tater

Will likely be needed in this thread:

Starlink revenue has more room to grow than launch services as well.

Expended the booster.

Vs it being led by self-interested incompetents harvesting taxpayer money for gain since... forever? Once again, we get it, you personally disagree with some of the politics of one human, which you use to poison the well of "spaceflight" and probably EVs, robots, etc, ad nauseum. Politics that for those of us a little older look like utterly moderate, indeed left-of-center positions not that many years ago—and we know this because that's exactly how many of us might describe our own POVs—utterly unchanged for decades, yet somehow rendered as "extreme" in the 2020s by the lunatics running the asylum. How about no more "nudge, nudge, wink, wink—a nod's as god as a wink to a blind bat!" in the forums?

Musk's statement, given the desired overlap of crew missions, was truthful—even if the plan goes as everyone had expected it to yesterday. They will come home as soon as possible—which is after Crew-10 comes, so Crew-9 (that they are now part of) comes down. Most normies (in this sense anyone not completely immersed in space travel) have no idea what's going on at ISS, and were calling Butch and Suni "stranded" even when they were within a sort of nominal extended mission stay. So a normie might say, "Can't we just bring them home, ASAP?" and Musk could answer—"Yes, we will do that." Which they will—as already planned.

Wow, MS-26 also leaves in march, and MS-27 is April I never paid that much attention, but I would have assumed the Soyuz and Dragon crews would have been out of phase with each other, not all the same (ish) months.

The suits and return vehicle are already there. The delay in making a decision last year was certainly at least in part a NASA decision. Boeing said the vehicle was safe—at some point close to the final decision, but they had already been there far longer than the initial mission. I'd say that the lack of transparency was well within the purview if the administration to deal with. They could have pulled the trigger on a Dragon return sooner I suppose, but that screws up Crew-9 either way. The only alternative was to buy a bespoke Dragon launch just to return them (which would cost 2X what they have paid for the current situation)—of course they could have charged Boeing I suppose. Still it's bizarre to bring them home in February vs March. There's a CRS mission in March, actually. They could send it early, but with a Crew Dragon swapped for Cargo Dragon, and pack in supplies? Crew-10 is 25 March. Send them up early, and send Crew-9 home early.

SpaceX wants to blow up rockets. For profit. Or something .

Orion can be delivered with LAS to Earth orbit (MEO?) with NG, assuming the 45t claim is accurate (I'm less sure given the very low TWR with no payload, but maybe they were not running at actual full thrust). I think that it without a doubt will get to that point, and Bezos has said all BO rockets will be crew rated. Orion CSM is ~26.5t wet, and the LAS is ~6.1t. Useless for Mars, though. The heatshield has problems with direct entry from the Moon, so the Mars DRA/M images of Orion as the crew return vehicle—leaving the returning Mars transfer vehicle, then doing a direct entry—seem far-fetched to me as it stands (also it then needs to sit around for a couple years and to be ready to roll). Course Starship to Mars with people seems pretty far-fetched to me, I'll believe it is plausible after an uncrewed landing.

I have a feeling Isaacman has no sunk cost fallacy issues on SLS. Wonder if they keep Orion?

As far as Manifest Destiny is concerned, it has exactly nothing to do with Martians, except for the people who someday decide to stay (if that is ever a thing). The history of the words? I'm utterly unconcerned, and I would imagine that the overwhelming majority of people hearing them hear them with no baggage whatsoever. I understand the history of the US decently well, and of the phrase—and I don't see it as negative (my US history is from sources other than those aligned with the garbage history of Zinn and his fellow travelers (I use that last phrase very intentionally)). As someone who owns 2 pieces of real property in the western US, if I thought otherwise I would have to give them away or be a hypocrite. Anyone with a problem with the colonization of the Americas who lives here can put up, or shut up. Give away your property to a native, or stop with the phony virtue signalling. Anyone in this position can easy demonstrate real commitment this way, so what if you lose your house, think of the natives that were displaced 200 years ago! If the west (I can see a chunk of it about the size of Connecticut out my living room window) was subjugated—perhaps they should have developed metallurgy. When the Europeans arrived the Americas were a stone age culture, so they lost. Applying modern cushy norms to hundreds of years ago is silly. The Europeans did exactly what the Mexica, Inca, or even the Chacoans here in NM would have done with disparate technology (minus the human sacrifice, anyway). Humans are humans, and once of sufficient size, we've formed empires—even in the pre-colonial Americas. In the race to get modern tech, the Americas lost, so their fate was sealed—heck, had Europeans come and not conquered at all, just come in peace to trade then leave, the Americas would have been doomed by diseases they had no exposure to. Infantilizing the natives also bugs me. The history of the Mayflower and the Plymouth colony is fascinating to me not for the Pilgrim stuff, but for the history of the natives. The Wampanoag saw the Europeans as a tool to be used against their enemies the Narragansett, who for some reason managed to not die off from the plagues that interactions with Europeans had spread down the coast. Their machinations were very human and understandable by anyone who reads history. I recall thinking it reminded me of WW1 Germany sending Lenin to Russia—"He'll destabilize our enemy, then we can clean up his rabble later!" They were, "These guys have guns, we can increase our power, deal with the Narragansett, then we deal with the handful of Europeans—the dummies can't even farm well!"

Save the Americas for living heart removal to affect the weather (or whatever they ripped hearts out of people for)! All human history is humans knocking their neighbors over the head and taking their stuff. The people here in the Americas did the same themselves, and I'm sure each group considered their own conquests "inspiring." (even the ones who used the conquered peoples for a supply of beating hearts to rip out) Anyone who lives here in the Americas who has a problem with this who is not 100% native has a simple expedient—write the title to any real property you own over to the first native American you run into (GIVE IT, don't SELL it!), and move back to Europe. I guess you have to work back to wherever your people first came from when Europe was uninhabited. Luckily you get a pass cause we bumped off the Neanderthals. But it's more complex in recorded history given all the back and forth in Europe before the Romans conquered/killed/enslaved everyone (thinking of my Celtic ancestors here, the Romans were pretty rough on them). Meanwhile in the modern iteration of one of the civilizations than managed to come up with metallurgy in the time since we figured out stone tools in East Africa—we're apparently going to Mars now. Not sure how the timeline works here, the window is Q4 2026, then Q4 2028. Not really ideal for Isaacman to actually get this done.

Possibly Starshield were hitching a ride with Starlinks, hence the wonky stream coverage.

Entry burn happened Another routine flight to space (and back), even if stream was sorta fubar.

Stream hosed. Liftoff https://x.com/i/broadcasts/1OyKAZZBwRqGb back fairing sep No video now, had been booster vid

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Ob_Isaacman: he has been officially put forth for confirmation as the next NASA Admin.

SpaceX clearly doesn't care about leaks and wants to blow up tens of millions of dollars worth of spacecraft every mission for the LULZ. It's a deep conspiracy, and they will actively try to hide what they are doing from all the Smart People™ on the internet who are not the dupes of the conspiracy so they can successfully blow up rockets.

Hopefully much of this discussion becomes moot do to Chevron deference being rightfully eliminated.

I actually agree, and a Mars ship needs legs anyway, so it needs to be solved. But they seem intent on catching it, so...