Wjolcz

I bet the middle Raptor isn't different. Seems like a lens + rotation + engine stand illusion. It's rotated and they obviously use different engine stands. The middle one probably has different dimensions. The one on the right looks completely different.

Considering that the only faster way down is jumping off the tower those zipline baskets don't look so bad.

THAT SUCKS

4.5K people are watching a steel silo being filled with liquid nitrogen. The frost belt seems to appear and disappear as if they were adding nitrogen very cautiously.

Spadre's 4K stream is alive. The nose cone looks stacked? That might be the old one. The camera is at such an angle you can barely see the fins.

This is pretty much the same attitude I have when people tell me WWIII is close lol

Came here to say just this.

HMMMMMMMMMMM...

How do we know that?

Ok, so it seems I was wrong. It just seemed very unorthodox to do things this way. The question now is: why won't more spacecraft be built this way? Cygnus probably could be. I guess it all depends on manufacturing techniques. Btw, the Starship crawler is crawling.

I don't think it will be though.

That's what I find odd about it. Wouldn't a spacecraft require something more efficient than RCS to go to the Moon even after a TLI burn? The engine(s) are obviously not shown, probably because it's still WIP. And if it isn't then I really can't imagine RCS alone bringing that thing back to Earth for reuse. But then I don't know much about orbital physics. Maybe that highly elliptical polar orbit, which Gateway will occupy, actually allows for low-ish energy insertions and departures. And I don't think that thing will be reusable anyway. Edit: the fact that the picture only shows the docking port and solar panels makes me all the more certain that these are the only two components guaranteed to be on the spacecraft. The composition of the picture says a lot about what kind of decisions were made when they decided to show it. And it doesn't make sense because they didn't want to show the thing but they wanted to include its destination (the Moon) which is why it's all "mysterious", backwards and featureless. Edit 2: I know I'm overthinking it and probably overreacting too.

So did all the Starship renders and the Red Dragon one (which looked like Dragon 1 but with engines and legs). Oh, and the upper stage landing. Also, that design is kind of odd if we assume that other thing in the picture is the upper stage of F9. Seems like an odd way to do a TLI. I bet it's still WIP. Plans change, especially in SpaceX, it seems. Really hope it does work soon.

So I'm guessing that Dragon XL is either just a boring non-reusable cylinder with a docking port (on the back?) or the render is bland because the final design is still WIP. I guess that's one way to secure the future of the company if Starship doesn't work.

Why is it oriented like that? To slow down and burn up?

I will be very disappointed if it ends up as another tank that doesn't fly (with Raptors as the source of propulsion, not nitrogen).

Not much. But that's probably desirable actually. When Starship goes belly first into the atmosphere the fuel should collect in its 'belly part' moving the centre of mass away from the centre of pressure making it more shuttlecocky. Unless it's designed to reenter with all tanks but the header ones empty. But then they are still talking about transpirational cooling and can't imagine they want to use precious header tank fuel for that. BTW did Saturn V have any anti-sloshing mechanisms?

What the hell? How come I live in Poland and haven't heard about this?

More than 1.

I'd think that the Super Heavy booster would only fly RTLS because of how powerful it is and it's probably way too big for a barge landing anyway. Also, there will be almost 40 Raptors on that thing. Those things will be pricey to lose.

The sooner Starship flies the better.

This looks like today's batch? Will be visible from central Poland, if anyone's curious. Scratch that. They are from Januray. Edit: couldn't spot any of them.

The explosion/leak looks kind of asymmetric, though.

That's because the barge bobs up and down and the height at which F9 cuts its engines differs. It's much less of a problem if the booster or Starship lands on a landing pad on land. IIRC they haven't lost a single booster landing at LZ-1 and LZ-2 (or whatever they are called) and AFAIK those boosters didn't have any leg issues.