JoeSchmuckatelli

I was looking at the Anatomy Pic above - wondering if there's any sketches of the plan for the cargo bay / faring without nose tank or what they plan for the giant pipe that runs down the center line? Could that be routed from the core of the ship to the perimeter... Or would customers need to build a load around that?

Yep. Spot price of iron ore is $101 usd/dry metric ton. Lead ~ 2k, copper 9k, and nickel ~ 15k/ton. For space to be marketable / competitive we would either need severely constrained terrestrial supply or unbelievably cheap space transportation. Literally they'd need to find that something like a metal rich asteroid is especially rich in something that we have difficulty finding / producing here with current tech. Even a craft as large as Starship that can boost 100 tons to space cannot land 100 tons Mining trucks carry 20-400 tons. Each. Rail cars are 100 tons each: multiple cars per train. Thus, you'd want to figure out how to process the ore and only bring... Concentrated ore or bar stock(?) (don't know what they sell semi finished / raw metals as) down to the surface... And even then I don't think it's cost effective. I'm thinking whatever we mine in space stays in space (off planet) unless it's something like easy sourced rhodium or palladium - and that will crash the price... FWIW rhodium is currently $4700 per ounce.

I think the point of the article was to get economists to think about "Space" as a different category of Market. The gist is that "Space" is no longer a niche thing that governments do for science, prestige and power... but an actual Market that might have investment opportunities for a variety of players. Truth told - We can count only a few players from a very few nations as active in this market, but that looks to be changing.

True. I'm steeped in a professional tradition that is highly adversarial. We like to think that through earnest partisanship coupled with professional responsibility that the truth will win out and that Juries are capable of spotting the BS. My analogy for political partisanship in science makes me hope for a similar process. Each side gets to make their claims as strenuously as possible within some bounds of professionalism... And somewhere in the middle lies the truth. The problem comes in with corporate interests or ideological orthodoxy requirements to be published. Lawyers have an affirmative duty of 'candor to the tribunal' - meaning we cannot knowingly lie to a court nor allow our client to. PR departments and partisans are under no such constraints. ... Still... Somewhere in the middle lies the truth.

I chimed in earlier about expendable second stage. To me, Booster is ready for action as a heavy lift platform - but we need a second stage that can deploy stuff to space. Starship is designed for landing on Mars, the Moon or Earth once complete. But it doesn't look like the optimal platform for getting something really cool like a ridiculously large telescope. That would need a TradSpace solution, IMO. I really, really want to see some kind of major science package (Cosmology, rather than solar-system-planetary) get off the ground and out in the void, Sciencing. Webb took way too long to get off the ground - and seeing as how lift has changed - we could really lean into the ridonkulous!

Panorama of Andromeda galaxy unveils hundreds of millions of stars

More economics than science - this article talks about the space economy, which we often speculate about. Probably not much new here for some - but it is directed to folks who don't usually look at Space as an economically significant sector. https://cepr.org/voxeu/columns/economists-should-point-their-attention-stars

Critical ocean current has not declined in the last 60 years, AMOC study finds ... studies about the AMOC's long term future are uncertain. Instead of predicting the future, a team of scientists from Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution (WHOI) quantified the past to help inform where we could be going. In a new paper published in Nature Communications, scientists found that the AMOC has not declined in the last 60 years. ...Their findings contrast with previous work, notably a paper from 2018 cited in their study, which reported that the AMOC has declined over the last 70 years. This past work relied on sea surface temperature measurements to understand how the AMOC has changed, but "we've learned that sea surface temperature doesn't work as well as initially thought," said Terhaar, who began leading this study at WHOI Critical ocean current has not declined in the last 60 years, AMOC study finds

I swear - that flight profile matched every in-flight save I had during KSP2's first few months. Just wait for the patch! Terminal velocity is what, again? If it is light enough - perhaps it landed on a tree or fence and then got blown off... onto his head?

Oh - sorry - I meant that the magnetosphere protects the atmosphere from the solar wind - which you spotted. Gravity helps there to be more atmosphere. With low gravity and a stiff wind, our pumping o2 into the air of Mars is just giving it to the wind, not really increasing the pressure for long periods I'm not arguing the mutation point: my opinion is that is a rate / percent issue and given that we don't get tentacles or claws out of the radiation, but cancer... That's probably a lifespan issue rather than a precluder of life

I missed that they ran water for the catch. Nice to see it, as it seems like a smart and simple idea.

