Spaceception

And look how much has changed. I wonder what the original SpaceX team would think if they could see what their little company will become. Heck, I wonder what they think now

Looks great I'll probably get VR for this, even when they can support non-VR.

Yeah... I wonder what the outcome will be. Unfortunately, people will start bashing Tesla/SpaceX/etc more now Even though their internal work is still really good, and impressive.

I suppose SpaceX would be in pretty good hands with Gwynne Shotwell. But what about Musk's other companies? Boring, Telsa, etc? I wonder if there's people who could faithfully take the reigns. Either for now, or permanently.. albeit with less controversy.

Oh, Steve Job's voice One more thing, it sounds like you were just doing your sleeping in those barracks. Not a lot of common area for meals, recreation, etc that's all done in the ship, and only the ship. Even optimistically, that's ~3-6 months in that condition. Probably a few times more than that (at least) to have the time to build a habitat in order to spread out in the first decade. So let's say that's roughly <10 of years of staying on a ship with around 100 people and less than 1000 m^3 of space. (Are there any other good Earth analogies to this? Maybe aside from a bad prison)

True. I guess it'd weed out the people who don't want cramped living conditions in exchange for going to another planet. But, here's another thing. Could onboard life-support take care of it? All the smells, water, air, waste, food, etc. Could it keep up? But (I don't know if this a deal-breaker), at least you could go outside. For the trip to Mars, you're inside for the long haul. Most people probably won't be trekking across the surface for safety reasons, and will only go out for necessary operations, like cleaning the panels, building the hab, etc. Maybe sometimes you'd go out to stretch your legs, but not for more than a few hours or so.

Came out recently. Looks cool

Is it reasonable to have 100 people on one of those ships? Most of the crew would likely be regular civilians. Maybe a few vets, or Astronaut trainee's that didn't make the cut, but mostly civilians. And while they would get training, and would likely have to meet some requirements, it probably won't be nearly as rigorous as NASA's Astronaut program. But as time goes on, and the population grows, this could change. Allowing the average joe to get in without as many pre-reqs (Aside from medical/physical, which I think will be hard caps). The psychological stresses of living with 99 other people (Or even more) in tight conditions, even with all the room of microgravity will probably be hard to get accustomed to, even if you're mentally fit (Emotions could, and probably will run high). Especially for the first few cycles of ships - as they will have to stay on the ship while habs are being built. Which means even less space to move around/live in. I think they've even mentioned you'd be in "Shifts"? Some people would sleep, and others would work or something like that. Which means you don't even really get your own room. Are 50 people better? Or even less? I think they said there's like 40 cabins (Correct me if I'm wrong), so 40 people may be good, to allow everyone to have a private space and all. If they scale up to something more similar to the 2016 ITS, maybe they could fit in more people. But not hundreds. I don't know though.

Thanks a ton! Screenshotting this so I can look at it in the future for other stuff

I need my math checked So, I'm trying to find the geostationary height for a planet 0.37x the mass, 0.66x the radii or Earth (~0.85 g), and I got the value of around 21,308 km. Which seems right. BUT, I calculated my finished value as follows: 295948.832 km x 0.072, why did I multiply it by 0.072? FIrst, I tried out the equation with Earth values (Several times), and multiplying it by 0.072 was the only way I could figure out how to get Earth's geostationary height. So when I did the equation for my planet, I did the same thing after converting the initial value from m to km (If you haven't figured it out by now, this was the first time I've ever used the equation ) I used a solid 24 hr day in seconds (86400 s), multiplied by 0.798 for the planet (19.152 hr day), Earth's mass in kg (expanded out to get rid of scientific notation), then times 0.37 for the planet, and Earth's radius in meters, multiplied by 0.66 for the planet. I used parentheses on all values with an exponent. And I used the calculation on the KSP wiki, which used cube root instead of square root on another website I found, which gave me even worse answers. (a = cube-root(G x M1 x t^2/4pi^2) - R) was the one of the KSP wiki. So uh, yeah, where did I go wrong? And what's the correct answer, if I didn't get it?

Just recently came out

So, a couple of questions. Either I didn't use the right keywords, overlooked something, or there simply isn't an answer, but could something like the Intrinsic field subtractor (Like the one in Watchmen that gave Dr. Manhattan his powers) be theoretically possible? And could something like that manipulate an object from a distance without the need for sophisticated machinery around the object?

