Raven Industries

Those Kerbals are adorable. Now it's going to be even harder to put them into near-deathtraps in the name of science.

You can stick it on a table? I look forward to the upcoming Starlink terminal with optional umbrella attachment.

It's very strange to watch a full blown manufacturing plant spring from the ground, more or less.

I don't know that the Gov would necessarily appreciate a company getting several dozen to a hundred people killed on a semi-regular basis. NASA would definitely protest the optics of it, at the very least.

I wish I could've seen the launch live, but I had work. Even so, it was an incredible sight.

A bit of duct tape for those little holes and it'll be ready for launch.

I had everything lined up perfectly, then got failed for going too fast at .08 m/s. KSP has spoiled me.

Self-fulfilling prophecy is fun!

If they're lights, it looks a lot like they're shining in an atmosphere.

Well if Starship works out we'll certainly be returning to the Moon with style.

Starship's capabilities may exist nowhere else except in pretty infographics and cute speeches at this point, but Musk already has one reusable cost-effective spacecraft, which is one more than everyone else. I daresay he's at least somewhat qualified to say that Starship is a viable idea.

Not quite the same, but if there ends up being enough demand for such smaller flights, I could see SS being used in a sort of international/regional airport type setup. Haul large groups of people into orbit and drop them off at a hub of sorts, and then ferry individual groups to their destination with smaller craft that don't have to be built for travel to and from the Earth's surface.

Half a ton of stainless steel, Half a ton of cryo, That's the way development goes, pop goes the vessel! (To the tune of "Pop Goes the Weasel")

As amazing as SpaceX's development is, it's somewhat sad to see NASA with its history of launch vehicle development slowly degenerate into a mess of pork projects and lack of vision.

I will have to agree that a manned mission would likely result in much more interesting information than any unmanned mission. One thing that was briefly mentioned but not elaborated on is maneuverability: Curiosity, in its 7 and a half or so years of service, has driven about 22 km. Apollo 17 covered over 30 km in about 4 and a half hours (over a few days on the lunar surface). Adding a generous amount of time for different circumstances and collection of samples, a few astronauts on Mars with a rover could do in a week what Curiosity has taken over 7 years to accomplish. As far as whether a permanent presence on Mars goes, I hate to admit that there's little reason to stay with more than a small research team. However, there is one potential export a colony on Mars could provide which has been more or less overlooked: Good feelings for billionaires looking for a cause to support. Evidence suggests it's an industry worth hundreds of millions of dollars, growing every day.

I know, we all dream of the day when it works and Jim Bridenstine can finally go down to the SLS engineers and yell "Elon Musk was able to build this in a field! With a box of scrap metal!"

I'm going to be the one with the unpopular opinion, I'm not a fan of the worm. The uncrossed 'A's just bug me.

If you simplify the refurbishment and replacement process enough, I suppose manned missions could take spare crush cores with them and replace them in-situ if needed. I don't know what's involved in the refurbishment though, so maybe it can't be made as simple as opening a hatch,taking out the old core, and sticking in the new one.

I wonder how the folks up in the ISS feel about the prospect of having tourists underfoot in the near future.

Huh, they seem to have missed the landing. That was unexpected.

So the first colonists sent to Mars will be facing some sort of combination of the Oregon Trail on steroids, Amundsen's South Pole expedition, and an extended tour of duty in a submarine.

I wonder, what sort of jobs will be available on Mars that allows one to pay back those loans?

I was able to watch the orbital insertion from my backyard in North Carolina, it was the coolest thing ever. A tiny orange dot with a plume of light grey-orange streaming away from it, traveling across the sky.

What's the touchdown speed for the Dragon Capsule? If it's low enough, perhaps you could just land on the recovery ship's helipad..