RCgothic

This is why:

5. Delta IV Heavy sets itself on fire every time it launches. Nuff said. 4. Ariane 4. I love the flared out payload section, narrow neck, and wide base. The only SRBs on my list! 3. Falcon Heavy. It's the biggest and most powerful rocket currently flying. Twin booster landings is like something out of sci-fi. 2. Falcon 9. It's simply revolutionary. Watching boosters land never gets old and it's blown away it's commercial competition. All its competitors are still scrabbling to catch up with a target that's moved. 1. Saturn V. Unequalled. Should never have been cancelled. Honourable mentions to Soyuz, Vulcan and Starship Superheavy. Dishonourable mentions to Shuttle for keeping us in LEO for 30 years and killing 14 crewmembers, and to SLS/Orion for the opportunity cost of eating the budget for things that don't suck.

Nice:

A few Elon Tweets this evening about SN8's flight. Seems very likely it'll flop. Either that or he's just downplaying expectations.

I approve this definition.

It appears there's a serious issue with an LH2 prevalve on the core stage. The prevalve is not a small bit of plumbing, and it looks to me it may be difficult to access without dismounting an engine. There's also some sort of issue with the TVC test, which wasn't reported when they posted their green tick against test 5 all the way back in mid September. Frankly this suggests a culture terrified of reporting further delays. Not sure this is an improvement on "indifferent to constant delay and expense".

I don't expect Superheavy 1 to have enough thrust to carry a payload.

What do we call it if SN8 doesn't stick the landing? I don't think it's appropriately a RUD. I'm leaning towards Emergency Lithobraking Manoeuvre.

So that's the bottom of it. The best bit about this is that it was discovered in testing, it's easily corrected, and it's not something that would arise on previously-good used boosters. Range is going to be busy.

It isn't the same fineness ratio as F9 though. It's about 70% longer but 240% as wide!

So that's an all but definite slip into 2022 for Artemis 1. There was no slack. Any delay now is 1 to 1.

Agreed, the whale mouth is a bit odd. Trans-shipping of cargo in space is also something they'll need to consider.

IRL flight computers are much more capable and engine gimbal is capable of defeating quite substantial aerodynamic forces. E.g. Falcon 9 has no rear fins and a fairing that is larger than the main body. In KSP that's a no-no, but it's actually not that big a deal.

Beautiful.

All three affected cores - Crew-1 (1061.1), GPS-III (1062.2), and Sentinel (1063.1) are new boosters with new Merlin's. It could be there's a slight susceptibility in the latest batch of engines that the static fire program has uncovered. This is why we test.

Several engines getting stripped out of F9s after recent static fire issue.

Surprise! Roscosmos didn't like getting mocked online:

It's a very complex subject, so explaining simply is hard. Basically, it's very hard to turn antimatter into useful work because it takes many metres of heavy material to absorb the energy released in the form of gamma radiation (which likes to go straight through things), and that's bad for rockets. Also the slightest percentage of energy transferred to the vehicle instead of the propellant requires vast radiators to dissipate, and those are heavy and so bad for rockets.

The data is good: The vibration is apparently nothing to worry about.

Static Fire! And then nothing exploded! Looks successful!

Yup, that definitely wasn't the full fury of even one Raptor. Preburners.

And if it launches on time it will shave I think 3 days off the fastest turnaround. Wikipedia says B1058 Demo-II to ANASIS-II was 1m 20d, but that month includes May 31st (51d). B1060 L11 to L14 would be 1m 18d but September was only 30d long, so 48d. At least until B1058 reclaims the title in November with CRS21!

Nope

Gorgeous: