RCgothic

Dragon is 9.5t empty with 1.3t propellant and up to 6t of cargo. Superdraco is 235s ISP, and the nozzle angle is about 20°. Dragon2 therefore has between 173 and 275 m/s in the superdracos. I'm unclear if the Draco RCS thrusters are sourced from a different tank. Dragon2 would need to use that 6t additional cargo for an auxiliary propulsion module, extended life support, and most likely extended RCS for all the docking manoeuvres.

I genuinely don't understand why anyone wouldn't care about their tax dollars being spent efficiently. I genuinely don't understand why any space enthusiast wouldn't prefer, say, ten Falcon Heavy or New Glenn launches (payloads included) to a single SLS launch (payload not included). Yes, ok, every rocket launch is cool. But ten launches acheiving ten times as much is ten times as cool.

About 17t including up to 6t cargo. For precise pointing yaw roll and pitch are probably reaction wheel controlled (yes yes, not as strong as in ksp. Strong enough.)

Additional confirmation that Static Fire of SN4 is delayed to Thursday: And OCISLY and JRTI2 are both deployed together for the first time ever. OCISLY is going down-range to catch Starlink B1049.5 and JRTI2 is conducting sea trials. Practice for the side-booster ASDS FH mission later in the year!

Haha, of course:

SpaceX gets a commercial ride-share for two Starlink launches. 3 extra 83kg microsats per launch. I doubt SpaceX will be reducing their standard 60-sat dispenser, so either Falcon 9 found an extra 250kg performance on top of 16.8t to LEO or Starlink sats have each got 4kg lighter. I think it's probably an extra 250kg for Falcon9. 17.05t to LEO and 63 sats at once is seriously impressive! https://directory.eoportal.org/web/eoportal/satellite-missions/s/skysat

One interesting thing - "Only use higher TRL technologies for 2024"

MOAR DETAILS!

Updated SN5 diagram, although we already knew it was fully stacked:

Booster 1049 is the second booster to fly a fifth mission. Hopefully the first to survive it!

Why this orbit?

Citation needed.

I'm down to 1m46 with keyboard control. Edit: 1m26s

Vulcan can handle a 7m diameter payload fairing:

Technically yes, but practically no. In order to effect an immediate rendezvous and docking the rockets would need to take off simultaneously from pads as close together as possible, or DV requirements rapidly become unmanageable. Then you have to get the rendezvous right and complete the next burn before apogee on a very short orbit. Either that or you start getting very wasteful high-apogee suborbital orbits just to get enough time to dock. Doing everything in such a rush and such proximity (and/or worse, inside a turbulent atmosphere) - is just insanely dangerous.

Whilst everyone is over playing docking sim, SN5 is now in one piece. And a new nose cone is out of the shed.

That's incredible! I'm 4.20s so far. Edit: 2m 25s

When I try to translate right it blows up the approach. I figure I'm trying to dock with a bad thruster cluster and that's why it's on manual!

A very cool factoid. Atlas V was so accurate that effectively mid-course corrections weren't needed. Which is fortunate, because it gave them enough propellant reserve to correct a serious glitch.

SpaceshipTwo may be exceptionally pointless, but it does look gorgeous.

Guarantee there's SN7 hardware about now that just hasn't been recognised as such. Anyway, was doing some sums - Falcon 9 US sure is incredible! For payloads under 9.5t it outperforms the Saturn S-IVB! That dry mass fraction tho. Beautiful. Does anyone know what max liftoff mass for Dragon2 is? I think it's 9.5t dry mass, 1.4t propellant and up to 6t cargo, for 16.9t max. Makes sense - chimes with 16.8ish tonnes for Starlink.

Launch site is coming along at a pace!

Static fire date slips to Wednesday:

You can't get wind power for free that way. It would consume more energy in drag than it would generate in additional thrust because the 2nd law of thermodynamics doesn't let you get away with stuff like that.