RCgothic

There's nothing about that that is correctly applicable to Starship. Starship isn't coming in flat, has an angle of attack (and has large fins). It has plenty of lift. (And even with a poor L/D, drag is desirable. It doesn't take very much lift to stay aloft at very high speeds). Heating is inversely proportional to bluntness. Bluntness is the inverse of radius of curvature. Because of its size and high AoO, Starship is the bluntest body that will ever have re-entered. It's much blunter than shuttle or X37B in absolute terms.

Looks like a hopping mockup to me.

Enterprise couldn't even launch under its own power.

If it were merely Elon time, I'd agree, unfortunately we're now on FAA time. It won't be only a month, there's still an at least 30 day minimum public consultation period that has yet to even start, plus an unknowable amount of time after that to complete the process. Despite that on balance of probability I think Starship/Superheavy is more likely than not to get approval to launch this year, that SLS is more likely than not to slip into next year, and that a version of Starship/Superheavy will launch before SLS. SLS will be a more complete system at the time of first launch, however Artemis 1 will not be an operational launch, it'll be an uncrewed test flight with a less than fully complete Orion capsule. By the time of SLS's first operational flight Artemis II in 2023 earliest, I fully expect Starship will already be operational for uncrewed payloads.

Yes it is and no it's not. If the end goal is ever increasing human presence beyond LEO, SLS/Orion is entirely the wrong way to go about it. For cost and manufacturing reasons it will never be capable of more than one or two flights a year and that will never result in a permanent offworld presence. Nothing beyond a token advancement can be made whilst this collective boondoggle of SLS and Orion swallows the exploration budget. In the complete absence of Starship upper stage reuse, the marginal cost of one Starship flight is going to be in the region of 65x less than one SLS/Orion flight. Starship's engines cost under $6m total *now*, stainless steel and methane are cheap, and as it has a proper production line Starship is going to be well under $40m per upper stage. (There's no serious obstacle to Superheavy reuse, even if it has to sprout legs to enable that). With full rapid reusability there could easily be 400+ Starship flights per SLS. That's what's needed for a permanent offworld presence. I personally am prepared to wait a little longer for a NASA human exploration program as it refocuses itself on something more sustainable post-cancellation of SLS/Orion, in the context of the rapid advancement of private exploration.

12th August is my understanding, although yes American dates are strange.

The HLS appeal process blackout isn't officially over yet apparently.

This is just an ISS crew rotation taxi.

I very much doubt the shuttle could have taken the ET and a 25t payload to LEO. Pretty sure it would be either or.

Soon(TM)

It actually makes you wonder how they managed to add an engine and two booster segments to SLS and still omehow end up with 15t fewer to LEO. The 100t figure for starship clearly doesn't include the mass of the vehicle and landing props, which is roughly 150t right now. Actual mass to LEO for Starship would be ~250t reusable.

Yeah, sometimes it's legitimate to count the mass of the vehicle as payload.

Ah, difference must be that I'm conservatively including stage mass in the "250t to LEO"

I was about to reply that some of those categories still required qualification. ;-) But yes, as of now Starship Superheavy gets the the *ever assembled* qualifier on all of those. What makes it relevant to this thread is that NASA continuously puts out "SLS, world's most powerful rocket ever" PR. As stated, that was always dubious. But as of now a full Starship Launch System stack has been assembled before a full SLS stack. It remains to be seen whether SLS briefly gets an *ever to reach orbit* qualifier (N1 didn't) before Starship does. I suspect the FAA are going to work through the details of giving Starship permission to launch before SLS/Orion is ready, but there's still at least a small amount of doubt about that.

More capable. 250t of stage (50t dry), payload and propellant in LEO translates to about 55t pure payload to TLI. If the stage is only 40t then that's 65t to TLI. Edit: I'm not counting stage as payload, but for Lunar starship that could be legitimate.

Fully expendable ~250t to LEO.

SLS will never now hold the title of most powerful rocket ever assembled (a dubious claim in any case).

touchdown!

"hardware rich" development program actually became anything but.

NASA don't have to pay out for milestones not delivered under fixed price contracts.

Basically the crane gets less stable as it lifts a load, so to compensate it gets derated. CoG gets higher, overturning moment of wind on the load increases, things like that

I'm not in aerospace, but I do have experience of the UK's third largest defence contractor. They got to that size by acquisitions, and frankly you can tell. It's a bunch of different similarly sized companies welded together. Nothing moves quickly, it has a load of different systems that don't work well together, way too many onerous procedures, and the overhead costs are staggering. If it didn't own original IP it'd struggle to hold on to existing customers who are exasperated by costs and timescales. Legacy companies sometimes get so big that failure is almost inevitable. They overcharge and move slowly, surviving on market dominance. If they can't absorb younger more competitive startups they'll get supplanted. Whilst they may have many impressive past achievements, the glory days are well and truly over.

At least a month probably much more. Just entering a minimum one month public consultation period, after which the are more steps. Environmental Impact Assessments don't move fast .