CatastrophicFailure

Dagnabbut, ninja’d and played by the stupid cache bug.

Sounds more like convergent evolution to me. Every fall: Also quite tasty, I’m told. I wouldn’t know, they’re too high. But I’ll still be sure to keep my noggin clear of leaf clusters when doing yard work.

I sense a disturbance... Hoooo, ho ho ho ho ho, haaah hah hah hah hah hah...

Buildup of the new Starship pad over the last couple weeks:

Wait a sec, so... is THIS a proto-Kerm? Pacific Madrona tree, native to the mild Pacific Northwest. Glossy, evergreen leaves in a cluster, sort of fuzzy underneath: Doesn't smell of cinnamon but the bark kinda-sorta looks like it: I'm told it makes a wonderful tea. And the clincher: they're nearly impossible to transplant, doing so is all but guaranteed to kill the tree. No one's sure why, it's like there's some extra component in the immediate soil... You almost never see them in groups of any size, either... I should probably go read the chapter now...

Excuse the random, just-jolted-awake-in-the-middle-of-the-night thought, but what happens to Kerm in winter? Are they evergreen or do they drop their leaves and go domant? Frozen ground can’t be good for sensitive Kerm fibers...

Even so, I’d be pretty darned surprised if they go directly for orbit even after a fully successful 20km flight. They’ve got two ships right now, after all, and are prepping to build two more before they even start the first one that would go to orbit, according to Musk. Tho I’m sure they’re expecting to lose some along the way. Sadly, I don’t think Mk 1 that we saw the other night in all its shiny glory will make it to the Smithsonian or anything. Quick reference: titanium has a melting point just below 1700c, 301 stainless is “only” around 1400.

And just like that, thousands of likes were expended within mere moments, overloading the system and breaking it once again...

Explain yourself...

Massive, crushing debt is a thing. No, seriously. Get that number down from “hundredS” to just around one hundred thousand, and you start nibbling that upper-middle class demographic. Extremely dedicate space fanatics who, say, have a nice chunk of equity in their home they don’t mind mortgaging out. Maybe cash in an investment. Arguably radical financial decisions, certainly, but that’s for an arguably radical experience. The Tesla S and X are in a similar price range, and a chunk of those owners aren’t “hyper-rich,” just very dedicated to the cause and willing to make personal sacrifices for it. Besides, if private spaceflight ever is going to hit the realm of the true middle class, it’s got to start somewhere. And here we have not one but two companies on the verge of starting commercial flights, that competition will be good.

I swear, I was no where near the place, I was never even in the same time zone! It was the one-armed man with the candlestick on the grassy knoll... I want my phone call.

Well, I mean, it does need to weigh just so... ooh, and there’s those wireframe not-engines, too, real artist’s work there, youbetcha...

Ahh. Ahhh. AHHHHH... BULLCHOOO! Dust... dusty in here... <sniff>

Still no likes so...

We’ve been building offshore airports to mitigate noise (among other concerns) for a while now. And helicopters? Not at all, you just need an undersea tunnel and high-speed electric trams running in it to move passengers. Oddly enough, Musk has some interest in companies that do both.

Clearly, you underestimate the ability of NASA contractors to siphon money. I’m not entirely sold on the whole P2P thing myself, but one way or another, “a whole ‘nother level of reliability” is a thing that needs to happen if Starship is ever going to be fully successful, whether it flies P2P or not. Thing is, until Starship gets going it’s been impossible to even measure that level of reliability in rockets because they all (or nearly all) just get thrown away. So there’s also no incentive to build that level in the first place, since it'd just be a waste. The Atlas V is the pinnacle of reliability, but we’ll probably never know exactly how much so, since it’s likely to be retired without a single major failure. Which, if you stretch the words a bit, is a level of reliability even airliners can’t match. Starship may be the first rocket to approach airworthiness-levels of reliability if only because it can, since it’s been made to. After all, there was a point in history when a wing falling off your airplane was a perfectly valid concern...

This. Woke up with it stuck in my head. Hadn't even heard it in years. Apparently I dreamt I was walking downtown and heard some epic, jazzy, drum-Heavy arrangement of the same belting from a bar. Yes, I acknowledge how oxymoronic the concept is, but like... dreams, yo. Now you all must share in my misery. Been listening to GWAR all day and it’s just. Not. Helping.. @Triop Thought that was Beetlejuice for a second. Would totally listen to a Beetlejuice band. Especially right now.

It’s a conspiracy..

Because they'll be landing with them at sea level. Vacuum engines with enormous, overexpanded bells generally don't play nice with sea-level air pressure.

I’m being blackmailed by a tiny blue man with an epic beard, send help...

Yeesh, give ‘em a break, it hasn’t even been a day, yet. They’ve earned it.

Man, we really need that like button back. Robots, yo. Repetitive, high-precision tasks like this have been the domain of robots for decades, now. And as you pointed out, the vast majority of those bolts will be more or less identical. Luckily for Musk, he’s a little familiar with the ins and outs of assembly automation, Starship won’t forever be built in a field, after all. I think they’re building an actual factory in Florida at the KSC. This is how they’ve done it on submarines for decades as well. Life support issues aside, we’ve got plenty of experience with cramming dozens of dedicated, highly trained people into steel tubes in extremely close quarters for months on end already. And bringing enough food for all of them. 100 at once, I dunno, but at least the new crop will get windows. This may be a reason for using Mars as a stopping off point to the outer solar system. Not to refuel the ship so much (tho it would need it) but to give the crew a few weeks of “shore leave.” There won’t be a need for them to bring years of supplies with them to Mars, either, that will already be waiting for them. Possibly an entire semi-finished colony with functioning food production already started, again set up by robots sent on the first few unmanned Starships.

Wild guess here, but maybe the gentler curve on the windward vs the leeward side leads to less heating? Like, the shuttle needed the carbon-carbon tiles on the wing leading edges due to the increased heating from the sharper edge, vs the flat belly. The vertical stab LE also had higher spec tiles than the rest of it. Or, it might just be a simple aerodynamic thing, more pronounced bulges like the dorsal side might do bad things to the airflow.

...are probably recycled from somewhere else. We know, after all, that the batteries are from Tesla, and if the flipper actuators are electric, there's a good chance they're also repurposed Tesla motors. Even if brand new, that's a maximum of $120k-ish (figuring the price of a new Model S) for each battery/motor combo. The avionics are most likely "flight tested" Falcon 9 parts. Whether that's literally flight tested, or just taken from the same new parts bin is anyone's guess, but I doubt if that's in the million dollar range.

Whoah. Never realized the BE-4 was that big.