RCgothic

Makes sense with the Raptor performance increase.

You're basically describing mass effect fields from Mass Effect. Copy across.

Pics or it didn't happen, basically.

XKCD1235

What I read there is another typical "leave us alone" statement of vagary by the FAA. The license may come as early as next month, but they haven't actually said there's no possibility it won't come as early as today. They could have said "The license will be issued in October". Or "The license *won't* be issued in September". But they didn't. Meaningless. It'll come when it comes.

That's definitely a thing you do when ready to launch.

There is right now a commercial flight around the moon scheduled.

The vehicle's already been redesigned. Check. Send.

To the surprise of nobody anywhere.

This isn't the first time the FAA have issued a nothing-burger statement like this as I recall. It's not news the next launch license needs to wait on the mishap investigation and this statement says nothing about timescale. It's just their standard "Stop hassling us. It'll be done when it's done," press release.

A good sign, IMO.

You appear to be calculating s=0.5*a*t^2, which is the formula for distance traveled under constant acceleration starting from rest over a time interval. @Shpaget has the correct formula for velocity under constant acceleration starting from rest over a time interval.

Won't have a lot of impact. They basically wanted to eliminate a stage separation mechanism which would need to be pretty chunky to push away a 1500t upper stage. First attempt was flip staging, where the booster main engines induce a spin that causes centrifugal force to separate the stages. They would have attempted this on OFT-1, but didn't get that far. There was some confusion on this point due to the loss of control and tumbling. Since OFT-1 they've changed their mind and are now doing hot staging. This could save a little DV as there is no coast phase for Starship, and the repulsion of the booster by exhaust gases could save it a little bit of DV on the boostback burn. The drawback is that the engines, engine bay and interstage take a much harsher beating.

Full stack! Also that's some nice heat shielding under S25. Was S24 the same?

The point being that without foundations such a skin could break under weight of thrust resulting in the pad being excavated and throwing debris at the lunar craft resulting in LOCV.

One plan for lunar landing pads I'd seen was to coat the surface with adhesive. This would be like a thin concrete skin over zero foundations. Yeah, good catch Dr Metzger!

I'd give odds of 4:1 that the FAA approval comes through just when SpaceX need it to, like it has every time so far.

The midbay has been demolished. RIP midbay. Demolition in progress:

Flame trenches are primarily to direct the exhaust away from the vehicle and to prevent damage to the vehicle. Although there are examples of the refractory brick lining of flame trenches being damaged by rocket exhausts, that's an example of the sort of scouring effect SpaceX were expecting and prepared to put up with for one launch. The Russians don't to my knowledge use deluge systems, even for the large rockets N1 and Energia. The pads at LC39 only had a minimal system for Saturn V, and it was upgraded for shuttle because of damage to the vehicle. The exhaust didn't seriously threaten the flame trench which was built for Nova, and the OLM at Boca Chica is taller than the flame trenches at LC-39 by a long way. A large rocket had never before now cracked and excavated its own launch pad foundation through weight of thrust.

Space is hard and even people who know what they're doing won't get it right 100% of the time. Has there ever in history been a case of rocket thrust so great it breaks a foundation before now? No. That was pretty unexpected. Have they fixed that problem? By all observations they've taken the problem seriously and rebuilt the pad so that won't happen again.

The new foundation isn't going to fail again. It's over two meters thick reinforced concrete capped with steel and with many more support pilings than previously. Even absent the deluge system it wouldn't be going anywhere.

Comment on Reddit supposedly from an insider: https://www.reddit.com/r/spacex/comments/15m3r9k/starship_development_thread_48/jxqawab?utm_source=share&utm_medium=android_app&utm_name=androidcss&utm_term=1&utm_content=2

Full duration was ~6s, sounds like at least 31/33 made it that far.

The 6 Apollo landings highlighted: