RCgothic

A skim read of the report doesn't reveal anything unreasonable in terms of mitigation measures IMO. SpaceX will be pretty happy with this I think.

Increase in ESM diameter? It could be flush with Orion or even bi/co-conic like Gemini.

Mitigated FONSI:

hyyyyyyype!

Scrapping Orion, I think they could have made a decent architecture with a launcher capable of 19t to TLI: 19t to TLI gets you an Apollo-style LM capable of braking itself into LLO for rendezvous. 19t to TLI gets you a CM *twice* the mass of Apollo, plus a CSM easily capable of LOI, TEI, and lunar rendezvous manoeuvres. 19t to TLI gets you ~4.7t of emplaced downmass in an Apollo-style descent stage for mission extension modules. 19t to TLI is within Falcon Heavy's capabilities. Or the launch vehicle can get away with just 52t all-up to LEO if the departure stage is a Centaur V with 27t of residuals. A much smaller, cheaper, launch vehicle that can launch more often is going to be far more useful overall than SLS.

Ouch. Follow-up to Artemis III likely delayed to 2028. If I were NASA I'd be ordering more ICPS to make use of ML-1.

Annoying for it to happen this soon into the mission though. Hope it's an outlier rather than evidence of a generally more hostile than planned environment.

This is why CRS-25 is moving: Hydrazine sniffed where it isn't supposed to be.

A loading device?

Another 2 week delay:

Yeah, it wasn't great.

I think this was the juiciest factoid to come out of that interview.

New update: These are impressive stats. Oxygen-Rich Staged Combustion, so not surprising it's performing above Merlin. It's not as high as RD-180 though. Wonder what the TWR is like.

That makes 4 thrusters failed so far this mission! Yikes.

Edit: Nevermind, Starliner stuff in the wrong thread. Payload delivered, good job ULA!

Most fairings are vented to external pressure to avoid internal pressure blowing the fairing open prematurely as external pressure reduces. But with a small door it can be built to resist internal pressure. Internal pressure adds rigidity which allows mass reduction by deletion of otherwise necessary stringer reinforcements. This is particularly necessary for Starship because it has to survive lateral aero loads during re-entry. However, some way or another starship is going to have to cope with a larger payload door. Payloads as small as individual starlinks are not typical.

Apparently the logic behind a small door is pressure stabilization of the nose cone: Might work for Starlink, but not sure about any larger payload.

It passed!

So cool:

Nice BE4 hot-fire test footage:

I would have thought that if they hadn't meant to that to destruction they'd have stopped after the first one went to investigate what went wrong. Two in quick succession actually implies they meant to do that, IMO

Genuinely surprised by this after seeing the damage!

Couldn't make it up! Not far off @Minmus Taster!