MinimumSky5

Just to point out, there are exactly three places in the solar system that you can find free nitrogen: Earth Venus Titan If you're going to build habitats for people, or terraform planets, you need that nitrogen. We obviously don't want to take nitrogen from earth, so Titan would be exporting nitrogen to the entire outer solar system. The methane is nice for plastics, but not the most valuable resource there.

You can't "jam" a rotating habitat in space, any more than you can "jam" a spin stabilised satellite. Almost the entire mass of the object is rotating, it simply cannot just stop rotating by anything that would also utterly destroy the habitat itself.

High Isp isn't necessarily the best option, depending on what you want. Eliminating the weight of the hypergolic storage systems, and the serious cost savings in not needing to handle them, are a much more important feature for SpaceX than squeezing every last second of performance out of them.

By using a gas generator cycle? Are you asking how that cycle works, or why it was chosen?

That's kind of the point of the active cooling? I'm guessing that at least some of the methane gets vented overboard to expell heat, and the reflective alloys will seriously cut down on the amount of absorbed heat.

While I can certainly understand the sentiment, you can't say to someone "Yes, you can do this better, cheaper, faster than everyone else, but for the sake of fairness, don't do it". If you did, we as a species would have never even developed agriculture. If this rocket flies at that price, it is bad for Rocket Labs, but that's the nature of aerospace, unfortunately.

Maybe it's a better TPS for reusability? Why they'd try it on this launch, though, is beyond me.

Because there is no other way to get a road into northern Norway, and it currently takes 23 hours to get there using the ferry crossings.

They forgot to install grid fins and legs... "Technical Issues" But at least now, I can actually watch given that it's on a Saturday!

Err, no? Electrostatic repulsers have been discussed after seeing what happened to the MER's solar panels, but none have flown to my knowledge.

@mushroombrew Let me try instead.... Hi, welcome to the forums! [snip] From you actual question, my tldr response is *garbled, garbled* ENVIRONMENTALISM OMG NUKES, and money, and needing a large, cheap rocket (we've had large rockets, and cheap rockets, but not large and cheap rockets.) NTRs may well have their place in space exploration, but we simply don't need them yet. [snip]

I'm guessing that the dust cover wasn't as effective as they expected, and they can hardly send a technician over to wipe it down!

Well, yes, but you do have to draw the line somewhere, and there was at least some scientific justification for the Karman line

Looking at that lineup, all I can say is... 9 - 5 working hours suck!

No, I get where they were meant to go, but look closely at the diagram, the artist has given that guy a second set of knees in his thighs, that bend backwards.

But, the XLR81 was a gas generator... https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/XLR81

I'm sorry, but what has happened to that guys legs? Artists, take note, plan your drawings before committing to them!

Electron/VCLS1/This One's For Pickering?

The air force have requested a newly built booster, and demended that it is not recovered... because reasons. Let's hope that they were charged far beyond what is reasonable for this, it's so idiotic.

True, but developing a tug of that design is also very expensive, and surely not worth the effort, if BFR is cheap to launch. But your right, I didn't explain myself there well.

Aside from being, admittantly, spectacular if they did that, what reason would they have to cool the booster that fast? They don't seem to have had issues with temperature recently, and thermal stress would be a very significant concern, as has been noted.

The problem with these ideas is that the business plan for the BFR requires large launch cadences, to spread the lifetime cost of the system out. The idea of an ion powered lunar tug simply will not work, as SpaceX could launch many, many flights to the moon with a fleet of Starships in the same time as one ion powered Starship would take to get there. Also, the costs of developing such a module would be very large, even for SpaceX (who, to be fair, seem to be able to develop new systems very cheaply).

That would take decades, or need a much, much more powerful power source than what BFR has available now. Would you want to fly in a BFR with a small nuclear reactor meters from your cabin?

No thermal blankets necessary... I so want to see the insulation flapping around as the Soyuz undocks!

No, sorry, the RS-27's were derived from the H-1, the RS-68's were new newly built. My point was the Delta family does have a Saturn heritage, but that that heritage is now no longer flying.