CatastrophicFailure

Doesn’t look like it. Looks to be almost entirely fluid cooled, so lots of little tubes that will add rigidity. The Merlin’s vac bell is so thin you could dent it with a hammer (or trim it with shears on the rocket in a pinch... ).

Guysguysguysguysguysguys...

They are, it's very visible in some of the post-landing pix of SN5. It's a very, very simple, one-way design: they can absorb impact by (more or less) crushing but there's no rebound like F9 legs, so once a leg is collapsed it stays that way, causing a post-landing lean. I reckon we'll stop seeing that if they move to Leg 2.0 while they're still doing single-engine hops. It just occurred to me too, if these are the 1.1 legs that Elon said are 60% longer, they possibly have a longer crumple zone too, which could make a more pronounced lean even with a softer (to the SN) landing.

Took my wife in to the dentist today for a wisdom tooth. Played this on the way home. She was not amused.

“Electron Heavy was just an April Fool’s joke.” Personally I’m betting on Starship Lite...

*yoink*

Cluck.

Don’t jinx it! If anything goes blorp now we know who to blame. Speaking of things going blorp, SN7.1 is on the road closure books to begin (potentially) destructive failure starting September 6th.

Last-second abort on Delta-IV Heavy, will take days to recycle, meaning SAOCOM 1B is also delayed several more days. [Excrement.]

IIRC they need like 14 hours of recycle time between launches, so if DIVH goes toward the start of its window it might still happen.

Remember to compensate for SN5 hooping early.

So, this happened: And then... Let me emphasize, “might have a prototype booster hop done by then.” Now, I’ll be danged impressed if they even have a Superheavy built by then, but still... the place is starting to look like Jeb’s spaceship parts yard by now...

Looks like we’ll be waiting another day for that hippity-hop: But, might get to actually watch on a weekend.

And I thought the coal-rollers were bad over here. Interesting gleanings from the NSF forum: there’s now a second, rather rusty, test stand that they’ve installed the thrust simulator on. This is probably where SN7.1 will end up for cryo testing, maybe future SNs, too. And speaking of future SNs, a segment of the nascent SN9 has a wide section of welded-on ponies for heat shield tiles. Seems unlikely the whole thing will be shielded but it’s a positive next step after 8.

It just needs to hold out long enuf that we’re mining asteroids and/or Titan.

First there was Pirate Metal... then Space Metal... and now... [ominous strings] MEDIEVAL FOLK METAL auf. Deutsch. And they rap, too. A bit much for the forum but google Feuerschwanz feat. Melissa Bonny.

Is actually a thing, for reasons... Well, according to Google they may be retiring the USS Truman in the next few years... I’m sure no one would object to selling Elon Musk a surplus nuclear-powered aircraft carrier... I mean, if they can trust him with gigantic missiles already... ...or maybe he’ll try that rekajiggered Pykrete thing... ...or the Russians will jerk him around, refuse to sell it to him, and he’ll get fed up and make it his dang self only better and cheaper... IceX.

Will the Russian Super-Ice-Carriers be crewed by polar bears? I’ll be disappointed if they’re not crewed by polar bears...

One less mystery: