is significantly a higher risk fuel storage location than the lunar surface. lots of swarms going up means a lot of lost wayward parts (perhaps the aftermath of a decade of starship operation barring serious effort at leo cleanup).

yea, technically 2-stage to orbit. though im not sure how were going to have a heatshiled on a middle stage. you need to connect up structurally without any attachment points through the heatshield. that second stage is going to be mostly starship like, but able to have a stage above it. 3rd stage will be like a mini-starship/lunar starship hybrid. the only real difference is that fuel depot is on the moon rather than in leo. frankly i question the long term viability of an on orbit fuel dump. on the grounds of space debris. and granted this is step 3 or 4 on a process that ends in us eventually having a nuclear powered milk run from leo to the lunar surface (with connections to phobos, deimos, and mars). i think the devices used are pretty common in flight termination systems, however i think starship's material choice probibly reduce their effectiveness. these things are usually fired against a different alloy (usually some kind of aluminum). perhaps stainless is a bit tougher and needs more boom to rupture.

my thought was the second stage would go to either a very low orbit or a more eccentric orbit such that it can be landed after one orbit. the third stage would be good to complete tli and lunar landing. for reusability it would have to refuel on the moon using isru before return to earth. of course you need to set up a moon base with a fuel plant and storage first (you are going to need first gen starship for this). alternatively your third stage would be something you can break down and utilize on the moon for base/spacecraft construction. for example it might have a large number of smaller rcs units and a cluster of engines, such that they can be removed and used on other outgoing missions to the solar system, tanks could be converted to habitats or fuel storage for the moon base. idea is you would use local materials to build structural components, equip with the salvageable parts and launch missions from the moon base directly. i dont know how it would work out delta-v wise. but it seems like a natural progression from starship to set up regular earth-moon supply chain. i think the timeline for a lunar base can be greatly accelerated over a mars base. there is also no reason not to build both bases in parallel. once the moon base is bootstrapped then you have two supply lines headed for mars rather than one.

my mom has always been childish and never did the responsible thing regarding spaying and neutering our pet cats. she would just let them breed. so there were always litters of kittens around and since i was the quiet one they would hang out in my room. me and/or my sister would have to go out and find them homes. our previous pair of kitties were also allowed to do this, id been able to find 3 litters homes, but after having to take a litter of kittens to the pound i said no more and got them both fixed, and have done this with our recent pair. people want kittens but dont think about what happens to the adult cats when they become homeless. if you want kittens you can usually volunteer to to foster kittens instead. its always nice to raise unweaned orphaned kittens and there are usually always some available that need socialization to make them viable for adoption.

ive always been a proponent of moon before mars anyway. if we can make a 2 stage reusable we can make a 3-stage reusable. so a reusable 3-stage to the moon, with a local fuel depot might be the way to go. you can not only refuel upper stage enough to return to earth, you can also fuel ships going elsewhere. if you wanted a nuclear engine, you could operate without concern for contaminating the earth if it operates out of the moon base. if i was going on a mars mission i wouldn't mind that infrastructure existing first. you can cut significant time off of delivery of emergency supplies if its on the moon ready to go on a fast transfer trajectory.

use a cuttlefish as a screen, a human head for your cpu, a cat as a keyboard (you are going to end up with a cat on it anyway so just cut out a step), and a chinchilla as a mouse. speakers can just be a couple of parrots. if you need a webcam, grab a mantis shrimp. wire together with synthetic neural conduits. i wouldn't be surprised if bioengineered products would be available within the next 100 years. were talking machines that run on meat. almost makes me want to play scorn again. if were being honest, thats probibly where were headed barring a hard reset (read nuclear war).

wonder if you could surf down from orbit darkstar style on one of those. this may be the libertarian in me talking, but this is what happens when you don't have to get approval from a dozen different government bureaucracies to get something done. though they probibly did have to apply for a building permit (otherwise they would have done this last week).

i always liked the guitar on edmund fitzgerald but i didnt know he did sundown too.

stuck on repeat

this has happened to me many times, even one where i was not wearing pants. this cat does not look fat, it looks like the kittens will be due any day now. probibly a 6-pack minimum.

boom boom starship should totally be a thing.

just be glad you dont live in a region where one airline has a monopoly.

i kind of want to post the video where gwar feeds jerry springer to the world maggot, but i figured it was in poor taste, not to mention a violation of a number of forum rules.

so my latest gen raspi tablet design hit another roadblock. to reduce the thickness of the tablet i needed to lay my boards out flat rather than stack them up on the gpio header (important things like the entire power system not to mention the i2s breakout for my dacs, amps and speakers and the i2c for the adcs and port expanders i will be using for joysticks, buttons and other controls). the plan was to use some idc ribbon cables to connect it all together. i had some ribbon cable but not the connectors, so i ordered some connectors. they got here yesterday and this morning i want to put the two together. turns out my ribbon cable is the wrong pitch. 1.2mm vs 1.27. other than that i dont think the wire gauge is good enough to handle the power. 28 gauge can handle 1.4 amps and there are two wires for each voltage rail (5v and 3.3v), so thats enough to power the pi. the speakers can in theory draw a lot of power, but im gonna tap those off of the pi-juice module directly. the rest is low power stuff. i thought i had some old ide cables, but i guess they went out with spring cleaning. id have been able to use the cables since ide headers usually have a pin missing for keying.

yea ive been beyond the crystal sphere. its got quite a gravity well. i think you can mod the game via the dev console. im not sure how to download a copy though, its been an eternity since i did webdev and my knowledge is damn rusty.

well then, call the welders.

i dont know. my understanding about reinforced concrete structures is that they are very difficult to repair. if you can get an engineer on the ground to sign off on them, you might be able to use them again, but any damage and you are better off scraping and pouring new ones. however if they are salvageable i can see space-x reusing them. otherwise you are looking at more than 2 months of delays. i wonder if elon had a structural engineer look at things before he made his 1-2 month announcement. if they can remove the superstucture as a single piece or in sections that can simplify the process of rebuilding the launch mount. i think it was designed such that any structural steel components were behind blast shields and thus thermally insulated. so long as its not bent or deformed or something you should be able to hammer out most of the dings (sort of like what you would have to do on a naval vessel that saw action).

depends on how much damage the structural components took. the upper steel superstructure may be easy to take down and inspect but if your pilings are fractured, you got a problem. id hate to see the rocket topple during stacking. so at minimum they will need to break down and inspect the superstucture and pour new pilings, and put in the deluge system while they are at it.

one of my more questionable life choices ended in the phrase: "dude! you're losing parts!"

8k and they formatted it for phone screens. you wasted 3k of my 4k monitor, so i only saw it in 1k.

depends on how fast you want to go. things are still far enough apart where direct point to point flat trajectories will still take an eternity without an expensive engine. of course if you get to the point where you can do fast point to point trajectories, gravity will be nothing more than a mild inconvenience.

looks like they are at it again. https://xkcd.com/2765/ its more game-like this time, there are powerups, puzzles to solve, and items to find. thats pretty much the makings of an adventure game. i spent four hours minimum playing around in it.

no freespace = list invalid.

mmmmm spherical beef. just roll it through the kitchen.

yea it was around 5:30 am when i realized the launch was today, but i hadn't slept yet so i went to bed. looks like i didnt miss much.