CatastrophicFailure

ITS HIIIIIIIIIIIIIM!

So, they get a nice fee and he’s now part of their space program, right?

I think sooner or later they’ll have to test to failure, if only so they can know exactly what their margins are. Design might need to gel more first, but with SN5 coming along so quickly it might just lap SN4 and leave it surplus. Also: (re: Starlink beta testing) Well, at least statistically my chances of being in an early test group just went up.

I’ll see that and raise you... This might be hitting below the belt...

Well, this is interesting... Tho, by that math, they could just use Starship and launch the whole Gateway, the HLS, main and relief crew, and a partridge in a pear tree all at once for twice the win. I’m kidding. Mostly. Explosives. Or order the moondozer with the optional SpaceX package and just use thrusters for extra downforce. More efficient in vacuum, anyway...

I honestly don’t know, I’d be real curious to hear from someone who ran the numbers. Your dozer weighs less, but the rock also weighs less. Seems to me like it’d be a net reduction in the amount of energy needed to do anything.

*moon. This is exactly what ULA’s ACES concept does, run hydrolox boiloff through a combustion engine for power. Probably not practical for the kind of moon-moving equipment a moonbase would need, electric would be simpler, less cooling requirement, and near the poles solar is much more feasible. Coincidentally NASA already has an in with a guy who builds electric powered equipment and the hardware to land it... Doing it on the moon also cuts the required loads to 1/6th, and with Starship as cargo ferry, mass is suddenly much less of a concern. Land a Starship that’s just full of batteries, have it constantly trickle charge from some huge solar arrays and boom, Lunar Supercharger.

Well, that’s what the head of NASA says, and he’s a bit of an authority on such matters. I think there’s a lot of good cinematography that could be done with just an actor and director, who’d also be operating the camera. Faking weightlessness in film is hard, doing it convincingly is even harder. Gravity did a very good job with that but there’s some things you just can’t do with only the 20-30 seconds you get on the Vomit Comet. Think one of those awesome, sweeping, single-long-takes that takes the viewer floating down the length of the entire station, saying hi to all the astronauts, looking out all the windows, etc. Professional filing in space isn’t entirely unprecedented, either. There was an IMAX movie done on the shuttle a while back, I forget if it had the Station. But IMAX cameras are huge, heavy and bulky, and they basically trained the astronauts how to operate them. Now, imagine what a talented director could do with just a handheld 8k+ camera that’s light years ahead of IMAX technology wise. Training astronauts to be scientists in Apollo was good, bringing along an actual scientist on Apollo 17 was even better, same idea here. Also, never underestimate the marketing power of a good gimmick. Remember Jurassic Park where the CGI got top billing but was only on screen for a few minutes? I think this will likely be similar. I’m no Tom Cruise fan, but he is a good actor, and I, not at all surprised he’s the first one to officially sign on to a project like this. I’m more interested in who’ll be running the camera. Better yet, go full wet-workshop: vent the tanks, cut some holes, and now you’ve got a good sized garage for your rover, too. Could even return the Raptors for reuse. Or go full-Kerbal and stick an extra Raptor on the rover... Also, this:

WE HAVE IGNITION! And nothing caught fire that wasn’t supposed to!

Needn’t be that much, SpaceX is only charging NASA around 55 million per seat. Now, with a used F9, used Dragon (which NASA won’t touch anyway), it would probably come in much less. Plus the publicity for SpaceX, I’m sure a deal could be made for a “reasonable” sum, at least in terms of movie budgets. Now, getting Tom Cruise’s ego into orbit, on the other hand, will require an SLS...

Figured something like this would happen sooner or later. https://www.teslarati.com/spacex-tom-cruise-movie-in-space/ I wouldn’t put too much stock in it as yet, but it’s cool that it’s even being talked about right now. When/if Starship really gets going and can take dozens of people and tons of cargo to orbit for only a few million, I think movies filmed In Space! will become a legit thing.

Watching this, I keep hearing the melody from a JackInTheBox in the back of my head. Something maybe coming at any moment. ANY. MOMENT. Maybe something bad, maybe something good, maybe nothing at all. And the wait is just maddening. I really can’t wait until this is the boring part.

O.O

Also, Superheavy will never (AFAIK) land on a drone ship, it will always return to a landing pad that’s in exactly the same place, and exactly the same height. One thing that’s made barge landings dicey is the up and down motion of the deck, even if it’s kept level. That’s a harder target to hit when you can’t hover. I would think SH would be able to hover, I don’t recall if it has a center mounted engine, but if it does it should have no trouble hovering on a single (or several) throttled Raptors.

And so at last we come to an end. I pray at the foot of this particular Tower you find a little rest and succor, Wordslinger. Thank you for bringing us all along on this incredible journey, where the unlikely pairing of spaceflight and head-sucking hippie trees doesn’t seem that unusual. Now the Story has been told, and it, too, can have its peace. But, I’ve found its a rule of the cosmos that any true Wordslinger cannot lay fallow too long, I hope you’ll include me in that PM you just mentioned.

Testing shut down for the night, but...

Think they quit or paused, EMS escorted a car over to the area a minute ago. Man, who ever thought a fueling test could be so captivating.

Concrete. Fast curing time could be an advantage, you’d just need a machine that creeps slowly along laying down a strip of concrete that’s set (but not fully cured) when it comes out the back end. Make multiple passes back and forth and voila, landing pad. These machines actually exist already, would just need to be modified for moon use. this line from that article tho... Um...

*cough*Shelby*coughcough*

AJRD just got a contract to build eighteen more...

Well... they both drive/drove really slick cars with interesting electrical doodads... Musks’s is much safer tho, fortunately.

Well, at least he’s sounding a bit more, er, grounded now...

They don’t necessarily have to fly it for NASA the second time around. For just one example, there is that high-ish orbit tourist flight on the books in the next couple years....