JoeSchmuckatelli

Naw - I think you're on to something... All we need is Ozzy and a dog to 'Bark on the Moon'

Obligatory quibble: Sharks are not older than the North star - but they are older than the star being North. I think I get 2 @kerbiloid points for that one!

The story of the Roman navy is interesting - they copied Carthaginian designs (their primary competitor) and improved on them. Kinda like SX - copy, innovate, fail, improve - - repeat. The Early Romans were really good at copying and learning from other people while improving on their designs which ultimately led to them being the most dynamic civilization in the Mediterranean. OfC - after a few hundred years they became complacent and decadent getting replaced in turn - but that is the human story Edit - there is a whole lot of 'bad things happen when you base your economy on slavery' (as the South learned) - but that is something nation after nation struggled with until relatively recently

I almost gave myself an eye roll cramp when I saw the headlines. I have not read this - but is it from the group of BRILLIANT Harvard 'researchers' getting money to look into the unprovable? Dragging the sea floor for UFO wreckage, etc?

Has anyone looked at or seen the numbers vis Booster performance and projected it as what its expendable first stage capability actually might be? Because thus far they've both gone slower than Saturn's first stage

You know... That's a really good point. Someone, in this environment of hate and discontent and uncertainty put their head down and found and fixed a Foundational bug. There are a lot of good folks over at Intercept who deserve to be acknowledged. Even if only with a virtual fist bump. Whoever you are...

How did you EVER figure out THAT one? Um, yeah. That isn't anything I could imagine being the cause. (someone in QA had to have spreadsheeted that CSI breakthrough)

Or maybe a bit overblown. Some indication =/= catasstrophy. This looks like disinformation - remember: the best lie always contains a kernal of truth. Not really passing the sniff test for me (at least not yet)

Yeah - that happened. Quibble that we don't know Fer Shure, but it's the most likely thing. Oh - Booster landing. No info vis SS Despite this - it pretty much 'stuck the landing' - maybe what they need is a landing platform with some deep water /a deluge system to put out the fire?

That is the part that makes the least sense. The best thing about SpaceX is that they are so confidently fallible. I wish more firms were like this

Interesting timing. The Civ 7 teaser just dropped, which got me thinking about how annoying I find the end game of Civ. I mean, you spend so much time trying to get a spearman and an archer across the map that by the time you do they have musketeers and a minute later you are putting stealth fighters on the map. And yet the truth is that 100 years ago many nations still had horse mounted cavalry. The pace of change in the last 400 years looks like the hockey stick graph. Ofc - to your point - if we simply graphed tool use over time the last 2 million years does, too.

Surprise - people do what is cheap and easy and fait accompli (insert Urkel (did I do thaaaat?) okay, busted, but since we are here... might as well keep going). To paraphrase: he who gets there fuhstest gets the mostest. Money, power, prestige and the game of empire. Nothing really new. ... Except. Something has changed. 40 years ago, news like this would have only been found in some obscure industry journal and known only to a few. Fait accompli was easier then. Now the Gretas of the world get a say. Will be interested to see if the people worried about the world 100 years from now win this - or if those who only care about short term profit and immediate reward do

We left a sekret helicopter in Pakistan. So, yeah. Thing is - the US {SpaceFarce} might want SX to make damn sure a failed launch drops a payload into the drink... But they're not gonna give 2 Schneikies about SX's rockets. FAA and State might have some concerns, but not the Intel community

Problem for whom?

Confused. We all assume the plan is to blow it up and sink the remnants. There is literally a very small range of possible outcomes from the test flight: 1. Nothing happens 2. Pad explosion 3. Liftoff then explosion 4. Partial flight then explosion 5. Attempted landing then explosion 6. Successful landing demonstration then explosion 7. Successful landing demonstration, failure to explode - floating debris. ... We know that IT-4 did not experience 1-5. If 6 happened... Is anyone surprised? If 7 happened... Are they going to blow it up intentionally or try to recover it?

Wow. Impressive. Still have work to do (yes, it was on fire as it landed... But it landed!)

This is the crux of where your argument goes circular. You don't need a 'reliable, reusable engine' when the thing you are trying to create is a 'reliable, reusable engine'. When do things need to be reliable? Answer: when you sell it to other people. * When does reliability not matter? Answer: when you are prototyping/inventing the thing. With SS+B, SX does not have a product yet. ** Until they do, there is no requirement for anything to actually work. * legally 'reliance' - SX isn't making any legal promises to anyone about these prototypes. No one is relying on anything. They only have a duty of care to not let the prototype harm others. That is it. ** I have argued above that SX could monetize Booster as a heavy lift expendable first stage. We've seen two flights where the rocket survives through stage separation. They COULD claim it to be working (thus a product /service) and customers / insurers can estimate the risk /reward of using Booster against the cost and choose to buy it or not. Reusable is another matter.

OK - maybe I'm off. Falcon is above 7500 km/h at stage separation whereas Booster was only running 5500. That would need a beefy second stage - but doable I'm guessing. Interestingly, Apollo's 1st stage dropped at 6k. Someone smarter than me could probably prove / disprove my guesswork

Good points. I'm not a numbers guy - so I'm analogizing Booster with Falcon. It looks like (reusability aside) that Booster can throw hard enough for a second stage to get orbital. And it can throw more weight than anything prior (assumption) - with a significant diameter now available to potential users. My guesswork is that if a customer came along with a second stage and payload that SX could monetize Booster at any point moving forward. (Some work needed obviously) I'm also guessing about SS - which likely had an intentional reentry flight profile - but it's hardly a stretch to guess it could have actually orbited if they wanted to.

Edit: ALTHOUGH... There could be a 'use booster' followed by a bespoke, not SS, parachute plus system to do something like the Chinese did with their moon sample return. (I'd call Booster a proven LEO first stage capable craft at this point) - which, while SX wants to keep developing as part of the SS program - there is no reason why some entity (NASA) couldn't buy one / rent one for a non-SS mission) ... In fact - can we agree that IT-4 is game changing? Humans simply need a working second stage to put 100+tons into orbit, right? Theoretically both Booster and SS can be considered working orbital class expendable rockets - right?

Cart? Meet Horse! Horse? Push! - not that I don't recognize the promise... But they're going to have to crash 3 into the moon (at least) before landing there, then 3 into Mars before landing (hopefully AFTER deployment of several Starlink constellations) and then figure out ISRU and... ... Big dreams. 2040? Might buy 2035 if we see Moonshot by 2028.

I watched the video - Booster went to a "precise location" and it was Ship that was "technically" 6km off geographically. Start with 2:00 Booster going to 'precise location' and 'zero velocity landing' supports chopstick attempt. 3:40 For those in the 'steel vs alloy' debate he keeps referring to the SX300 as steel.

@DDE Reminded me of the saying that writing fiction is hard because it has to make sense - where real life is not similarly constrained

Elevator pitch for the next Steven Segal movie?

Look at the acceleration there at the end of the flight It's possible the telemetry data wasn't being picked up by the stream. It was pretty obvious from watching that the video link and telemetry data displayed were separate data streams. Several times during the flight, video would cut out but the telemetry data kept changing. However at the end, we had video but no telemetry. Shrug.