tater

ITAR-compliant disposal?

Not picking something well beyond current TRLs, I'd like to see an NTP test flight. Any NTP, but with enough propellant to give it a decent workout. Obviously needs some instruments and a high gain for whereever they would send it.

Or maybe they end up adding legs back in. (keep removing parts til you have to add some back) It's interesting to remember that landing on the launch mount was part of the initial concept (which I thought was nuts back then, as well).

Yeah, the show is pretty well done, and the crew are all just decent humans.

Live in 37 hours, lol.

Making it look routine. Given the accuracy of F9 on a wobbly ASDS, and the no-hover nature of F9 landings, maybe they can do better than I imagine with SH? I mean they must have some confidence.

Landed

Music

live in 44 Or launch in 44 min... live before

I have to say, I still find the idea of it being that precise WRT those loading points... hard to imagine.

Obviously a better version of my doodle about where I though the cradle/carrier/whatever should go. My craptacular PS of sevenperforce's diagram for reference:

For any speculative mission in the middle-near time frame—<10 years—Starship is certainly the elephant in the room. This is particularly true where the mission target is Mars. An expended SS (SSe) could easily put a decent sized spacecraft en route to Mars. That's ignoring any attempts by SpaceX to land a SS itself, I just mean as part of testing vehicle capability (or demonstrating to NASA that SSe is an option for certain missions). Still, already existing vehicles seem to be more OP's point.

Yeah, it's certainly not awesome. Obviously not an insurmountable problem. Eat a low residual diet, etc. I know when I go backpacking, I tend to digest rather a lot an end up without a huge, um, residual. I've gone on some longer trips where I went several days without more than liquid waste. BTW, weather is now 80% "go" for Inspiration 4. The large tube with the poop icon folds down. There is a separate collection system and tank for urine. Both are I assume negative pressure .

They always expected free flights and this contingency—the vehicle has a larger volume than the Apollo CM, and the toilet is at least a toilet, and not just bags with stick-um around the rim. Apollo waste collection often took the astronaut almost an hour. Fully strip, etc. It's a question literally everyone has though, might be a good thing to cover. Every public talk I have seen by an astronaut has someone ask that question.

They have to set a window, it needs a NOTAM, and all the other range restrictions.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mcY8W9y0VaA Livestream. For some reason they don't have embedding set. Live now. (I don't have time to watch it, but maybe someone wants to, lol)

LOL, political issues are never taken into account. So 10+ years and billions it is, then

True enough, but having not done any sample return at all yet, they need to start someplace. Any return vehicle landed would be well-served to have a contingency sample capability (sample the landing site). Maybe they mean to land the pickup lander as a separate mission? So sample return is 2 launches? Of course both then need to work for mission success. Remember the point of this particular thread is that such a mission need not take several billion $ and a decade, but could happen sooner, and for by Mars mission standards, "chump change" on the order of a few hundred million $. The few hundred million option could be Keep It Simple, Stupid! and do what would be contingency sampling for a more expensive mission (landing site sample, as Apollo did first thing off the steps). Should that be achieved, they could send more cheap return vehicles to different sites, and they'd have Mars samples before the complex mission even left Earth. It occurs to me that the point of a 400kg return vehicle I read about is so it can stay with the rover. Ie: land rover with sample pickup arm, AND the return vehicle, drive to cache, load samples, send return vehicle. That simplifies some things, though means the sample payload is lower given that small return vehicle mass.

That's what I would think as well. Of course any such cache has to be in or near someplace appropriate to land in (landing ellipses are fairly large/flat), then they need another rover to pick them up, and bring them to the return vehicle. Really does seem needlessly complex to me vs landing, sampling the landing site, then leaving.

Pretty good landing.