Now, I'm preeeeety sure this article has already been shared https://arstechnica.com/science/2018/09/inside-the-eight-desperate-weeks-that-saved-spacex-from-ruin/, but I really like this quote "Outside of the USSR, from 1957 through 1967, and NASA from 1961 to 1971, it is difficult to find a country or company that has had a more dynamic decade in space than this." And this is why I think we'll see the BFR launch. Pretty much all of the comments were interesting to read as well (Surprisingly), and despite what SpaceX has ahead of itself, I'm excited for the day when we cheer on the first BFR test launch. Now I just want more updates of the BFR progression. How many times have the Raptors been tested, and for how long in total? How hard was it to build the first carbon fiber cylinder? Do they see building the first fuel tank as faster and/or easier since they already built a larger one a couple years ago? What's the progress on the refueling procedures? Ugh... I wish there were more people like Tim in the audience asking questions. Or even publically submitted ones entered by SpaceX employees or something.

From the video in the presentation (41:17 onward roughly), it has a high angle of attack, and comes in right side up, heatshield forward. Once it's lower in the atmosphere, it looks like it levels off on its belly (roughly) to bleed off more velocity, rights itself again, and uses the engines to land.

I thought that would pull too many resources from actually developing the BFR? And that will be handled in the mock-up version next year.

Oh, no, I meant more like basic equipment, habs, something like the start of a base. I wasn't talking about the picture's version. I agree that'll take awhile.

It's almost the same pic from a couple years ago, but I can't help feeling the same. There's just something so awesome about that pic, and it looks so tantalizingly close as well.

So, 2028... Does that mean the date for a crewed Mars landing has slipped 4 years? Because I imagine a base can be built in the first crewed mission. Gives them more time to test everything though, which is good. And a date I was honestly expecting.

I wonder if that'll be part of the grasshopper tests with the BFS and BFB, go really high, drop, and land on a very narrow target. Later tests could make it approach at an angle.

Oh, sorry. it was one of the first questions I could think of.

Does getting the urge to write something serious in that font to screw with people fall under that umbrella? To keep on topic: What forum (Sci/Space, KSP discussions, etc) seems to require the more moderation than usual?

Yep! The facebook group is nice too if you have facebook. I've found it to be pretty civil so far. I also need to add the next dev diaries 124 https://forum.paradoxplaza.com/forum/index.php?threads/stellaris-dev-diary-124-planetary-rework-part-4-of-4.1117775/ 125 https://forum.paradoxplaza.com/forum/index.php?threads/stellaris-dev-diary-125-the-galactic-market.1119230/ 126 (Released earlier today) https://forum.paradoxplaza.com/forum/index.php?threads/stellaris-dev-diary-126-sectors-and-factions-in-2-2.1120288/ The game is only gonna get better with 2.2

I wonder if it'd be better if you or someone else made a separate thread for all TESS discoveries (With new planets in the OP), merging the two you've already made. This forum is gonna get pretty cluttered pretty quick in the next couple years otherwise

This article was interesting. I was expecting technical reasons, but it was just about the social nature. https://longreads.com/2018/09/19/were-not-ready-for-mars/ There are good points - We have serious problems here - But those have been said many times before - There's no guarantee the resources extracted will be used for all of us - some people have greedy intentions, etc. But I don't see how colonizing other planets will be saving our planet. Those are two separate things which we will do in parallel. I do think we should acknowledge our problems, correct our mistakes of the past, and correct/improve ourselves along the way. But becoming something akin to "inward perfectionists" seems a bit extreme to me. Adding to that (I had a conversation about this topic of space colonization yesterday): We would have to be at it for a long time before we "ruin space". I think we'd actually need to be trying in order to ruin it. One of my points in the conversation was: "Humanity is pretty awesome when you're not looking for reasons to hate it. Look how far we've come. The things we've created. How much we've grown. How far we could go." After reading the article, I think I would be close to the type of person, or exact type of person he talks about in the article. But we shouldn't stunt ourselves because we aren't perfect. Which after reading this quote (And others); "I am saying that to preach that Mars will save Earth while we wreck, ravage, and scorch Earth with no sense of spiritual decorum or ecological humility, and somehow then expect that space won’t be wrecked ravaged and scorched too is completely misguided. " I think that is almost how the author thinks humanity should be before attempting to colonize the cosmos - perfect, or closer to perfect - And if we have to consider ourselves perfect/worthy or similar of colonizing space, then I think we'll have become an incredibly egotistical species by that point. Even more than the author thinks we are now. Anyway, hope I made sense, do you guys agree or disagree with the article?