CatastrophicFailure

Had our first power outage of the season yesterday, and it’s not even technically fall yet. Odd storm, my weather station showed consistent gusts 20+mph, usually even a really bad storm has a lot more peaks and valleys. And terrible timing, all the leaves are still on the trees and they’re still dry and brittle from summer, whole south end of the island went dark. But, thanks to Starlink, for once it was only a literal black hole instead of an information one. I was able to keep monitoring things remotely, not worry so much, and finally, finally, everything just worked.

Also entirely possible they're still busy puking their guts out.

Or just make sure the nose is pointing away from the sun at certain times… There was a tweet, maybe unthread, from NASA, I4 is using their TDRS system for communication, so probably in comms all the time, for safety if nothing else.

Yes.

I think you're still missing the point. There is no either/or here, landing SH will be like a constant, smooth slow to a stop in your car, unlike Falcon, which slams on the brakes at the very last moment. SH most likely will not hover, but it can, that's the point, it has enough engine control to do so, so if it can do that, it can also have infinite control of its descent speed from TV to zero. It can slow down a lot, or just a little, in order to gain time to make other adjustments as to exactly where it ends up. The prototypes were just that: prototypes. Pinpoint landing was not part of their mission profile, just "good enough" to reach the concrete pad. The fact that they touched down, tilted, on a single off-center engine doesn't help with precision, either.

It’s not so much that it will hover, it’s that it can… in contrast to Falcon 9 which cannot. This means that they have full control of descent speed right down to zero m/s, which will allow much more precise maneuvers than F9’s suicide burn, even if SH is actually still moving the entire time.

Sooooo… what’s that, about tree fiddy US?

Today… well, yesterday, I discovered how sharp router bits are. Exactly how sharp router bits are. Fresh, brand new router bits still in the fancy little box that extolled everything about them except the dang shank size so just pop one out and take a peek… er… cleanup in aisle seven…

Aaaaaaaand then you’re getting pulled over and ticketed for littering. I mean, really, some people just have no appreciation for advanced aerodynamic research.

I think the issue here is not that Musk and co. oppose regulations, more that he moves shockingly fast (despite ElonTime) in industries where progress is typically glacial—at best, and regulations simply cannot keep up. They need reforming to better fit the modern world that SpaceX and others are finally ushering in. I mean, seriously, at the start of the year there was no orbital launch pad in Boca, and now they’ll very likely be ready to launch within the year. Possibly more than once. Contrast.. those other guys, who’ve been building their own pad for a couple years now? In a place with much better infrastructure?

And on that note...

A missile sub is a bit generous, they're palatial by submarine standards. An old WWII diesel sub might be a better analogue, tho I can't find any stats on the habitable volume of such. It's maybe worth noting, that by the time Starship has any need to carry 100 people at a time, infrastructure on Mars will be well established, so they'd be arriving to prepared, suitably-sized habitats. They'd only be canned for a few months of transport. I also recall seeing something during an early Starship presentation, where they mentioned doing a high-energy transit to get the travel time down to just two or three months. That would make 9-ish cubic meters per person a bit more tolerable, especially with 21st century accommodations vs a noisy, smelly submarine. As someone said upthread, mariners have endured far worse.

There’s a special IR/UV coating on the roof glass, it actually works surprisingly well to reject heat, even in summer sun. We notice far more heat coming in through the untinted side windows. That said, the wife has has a solid shade over the glass roof pretty much since she got her 3. The view is nice, but we just hate the sun. Preparation for proper metal covers, maybe? Tho @Elthy makes a good point about black pressure vessels in the Texas sun.

There’s a TV Tropes for that.

Should have ordered the “frustration-free packaging” from Amazon, those plastic bubbles are hard enough to open up without Space Gloves.

And that’s without even mentioning…. …The Forbidden Library!

Welp, people smarter than you or me seem to think it's a good idea, and they're the ones putting money where the mouth is, so I'm gonna give them the benefit of the doubt for now. Most efficient way? No, probably not. Fastest, in terms of hardware development time vs same ol' same ol' that's gotten us nowhere? Now that might be something. If it's stupid but it works... it's not stupid.

Don’t forget now, Starship’s primary purpose actually is downmass… on Mars. How well that translates to Earth, well, we’ll see. But I still keep slim hope that Starship will one day bring back the Hubble for the Smithsonian. Ullage “thrusters”, maybe? B4 is still quite unfinished at this point, there’s a lot of covers still need to be put on. Or, SpaceX has done the modeling and figured out some stuff doesn’t actually need covers. Wouldn’t the shock wave itself keep hypersonic flow away from the hull to a point?

Of course they didn’t. This is the first time we’ve seen a tiled nosecone at all, there’s going to be a learning process rife with mistakes. That’s how they learn. We’ve seen plenty of other false starts that went straight to the scrapyard because they didn’t turn out quite right, big difference here is they can fix it instead of just starting over. Remember how rough the Mk-x’s and early SNs looked compared to today?

Someone needs to update and re-record it for the modern era. Of course, it would end up being a four or five hour long synth-rock tragedy opera.

That could get… awkward… Likewise if the aliens decide to drop in at the wrong moment…

Also, whatever Final Form the MechzillaTreads end up taking, they’ll need some simple mechanism for actually gripping the booster’s load points, like cups or something, not a flat, slippery surface.

Well, they are designing a lander… maybe this is how they do research into digging themselves into a really deep hole… with rockets…