CatastrophicFailure

Good question, have any links? Pretty unlikely the Electron is gonna be moon-worthy in time. But I thought the F9 team already had a launch contract?

This: Also, this: And finally, this: (re:WHEN?!?!?!?!?) C'mon, guys, "couple of months??" We're rapidly running out of 2017 at that rate!

Sigh. Once again my Monday starts with "just keep it together till Friday, man." SMH.

It appears I've just crossed the 6k mark myself, thanks in no small part to @Geschosskopf.

P... pokemon? Oh, that's actual Cyrillic... Asking the real questions. He probably just owes her money.

Eh, figures. Looks way better than reality.

Wait, stop the presses, what's that wavy fuel line from??

Wingardium clickiosa.

I feel like a caveman looking at the space shuttle trying to comprehend this.

I'm just glad the trip to Rald is only a couple of hours. Can't timewarp on a ladder, so it was let go... drift away on warp... jet back... hop in... jump out... let go... wash, rinse, repeat. And Triti gets all the glory. Well, you'd have to get with @Just Jim on that . Also... (actual spoiler)

Like @sevenperforce said, possible but I'm wondering what they can possibly do for the "experimental" recovery on the maiden FH launch. If that's even still on the table.

There comes a time when one simply has to accep the inefficiency of the gastrointestinal tract and go intravenous. expect referenced 2700- word steaming pile shortly...

How is the bell extension attached? I'm guessing it would not be as simple as swapping regular bolts for pyros to ditch it...

And here I was hoping it was finally SPACEBALLS: The Toilet Paper.

What's that bit hanging off on the right that looks like a roll of TP?

Platypi?

In... space..? BRB, suddenly have great idea for a movie...

Well, now that he's been doubly warned I suspect he'll go into hiding. Maybe turn up on a remote uninhabited planet having grown an excellent Beard of Hermitage.

I'm = she's, but you get the idea. Glad you're enjoying things, hope you're feeling better too. As to PDFing everything... maybe. As it is I'm still struggling to get Shadows un-derped. I've got archive files of everything, but they lost all my formatting in the process. And come to think of it, I haven't backed up any of the changes to Shadows, either. @TotallyNotHuman How can such even be done without a lot of fuss, images & such? Next chapter for Revelations, here, is still creeping along (three weeks, now *shudders*). I'm hoping to have a steaming pile of flarp to pester @Ten Key with by this weekend.

Considering that's what on the primary reasons for the thing, yeah I'm gonna assume that's one of SpaceX's goals for it until demonstrated otherwise. But the argument that there just aren't any payloads for it when there have already been payloads for it (that launched on other vehicles or other vendors) seems a bit silly.

There have already been several launches slated for FH, but due to the delays wound up on expendable F9s. FH will immediately end that. Every expendable F9 flight over the last couple of years represents a FH customer, so the demand is out there, just because it can lift 20 tonnes to GTO doesn't mean it will on every flight. Even under best case scenario, the FH is only planned to fly a few times a year. And if they're even remotely successful with the attempt at stage 2 recovery, that opens the possibility of a fully reusable launch vehicle, which changes things yet again.

@Ultimate Steve flarp that, everyone goes to Europa. Land on Io. Bring sunscreen.

Year 7, Day 201... All those recovered Mallard stages taking up hangar space have finally proven useful. The engineering team has cobbled together another Grey Goose and a supply ship able to make a pinpoint landing on Rald in a record time of only 9 days and 10 sleepless nights. Sleepless, because anyone who looked about ready to nod off got a very intense talking to from Triti in which she explained in explicit detail exactly what would happen if they did nod off, thereby precluding them from ever sleeping again. Ever. But, surprisingly enough, it worked: And the precious cargo of snacks and clean underwear was soon on its way to our strange, blue sister planet, hopefully to arrive before our castaways are reduced eating each other. Which might happen anyway. All that radiation has probably affected their brains, and, well, that Lodvin just ain't right in the first place... Which brings me to one teeny, tiny complication. Triti insisted on going along. And when Triti insists on something, well, you get the idea. This created a problem, however, as the stripped-down capsule doesn't actually contain any life support equipment. It's been reconfigured for water recycling and waste processing only. This led to Triti spending the entire flight in a space suit clinging to the ladder, only popping back into the capsule to swap battery packs and O2 canisters before the CO2 levels inside chased her back out again. I think she's fully earned her Bad-S credentials with this one. After a journey both claustrophobic and agoraphobic, and a further few hours in low Rald orbit waiting to pass over the campsite, Triti returns to the cabin to begin her descent, hopefully before she dies of carbon dioxide poisoning. There's no heat shield of any sort, but fortunately orbital speed at Rald is low enough the engine is able to withstand it. Triti rides the transfer stage down as long as she can, burning the last of its fuel to kill the last of her speed a few kilometers up. Then alot of things happen at once. The cargo craft detaches, the empty transfer stage begins tumbling in the worst possible way, and Triti starts to feel light headed... The quartet of air-breathing Juno engines begins to spool up but the little craft is stuck helplessly in a near-flat spin. But as the thin atmosphere finally thickens, the lander straightens out and Triti realizes she's low enough to just open a window. CO2 toxicity must still be affecting her perception, though. Her first words are that Rald smells of chest hair and feet. Despite the strange air, she's able to locate the NewShip, having made her descent only a handful of kilometers away. But Bad-S or not, she's not completely stupid, and pops the emergency chute rather than risk landing on uncertain terrain. The supply ship sets down just meters away from a concerning rip in the very fabric of reality itself. But after all this, even reality or fractures thereof are not going to stay Triti from her wrested rounds! She safely taxis over to the stranded crew bringing much needed snacks before they've nibble too much off each other. Which is odd, because they still had like five days of food left. Jencine quickly sets about hooking up the supply ship to the beached NewShip. Oh, apparently the food was shipped in pipe-friendly puree form. Yum yum. And as long as they're going to be there for a while, might as well get some scienceing done, right? So now, instead of rescue, we have four Kerbals marooned on Rald, still with a limited food supply and absolutely no ideas of how to get them back home any time soon, and a couple of which might be clinically insane. I'll let you figure out which ones.

We can hope, but there may be (probably will be) launches from 40 before FH is ready.