RCgothic

This was a surprise:

I like the joke how the best way to get Orion to the moon is to stick it in Starship's cargo bay.

Among a lot of other things, including that he was selling all his possessions including his house, and that his gf was liquided at him. His tweets seemed high and/or drunk.

Also starship can spare the mass budget for a slightly inefficient and therefore oversize solar array.

There won't be any (unintended) rotation as the engine points through the CoM. There will probably be a slight horizontal kick as SN4 takes off and lands, but should be well within tolerance.

It can gimbal through the centre of mass, should be fine.

Lunar demonstration landing in 2022. Hype train!

Dynetics was highest rated at this stage -

Press release says three stage, but I think it's more accurately single stage plus two replenishable drop tanks delivered separately.

It's speculated you need gimballing for control in descent, but RVac can't gimbal. Thus both RVac and the RSL opposite being paired together.

This was announced as a three-stage vehicle, but actually think it's more accurate to call it a single-stage vehicle with two drop tanks delivered separately.

Hahahaha So we now have three just selected variants: Tanker, Storage, Lunar Lander One highly likely: Cargo One a bit further off: Crew

Note how this way Starship gets a lot of practice flying humans without having to perfect landing on earth first.

Also EverydayAstronaut's SLS Vs Superheavy video part 1 is now live:

Incredible validation for Starship right here. NASA thinks it will work. Including orbital propellant transfer. And that's me out of likes for today!

Three Landers selected. A three stage, single stage, and a two stage. Boeing not chosen.

SpaceX selected. They bid Starship. Boeing not selected.

Raptor is a flown engine. Starship has about as much in common with Starhopper and Falcon 9 as SLS does with STS. The tiles don't require detailed inspection because 1 - they aren't glued on, so the glue doesn't need inspecting, and 2 - Starship's stainless hull can mostly survive without them.

The key thing about SSSH is that it aims to cost roughly a tenth of falcon 9 per flight. Being a super-rocket makes that easier, but isn't really directly relevant. SSSH could be twice as large and lift half as much as the current design and as long as it comes within an order of magnitude of its cost goal it would still make every other booster with a payload smaller than SLS Block 1B cargo completely obsolete.

The Merlin 1D is an amazing engine. The TWR is insane. No other engine has survived as many hours of operation, not even the RS-25. And Raptor is an engineering marvel. Methalox stages equipped with Raptor engines will beat Hydrolox Centaur stages to high C3. Both among the cheapest orbital rocket engines ever developed OR produced. Trashcans with toilet plumbing does them an immense disservice.

I tried to edit and got an error message, which is why I created a sandbox. The DVs listed are excess past TLI.

Ah yes, that's what I saw.

Well I made a LES weighing 500,000t and the first stage still gets off the ground. You seem to be playing with it now. Not sure if you fixed it or it was just extreme lag finally working itself loose...

Well. Here's hoping Boeing's analysis manages to get it right first time. That'd be nearly as big a bang as SN1 in a much more expensive test rig.