AckSed

30.5m tall, 3.7m wide... any other rockets that are comparable? The expendable, hypergolic Long March 2D has roughly the same payload and diameter, but 10.5m taller.

Summary of the 51 satellites launched on the Transporter 10 mission: https://orbitalindex.com/archive/2024-03-06-Issue-259/.

I think it's institutional inertia. Any mission using channels that aren't 'established' must wriggle around the bureaucratic blockages in the arteries of the whole organisation. They need champions on the inside, like Ingenuity, which was almost killed-off. If you'll allow me a little rant here, no-one is prepared for what's coming when both StarShip reuse and in-orbit refuelling is proven out. No-one. Not. A. Soul. NASA? As the monks in the cathedral apply the gold leaf to their metaphorical hand-drawn parchment, they're trying very hard not to think about the printing press, even as a few juniors in the back rooms marvel at the process. The cubesat and smallsat builders? Not ready. Universities and research organisations? Yeah, I think I heard about Starship... Only a few in the commercial sector are thinking about it (e.g Varda and Sierra Space), and it's more about heavy-lift than the ability to send Starship off as a monster probe from LEO with a kick stage. I suspect SpaceX isn't fully ready for it either. The hardware for the Mars mission before the colony will still need specialised equipment, and that is still but a dream.

Here's the blog version: https://www.nasa.gov/image-article/nasa-spacex-test-starship-lunar-lander-docking-system/ It's a big, impressive boi.

That was oddly beautiful. Fixed perspective and the slow tumble made me hum Blue Danube.

It should, but there's no free lunch in that case. Sure, you're pushing further, but you now have to get the beaming station back into place, and even with a small, efficient chemical rocket that's a lot of fuel. Allowing it to be pushed back into position by the laser (because both sides of the cavity are bouncing photons back and forth) halves the force. This is what solar sails would excel at. Either acting as a statite at L1/L2/L5, providing opposing force and maybe solar power for the beam, or used for the return trip. Diffractive sails are a fascinating variation that provide "a component of force perpendicular to the sun line, thereby allowing navigation without sacrificing the amount of solar power on the sail." You could use boring solar-powered Hall-Effect Thrusters too. If it's staying in one place, there's no drop in power.

Could someone check my assumptions here? I'm trying to work out Photonic Laser Thrusters (PDF) (really quick explanation: form an optical cavity in between source and mirror with gain medium to bounce laser back and forth thousands of times, creating useful thrust at mirror) and how they respond to added mass. The 1 gigawatt laser is turned off when it is 30,000 km away from the beaming station, due to attenuation. I am assuming the beam is firing from the Moon and the receiving craft is in orbit around the Moon, so it is travelling at ~1600 m/s. The PDF gives the example of a future craft with 1-ton total mass, 50-metre mirror and 500kg payload, has an acceleration of 32.27 m/s2 and is within range of the beaming station for 1.2 hours, or 4320 seconds. It exerts a force of 3227N, and final velocity is 141km/s. With a 10-ton total mass, the same mirror, and 9.5 tons of payload, that acceleration is reduced by a factor of ten to 3.227 m/s2, because a = F / m. Here's the assumption: I can apply the same force for longer on a greater mass, to gain the same final velocity once it passes beyond range of the laser applying motive force, correct? Obviously forces when leaving orbit are more complex as they have to take a vector, but to a naive approximation, is this correct?

Only now is it settling in to the noggin that we have tri-weekly regular rocket launches with booster landings. (I'm a little slow like that.) Falcon 9 is a bona-fide space-truck.

Smugness.

I appreciate the attitude to just send it up, and he's right that building things at scale is much harder, yet necessary.

Neptune is surprisingly not an instant death - if you're inside a sufficiently strong aerostat/submarine. And you avoid the fastest storms in the Solar System. Radiation is sorta benign this far out from the sun. The gravity at the 'surface' is 1.14 g, and the temperature at 1 bar is a brisk -201 deg. C. Go deeper and the temperature rises. Bob about in the relative calm of the North Pole and about *waggles hand* 30 bar pressure, and you'll almost be warm enough to not freeze.

Okay, I don't mind Nelson bigging them up, but even I think it's over-egging the achievement.

Down on the moon, but in what condition?

Let's hope turning the antennae on and off solves it.

Comm outage. Think it hit a boulder and tumbled?

Heard on stream: they're using the lasers on one NASA instrument to act as doppler LIDAR, due to the lander's lasers not working. Had to upload a software patch.

I wonder what the pricetag of those are? Could we have Orbital Reef for $400 million? Super-Mega Freedom Station with four of the 3.0 for a billion or two? Even a single 3.0 would exceed the volume of the ISS more than 5 times over (915 metres cubed vs. 5378 metres cubed). That is large. For comparison my current terraced 2-storey, 3-bedroom house in the UK is 12-14 metres tall, 10m long and 7m wide. If we ripped it out of the ground and stuck it inside (handwaving the internal support tube) it wouldn't even come close to touching the sides. This is the beginning of a space-factory. Edit: Using SpinCalc, if you spun the 3.0 up to 4.2 rpm, you would just about get Mars gravity of 0.38g on the inside. Mars settlement sim as well.

Fascinating article from 2022 on the IM-1 comms: https://blog.jatan.space/p/moon-monday-issue-93 Long story short, they're not using NASA's Deep Space Network, but renting time on other commercial ground stations around the world. They tested it (with NASA's help) by connecting to the Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter.

My good fellow is probably thinking of the problems Skylab astronauts had. But there probably would be a handhold, well, at hand at all times if the designers were halfway competent. If not, I'd make up a folding version of one of those grabby sticks used for picking up litter and wear it on my belt. Hell, make two and I can be the king of the swingers.

Carbon. Luna is remarkably low in carbon and the first few settlements might cause a brief 'carbon rush' to set up 'dry ice' cartels at the permanently-shadowed craters in the South Pole. Then people would be outright shipping in compressed blocks of artificial graphite for chemical feedstocks, electrodes for electrolysis of magnesium and aluminium, carbon dioxide foaming agent for silica insulation, methane rocket fuel and so on. Or polyethylene, as it can count as radiation protection... and then be cracked for its carbon and hydrogen. There might then be a carbon Prohibition from shipping away Earth's 'natural' carbon, even though it's not true and the Earth could definitely use a lot less of it, and the cartels are also sneaking in their own because the crater CO2 is running dry. Then Prohibition collapses just as asteroid mining and production is set up, leaving the cartels and the former 'carbon crackers' now dependent on the influx of carbonaceous asteroids. Or worse, left behind altogether.

Varda finally gets to come home: https://spacenews.com/varda-gets-reentry-license-for-space-manufacturing-capsule/

Axiom's lunar EVA suits being put through their paces: https://www.nasa.gov/image-article/axiom-space-tests-lunar-spacesuit-at-nasas-johnson-space-center/

I wonder if it's Australia's aviation authorities taking on this, or they've finally convinced the FAA to drop it, so to speak.

This has become the Hazegrayart thread. Not complaining, just remarking - they're good at digging out the strange and somewhat plausible. On that note, absolutely check out that video's description for a 40-page article on reusable booster concepts. Edit: There's a two-stage HTHL spacecraft that's called... POBTATO. POBTATO! Its second stage is a flying wing and it didn't rely on mid-air refueling, so I suppose they just leaned into its wide shape.

Can't say it's not inspiring to see a new rocket being raised, even if it's not a 'real' one.