Ultimate Steve

Yes, the ITS has its problems. But there are solutions to most of them and I agree that a revision of the design is necessary. Heat shield - yeah, that's quite a bit of risk. Not so much at Mars due to the amount of atmosphere, but at Earth, yes. Especially coming back from Mars. Fortunately, the heat shield should be able to be inspected en route using EVA's or maybe a camera robot or something. And with 100 ton cargo capacity, they would probably have something to fix small parts of the heat shield in the event of an impact. This is not entirely an ITS only problem, though. Any spacecraft flying the same mission profile will be exposed to the same conditions (Except the bigger you go, the higher chance of an impact). Abort system - If you fire all 9 Raptors at once the TWR is sufficient (iirc, read it somewhere). The vacuum engines will have the wrong nozzle length but will still produce a good deal of thrust. But I do agree, the current abort plan is sketchy at best. My personal solution would be to make the interstage a separate unit that can detach from both S1 and S2 and pack it full of solid rocket boosters. During a nominal launch, it would stay connected to the first stage and land with it. During an abort situation it would separate from S1 and stay with the spaceship and ignite its motors. At burnout the abort ring would separate and the spaceship would land. Also, another improvement would be to make the crew portion of the spaceship separate from the fuel section of the spaceship in the event of an even worse emergency, like an engine section explosion. During the Challenger disaster, it is believed that the explosion did not directly kill the crew and the cabin was blasted away in roughly one piece. The top of the ITS spaceship would have parachutes in the event of this separation. I'm pretty sure that the ITS does not use helium for pressurization, but I don't have the reference link so I can't prove it. As far as the whole tipping thing, yeah, three legs does not offer redundancy. However, neither does four. Five will, but at a very narrow angle. The landing legs extending to provide a wider footprint has already been pointed out. In the event of a tip over on Mars I suspect most of the crew would be alive, provided they were wearing pressure suits, which the first missions undoubtedly will. Ideally for the first crewed mission, another ITS will have already landed and the astronauts would likely be able to use it to get home. As far as launch failure with 100 people on board, the first ones will probably have less than a dozen. In a perfect world, ejection seats that blast upwards. By the time that SpaceX ramps up to 100 people per launch, they will probably have switched from sending them all up at once to sending them up in groups of 12 or so using a smaller vehicle (yet to be developed, but they probably will at some point. They will eventually want a smaller vehicle for satellite launches, because if Falcon 9 pricing gets down to 10 million optimistically ITS will be cheaper and overkill for a sat launch). Even though the ITS has been criticized a lot, there are still solutions to most of the problems. They might take significant time and cost to find, but they're there. Even though it may be dangerous and sketchy, at the current point in time it is the only method to land on Mars that people are taking seriously and actually developing. NASA does not have a plan to land humans on Mars, their current plans culminate in a flyby. China wants to do it eventually, but we know nothing of their plans. The ITS is actually being developed and hardware is being built. Hopefully, NASA will realize this and partner with SpaceX on the mission. Maybe ULA as well, because they may know a thing or two about reliability. Given the combined effort of the NASA, ULA, and SpaceX engineers, and the combined budget of all three, I think that Mars is feasibly reachable within the next two decades. (Also, YAY! The reflight was successful!)

YEEEEEEEEEE EEEEEEEEEEEEES! WOOOOHOOO! We now live in the future!

Tech cast has views from the pad and from OCISLY!

Yes! I do it every single launch. My favorite song ever! Sort of off topic, but I wonder if we can get an update on the HYPErloop. *slowly backs away*

SpaceX FM is live! Hype music active! For now, the hype music is SpaceX FM. The actual hype music will be just the original Final Countdown, because I don't have time to sync another one so close to the launch. For those interested, start the official YouTube video at T-53s so it will sync to the launch. So, we have reusability, fairing recovery, and roombas! Yay! The Hype-cast is about to start!

An April Fools joke two days early?

The Hype Train SpaceTrain is now on internal power.

Welp, it's not on my birthday any more... To the 19.5 million people who's birthday it is tomorrow: Enjoy it! I am preparing my hype array. It includes loudspeakers, model rockets (wait, never mind, it's downpouring outside), and 87 different covers of "THE FINAL COUNTDOWN!" This is going to be soooooo cool! I can't wait!

