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SpaceX posted on YouTube as well (nice HD):

This is pretty cool

Just so. Sorry for your loss. All I can say is that the grief gets better over time (I lost my mom in 2009, and I was close to your age at the time). For me it's usually happy memories, but the sadness still comes when I think of things I'd like to ask her or share with her. I know she'd prefer the former, so I try for that.

They never get any lightning, way more sonic booms

It's not like there's some other biome just outside the previous area. The creatures under scrutiny are in the current boom footprint. My guess is it's a 2 month wait so that some people at FWS who know bupkis about sonic boom impacts on animals* look at what the EPA already decided and sign off on it. *I say this because probably no one knows much of anything about sonic boom impacts on these particular animals, there are not many places at all where supersonic aircraft fly.

It's important to note that SpaceX has pointed out that none of the issues withthe current 2 month paperwork period are safety related at all. The 2 month FWS is related to the slightly changed size of the sonic boom profile—not that the impact is any larger (it's "no impact" per the previous EPA findings, just "no impact" over a slightly larger area). Also: and:

I think there are many good reasons to up some TRLs on the Moon for exactly this reason. I don't think colonization is right in either case unless we know more, though—ie: sending people to actually live either place full time, including having kids. They might have changed the tiles to the new ones. The real change is the next ship with them moved leeward out of harm's way.

They intentionally left a couple tiles off the last flight in the skirt area, so I wonder if those 2 are intentional as well.

I missed this somehow. Yeah, they actually talked about this decades ago as a possible solution during the Lunar Bases and Space Activities in the 21st Century conference, and again at a civil engineering in space conference that was here in NM. I think it's a work-around for a base, but I don't think it's acceptable for a true colony. We definitely need some work on how gravity impacts long term health (and embryology).

One area of possible use for SpaceX on the Moon would be IRSU for O2 I suppose (slightly more on topic than lunar colonization). By mass, O2 is ~78% of Starship props. There might be a use case for O2 extraction (loads of it on the Moon), where they simply bring the CH4 with them. CH4 (full) for SS v2 is ~330t. CH4 (full) for SS v3 is ~506t. V2 has ~10.28 km/s dv (full, no payload, 100t dry). It can get 425t of props to LLO, enough to make a CH4 tanker that could 100% fill another V2 with CH4, with enough dv to get back to Earth (direct entry, or aerobrake—assuming the residuals are methalox, not just CH4). V3 has ~11.14 km/s dv (full, no payload, 120t dry). It can get 680t of props to LLO. Enough to refill a v3 with CH4, or 2 V2s (has about half what it needs leftover for TEI in the latter case). Note that if the tanker variants in this thought experiment were lighter we still might get better round trip margins—or even 100% propulsive returns. V3 needs ~250t of total props for a propulsive return to LEO at 120t dry, cut dry mass to just 98t, and it gets home with 200t of props. Of course if the residuals are just CH4, then the lunar SS brings excess O2 as cargo. In the V3 case if a lunar ISRU tanker brought up 617t, then our V3 would have a total of 790t of props (after donating the 506t of CH4 to top off a V3 in LLO)—7.5 km/s of dv. Alternately, our V3 keeps 506t of CH4, donates 174t of CH4 to the lunar vehicle, and accepts 1794t of LOX—which looks like it could be done with 2 trips of a tanker for LOX from the lunar surface. Our full V3 in LLO has that 11.14 km/s to play with now. ~2.9km/s will get our V3 to Mars orbit, another 1.4 km/s to LMO, looks like more nominal might be a total of ~4.7 km/s from LLO to LMO (propulsively). Our V3 gets to LMO with 560t of props as a tanker for other Starships there. Better with aerobraking.

Getting anything interesting done in space, particularly with humans will never happen at all left to government. Since there is no economic case for the Moon or Mars, it can solely happen as a project paid for a person or group willing to light the required money on fire to do it, not hobbled by partisan politics (changing goals every X years, or even what districts get the $$$ to work on it). So the time constraint is currently his lifespan... maybe Bezos' lifespan assuming BO gets their act together. Space is a money loser. If it was about money he'd just sell cars/robots and buy a yacht to chill on. SpaceX/BO/etc is chump change. All of your ad hominem claims are based on mind-reading—except that apparently you consider disagreeing with any of your personal politics evidence of mental illness . Or something. I think that it's reasonable to wonder about more ocean landing tests, but then again, I don't have the data that SpaceX has. They know a little something about rocket landing trajectories after all, and they have all the data. It's not like they have nothing to lose, either, they're literally aiming it at their launch facility. Note that FTS is still active, and they literally see the trajectory forming during the boostback burn in real time. Should it be off nominal at all... BOOM. The vehicle can't possibly make its way back to the point it is closest to SPI/Brownsville and possibly do something to impact either location, Newton would have shown that problem starting to happen at the beginning of boostback. I mean I think an airlock is a good idea, and in a larger vehicle, having 2 on EVA and 2 inside at least means that only 2 can die from an EVA failure. It would be reasonable to ask why they did 4 crew instead of 2 in the case of Polaris, they'd have gotten all the EVA/suit data, risking half as many lives. That said, they did test everything on the ground (as they talked about well before the flight). The fact that EVA is currently so incredibly complicated is not something I ever paid much attention to, but it makes sense, particularly with PLSS requiring the densest possible amount of consumables carried (hence pure O2), so all the problems of deep sea diving become a thing.