I've always enjoyed this idea - but it will never happen. Blue Mars or Green Mars is an impossibility until/unless we manage to give the planet a buff magnetosphere. More gravity would help as well. What we could do, however, is a robust subterranean or dome city via these methods. ... If we are really serious - we could "Gaia" Mars with a couple of dwarf planets and a bunch of comets, creating Earth 2.0. Done just right it gets a moon.* *But by the time we can do this... will we really need to?

Dark Oxygen: Initial research suggested potato-size nodules rich in metals, predominantly found 4,000 meters (13,100 feet) below the surface in the Clarion-Clipperton Zone, released an electrical charge, splitting seawater into oxygen and hydrogen through electrolysis. The unprecedented natural phenomenon challenges the idea that oxygen can only be made from sunlight via photosynthesis. ... In some cases, the dark oxygen had been isolated from the atmosphere aboveground for more than 40,000 years. If oxygen is not continuously being added to an environment (by trees and plants, for example), it would eventually disappear. “After 40,000 years or 30,000 years (separated from surface processes), there’s no reason really to think that there should be any oxygen left. Because oxygen is such a yummy electron acceptor, it usually either chemically oxidizes or microbially oxidizes,” Ruff said. “So what was it doing there?” ... After patiently working in the lab and field, Ruff ultimately discovered that microbes in the water were producing oxygen. The microbes had apparently evolved an obscure but neat trick that allowed them to produce molecules in the absence of light. Through a series of chemical reactions, the microbes were able to break down soluble compounds called nitrites, molecules made of one nitrogen and two oxygen atoms, to produce molecular oxygen in a process known as dismutation. The microbes also had the ability to use the oxygen to consume methane in the water for energy. What’s more, Ruff found that the quantity of oxygen produced was enough to sustain other oxygen-dependent microbial life in the groundwater. The hunt for ‘dark’ oxygen and why it might be more common than first thought | CNN (Note: this is a new article about a discovery I linked to a while back.)

No other way to really do it without losing IP to the competition. Given that an explosion was always a possibility, even a likelihood, I'm not bothered this is an Internal investigation with reporting to the relevant agencies. Had something unforseen or injuries to a third party - I'd agree with you

Musk saying on X that next month's flight unlikely to be delayed. Hope that is true. I know we were handwringing last night because of the dramatic footage from aircraft and rerouting of planes - but now I'm reading that everything stayed within the corridor and exclusion zones. Tells me that the safety and mitigation plan was effective. Everyone knows these are test flights of prototypes and space is hard. I'm now leaning towards hoping the FAA & other powers that be don't delay the next scheduled iteration.

SX has a working very large 1st stage. Three successful launches with two RTLS catches. They could commercialize Booster. Question is - how much is the cost of expendable second stages? Like, cool factor aside, is Starship actually necessary? Can we get a lot more weight to the moon and Mars now using traditional-style upper and payload staging ideas matched to the size Booster now allows? Or do we really need Starship to work, too? (is it a nice to have or a need to have?)

When uncompromising perfection is expected, you might be right - but I'm on the other end of the spectrum. Two experimental rockets - both huger than anything else that has flown since Apollo... Both having had some measure of success? Booster catch is amazing and SX potentially having a competitor for heavy lift - plus potential size of future science missions? I see this as really neat, really fast progress. I expect problems - and hope to see NG fly again soon. . That said - the debris field forcing aircraft to reroute is gonna be a huge stink no matter what - and SX should have to answer some stiff questions!

Any news on the landing attempt.? Other than it didn't work?

From the thread:. "...an advanced technique for heating the cabin while conserving battery power" Might not be all that warm - air is a good insulator

Absolutely. Covid has already changed. It's currently not as aggressive. https://www.bbc.com/future/article/20250113-why-covid-19-is-becoming-less-deadly

Their justification is pretty interesting. Low energy insertion and a unique location

I'm fairly certain that a healthy food crop system is going to need to have a vibrant topsoil ecology. Sterility is highly overrated. https://www.bbc.com/future/article/20151118-can-you-be-too-clean

Is there any way to rewind an "X" vid? I popped in 12 minutes too late to watch the launch.

Hm.

I might need to get a badge made then! Hi - I'm Joe NASA Consultant *would you like nuts with that? "