darthgently

People are missing the point that many rural villages share one or more Starlink terminals and distribute locally via WiFi and cat 5/6. Just as passengers on a commercial flight share a Starlink terminal. It isn’t about cabins and yachts, for Crom’s sake

IFT-7 g2g https://arstechnica.com/space/2024/11/spacex-just-got-exactly-what-it-wanted-from-the-faa-for-texas-starship-launches/

Sure, if you only consider the first world. Most of the world’s population is lucky to have dialup or oversubscribed/spotty lower speed cellular. A few Starlinks can provide better for a small village. Also you have clearly never worked a crew hanging or burying and maintaining miles of cable and fiber or building and maintaining cell towers and antennas. Never mind the hurricanes and tornadoes. Vast costs are involved that cannot be appreciated from an armchair

Wot?

Not sure if posted yet: “…automated health checks of critical hardware on the launch and catch tower triggered an abort of the catch attempt” https://www.spacex.com/launches/mission/?missionId=starship-flight-6

Consider how quickly we’ve adapted to ZERO plasma blackout. We KSP’ers are accustomed to having access to the craft in all phases of flight, lol Seriously though, Starlink rules for reentry comms

That was by far, without doubt, the most complicated and roundabout recipe for Banana Flambeau I have ever seen. I hope it tastes good

Current thinking is that direct aero to landing won’t work for crewed without capture burn, iirc. G forces I think?

I’m going to put this here given the recent posts about < 1t payload market and ABL self-deleting. After watching the recent Kessler syndrome vid from Sabine it occurs to me that a rather large niche for < 1t payload launch market could exist for targeting specific dead objects in orbit for controlled deorbit. The market would almost have to be a government or cooperating governments to deal with the problem. That or the owners of the junk are held accountable for deorbiting it and they pay for its removal. Alternatively, what if every sat launched was equipped with the ability and resources to bring back some junk with it when it was deorbited at end of life. Starlinks, just in sheer numbers and short 5 year lifespan, could clear the junk out of their shells fairly well and fairly quickly I’d think. I imagine this being covered under contract from an international consortium of junk owners and governments

Given payload capacity is so valuable and time is relative, maybe a hybrid of multipass aero deceleration and retro burning could be found where not too much time is added to the journey but much less entry braking fuel is required so more stuff (or remaining propellant) can be delivered to the surface. Cargo only missions could do as many aero passes as possible and crewed missions could do as many as could be endured. Maybe enough fuel could be saved that it would be enough to put the crew back into orbit later? That seems optimistic. But if so, a refill tanker could be waiting for them in Mars orbit. This could take the pressure off having successful ISRU of propellant wonderfully working right away

Everything is bigger in TX

This works. Gorilla tape works very well. Do not rub the skin as this will drive the fibers deeper

Shotwell: 100 Starship flights a year next 4 years, F9+Dragon for 8 more years, crew rating Starship important milestone when enough flights in (after 8 years or so presumably) https://arstechnica.com/space/2024/11/spacex-president-predicts-rapid-increase-in-starship-launch-rate/

“So, you’re saying there’s a chance?”

Well put, but I don’t see much functional difference between what you and I wrote other than I might be assuming more rational actors. But typically the more skin in the game the higher the degree of rationality striven for. So just as betting markets have uncanny predictive ability, so does the valuation process, to an decent degree Well put, but I don’t see much functional difference between what you and I wrote other than I might be assuming more rational actors. But typically the more skin in the game the higher the degree of rationality striven for. So just as betting markets have uncanny predictive ability, so does the valuation process, to a decent degree

I’ve been subject to intrusive imaginings of a duel Superheavy launch and landing utilizing both towers at once. I can’t think of a valid use case but it would be so dang spectacular

Would be interesting if the trash is compacted into a small subchamber that can be periodically exposed to vacuum to kill anything growing in it. Though the heating during compaction probably does a good job of that. And yes, I’m aware that there are some very tiny things that survive vacuum reliably well

I beg to differ, profitability is the biggest factor in valuation, followed by viable evidence of pending profitability. How else would valuation rationally work?

If it isn’t obvious this vid is a comparison between the simulation (left) and the reality (right). What I want to know is whether that is a pre-flight predictive sim, or after the deed. If the former, even more impressive

The title of that vid may end up being prescient

I gather Tesla and maybe BYD are the only EV companies making a profit on EVs.

Nice endorsement if accurate

Future Miyake grade super solar flares could dwarf the Carrington event by 2 orders of magnitude given the strongest inferred in tree ring records. Miyake grade solar flares appear to occur every 400 to 2400 years or so. Throw in the risk of large earth crossing asteroids, glaciation, and human idiocy and I am more and more appreciating Musk’s insistence of not having all of our eggs in one basket. If SpaceX continues to apply its profits to interplanetary diaspora then they will create the space market in their wake making it far easier and less risky financially than we can now imagine for those who follow. But clearly the more players willing to run point on the risk the better. Blue Origin seems willing in principle I’d like to see SpaceX‘s competition at the tip of the spear be represented by more than the PRC, personally