RealKerbal3x

You only need an engineer, they bring their welding tools with them everywhere. I'm not sure if there's a level requirement in career, though. Just bring the highest-level engineer you have whenever possible in case there is.

Jeff Who wants in on the steel action;

Relevant xkcd:

I still think the chance of SN16 flying is low. Any data they could have got from flying SN16 could also have been got from reflying SN15 (with reuse data to boot), and they seem to have decided against that. Plus, SN16 has been sitting there for weeks with no progress (it's still missing the aerodynamic tips for the aft flap housings). As far as I can tell they're 100% focused on getting to orbit as soon as possible.

Starlink deploy! That's Starlink orbital shell 1 complete!

Booster is down! Norminal orbit insertion

Max Q

Hullo

Starlink stream is live.

The placeholder lander is still there, it's attached at the bottom of the picture.

Is this a recently released render? If so, it's interesting how their placeholder lander is still included.

SN15 is being lifted off the pad. Looks like it's on the way back to the production site today.

SpaceX have done a lot of things previously considered 'impossible'. Landing a first stage propulsively on a barge in the middle of the ocean was impossible. A commercial vehicle flying crew to the ISS was impossible. Cost-effective reuse was impossible. The bellyflop and flip maneuver were also impossible. They've successfully done all of these things that were impossible, and made them look easy. Clearly the engineers at SpaceX are good at solving extremely difficult problems. So when they announce another plan that sounds crazy, I think we should trust them to figure out a way to do it, given their track record. They would have dropped the tower catch idea long ago if they figured it wouldn't work or just wasn't worth it.

They're really doing it. A job posting for Boca Chica a while back was asking for engineers to work on the 'Super Heavy launch/catch tower'. It's not just Elon rambling on twitter, they are working on it. It does have quite a few merits over just landing it, as well. Catching the booster means that they can move all of the shock absorber hardware out of the vehicle (where it's mass-limited) into the launch tower (where it can be as massive as they want). It also allows the booster to be moved directly back to the launch mount after landing, which is great for rapid reusability. Now, the whole 'catch Starship without a landing burn' thing was definitely just Elon thinking out loud. But catching Super Heavy is a genuine project.

Given that the eventual plan is to have it be caught by the launch tower, it's definitely capable of full RTLS. They're only landing it in the sea here because, as you said, in the event of a landing failure, they don't want it to destroy the launch infrastructure they spent a year building. (Also, the tower catching arms probably won't be ready in time for the first orbital launch)

Technically it would still need SL Raptors for control during ascent as RVacs don't have gimbal. (I don't think RCS would provide enough authority) Also, this might be the image you were thinking of, from an Everyday Astronaut video:

I wonder if we'll ever see a fully expended Starship launch. It would be cool to see but I don't think anyone is going to need a 300t payload put in LEO anytime soon. A thing we're more likely to see is an expendable upper stage config for high-energy interplanetary launches.

New Glenn is in a similar category to Falcon Heavy. Unfortunately, they seem to be shooting at the wrong target. Falcon Heavy is a technological dead-end, as evidenced by SpaceX discontinuing further development of it before its first launch. BO should really be working on a Starship-class fully reusable launch vehicle if they want to be competitive. The justification is probably 'I don't want it to work, therefore it won't'.

Okay, so hear me out here: KSP 1.12: All Your Base

Well, technically they'll start doing that from the first launch, just not in one piece

(13.4km in sensible units)

I got a KSP video recommended to me on YouTube. I was immediately hooked. About a year later I got a computer that was just barely capable of running it. I bought 1.3.1 and the rest is history