I don't think the Moon will ever be "colonized" as I am pretty uncertain that 1/6g is enough to make healthy humans. I'm unsure that 0.38g is healthy, actually, and if it isn't, a Mars colony is also off the table completely.

Can't wait to have another big rocket flying.

A A render of ship 31 vs 33 showing the smaller, leeward fins, etc, done by https://x.com/ScottLikesSLS

This is a level of absurdity that I haven't seen since the last (and only) person I have ever blocked on this site. SpaceX tested the EVA suits on Earth in a vaccum chamber. Safe haven? Gemini had no "safe haven." The Apollo CM and LM had no "safe haven." Even Shuttle or ISS—with airlocks—have no safe haven should a suit fail on EVA, the cycle time of the system is not the Discovery airlock in 2001. The fastest EVA abort I think was the Italian guy who got water in his helmet, and I think the repress was about 30 minutes. Given the hours of prebreathing, etc, I'm honestly not sure what the actual min safe time is—EVAs are incredibly complex. Since all 4 astronauts were on the same EVA in terms of breathing, they could simply close the hatch and repress to the suit air levels (exactly what they did for prebreathing beforehand), then slowly bring the capsule to the usual mix.

Certain POVs always assume they can actually know the contents of another person's mind (and some of the subject matter these folks tend to agree on even require the notion that someone can actually understand the consciousness of someone who is "not me"). Odd. It's not "escapist," it's simply reality, and has nothing at all to do with not caring about the only good planet in the solar system. I have stated a zillion times that I am not a "Mars Bro," yet nonetheless it is simple fact that a backup is a good plan in the long haul. Such a backup requires a completely self-sufficient offworld colony (the people thrive even if the ships from home stop coming). Do I think this happens soon? LOL, no. Does trying for it soon help humanity? Unambiguously "yes." How? Any serious attempt at such a path on Mars requires the sort of capability that gives us the ability to mitigate existential threats to Earth. Having to deflect an asteroid with our current capabilities would be nearly impossible. Having 100s (1000s, lol?) of huge fully tanked up ships in LEO gives us many more options in this scenario. Having some of those ships out at Mars adds more options—regardless of the success of said colony. It's funny that the most off topic, ad hominem attacks (that include some sort of mind-body duality that allows them to know within their bizarre epistemology what another thinks/feels) only ever come from one direction, and the people doing so consider this normal discourse. When I encounter people like this at cocktail parties, their opinion of people broadly is painted by whether those people agree with them on every other issue. A single point of failure in opinion alignment is heresy to that type of person, and the well is poisoned. The unbeliever must be burned at the stake. I'm not religious, myself, and I don't treat nomnally non-religious ideas as religion, either. BTW, he has said things that mirror Bezos, actually—that Earth is the best planet, and Mars colonization is not someplace better, just someplace different. His arguments for solar, EVs, etc? meant to get rid of burning hydrocarbons as much as possible—the opposite of not caring about Earth. Both want people off the planet doing stuff, and both men's ideas not only complement each other, but have the same endpoint. A better Earth, and an expanded humanity.

It's still a suicide burn. The only alternative I see is the boostback shaping a trajectory that drops nearly vertically, which they could also do, since a failure of the boostback burn then drops it offshore. The CRS-16 hydraulic failure (gridfins) had the booster land just off the coast after a nominal boostback and entry burn, however, which suggests that the boostback left it with an offshore trajectory (maybe the gridfins are doing more of the horizontal work than the landing burn?).

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2Sr8RMRBkdQ

The downward component of the velocity on a normal return trajectory will be offshore, but with a substantial horizontal component towards the pad (land). Lighting the engines (pointed mostly down) will slow the descent rate, so the trajectory will then move ashore as the vertical component is reduced more than the horizontal. The balance of this is adjusted on the fly, obviously. By the time it's headed ashore, it's already very much slower than at the start of the burn, and if there is no relight, it goes in the water. Failure after enough burn time to have the trajectory shaped ashore—it's not going very fast any more.

Booster in catch position before OLM mounting it:

I'm pretty unsure that starships in the common meaning will ever be a thing at all. Also, what about "star sailors?" What do they ride in? Universe sailors? (astronaut and cosmonaut, respectively) (I'm actually not a fan of the name, either, I just got past it faster, probably).