Wjolcz

@kerbiloid maybe you should stick to making KSP jokes and posting pictures. You're much better at it than arguing.

What is going on with this thread recently? I feel like it gets raided from time to time just to get it offtop enough to get it closed.

I like how some people in this thread go all "where's the data and numbers, they are not sharing it so obviously reusability doesn't work" then there's a post like this one without any data either somehow trying to prove it doesn't work. So there's this post versus Shotwell's quote. But she obviously has things to hide, right? We don't know. But they are pursuing it. Other companies do too. That's what matters since it seems to be driving costs down significantly. It doesn't matter. If he has a constant income from that then he can spend all that money on whatever he wishes.

Is he still a co-owner of PayPal?

It would be really odd if they kept recovering them instead of building new ones since reusability doesn't save you that much money. That being said, Musk himself said that a rocket company is the opposite of profitable. I don't remember the exact quote but he was implying that you have to be really naive if you are starting one and your main goal is to make money. At the same time: reusability is already studied by other companies and nations. So, maybe it's not that bad of an idea after all? If he was just a big reusability troll the math would show that's it's not profitable. Yet, we are about to see a lot of Falcon 9-like rockets with legs attached in the following decade. I'm sure the Chinese and Europeans can count money too. AFAIK it's being paid, at least in part, by Maezawa. Does SpaceX even have any investors? I thought it was private, or something? That doesn't mean they are on the brink of bankruptcy though. Maybe you need fewer people when you are mostly reusing rockets instead of building them? Maybe you don't need to produce X engines each week and instead you produce less than X because they aren't thrown away into the sea each time you launch? I can easily imagine maintenance needing much less people and resources than constant production. Fewer compared to what exactly? Maybe he is. Maybe he isn't. All I care about is seeing people land on Mars before I'm old. And he seems to be the closest one to achieving this, it seems.

What even are body fins? I'm assuming basically what was already planned, just never called that way?

The source code is coming soon™. I didn't have much time recently to turn my PC on and upload it.

I think that close encounters or even actual rendezvouses are plausible. If you had a spy sat and saw another one slowly approach it would you do anything? Running away is a waste of fuel since the X-37 has so much of it. Not only that, changing orbit by "running away" really messes with the objectives and makes your sat run out of fuel sooner or later. I really like the idea of it just scaring away other satellites like a shepherd dog scaring sheep, or something. Especially since it's reusable. Not many spy sats can do that.

I wouldn't be surprised if it was another month or two before we know when the Starship is scheduled to hop. That being said, I will be very happy if it successfully hops before the end of this year.

They might be testing the fins for some other rocket. BTW, I thought hypergols can relight?

Because: 1. (AFAIK) Orbital ICBMs are banned. 2. They don't really need to. I'm really not sure why anybody would test this kind of ICBM scenario. It's surprisingly a lot. Fueled by UDMH, IIRC?

Pretty sure you can test this with an ICBM. And it's probably been done or at least studied already. My guess would be a satellite interceptor. If there's anything to intercept that would be spy sats. The plane has an arm so I can easily imagine using it to knock some sats around.

I'd say Texas even though Starship can probably barely fit on the barge. The skydiving is much safer done over water than over land with populated areas and hardware. If it was up to me I'd rather risk a test article being destroyed during one of these tests than people dying because something went wrong and one of the flaps got stuck. Besides, aren't they building another barge? Would make for a useful spare if one of the existing ones were destroyed.

MOOOOOODS! This is true. So these must be the parts where the legs join the main ship, right?

Not impossible, but the price of a trip (and the rocket itself) would probably be much higher. Not only that but I can imagine ejecting ~1000 passengers at once is pretty hard to pull off.

Oh, well. Then I guess I wasted 4 hours of my life. Edit: at the same time I learned something new and got to create something that is stock-alike. Maybe that's a win after all.

NO MORE SCIENCE! Here's my first mod. It introduces a new strategy that exchanges Funds for Science points. I made it because KerboKatz is not updated anymore and I think it was a great mod that changed the way I play career mode. WHAT IT DOES: You don't have to do science experiments anymore. Just keep hoarding money from contracts and when you're ready to unlock a new tech tree node just buy some science with cold hard cash. The exchange ratio is 1000 : 1. Here's the Google Drive link (because I've been waiting for the last 6h for SpaceDock to send me the confirmation email!): [Download link snipped by moderator, pending posting of source code; see note below] All you have to do is put the 'SciencelessCareer' folder into your GameData folder. Screenie: NOTE: It depends on your playstyle and how you want to use it but I recommend trying it with minimal science rewards. License: CC BY-SA 4.0

I want to put my mod on CKAN and from what I gather I need a SpaceDock account first, but the confirmation email didn't came (tried registering over 6h ago). It's probably not the right place to ask but the SpaceDock crew didn't answer my question either.

They still haven't added any legs to both Starships, and I think it's the most obvious thing to put on first. My guess is that landing gear will be extenable pistons attached around engines (three or four, maybe more), top fins more or less unchanged and extendable airbrakes on the sides. I'm planning to make something like this in KSP, and I know how it sounds, but it's the simplest thing I can think of when trying to replicate the Starship-like reentry. Edit: I know there are people smarter than me working on this. I just want to say 'CALLED IT' really bad in a week or two.

I'm still wondering how will they transport the fully assembled rockets and starships? They can't just lay them horizontally, can they? And transporting it horizontally will be quite a challenge.

For anybody interested: today I created a mod that adds a strategy that does exactly what I wanted (basically KerboKatz science exchanger turned into one of the strategies). It works great and it's coming very soon. I just need to work out a couple of details.