RCgothic

They also don't especially like being chilled. Ferrous magnets stop being magnets at cryogenic temperature, and Neodymium loses 30% of its strength. Samarium Cobalt are better, losing only 10%. I know this because of a stint as a production engineer where the design engineers gave me some large and awkwardly-shaped steel components to freeze-fit using liquid nitrogen without allowing me to machine any lifting features into them. Had some "fun" designing cryogenic lifting magnets.

It's the combination of being both heinously expensive and therefore also penny-pinching. Any other programme with this budget would have had this sorted.

Interesting that there going closed cycle on the engine. Peter Beck was previously adamant a simple gas gen engine was all the performance needed, in combination with lower structural mass fractions from using carbon fibre construction. The fact the performance seems about the same despite uprated engines makes me think they've had mass creep somewhere.

Lol.

And another thread on some nose cone weirdness:

They're not wasting any time getting B8 out:

Editing in the caption: More booster7 x7 Static fire pics.

SpaceX drone vantage: Edit: Ninja'd! Got to be quick to get ahead of @tater! That's what I get for adding a caption.

That'll be more dry mass. Could be for the booster outer ring, integrated blast shield/aerocover?

Interesting observation:

Superheavy has already fired. Not on all engines and not at full thrust, but it's still a static fire of a flight vehicle.

O.o There goes their perfect flight record.

I believe it's similar to the launch umbilical tower, but there's no equivalent to Saturn's Mobile Service Structure or Shuttle's Rotating Service Structure which allowed those vehicles to be serviced on the pad.

I believe I included all the applicable caveats.

Reflected energy goes with the 4th power of distance to the reflector.

SLS isn't the most powerful rocket ever built - Superheavy is. It isn't the most powerful rocket ever stacked - Starship Superheavy is. It isn't the most powerful rocket ever fired - Superheavy is. It won't be the most powerful rocket ever fired at full thrust - N1 is. It won't be the most powerful rocket ever launched - N1 is. It may, briefly, be the most powerful rocket ever to reach orbit. But only if you don't define power by payload to orbit - in which case Saturn V is. Sure, SLS is one of the most thrusty rockets ever built. But it's quite inefficient with that thrust. Most of the propellant is low-ISP SRBs with heavy casings, and the core stage is an enormously heavy sustainer architecture. Thrust doesn't directly feature in the rocket equation. Only ISP and mass ratio are of primary importance.

Now a large grass fire and what appears to be a literal dumpster fire inside the test area. >.<

I wonder how many this time.

Ultimately it's about conservation of momentum whilst minimising turbulent flow. When an aerofoil has a positive angle of attack, air molecules collisions with the underside are increased (as is pressure), accelerating the flow downwards. On the upperside the surface falls away from the air molecules, and collisions (and pressure) are reduced. The random motion of gas molecules causes the gas to move into the vacated area, and again the flow is accelerated downwards. Whether you view the lift as arising from the difference in pressure between the two surfaces or equal to the impulse imparted to the gas, it's just conservation of momentum. The gas is forced down (and a little bit forward - drag), the plane is pushed up (and back). The different shapes of aerofoils are all about keeping the flow attached to the aerofoil predictably and avoiding turbulence, which moves the air molecules more than necessary and so robs additional forward momentum from the aerofoil (drag), but also disorganises the flow such that the average deflection of air is less (lift reduces). How much the flow is diverted by an aerofoil is a function of angle of attack and speed, so if you vary your speed but want the same lift you also have to vary the angle of attack. But if the angle of attack is too large, the flow will detach and the wing will stall. Subsonic aerofoils like smooth transitions, because the gas can follow the curve of the surface. Supersonic aerofoils can't keep the flow attached to the upper surface, so they're always going to get drag and turbulence because of that. Instead they design around minimising transitions. Supersonic aerofoils don't like transitions, because the upstream flow can't see them coming and so each transition generates a shockwave, and shockwaves sap energy. A curve is effectively a series of infitinte transitions, so that's bad. Supersonic aerofoils are therefore sharp and flat with a minimum of transitions. Also, in an atmosphere everything is an aerofoil. A brick is an aerofoil. This is where body lift comes from. It's not as efficient as a well designed aerofoil though, and tends to come with a lot of drag. The only objects that don't produce at least some lift are balls and cylinders perpendicular to the flow because they can't vary their angle of attack. But even these can induce lift if spinning and moving in an airflow. Friction accelerates the boundary flow in one direction and decelerates it in another, which changes the exit angle of the airflow just like an aerofoil. This is called the magnus effect, and it's how sports balls are made to curve through the air among other effects. I think you've basically got all of this down already, sounds like your understanding is pretty good.

Yeah, an RP-1 rocket is just more powerful than a Hydrogen rocket of the same size. Constrained by the size of the VAB, the most powerful rocket NASA could build would be RP-1. It's also much lighter on the pad prior to fuelling than anything with SRBs, so less constraint on the crawler.

The clean pad decision is looking like a bad one, given 39B will have no other users for the foreseeable. No on-pad servicing options a related bad call. No trickle-chargers for FTS and and secondary payloads is a complete WTAF decision. And ICPS does seem to be severely handicapping for launch windows, which makes all the above even worse. Good article link @tater

It's a typo, $1.4B not $14B. But yeah, in addition to the seats is roughly 6t cargo up and 3t cargo down. Direct comparison with Soyuz doesn't include that.