Although some people criticize their plan, it's way better than having no plan, which is what they had until a short while ago. Anything space related I'm down for. Except orbiting nuclear silos. Unless we were in the middle of an alien invasion or something. Speaking of plans, part of me sometimes wonders how much sooner we could get to Mars if we took all of the major space agencies and combined them together. SpaceX's and Blue Origin's focus on reusability and cost effectiveness, ULA's safety record, EVERYONE's engineers, NASA's infrastructure, and the budget of the US military. Plus a whole bunch of other things I forgot. If everything went absolutely perfectly and everyone was in on it, then there is a possible future in which we will land on Mars in 2020. But, we live in an imperfect world and we will have to live with what we've got! And now NASA has a slightly larger plan, and we do have the history making launch tomorrow...

Not on that computer right now, but iirc KSP is somewhere around 2gb, so I'll go with that as a benchmark. Going from memory, we have my 1.2 installation, 1.2.1 installation, 1.2.2 installation, two failed 1.2 installations, a 1.1 prerelease, at least two 1.1 updates, a 1.0.5 RSS/RP-0 that never got very far, a KAS/KIS install on a flash drive somewhere, a Toy Solar System install on that same flash drive, an OPM install, a main 1.0.5 install, at least three other 1.0.x installs, and at least one 0.90 install laying around somewhere. There's also several modded .zips. At one time I had 0.20-0.23.5 on this computer (the older one) but unfortunately I deleted them at some point. The only version I ever had on the super old computer was 0.19, which ran at *shudder* about 2fps no matter how small the rocket was. So, using an average of 2gb per install (including shared zip folders, mods, screenshots, etc.) over about 18 installs (even though several have since been deleted, we're looking at all time here) leads to an all time total of about 36GB. That is dwarfed by the amount of HD screen recording I've done of KSP...

So every single SSTO is overbuilt? Awesome!

https://spaceflightnow.com/2017/03/24/ses-10-flight-preps/ Thursday! It was Wednesday (which would have been SOOOOO awesome to have it on my birthday). It will be the first reflight of a flown booster.

You can skip me again. I am extremely busy right now. I promise, I'll take my turn soon! Oh, look at the time! I need to get to the aforementioned extracurricular activity!

*GASP* How did you know I just got back from Ohio? @pandoras kitten

You can skip me for now. I'll be in Ohio for the next four days. The next person on the list can go.

CAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAKE! If only I wasn't going to be in Ohio for the next few days, I'd build a rocket cake.

Yeah, from what I hear FTE did not to a very good job porting the game. Hopefully Blitworks will do better!

Earlier this week: Yes! SpaceX is reusing a booster just two days before my birthday! A day after that: Aww, I won't be able to go watch my teammates at all-state speech! Yesterday: YEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEES! I can go watch all-state speech! And one of the most significant rocketry achievements in history is now scheduled for my birthday! Today: *checks launch window* YES! It isn't during school!

Can I use a Kraken drive? *Insert Evil Laugh Here* Since I know you are going to say no, I would like to propose a second category that includes stock exploits, such as Kraken drives and/or decoupler spamming. EDIT: Using no Kraken drives I managed to get a bit above 300KM. Proof coming tomorrow.

Yes. BTW even though I bought KSP right before the DLC period ended, I've gotten so much enjoyment out of this game that I'd gladly throw another $100 at SQUAD (about 4x what I paid for KSP!) just to show my appreciation (not even for a DLC!).

"Errenous Error Message" And, we have a new acronym! On a serious note, have you tested what happens if you go down that low? (Provided you don't burn up, which you probably will)

Hmm. I don't think I can see the back in any of your pictures, but it might be possible to radially mount two of them on the base of a rather large booster, and then have the bottom section of the booster contain fuel for nuclear engines, which would be mounted on the boats (on decouplers if you'd like). As for heat shielding, if you can get them to LLO I think a single inflatable heat shield on the back end (for drag, not actual heat shielding) should be sufficient if the craft is empty upon landing (you could use the fuel inside it for the nukes). Oh, yeah, and you also probably need parachutes. This is somewhat similar to how I launched my Laythe-Vall SSTO's. Just for inspiration. I really need to take my turn soon, but stuff is getting in the way! (And today was the last day of Spring Break. GRR.) If the boats do not get there soon enough and you are feeling adventurous, you can (quicksave first) take one of the SSTO's and attempt a water landing near the plane.

That telemetry readout screen looks suspiciously like a low-res version of KSP...

Those LH2 flames always get me! Then two seconds later, I realize they're normal!

They are polling again!