RCgothic

Raptors:

Aka hurricane season.

Those BE-4s look very incomplete to me considering the amount of soon(TM) we've been getting every time we've asked about them!

B1049, oldest booster to reach 10 flights and oldest still in service, is scheduled to be expended on its eleventh launching Nilesat-301. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Falcon_9_first-stage_boosters

*Especially* when your rocket engine is chugging!

I would say these are for B8. B7's header tank is all but certain to be damaged too where the transfer tube ripped away, and I don't see it being repaired internally. And if they have to separate B7 to get to it, well that reduces B7 to a similar level of assembly as B8.

The tweet was deleted, but the picture is still up in this article: https://spaceexplored.com/2022/04/22/leaked-image-shows-damage-inside-spacexs-starship-booster-7-prototype/

Looks like B7 has done an SN3 internally: Likely to be scrapped IMO.

It'd be relatively simple to whip up an expendable version of Starship for outer system probe missions. The refuelling at Mars thing wasn't a serious mission architecture, but an aspirational way for reusably extending *human* presence through the solar system. (Yes, this is so far in the future that Starship will probably have been retired, so I wouldn't think about it). Fully refueled in LEO, an expendable starship could seriously cut down on transit times for the same probe launched on SLS (at the expense of very high arrival speed). There's probably a median way where transit time is substantially (instead of seriously) reduced and a braking stage is included.

I saw someone in Twitter suggest 1.5y could be done (not sure if for 100t or standard probe). But it'd arrive at low Saturn orbit at 30km/s. Haven't run the maths myself.

I'm not sure Russia is physically capable of this. There are more satellites than there are interceptors. Unless the satellites are vulnerable to electronic disablement of some sort, which I'm pretty sure would be rapidly patched as next gen shells start getting deployed.

Sort of Blue Origin, but more Amazon project Kupier news: Missions awarded to Blue Origin, ULA and Arianespace

I'm sorry, I made a maths error earlier. MN multiplied by km/s is GW, not TW. I was off by a factor of 1000. >.<

It's especially sad because it *could* have been moved, (on 5 engines if necessary with an engine out for maintenance) but even an immediate "GO" decision probably wouldn't have been soon enough given Hostomel airport's location and the timings involved.

The reason given for the delay strikes me - no positive pressure means hazardous gasses can't be certainly excluded from parts of the ML, so technicians can't safely access those spaces. Technicians in proximity to an enormous rocket during first fuelling operations is definitely a... thing.

Although maybe the international partners should be thinking about that. I wonder if the ISS has taken any good photos of Srebrenica recently.

You'd think spending a billion dollars would ensure "right first time".

There are now updated images:

Hehe:

I think theoretically tapping tidal power reduces the size of the tidal bulge - it offers additional resistance to the tidal deformation. A smaller tidal bulge will subsequently exert less torque on the moon. But I believe most of the tidal effect on the moon comes from deformation of earth's mantle, not its oceans. It's pretty inconceivable humanity could tap enough tidal energy for the moon to notice.

But if they don't have someone staying at the gateway what is the point of the gateway /s

Also, without SLS/Orion swallowing such a large chunk of the budget, there would be enough money to spend on things like extra missions and surface habs. Congress won't give that same budget to anything other than SLS/Orion. That's the part of the problem that needs to change. Because this schedule is pitiful.

No part of SLS/Orion is taking people to Mars. Ever. Not at this cadence. To continue with this schedule will be to totally surrender crewed space exploration initiative to private endeavours.

Although "much more" is still comparatively little when you have mass-altering ability combined with fusion thrusters (impulse engines)