cubinator

I'm beginning to see the striking taxonomical similarities between Starship and an insect.

Heh. Yeah, trying to get any appreciable thrust out of a photon rocket by heating something will melt it.

Rocket Lab's launch site in the view of Crew Dragon earlier:

Nope. Not this time. It's false. It's a total fabrication.

No, it's standard procedure - because they're going to be floating in that spaceship for 27 hours, and these are more comfortable clothes for the coast. Temperature in the capsule is 23 degrees C.

No, my drawer full of Tic-Tacs is in there!

no

Glad to see Victor, Mike, Shannon, and Soichi safe and sound IN SPACE!

Everything back to norminal!

Interstellar. When Cooper's helmet cracks and the ammonia-rich air starts flowing into his suit, Brand simply tells him to not breathe too much while she comes to rescue him. But if the atmospheric pressure is not ridiculously higher than Earth's, he should be able to just flush his suit with oxygen and overpressurize it a bit - that way oxygen will flow out, and ammonia can't flow in. He'll still be losing oxygen at an increased rate and needs rescuing, but at least he won't be breathing poison while he waits.

There is a planet with life on it.

Not before my VR space station simulator.

Well, better that they delay it now than tomorrow after I've told everyone at the planetarium about it. And I'll have more chance to watch the whole event.

I suppose it would - at least while letting the gas in. Once you're at a stable pressure, you can bring the whole thing back down and the boiling temperature for the liquid will be higher.

A higher pressure in the pipe could reduce boiloff.

Last night I dreamt I was in the Crew Dragon, pulling my helmet visor down.

Mealworms today! Late instars fresh from the bin of high quality grain. Freeze them for a while to kill them in the most painless way possible Cook in a pan with a little olive oil at a low temperature until crispy. High temperature makes them 'pop', which is not much fun. It's hard to tell when they're crispy (I don't think there's really a dedicated 'bug-grabbing' utensil? I'll have to invent one...) but they start to look translucent as the fat bodies shrink and the exoskeleton becomes hollow. At that point they're pretty much good. You can mix them with anything you would put nuts on and it will most likely taste great.

Maybe a LN2 deluge instead of water? Though water has a much higher specific heat...It's gonna be toasty. Superchilled saltwater?

I am wondering what the launch pad is going to be made of. The MLP of the Saturn V had ablative paint to keep it cool - I can't imagine 28-however many Raptors it is now are better than 5 F-1s for that.

Perhaps. Though there are other types of tectonic activity like on Mars or Io which do not involve plates but still recycle material. A moon of a large planet might have a volcanic 'temperate zone' driven by tidal force. I also heard it suggested in a geology class I took that the inverse of what you quoted is true - water is an important driver of plate tectonics, as it dissolves material in it and lowers the melting temperature of rock, allowing molten patches to form in the mantle and letting Earth gradually leak its internal energy through relatively small eruptions rather than waiting 700 million years to blow up the entire crust like Venus. Perhaps for a more exotic approach a periodic pass through the debris field of particularly nutritious and gargantuan comets could be the source of new nutrients.

A highly oblate planet? (I highly suggest checking out the theoretically stable toroidal planet as a storytelling setting, but the only plausible way to create it would be artificial) An Earth with no plate tectonics? (Think Mars if it was a moon of something with a nice big protective magnetosphere) Saturn's rings are thought to be the remnants of a moon which drifted too close over time and was destroyed by tidal force about 100 million years ago. If the same were to happen to Earth, it might be a rather catastrophic event. Other ideas: A very cold Earth with ice covering the oceans (This has literally happened to Earth before and the microbial life that was present at the time was fine and dandy) Binary tidally locked Earths - for extra spice make sure civilization develops on the side not facing the other planet!

Better than the eternal "20 years away" threshold...

Imagine someone named Jost.

My main concern is that other companies are trying to compete with Starlink by launching their own constellations. Of all the places where competition occurs, this isn't the best place for it. We should only have one satellite internet constellation. I think one is fine, but multiple would be too much.

It looks like it's supposed to be on fire. At least on the bottom side.