RCgothic

So ~360 bar to hit 2.5MN.

What's the previous record?

Wow. SLS isn't even necessarily compatible with clipper.

I can't believe people still think it's going to be some sort of water tower. It's gigantic. The footings and concrete supports are way beyond what is needed for a water tower. Either that or people are trolling in a way that's too subtle for me. The central pipe is either a temporary support for the concrete forms, or a support for a blast deflector. It's not lined for water and there's no plumbing below the pad footings.

This one I think.

Whenever I manage to beat @tater to a news item I feel ridiculously pleased with myself!

Depends on the payload mass relative to the stage mass. For a 56t payload, yes, RL10 would be better if you're staging shortly after the main launch vehicle has burned from the parking orbit. For a 1.3t payload like Persephone, a raptor stage would be better than a Centaur because for small payloads better mass fraction trumps better ISP. TWR isn't really important to vacuum stages already in orbit.

I would have thought flying polar missions from Vandy improves the possible cadence from Florida, but maybe and extra 2-3 flights a year isn't worth it.

Feels like it's been coming for a while.

If Persephone insists on using those low g limits then actually Starship probably wouldn't be suitable as an alternative launch vehicle. I would like to see a refueled starship send a 56t probe to the outer planets with a raptor kick stage some day though, that would be rad.

Mission mass is 1229kg? Needs a C3 of 125km2/s2. https://www.google.com/url?sa=t&source=web&rct=j&url=https://www.aiaa.org/docs/default-source/uploadedfiles/education-and-careers/university-students/design-competitions/3rdplaceiowastateuniv.pdf%3Fsfvrsn%3D183eeb83_0&ved=2ahUKEwi_obOOiJTrAhWGOcAKHZynCLkQFjAAegQIAxAB&usg=AOvVaw11z0eBaoNrkn9anKOjmGjI

Not with a supersonic shockwave it won't. The triggering shockwave arrives before any mass can be scattered.

This is my last tonight (this morning?!)

So no dev until 2025 at least, and even then probably no dev. Yeah, SpaceX, Dynetics and ULA needn't worry.

Heck of a lot going on this evening!

He's aiming at the wrong target. By the time their 100-flight-reusable first stage hits, F9 will have been retired and they'll be competing against reusable first *and* second stages with vastly higher payloads.

ULA have phenomenal injection accuracy! It's definitely a unique selling point that justifies a slightly higher cost. I'd like to see what SpaceX's comparable charts look like!

Starship Superheavy seems to have got a fraction taller! 122m is the tallest estimate I've seen yet. Edit: ah, it's 2m worth of legs: 40% of 34 is approx 14 missions over 5 years. 3 per year-ish.

https://www.cnbc.com/2020/08/07/spacex-and-ula-win-2022-pentagon-rocket-launch-contracts.html This could actually spell the end for OmegA. Northrop were heavily targeting DoD contacts and they were awarded diddly squat. Bezos and Blue Origin can afford this setback. Can Northrop?

I think the fact that the blast site is strongly hemmed in by Mediterranean could account for a yield in the high hundreds still producing a seismic 3.3 from a nominal 1.1kT worth of incompletely detonated AN. Ditto the focussing effect of the grain silo and the area of destruction opposite to that shield. Fuel contamination - bags, pallets, fuel-rich firestorm environment, could also produce a larger magnitude. Any combination of these could bump up the yield, even with incomplete detonation of partially degraded AN. Or it could just have been a 1.1kT detonation purely from complete detonation of the known quantity of AN. I don't think a yeild under the high hundreds is credible. If there'd been a photon flash instead of a red cloud of nitric acid nobody would have any trouble believing this was a small nuke.