Elthy

Damn, Starship did just what every other rocket did for decades: Splashdown of the first stage, destructive reentry for the second, both at predetermined spots...

Interessting to see that it actualy exploded in the air, not on impact. At those speeds its about 1 second difference, was hard to tell from the video. I hope they will release footage of the booster as its comming down, but im not sure if they have any. Afaik it was out of view from the land, so only a plane could have captured it, right?

Lol, the huge gaps make it look realy improvised, like an old yard gate...

I think there are lots of possible solutions without altering the hardware, e.g. different timings on valves or a stagered restart of the engines.

I propose we split it up in another way: One for normal discussion about SpaceX, one where someone brings up the same stuff every page. The second one is propably better suited for "Forum Games"...

Those shockwaves on the 33 engine static fire are insane. Seeing that i cant imagine any structure to survive that up close, im even impressed with the drone not falling from the sky...

From what i remember Musk has full decivice rights regarding SpaceX, noone would be able to stop Starship without convinging him to do that (or him running out of money).

That would propably require a friction-less system. Its propable that the expended gas isnt enough to move the same volume of fuel through some more or less complex piping system.

Is it realy? The volumes they want to transfer at some point are huge, hundrets of cubic meters. Even with some big fuel connectors this will take some time, requiring lots of delta-v to provide the acceleration. I could only imagine a hybrid solution, ullage to provide e.g. 0.01g so the propelant is settled during the transfer while the actual transfer happens with strong pumps, keeping the time under acceleration to a minimum.

Another thing regarding space-based power would be the energy required to get something up there. I currently dont have the time to calculate it, but the thousands of tons of propellant for one launch equal a lot of energy. It will propably take a realy long time for both PV or nuclear power to just generate the energy that was used in getting them up there.

Wow, those 33 engines firing together are beautiful. A friend of mine tried to watch it on Youtube and found an "official" stream, he only became suspicios as Elon Musk tried to sell him cryptocurrency. At that point the real lanuch was already over...

They can build 3 second stages a week because they dont have to build mnay first stages, including engines.

where did you see any excavation? I only saw lots of vapor, nothing to assess the pad structure...

Dont forget the temperature. A blowtorch can cut through steel even though its pressure is in the range of canned air. This will also complicate things with water-cooling, superheavy will literarely vaporize tons of water per second. All that steam will add to the dynamic pressures below the pad.

To bad they sold them.

They propably have to reconsider their whole approach, maybe go for a traditional launchpad like LC-39 with lots of water. A reusable rocket is of no use if the launchpad isnt reusable... Thats what i thought, too. Looks like failing engines took out controls/hydraulics, just like N1.

At launch. But 100t less dry mass will have an extreme impact on delta-v, resulting in an early burnout of the second stage. Either they will have lots of fuel left (which they propably cant vent during the half orbit they are doing) or they start with less than full fuel tanks, which will be more than just 2% of the mass at liftoff.

Did SpaceX say anything about the "payload" of this starship? I think flying it empty could mess up the launch profile, as the acceleration would be way higher and they end up with lots of extra fuel, which would mess up the reentry...

For GPUs i would recommend this: https://www.3dcenter.org/artikel/fullhd-ultrahd-performance-ueberblick-2012-bis-2023 While its a german website the values should be easy to understand even if you dont speak it. They aggregate hardware reviews (with lots of benchmarks each) and calculate a percentage, 100% being some old GPU i cant remember. If you scroll down you will see values for older GPUs and a separate 4k Index, which is more relevant in high resolutions as the cpu can be a limiting factor in 1080p. For comparing CPUs there is sadly no comparable score, the best i know if you want to compare recent hardware is this graphic: https://www.3dcenter.org/abbildung/performance-ueberblick-intel-raptor-lake Again this is aggregated vom lots of reviews.

Im exited for all the new stuff modders will create.

But that would be realy unusual and in total contrast to the GPU requirements. Again, the CPU isnt just calculating stuff thats obvious on the surface, but also the gameengine itself. If you stand still in a shooter after all enemies are down is the CPU idling? Its not, as only a small part of its jobs are reduced now. We can exclude GPU physics for sure, otherwise we would have read about legendary progress in GPU-calculations everywhere in computer news. GPU physic calcualtions are only viable for a realy limited set of scenarios, where there is not much interaction between the simulated particles and accuracy isnt to important. Thats why we have only ever seen it on some graphics eyecandy like hair or debris.

Not realy, its responsible for a lot of things. Physics are usually the limiting factor in KSP due to running on a single thread, but its also doing lots of work in graphics (feeding the GPU with what do do), sound, backgroud simulation. But ive mainly mentioned it because it doesnt fit in with the other mentioned hardware, the other three boxes have comparatable pairings.

The required specs are so strange... The mentioned Athlon is an extremly weak CPU, its from the times before Ryzen and way slower than the i5 6400. But to low minimum specs arent much of an issue, to high ones are: An 2060/5600XT as "minimum" is just crazy. It would be justified for a ultra shiny "the next Crysis" AAA-game, but not for a game with allready outdated graphics, where most of the screen is usually an empty skybox. When comparing the screenshots to other games i would expect something like an 1050ti as minimum, of less...

From what ive heard not muffeling the sound could lead to an oops, as rockets (especialy of this size) are so loud that the reflected soundwaves can damage the rocket on liftoff.

Do you have a tl:dw?