CatastrophicFailure

Aye and aye. He’s a great editor and a good man, but there are more important krakens than these to be vanquished.

Heh, I love the part where he says “[something something the Shuttle’s external tank]... which is slightly smaller than Starship.” It sounds like they’re gonna move it in two sections from that article. Slightly disappointing we won’t get to see it standing tall where it is, but it does make the move in only a few more weeks that much more plausible.

Well, not like they’ve been having the greatest luck recovering the core stages anyway... So I just noticed this... what’s up with the deck? Why’s it cocked up at that weird angle? Did they have to somehow reduce it to make the canal transit?

Sigh... so... Ten Key is... no longer with us. It seems he has Moved On, perhaps to take the Long Walk into the wastelands to bring Moderation to the unmoderated. We shall not see his like again. As to the Reader’s Digest edition, well... I’m a bit stretched as it is. Such is the downside to writing a serial novel epic story over years. Most of what I’m calling back to is probably inaccurate anyway, and full of plot holes. But speaking of such long-dead spectres rising again, the next chapter is coming Soon.™️ ...maybe I should start adding footnotes...

Ahem....

Potentially relevant:

Whoah... just imagine what kinda ginormous creepy-looking statues we could leave to weird out future alien archaeologists in 1/6th gravity... You don’t even wanna know how long the permit for that would take...

IIRC Musk has said they’ll never go horizontal. Once everything is at the Space Center it’s pretty easy, how they’ll move from Cocoa I have no idea, don’t think there’s a barge dock close by.

Also, this: So, it looks like the existing Starship bits sure won’t fit in that structure they’re building. I’m guessing maybe it’s for assembling the next Starship, then? What is there is starting to look mighty tall, too...

SpaceX should just start it’s own FAA, but with blackjack and... permits...

Apparently this one little part of the hopper got too hot.

Ssssssort of. I was just reading a thing but I can’t find it now, but anyways, instead of a pressure envelope like an EVA suit they used inflatable bladders, akin to fighter pilot G-suits. Lose pressure, and the bladders inflate, maintaining limited mechanical pressure to the most important bits. So kinda both.

It’s 11:18pm, do you know where your clicks are? Never know where they might run off to when someone leaves the thread unlocked...

Been up since 3. Didn't sleep for crap last night either. Meh.

Is there any evidence that they have? OTOH, there’s an established line of evidence that they have not. My tinfoil hat is wrapped up with last night’s meatloaf, I’m afraid.

In such a case, any craft would just abort and land. For reference, the Russian SOKOL launch suits are only rated for two hours in a vacuum. That’s about how much they’d need to deorbit and land. You made a baseless accusation, burden of proof is on you, dude. I will say that with past trouble, like the parachute issues and the Dragon explosion, SpaceX has been nothing but open and fully cooperative with NASA.

See, now this is just pure, unsubstantiated SpaceX hate. Do you have anything to back that up? Or is it just, “it’s SpaceX, OF COURSE they’re lying!”

Why are you so certain SpaceX has not been exercising due diligence in the development of this suit? It seems you’re assuming in the negative for its own sake. Starman was not a spacesuit test. Musk was very clear on this, there were no sensors, it wasn’t pressurized, testing the suit was never the intention. Meanwhile, back here on earth, testing has been progressing for several years now. The suit is made under contract by the David Clarke company— they’ve been building such suits for decades, including the space shuttle “IVA” suits. Fun fact on those, as long as we’re criticizing space suits without understanding, the space shuttles ACES suits were not full pressure suits. IIRC the boots were not in the pressure envelope, maybe some other things as well. The SpaceX suit is NOT an EVA suit or anything close to it, it’s sole purpose is to keep the crew breathing until they can execute an emergency landing, which could be in less than an hour if something went really, really bad. With all such launch/entry suits, the requirement is the same. It’s assuming the crippled spacecraft or portable life support will continue to provide thermal management, etc, for the short time during which the suits are needed to maintain pressure. Have a look at that article I linked upthread, or browse the Wikipedia entries on space suits, it explains a lot of this.

Well, just looking at them, they look considerably more comfortable than the bulky, wrinkly things the other guys wear. I’d be very curious to hear what the astronauts themselves have to say about which they prefer, but I doubt if they’d be allowed to state such.

I think this one got missed: Man, some big-budget movies don’t have space suits that look this good! And these are real. ETA: Also, good article at Teslarati. These suits aren’t EVA- rated, I wonder what SpaceX will come up with for that eventuality, given the current NASA suit design is some 40ish years old.

The enemy of my enemy is my friend, and misery acquaints a Kraken (etc) with strange bedfellows. also, trust but verify...

In Soviet Russia, bus catch you!

He could probably feel the gun pointed at it...

Not the pad crew, tho. Bonus points if they wore their brown pants that day. And fewer still know their commentary immediately after aborting, they switched off the recorders cuz they were swearing so much.