RCgothic

This is an excellent article on the nature of risk in spaceflight:

Some photos that weren't posted earlier: That last photo in particular... Check out the fat falcon legs!

Decent article on the status of Artemis's constituent pieces. Praise for Bridenstine. His management of the lunar program has been deft. I agree with one of the commentators - it seems like an actually competent person somehow managed to slip through an appointment process designed to weed such people out.

You don't even have to man-rate Falcon Heavy. Go up on Falcon 9 and rendezvous with a kick stage. Still, if you want to find someone who agrees SLS is the coolest thing since sliced bread, go on Twitter and search "SLS Rocket" and "Latest". Guarantee you'll find at least a few aggressively pro-SLS.

Also Centaur V vs ACES. "I just saw there is ACES which should see the light of day, I wonder how different it is from the Centaur V?" "Not Very".

Tory Bruno is a legend:

Wet dress rehearsal and static fire tentatively in for Tuesday with Wed Thurs backup dates.

Apparently there are some fairly major differences between Raptors still: This must be a photo of the installation in MK1? Starhopper didn't have 3. I don't think SN1 got as far as 3 engines installed. SN3 also lost before engines installed. SN4 has only had one. If that's the case then we maybe don't need to get too excited. MK1 could just have been posing for the cameras with whatever would fit. I heard #8, #9 & #10 were earmarked for Mk1, but that doesn't mean those are the ones installed. Could be some significantly earlier numbers there.

Raptor #20 is the one for the hop: SN6 gets some more progress: And Elon doesn't (always) mess around:

It's been a slow news day for Boca Chica. SpacePadreIsle is going to take a look in a bit to see what's changed.

How does any of this relate to the Dynetics Lander? I'm sorry, but I came adrift at the personality test.

I think a spent fregat stage just broke up. 2011 launch I think?

Drive-by tour of Boca Chica site:

Get hyped:

I can admit the launch will be cool. I'm just pained by the thought of what else could be acheived for $39B by 2030 in lieu of 10 SLS flights.

Epic facepalm. Oops. Thanks for the correction.

Agreed. Up until falcon heavy flew, SLS may not have been ideal but it was the only game in town. Although I'd go a little bit further than @tater and say that SLS has never been capable of the missions asked of it. It can't fly often enough, and it can't lift enough, and it costs too much when it does fly. By itself it could maybe do gateway or HEO asteroid rendezvous. Those missions are makework for a rocket that can't do better. A moon landing absolutely required the development of another heavy lift vehicle to support SLS. But as soon as you got that second cheap heavy lift vehicle able to fly often, EOR becomes a thing. And now there are 4 other heavy lift vehicles. Talk of SLS and Orion going to Mars was always crazy. Just never going to happen. If SLS had gone straight to Block 2 Cargo and cost maybe half as much, (with crew taxi to LEO on commercial crew) I'd credit SLS a continuing role. But Boeing can never hit that price bracket, and competition from other launchers will get SLS cancelled before Block2 can finally appear sometime in the 2030s.

Whatever test they performed last night, seems like SN4 survived it. Gaseous nitrogen proof-test it seems:

We've wasted a decade and tens of billions on SLS. Every flight the US purchases from now on could fund ten to twenty falcon heavy flights. If Starship hits its targets, every SLS flight could fund a thousand Starship flights. The opportunity cost here is staggering. And frankly at $143m per engine Rocketdyne and Boeing are taking the US taxpayer for a ride. I'm not convinced you need Orion for a moon landing in 2024. If you can develop a lander in that time you can develop a capsule (particularly with a largely common design - Starship.) But even if you do, Falcon Heavy can push Orion to TLI in two launches for less than the cost of two of SLS's core engines.

The tricky bits are pad turnaround, launch window, endurance, and barge availability. You can't launch two FHs in close succession: There's only one TEL (although I'm sure SpaceX could solve that issue if there was need). So a day or two to re-mount the next FH. Barges is harder. Assume at least a week to get the cores back and unloaded and out again. Pad turnaround at 39A is probably a lesser limit than either of the above. Launch window is a tricky one. You have to aim the elliptical orbit for where the moon will be at the time of the second TLI burn. If your second US only has the endurance for an immediate rendezvous and burn then if that second launch scrubs for any reason then you have to wait a month for the moon to come around again.

It's ugly. It's scam-level expensive. It doesn't have the capability to do the obvious mission architectures. It could *never* do the Mars mission for which it was continuously touted during its early design phase. It's a decade behind when it was needed. It falls very short on my space hardware coolness yardstick. Stick the one we've nearly built into the KSC rocket park and let us never speak of it again.

However, LAUNCHED on a partially expendable FH, FH can boost a 32t payload into an elliptical orbit ~1350m/s past LEO. You'd require roughly 31t more fuel to go the remaining distance to TLI. Good news! We've just demonstrated the ability to send 32t to that orbit. A second naked falcon heavy partially reusable would arrive at rendezvous with 32t of propellant. Just separate the lander and dock to the fresh upper stage. It can complete the burn. Only 2 cores expended too!

Even if F9 US had the DV to perform NRHO insertion it currently hasn't demonstrated the required 3 days endurance. Any margin beyond TLI would be wasted.

27t payload plus 4.5t F9US is 31.5t dry mass. Wet mass is the above plus 64t propellant residuals, 95.5t. At 311s that gets you 3380m/s. TLI from 250km LEO is 3280m/s. I'd call that extremely marginal.