CatastrophicFailure

Good article with some equally interesting discussion down in the comments. TL:DR due to potential delays with Starship, Orion’s heat shield, et al, NASA may be considering an Apollo-9-esq mission of putting Orion into LEO to dock with a stripped-down Starship for habitability and other tests. Or, if you believe the conspiracies, a “camel’s nose under the tent” to obviate SLS entirely… derp… here’s the article… https://arstechnica.com/space/2024/04/nasa-may-alter-artemis-iii-to-have-starship-and-orion-dock-in-low-earth-orbit/?comments=1&comments-page=1

Only if they bring back Spirit & Opportunity too.

For anyone else who’s brain absolutely will NOT let them rest until this useless knowledge is known… that wood be a pallet approximately 135x82x11ft and weighing 18,750 tons, and is either half the annual production of pennies or all the pennies in circulation as of 2012 depending on which nonsense interwebz source you trust. so yeah, splash. BIG splash.

Finders keepers.

Sadly, nothing related to Tesla is ever unpoliticized for free from bias, either way. Such articles are nearly always missing important context, like the fact that most of the people caught in that mess hadn't bothered to precondition their cars prior to going to charge, which makes a huge difference. Or mention all the people who can't start their gas cars due to... dead batteries. Note you don't hear about issues like this in places like, say, Norway, or even Minnesota, where such subzero (F) weather is fairly normal and people know how to handle it. There's more than that, of course, so if you really want to discuss it I'd suggest taking it over to the relevant Tesla thread. Now that you've ranted, how about listening? It's hit over 100 a few times here, but I've never had to get into a burning hot car, because it's always cooled down remotely by the time I get in there. Also, nudge nudge... Er... socioeconomic factors and, shall we say, heavy use of alternative pharmaceuticals...

I’m just gonna say this: if you truly wish to have an informed opinion about Teslas in X climate, or anything really, listen to people who actually own them, not what some rando on social media or newscaster sensationalizing for ratings/clicks says.

How many spherical cows can fit in a 13m ShawtyStarShip? Also keep in mind, they are still planning for ≈18m SS/SH in the long future… I see it like this: the first Starships to Mars (or a proper lunar colony) will be one-way, with wide, one-use LSS-style legs under heat shields (Martian EDL less demanding?). They’ll carry robots that will build level, solid, Mars-crete landing pads for the next, reusable Starships with stumpy-legs, which will bring the crews to finish assembling the mini-Mars-Mechazillas (MMMs) catch towers, 3D-printed in situ, to start using “standard” Starships.

They should follow precedent and send a Cybertruck to Jupiter.

And then there’s this: The TL:DW:

I had to grab the fire extinguisher and put out a flaming shopping cart. Wen your job’s not literally a dumpster fire, but close enough. Sadly the shopping cart, and some dude’s drawers, were a total loss.

Or just land it in a massive underground silo like a proper Bond villain. But speaking of all this, sort of, interesting thread here from a very astute person who IFT-3 Superheavy's return. Counter to Falcon 9 boostbacks, which actually glide a good ways, it basically came straight down. That could certainly explain why it didn't appear to slow down nearly enough, and points to grid fin issues again:

CSS is a discredited hack who hate-mongers for clicks and has been proven wrong pretty much every step of the way. Not really a good “source” to call back. Oh, and also a media thief. jus sayin…

So would that be the core or (final) upper stage?

Is this one of those one-time-use “missile batteries” that can sit around for ever but once it’s activated, it’s done?