CatastrophicFailure

Sage words from a great Sage (wonder if I could get him to do a cameo) For me, the biggest takeaway there was “keep yourself interested,” or words to that effect. If an author loses interest in their work, the reader is sure to pick up on that. Now @Just Jim, IIRC you do have an ending to Emilio in mind, that you’re only kinda-sorta working towards and mostly enjoying the ride along the way, right?

That’s 5:30pm PDT/8:30EDT... seems to be a recurring theme with RL...

Don’t forget the poop smasher...

Maybe Jeb just needs to drop a few kilos...

poop.

Year 10, Day 249... After three years and 171 days in the cold, lonely reaches of deep space (and one heckuva launch gambit), NOVA Gauss is at last closing in on its target... Which is already revealing a wealth of surprises. It remains uncertain if it will pass close enough to the moonmoon to recover any data. The lander is short one RTG, it's anyone's guess how long it survives on the frigid little world...

Wait, a two month turnaround? Surely that's gotta be some kind of record, they never turned the Shuttle around that fast, did they? ETA: Answered my own question, 54 days for Challenger is the record. If it goes up on the 29th, that would be 72 days from TESS. Shortest post-Challenger turnaround tho was 88 days.

That’s cuz Micky Mouse don’t pull people’s arms out of their sockets when he’s offended...

Electron is still dumping trash into the ocean, but in all fairness, it’s a bloody big ocean. AFAIK, there’s nothing really nasty on the booster, kerosene and li-ion batteries would be the worst, the latter of which just ends up on the bottom.

Well, in this one, oddball, particular case, it sort of is... In relevant news, prop load underway for static fire.

If we can put a big enough structure to be a zero-g concert hall in space, I think we can solve these minor engineering problems.

Telemetry.

Next attempt late Sunday/early Monday:

tho, given that tomorrow’s a Saturday, I wouldn’t be heartbroken if it got scrubbed... as I’ve only got 20 min left tonite to watch.

Latest tweet says holding “just for a few minutes,” YouTube link is counting: Dang it, Murray the Cable Guy, do not screw this up again!

Those two...

Gee, that flag looks kinda familiar...

Quick, somebody call Lindsay Sterling!

Because someone had to, what with all this dinking around. ಠ_ಠ And just for good measure...

5:30pm PDT/8:30EDT, UTC above. Hype train time!

Perhaps a sacrifice is in order then, to curry his favor. Let’s all make with the ominous chanting! and annoy @5thHorseman till he appreciates the dink.

As I understand it, right now these are only options for launches, and they’ve yet to secure any actual payloads for them. So four confirmed flights, I guess. I suspect someone will come up with something after ArabSat 6, or 2019 will be a very dry year for big rockets.

So, this would be flight 4 then? (That we know of ATM...)

Exactly. ಠ_ಠ Here, we have the sunk cost fallacy in all its fallacious glory. I spent way too much time making that thing work, switching around engines, rekajiggering boosters, even simulating (expensively) umpteen launches just to make sure the boosters really could survive reentry and landing (which was surprisingly difficult, apparently a long skinny thing with all the mass at one end prefers to lawn-dart into the ocean at hypersonic speed rather than slow down enough for the chutes to deploy, go figure...) even tho in the actual flight, I’d never see this as it’s all handled by StageRecovery. At some point, the thought probably occurred to me, “maybe I don’t really need a thousand-tonne monstrosity just to get 30 or so tonnes back from Rald...” but, I’d already put this much effort into it... In the end, lift capacity of the thing is far less than even the stripped-down Nero IX, not even that of an Otho V, cuz it has to haul the rest of itself around too.