RCgothic

At least some of the lower tiles had been missing prior to flight.

Those are all valid things to be considered, but none of them make a Mars or orbital colony impossible. Unlike the first pilgrims we do actually now know now what constitutes basic nutrition and sufficient generic diversity.

Basically, as with Falcon 9, NASA were initially skeptical of reuse, but SpaceX convinced them after multiple successful reuses of Dragon v1.

And the Crew-1 Dragon Resilience after its stay at the ISS is being retrofitted with a dome window in place of the docking adaptor for a free-flying mission later in the year, Inspiration-4.

Also, yes, Musk and Bezos can both be collosal members. They are both ruthless, have little to no patience, and work hours that (at least in Musk's case) lead to occasional public breakdowns. I particularly dislike the way Musk slandered and libelled a mine rescuer for no better reason than the guy didn't Musk's crazy cave submarine idea. That was low. There's no excuse for that sort of behaviour. But liking and respecting are two different things. These are the two richest guys in the world and they've built that success themselves and they've had to work for it. There is an Aphorism: How do you become a millionaire? Start as a billionaire and found a space company. Neither of these guys are in the space game for profit. They're using their resources to improve access to space to build a better future. Musk wants to take us to other planets because he believes if we don't then ultimately something is going to wipe us or and we will have no future. Bezos wants to take all industry offworld to space so that we can stop trashing our own planet and it can become a paradise. Musk wants to get us off gasoline for the same reason - it's why he founded Tesla. Liking these guys is not mandatory. They can be pretty unlikeable. But respect? How can anyone not?

Mars was the inspiration. The inspiration attracted the best engineers, and that made SpaceX the best rocket company. Without that belief in the goal, Falcon 1 would not have been a success and SpaceX would have failed. I strongly recommend you read LiftOff by Eric Berger. By comparison, Blue Origin's orbital industry isn't nearly as exciting. Combined with their secrecy, their works don't do any of their recruitment for them. That's why SpaceX will always beat them.

Dreamchaser and Cargo Dragon will already run concurrently alongside Cygnus for commercial really phase 2. That phase of the contract still has a while to run, so there's no chance of any of the cargo vehicles being replaced in a new phase any time soon (although Cygnus' missions all seem to be front-loaded in this phase). It's Commercial Crew Phase 2 that will soon be selected. I would be shocked if Crew Dragon weren't retained. By all accounts NASA is extremely pleased with it and it's the cheapest. It's Starliner that needs to prove it can perform.

Depends. I think that as long as NASA has the budget they'll keep at least two crew vehicles. Dissimilar redundancy and all that. 2nd phase of commercial crew will be interesting though. Both capsules will have to rebid against outside competition. I would be highly surprised if Dragon weren't chosen again, NASA seem extremely satisfied with price, service, and SpaceX's management culture. Starliner on the other hand may be vulnerable to replacement by a newcomer, such as Dreamchaser.

Last I heard New Glenn was something like 45 tonnes to LEO with a reusable 1st stage, and they don't plan to ever expend it. So technically it's a more powerful rocket than Falcon Heavy, though Heavy's expendable modes allow it to retain the advantage for BLEO. It's also a more powerful rocket than Vulcan, with 7 engines on the core stage vs 2. Vulcan Superheavy with 6 engines might be competitive, but that's only rumoured.

Next steps for SLS: Got some TPS repairs to do and FTS to install before going vertical for stacking at the end of May / start of June.

In theory they'll need to go for the same markets SpaceX does. NASA, DoD, Commercial, and quasi-internal megaconstellation (Amazon).

Interesting. I'm curious what the station schedule looks like and how long OFT-2 will stay up there.

Who knows. Perhaps tomorrow they'll open a hanger and New Glenn will roll out. They don't let on what they're up to which makes it much harder to be a fan. I exaggerate a little. We know New Glenn isn't going to appear until after Vulcan.

That was an awful lot of repeating things they'd already done. "Aggressive step by step" lol.

Even the mobile crane isn't big enough to stack Starship on top of Superheavy on the launch platform however. That's why the integration tower and its crane need finishing. The integration tower seems to be coming along nicely though.

It'd actually be quite funny if bits fell on the US. In a "haha, now we get to analyse the bits, maybe control your re-entry next time" kind of way. Europe looks mostly safe at least.

I think tater is probably right that re-entry descent and landing is better tested with soft Ocean landings before risking any barges or overflights of land. I'm thinking they'll probably skip supersonic flight and RTLS and go straight to orbital testing. If we consider Elon's schedule of July for orbit there isn't much time to squeeze in supersonic testing beforehand, especially if SN16 and 17 face the same license restrictions as SN15.

They have enough of a production queue that reuse isn't necessary at this stage. I expect SN16 to roll out for a repeat, given the FAA licence for the next mission is already issued and there were no obvious incidents with SN15 that would need investigating. Changing the mission parameters is probably not worth the hassle. If SN16 goes well maybe they skip SN17 (which is also covered by the current licence) and jump straight to SN20, but that might mean a gap in testing whilst they sort BN3 and the integration tower and orbital launch pad out. Reuse can come later.

Whilst starship looks slow, its terminal velocity for most of its fall is upwards of 200mph. Skydivers can manage a 1:1 glide ratio and Starship is based on similar principles. Even if Starship can only glide half as well, that counters 100mph winds. That doesn't seem overly restrictive, and SpaceX don't seem particularly worried about it either.

Wind is likely to be less of a constraint for Starship than F9. Starship has a lower fineness ratio which makes it less susceptible to wind shear.

Guidance isn't one of Starship's problems. It has aerodynamic control that has worked well since SN8. It hasn't missed the pad yet.

Yup, nobody is proposing launching SN20 as a crewed demo and landing it on an ocean platform. The difficulties for Starship's crew rating are: 1) No abort system on launch (from earth). 2) Re-entry. 3) Bellyflop manoeuvre. 4) Propulsive landing. None of those apply to crewed operations in space. Crew rating a version of starship that only operates only in space is therefore no big deal. There's a good chance lunar starship would be safer than any of the other options as due to size it has increased endurance and system redundancy. NASA particularly liked the Lunar Starship dual independent crew refuges.

Reference to the computer game Portal.

1) NASA bought two missions, not a lander. The missions include the starship architecture, so NASA isn't paying for anything they weren't aware of. 2) The contract payments are based on milestones. No milestone delivery, no money. If SpaceX wants to spend their money on unrelated things, they're free to do so. It's not NASA's money they're spending. 3) "Awful Mars rocket" doesn't ring true. China's opaque ambitions aside, nobody else has any other credible pathway to a crewed Mars mission.