CatastrophicFailure

Gotta right click then paste that as “plain text.”

Go for prop load!

...maintain eye contact and assert dominance?

...3:45 shalt be the number thou shalt launch at, and the number thou shalt launch at shall be 3:45. 3:46 shalt thou not count, nor either count thou 3:44, excepting that thou then proceed to 3:45. 3:47 is right out, as are scrubs, delays, unnecessary explosions, or other such nonsense. Amen.

ALL HAIL THE HOLY MOUSE CLICK!

This thing ain’t flying today. Go on, universe, prove me wrong! I double dog dare you! Smite me, O mighty smiter! Tease.

I’m currently running on the theory that she’s not going up today after all so I can squander likes as I want, hoping the universe will turn things around to prove me wrong just out of spite.

Sigh... I knew everything was going too well.

*triumphant John Williams fanfare plays in background*

No. Visionaries create hype like this. And speaking of hype... *man yells at cloud blown by upper level winds*

This thread needs one of those interactive maps showing everyone’s location. Et al, re: fairing recovery: we still don’t know the fate of the GovSat booster, it may not be back yet, and that’s possibly where the Steve-O is. Like OCISLY, no time to get there & back again to recover from both missions. Cold gas thrusters also have horrid ISP, you’d need a LOT of pressurized nitrogen to land several tons on the moon. You’d need a lot of UDMH/NTO too with SuperDrakes, but at least there’s quite the precedent for landing huge payloads on the moon with big hypergolic engines. And now, back to bed for another few hours!

Another random thought on a night of random thoughts... That looks like their space suit in the drivers seat... I wonder if it’s just a “dummy” or a functioning test model? Great way to test if it can survive a ruptured cabin all the way to space, after all...

Yes. ಠ_ಠ I don't want no scrubs!

This is going back to before I started work on Shadows of the Kraken in earnest, when it was just a few random posts in the WDYDIKSPT? thread with a vague theme: This is about where it went from a mission report to an actual story, and became the bizarre 3-year odyssey it currently is. And surprisingly enough, I was actually able to dig up the old posts in that thread! (A big forum re-orgnization a while back broke all the links). Looks like I'll need to add a "Lost Chapters" addition to Shadows. (and finish un-derping it... a year after I started... sigh...)

Then cue a scene with a sultry sax overdub... and a grilled cheese with a problem.

Dat plane change doe. If you think today is bad... Tomorrow the whole thread might run out of likes before launch time. So, since I’m saving all my likes, to everyone with an amusing/informational/thought provoking post today, here’s another rocketman in a slick suit with a sweet ride: I’m off work for the next two days for this. Fingers, toes, and joints I didn’t even know I had crossed that next time I clock in there’ll be a car en-route to “Mars-ish.”

Iiirc they just mentioned this a few weeks ago, so over 400 now. If anyone can get 27 running right at once, it’s SpaceX.

Because things are happening. They may only be smol things, baby steps in the grand scheme and what not, but they’re some of the things that were “promised” to all of us decades ago, that many of us had already given up on, and now finally, after all this time, here comes this guy who says, “I’m gonna do the thing” and then unlike everyone else, he actually goes out and starts doing it! This is the attraction of NewSpace to people, while old space is still plodding along saying “yeah, maybe in 30 years, also we have no funding” or repeating the same boring, if necessary, stuff over and over. Tomorrow represents real, tangible innovation. Like someone said back a page, we’re finally making all this cool lunar landing speculation on a real rocket that’s actually sitting on the pad right now. I can only imagine that maybe this is what it felt like say in 1967 or 68, when space nerds really had some hope for what was to come.

Something something so preoccupied with whether or not they could they didn’t stop to think if they should... ...and that, Class of 2296, is why to this day Mars is infested with dinosaurs...

Sure, and it would be just as “easy” as the original FH...

Meanwhile, SLS is still... Interesting... Apollo LM was right around 16 tonnes... Any back-of-the-envelope calculation on what kinda LOX boiloff there would be en route?

Interesting, so... stick some landing legs on a Falcon upper stage and assume no boiloff, and it could land 9 tonnes on the moon? Hmm. I wonder how many of those Moon Express landers they could fit in the fairing. Unleash a swarm upon the moon!

Nah, just the most powerful car delivery truck. couple of intereting tweets, here. As many suspected, looks like the FH trip around the moon might be off the table. And quite the little boast here: That would be... interesting... I’m extremely curious to see how the economics of everything starts to play out like later this year once Block 5 and its promised easy reuse is well established. Wonder if they might start earmarking their old Block boosters as disposable FH boosters... All signs continue to say everything is GO for tomorrow.

Like @sevenperforce said, I think there’s a lot of artistic license in the vid (and reused footage ). The car’s not going anywhere near Mars, we all know how hard it is to hit another planet even with a perfect window, and more over, there’s the regulatory aspect from potential contamination if it did (remember, it’ll most likely be completely uncontrolled and incommunicado at that point). From the pix of the payload adapter, it seems unlikely, sadly, that the car will separate at all. It is just a glorified mass simulator, after all. They’re not gonna dump a whole lot of effort into developing one-off Tesla decouplers. Myself, I would really love to know what modifications they’ve done to the car for this, maybe that press conference will say. I can pretty much guarantee that’s not a glass windshield, probably lexan or some such. Wouldn’t be surprised if the rest of it is just the shell of a real Tesla body over a custom dummy frame. Also, while I’m rambling, this:

Looks like that new “simulation” is out. Heard rumblings of a press conference, too. Almost within 24 hours now!