MinimumSky5

Well, I think I speak for most people here in saying that while we also like big rockets, we'd prefer to see humanity spread it's wings amongst the stars, but in order to do that, we need cheap access to space to enable people to see business opportunities off Earth. SLS is almost the antithesis of what we want to see.

SLS is cool because it's big, but sadly that doesn't mean that it's useful as a heavy life vehicle. Its in a very awkward size category where it's too small to easily do lunar missions, but too big for current LEO payloads, and it's sustainer architecture doesn't allow it to be easily made reusable. Combined with a total cost higher than many countries GDP just for one launch, and you can see why it isn't very popular.

Why did they allow those officials near to the quarantined crew? That renders the entire exercise pointless.

Given that the propellants in the main tanks will be sloshing around every which way during reentry, I doubt that they'd want to add more in, it could mess up the center of mass, and result in engine starvation during that start if the landing burn.

The circles are a representation of satellite visibility to the ground stations, yes. I doubt that it's that good though, some of those base stations are nestled between mountains.

I think that the one on the right just has its turbopump hidden from view, you can match some of the piping from the other two raptors to it to correlate it's rotation.

But if antimatter could travel backwards in time, then either: Causality cannot be conserved, as antimatter particles would constantly be arriving from future high energy events Or: Antimatter could not be seen, as it would immediately start moving at a right angle to our conventional four dimensions of spacetime, and would appear to just vanish from existence at its point of creation. Or, am i just missing something here?

Maybe not, the weight on the legs seems to be transmitted through the final bulkhead directly onto the legs, without the hinge taking any strain.

If that was an engine failure, it looks like they lost the centre engine, given that the plume still looked mostly symmetrical after the anomoly. Probably reason for booster loss, given that they land the boosters on the centre engine?

CRS-16 failed a landing at LZ-1, though to be fair, that was a hydraulics issue with the grid fins, not the legs.

Nope, no further launch attempts today. Probably due to inclination for launch. Looked like the abort was between engine ignition, and liftoff.

Unfair comparison. SpaceX are developing their hardware by deliberately pushing their hardware to the edge of what it can do, and then far beyond, to see where the limits lie, not by simulating it to heck and back to find all of the possibly failure modes. There is nothing wrong with that approach, it's messy, and has very public failures, but it means that SpaceX won't invest in true production unless and until their hardware is flight proven, rather than hoping that they have coded in all of the variables right before they test their software. The exploded vehicles were (mostly, admittedly) built to be destroyed, so it's a bit unfair to say that those failures reflect badly onto SpaceX. Only do that if you know how many virtual SLS's Boeing has sacrificed in simulations.

(paraphrased) "If Korolev knew that we'd still be flying Soyuz in 2020, he'd be turning in his grave." Well, shots fired much! (not that he's wrong)

Is the talk over already? I'm just getting an ad for OilCon 2020 (Which is apparently a real thing).

Is this the first fully private crewed launch? (Please say yes, please say yes, please say yes!!)

I know, it actually feels like we have a shot this time, not just with SpaceX, but Blue Origin, Relativity (started by ex-SpaceX personnel, with an established company goal of building a rocket on Mars), Made in Space, Axiom, Planetary Resources (If they ever get the funding sorted...). It's not just a political stunt, this time, it's an economic push by the private sector.

https://arstechnica.com/science/2020/03/inside-elon-musks-plan-to-build-one-starship-a-week-and-settle-mars/3/ Berger's had a field trip down to Boca Chica, to check out the new production lines for Starship

It also looked like there may have been some ground damage, given that the lights gave out as soon as the tank landed.

My money is on a bigger ASDS, if it's to stationkeep the smaller barges, at some point the limiting factor will be swivelling the thrusters to compensate for wave action, making them unsuitable for OCISLY or JRTI, but they may be worth it on a much bigger Starship barge the doesn't have to worry about wave action as much, due to its higher mass.

Is that an unusually short amount of time for a Launch Readiness Review, or am I thinking of something else? I thought that that was the sort of thing that you'd do in the weeks approaching a launch, not hours.

More like the sudden collapse of the baseball itself into a black hole just from it's kinetic energy alone, long before it hits the Earth

Do you know if this will be available on a streaming service, I'd like to watch, but I'm not sure how to as a non-US citizen?

The thing with Trident, is that it's going to use an alignment of Jupiter and Neptune that we wont get again for several decades, so I'm kind of in favour of Trident for that reason. Obligatory Scott Manley video!

Are they paying to keep the Leonardo MPLM, or have NASA just allowed them to make use of it to keep a somewhat NASA station in orbit? Also, I love that solar panel boom deployment mechanism!

https://spacenews.com/spacex-wins-nasa-contract-to-launch-earth-science-mission/ SpaceX has been awarded the contract to launch the PACE (Plankton, Aerosol, Cloud, ocean Ecosystem) satellite in Dec 2022. The satellite is going to be launched from Kennedy into a sun synchronous orbit, so AFAIK, this is the first mission to use the new polar orbit trajectory that was announced... early last year, I think? For those of you playing along at home, the total cost of the contract is $80.2 million.