RealKerbal3x

The weather seems to be steadily clearing up.

Imma just steal this if you don't mind

I think that would technically be in violation of the license

That's just the temporary flight restriction - the area where aircraft aren't allowed lest they endanger the launch. The launch license is a different thing and actually represents formal permission to launch from the FAA. Thus far the licenses have only allowed a maximum apogee of 12.5km.

I wonder if these launch licenses allow them to go any higher? Unless they find a new major issue, I don't see them needing two more 10km flights after SN15.

Only one Apollo 11 astronaut is left now...

I'm fine with km/h but it's a hard pass from me on imperial units. KSP should remain entirely with the international scientific language, aka the metric system.

Darnit, looks like I misremembered again. I'll just edit my post to avoid any confusion.

Artemis 1 is similar to Apollo 8 (lunar free return trajectory) but uncrewed. I did a big dumb, see @tater's post below instead.

Dragon hatch is open. (Why am I the only one posting here? )

And hard capture. Welcome back to the ISS Endeavour!

Soft capture confirmed!

Great views, about 15 min to docking.

That article sums it up pretty well. It's become harder and harder for old space to ignore the existence of Starship and what it represents, more so now that it's won a major NASA contract. I genuinely think that Musk's vision of a multiplanetary future is just within reach. If Starship works, everything changes.

If it's the inline cockpit then they've reverted it to its pre-KSP 1.1 model. The current version has one Kerbal sitting behind the other, so I'm more inclined to think that it's the regular Mk2 cockpit. But it's more likely that this is just a rather basic mockup IVA that they made to test things like the Kerbal animations, as it doesn't seem to be that detailed.

Looks like an aircraft cockpit (Mk2?) to me.

I think you're confusing correlation with causation. Many cylindrical objects have burned up on re-entry, but that's because none of them were designed to survive it - they weren't equipped with heat shielding or any method of attitude control. Cylinders aren't a bad re-entry vehicle shape just because a discarded cylindrical stage doesn't survive.

The flip isn't really a problem. We've seen that as long as at least two engines are able to light, they're able to smoothly transition to vertical powered descent. That's been the issue though, getting those engines restarted, running healthily, and correctly drawing propellant from the header tanks - all the way down to the ground. Hopefully the changes made on SN15 and onwards get those problems licked.

Blue Origin who?

Most of the time where engines are clustered and/or arranged in a way that would prevent radiative cooling from being effective, regenerative cooling or another method is used to regulate nozzle temperature. See the SpaceX Starship engine bay, where multiple engines are located inside a skirt that prevents excess heat from simply radiating away. Here, some of the propellant has to be circulated throughout the engine nozzles for regenerative cooling. Other methods of engine nozzle cooling, such as ablative cooling, would also work, but I suppose we're assuming that this SSTO is reusable, and an ablative coating inside the engine that must be replaced every time isn't great for reusability. (Also, most of the time rocket engines don't use the air as a heatsink, as it's easier to just release it as infrared radiation, and rockets spend most of their time in vacuum or at least extremely thin air anyway).

Successful flight!

Downlink soon. Oh no, overdone NASA PR again...

I'm pretty sure it's a reference to the SpaceX droneship of the same name.

Updated design, with new landing legs!