CatastrophicFailure

Nothing of... huge interest. Top left looks like up inside, looking at the lower tank butt. You can see the manifold for the fuel lines, similar to recent SLS photos. Top right is a tank dome hidden behind shipping containers. bottom left is just the flank of the beast. Bottom right is the same tank dome closer.

Likely a big reason why they chose to go the AI route, with human oversight. It doesn’t have to be perfect, it only has to pare out a small enough number of potential collisions that the human overseers can reasonably verify and actively monitor.

Not at all, eventually they’ll all just clump together and can be moved out of the way with a gentle push...

And Starlink will have its own automatic anti-collision system, as well as ground monitoring by multiple systems. How is that even relevant? A sat that’s low on fuel will be safely deorbited and no longer a concern. Also: Yeah, this whole non-issue is just ESA grandstanding for their own product.

Just for comparison, on average there are around 12,000 aircraft in the air at any given time*, which are much bigger than Starlinks, in a much smaller “shell” of space. They are highly regulated, and very rarely hit each other at altitude. The whole Kessler syndrome thing is way overblown. People forget that space is big. Really, really, big. And the farther out you go the bigger it gets. And most things that aren’t far out don’t stay up forever. *And as high as 19,000 at once, I recall reading.

“Don’t dead, open inside” Not unusual for airplanes, rockets tho... I’d be surprised to see SLS bits just sitting out like that, or even Atlas. Musk does want to make the whole mess more airplane-like, tho, hmm...m

I love that there are bits of rocket ships just laying around outside like that. Looks like they’re working on a new tent Quonset hut shelter space, too, and maybe the beginning of another ring jig? Now, if I were the head of that there steelworks, knowing there were drones overhead all hours of the day, I’d start leaving all kindsa stuff laying around just to mess with people... 10m steel ring... surplus space shuttle wing... giant rubber chicken with a sailor hat and a vat of mayo from Costco...

So this is interesting... like train wreck interesting... Apparently SpaceX allegedly “refused” to move a StarLink sat out of the way of an ESA bird. Now, according to the train wreck comments, the only Starlink at a similar altitude to the ESA sat is one of two that’s slowly deorbiting itself, which +the slow-responding ion thruster May have been the reason it couldn’t move. Whole thing needs to be taken with a great big grain of salt for now, but there it is. ETA: Better article, mentioning a different computer pegged the chance of a collision as pretty negligible.

Top.... men....

Being able to cook a full meal in the car is exactly why we left Phoenix for Seattleish.

Today we discovered that the frunk on the wife’s new Model 3 is the perfect way to bring home a pizza without it sliding all over. Even keeps it warm on a sunny day. And also, everything smells like pizza when you get out.

See, now I’m gonna love that, Persistent Rotation is always on my short list of mods for a new install... if only so I can switch back and watch a still-tumbling bit of debris reenter.

I’m waving from about 20 miles away, does that count?

SpaceX already has the whole VTVL thing down pretty good, they arguably have a better understanding of it than anyone else in the industry right now. What they don’t have is flight data on reentry and descent on their unprecedented plan of doing so. There’s probably not a whole lot more they could learn from Hoppy, that’s why the first Starship test will be all the way to the edge of space and back— that remains the big unknown. Once Starship is back down low and going butt-first on a pillar of fire, that’s actually the easy part.

What’s that thing above the C-5, left of the shuttle? RHOMBUS? Looks like a great big aerospike... uses it as a heat shield on reentry? Then stubby wings for some control to a vertical landing? MOAR BOOSTERS! optional?

Will physics still, er, revolve around the “1/10th size and ridiculously dense” model of the current game? Any native support for upscale design/real-scaled mods?

. . . *Points at Owners of All Media Disney*

Nope, just a single Tyrannosaurus Rex. dat roar doe And not ones to rest on their laurels, apparently SpaceX is also aiming at the opposite end of the spectrum:

Whoah. And whoah! And also, whoah. Them are some... aggressive time frames... I wonder why more delay on the presentation, tho? What are they, for lack of a better phrase, “hiding?”

You w—? Well, I suppose you could come help me test the electric fence if you wanna further your education...

Well, at least we know why they had issues with the FAA over altitude, they couldn’t accept the “return data from upper atmosphere” contract yet.

So... grabbed a live wire, eh?

haven’t seen this mentioned yet... apparently right at the end you can see one of the COPV’s get liberated and go flying off on its own...

Daaaaaaaaaang! I was not expecting the flight to last that long! What’s the longest burn we know of for a Raptor at this point?