RCgothic

As far as we're aware this a permanent integration tower. It'll get some cladding to tidy it up at some point.

In SpaceX's particular case, that's just traded expending a cheap 2nd stage for expending the entire first stage. And the first stage also costs more than usual because of advanced!materials. That's not a good trade. If utilising different engines and lightweight materials would make a big difference to turn a regular rocket into an SSTO (and note that several of them technically can already SSTO with extremely small payloads but never do), it would also make a big difference to a TSTO as well. The only possible way an SSTO makes sense is if you want to reuse everything. And to reuse everything, everything needs a heat shield. Everything needs enough control authority for re-entry. All the extras need to be taken to orbit and back (eating potential payload). Whereas to fully reuse a TSTO only the upper stage needs the extra bits, and the first stage can be much more lightweight. SpaceX in particular aren't daft, and for starship they've taken the single best way to get to orbit fully reusable with a lot of payload. If SSTO made more sense, they'd have done that. Finally, note that although SSMEs and RL10 are extremely efficient *engines*, their propellant tanks are larger, more insulated, more expensive, and heavier than the tanks required for alternative propellants. Storing hydrogen is hard. Engine efficiency gives a linear benefit to the rocket equation. Mass fraction gives an exponential benefit. Depending on the application it can be better to optimise dry mass fraction than engine efficiency. A hydrogen powered stage might get more mass from LEO to the moon, but because of the better mass fraction a methane powered stage could send more mass from LEO out of the solar system entirely. This is just one example to show why rockets don't always use "the best" even if they could. Hydrogen usually needs side boosters to get off the ground. Aluminium orthogrid may be lighter than steel, but it's more expensive, more time consuming to produce, and needs more heat shield than welded steel, for instance. "Best" can mean many different things. Throwing better engines and materials on a rocket doesn't necessarily improve it if it makes the whole thing more expensive than the benefit.

The only edge case I can think of is of the SSTO is landing somewhere fuel is available but a booster stage for a TSTO isn't. If there's a booster available, TSTO is always better. If there's no fuel available then it's not rapidly reusable as SSTO Twice (without refuelling) isn't a thing on Earth. Bit niche.

What is the point of an SSTO? Cheap access to orbit? An expendable 2 stage will *always* be cheaper than the advanced engineering required for an SSTO. Reuse? A reusable TSTO will always have more margin available than an equivalently engineered SSTO. Always.

If it were economical someone would be doing it.

I really don't see everything being readied by end of July. There's still so much to go.

That's sure to set back the orbital launch attempt. Darn.

Yes, the physics of KSP include discontinuities. When a spacecraft moves from one sphere of influence to another (defined by a simple radius on a per body basis) it experiences a sudden switch. In real life there is no discontinuity and things like libration points exist where the forces cancel out. Orbits are no longer pure ellipses when you consider n bodies either. This would be extremely resource intensive to calculate for a dynamic situation such as a game. Patched conics is a good approximation for performance reasons, but it is not fully realistic.

Mark Watney had better not get stuck on Mars.

And basically rebuilt between flights. That's not "cheap frequent access to space" in my book.

How many sections does it need to be the highest structure in South Texas?

Observers think first part of the catch mechanism has been installed on the launch tower. It's a super-heavy duty winch, very much excessive for an elevator. The crane winch for lifting Superheavy/Starship onto the pad is expected to be in the crane up top. Due to rotation of the crane beam it'd be seriously unusual to try and articulate cables through that rotating joint. Therefore this isn't that. I'm not sure I agree that the arms will be used to stack Superheavy and Starship on the launch pad. That'd be a very much more complicated mechanism than a linear catch with rotation to the pad performed by a crane on the top of the tower.

Whilst we're on the subject of superior ISO standards, I'm quite fond of ISO 216, A, B and C series paper. Fold in half to get the next size down without changing the aspect ratio. A series has an area of 1m2 at A0. This means that A series sizes have areas that are a regular fraction of 1m2. B series is the size half way between each A series size and the next size up. B0 has a width of 1m. This means B series sizes all have a side that is a regular fraction of 1m. C series is half way between B and A, making it fractionally larger than A so that A series paper will comfortably fit inside a C series envelope of the same size. So cool!

13x 28-day months don't divide nicely by anything, the lunar cycle, isn't well approximated by current months either and isn't directly relevant to most people anyway.

Taller, I reckon. The 2nd pad is nowhere near ready to start construction, and if the 22m payload fairing starship variant in the Starship User Guide is actually ever going to be a thing it'll need more than minimal tower clearance on the standard 18m fairing Starship version.

There are plenty of situations where "date modified" is not the correct date to sort by. But moving on from date formats in filenames, my fantasy calendar would be 12 months of 30 days of 5 weeks of 6 days, plus a variable length festive week to make up the difference in the end of December, 5 or 6 days. Advantages - year always starts on Monday 1st January. Years end on Saturday December 35th, except on leap years when they end on Sunday December 36th. Dates always correspond to the same day. The 23rd of a month would always be a Saturday, for instance, and you can know that any number of years in advance without consulting a calendar. A 4 day working week followed by a 2 day weekend is a better ratio than present 5 on 2 off. Pay periods would be more uniform - a work month is always 20 days, no variable number of days or weekends. No Tuesdays (because Moonday, Odin'sday, Thor'sday, Frigga'sday, Saturn'sday and Sunday are all more awesome). Disadvantages - born on a weekday? Yeah, that's forever. Just celebrate on a weekend like most people do most years anyway. Entire planet would need to change to avoid conflicting dates. And it's never going to happen, we're too locked in to our current bizarre system.

Or dodecaweb.

Haha, that's what I meant. Just the order is important, not the separator as long as it's not something incompatible. I generally use "-".

For file names I definitely prefer YYYY/MM/DD. Sorts alphanumerically in an order that makes sense.

There was a photo of a shipping status chart for engines for the orbital launch test spotted at Hawthorne recently. It seemed to be counting down to approx end of 1st week of July. Assuming then 1 week to go through acceptance testing at McGregor and 2 weeks for installation and static fires at Starbase, we're then looking at end of July or start of August at the very earliest. There's still a lot to do on Booster 2, SN20, and the orbital launch complex (tower, launch table and tank farm) though. My personal guess would be late some time in late August or early September.

As an engineer who has to use both systems, as far as I'm concerned if all knowledge of the Imperial system were burnt in a fire nothing of value would be lost.

Ouch

I believe they're currently resurfacing the road to take heavier loads and allow vehicles to turn more easily.

And they have rolled out previous SN's with engines pre-installed where it made sense. They do do a lot of engine installation and swap outs at the suborbital pads though. As mentioned by others, Superheavy may be particularly challenging to install engines on at the pads. The outer engines would interfere with the pad interface, and the orbital launch platform is at substantial height.