Minmus Taster

WOOOOO! WERE COMING IN HOT!

Tumbling Wow, actually getting a signal.

Reentry

Looks like their tumbling, not great.

A steep reentry trajectory would probably be harder for the ship than a normal deorbit. Burn is not going forward, reentry upcoming.

Wonder what continent that is, maybe Africa? Were a long way from Texas... Less than a minute to the burn.

Payload door closing

Prop transfer seems to be starting.

The interior of S28

Again, it looked as though something was leaking around the engines, is that normal venting?

Is it just me or is the starship leaking propellant or something?

Doesn't look like things are getting any better. Booster load may have just begun.

Aw it's cloudy, giving me SN11 vibes..

They need permission to launch from the FAA, could come tomorrow or in a month for all we know : P

Is it possible you could avoid the planetshine issue by stationing the tanks at a planets L2 point? That way you could have a system where some tanks can be stored in orbit and regularly refueled incase someone needs them and the larger tanks can be placed at L2 for long range craft to use.

Is it possible to keep propellant depots cool by shading then behind sunshields? That would allow you to basically have them everywhere in the solar system the shield can survive and operate.

In the case of the Uranus Orbiter (if it actually becomes a mission) the problem isn't just getting there, it's being able to slow down to get into orbit. Of course you want to be going fast enough for it to get there within a FEW presidential terms but also not so fast it can't insert itself into orbit once it's there. That's why no one has sent an orbiter that far, a recent study for a Pluto orbiter (much further than Uranus but still puts things into perspective) had the cruise phase for the orbiter taking nearly 30 YEARS to get there. Not to mention it needed like 5 RTG's to power it that long:

Haven't watched it yet but looking forward to it!

"Yolo".

Yikes, how far is it from the lander?

Thought this would be a fun world building exercise. Propose a space mission of some kind. It can be manned or unmanned and take place in any location as long as it is somewhat grounded in known or plausible physics/technology. Build a fictional proposal for a NASA probe or go full kerbal and send an interplanetary craft of poor souls to neptune. If this thread gains traction we could also do votes for which proposals to "fund" like real world concepts.

I'm particularly interested in what's left of the old 'Venera' probes, would they have been totally destroyed by now? Another interesting one is the 'Huygens' on Titan, it is supposed to have landed in a dried up riverbed so is it possible it was swept away to another location? It was designed to float after all.

I know this was a month ago but Juno found active volcanic plumes on Io during it's second flyby early this month:

Ingenuity's blades are totally shattered, there's at least one that was spotted 15 meters away from the drone. RIP to a real one