RCgothic

As per usual, I'll believe it when it's on the pad. Roscosmos is long on plans and renders, short on development.

New launch tower section.

Is this 4 and 5?

Huh. Aeon1Vac surely isn't remotely powerful enough for TerranR. AeonRVac for Terran1 technically doesn't contradict that statement? For AeonR: with a payload 2/15ths to 1/5th a starship the TerranR must weigh ballpark 670 to 1000t. That's roughly at least 95t (900kN) per engine. With a TWR 1.5, that'd be 1.4MN. Not a small engine?

If Terran 1 uses 9 Aeon1 engines and Terran R uses 7 AeonR engines then AeonR must be much more powerful than Aeon1 and it's probably an AeonRVac not an Aeon1Vac on the 2nd stage.

Visorsats have been a big improvement over v0.9. Comparison to OneWeb.

First rival to respond to Starship rather than F9. Kudos.

Literally chief engineer of SpaceX.

131 busted: It's like AB1 or something.

If you've read anything about how he runs his companies you'd know he learns as much detail about everything as he can and that the buck for technical decisions stops with him. He doesn't delegate those decisions. He knows enough to make them himself. That man is a machine.

! Might be 81 though. Personally I think it looks like 131 though. 3 digits not 2.

I think I've also heard him say he isn't going to risk himself on spaceflight lest the driving impetus to make life multi-planetary dies with him.

Bezos family going to space and then rapidly returning.

So that behaviour wasn't expected then. Interesting.

Falcon Heavy's fully reusable payload to LEO isn't double F9's. It could lift maybe 22t back calculating from 8t to GTO. That's about 16 extra starlinks (flat packed in pairs). Additional costs are 2x booster refurbishments plus additional refurbishment for a spicier re-entry (and higher risk of loss of) the centre core. Saved cost is one second stage, which is thought to be the majority of the cost of an internal falcon mission. So that might work. I guess we'll know if we start seeing FH Starlink missions. Expending the centre core gets ~90% of fully expendable performance. This could lift over 3x as many starlinks as F9, volume disregarded. So this could lift twice as many most likely. However compared to 2 F9 launches you've got 2 booster refurbs (same) and have expended a first stage and a second stage instead of two second stages, which sounds like a bad trade. That's only ever likely to happen in a full scale nuclear exchange when the missile farms open up. In spaceflight there's no reason to have the risk and complexity of launching two spacecraft at once. Best we'll see is a quick turnaround of the range, Gemini-Agena style.

None. The Artemis program can't spare any. But a starship architecture could send over a hundred tonnes to a Neptune intercept direct with plenty DV left over for a fast transfer, and a hundred tonnes is plenty to brake into orbit with a decent science package even using hypergols.

Suspected for a while.

New rocket. NASA mission. No static fire requirement. Money saved.

I like this carrier idea better than dropping into warzones. I imagine there'd quickly be a new class of drone support ship if there's any issue landing on a carrier. Sufficiently distant to take the risk from other vessels but still protected within the group.

Cost/complexity no object, I'd guess: Kerolox 1st stage with kerolox crossfeeding side boosters. Maximise thrust. Hydrolox 2nd stage to push an enormous mass into LEO. Hydrolox 3rd stage for GTO/TLI. It's not that much DV really. Methalox 3rd stage for beyond. Refuelling, complexity and cost considerations would seem to completely bias the scale towards straight methalox however.

I discounted the impossibilities above, but in practice a hydrogen upper stage fitted on top of an existing booster would have a lot less propellant by mass due to hydrogen's much lower density. An equivalent mass upper stage would be a lot larger and wouldn't practically fit on top of a booster not designed for it. Either that or it ends up an abomination like Ares-1.