MKI

Whats all that stuff exposed on the bottom of the booster? Its weird not seeing any landing legs, making it look even more like a water tower. But all that exposed stuff on the bottom is.... for what?

How fast would you need to launch something to get to the moon in half an hour? :O The other consideration is even if Starship is vulnerable to fire... how do you stop 15 of them when you can't build them that fast or launch as fast? Its the same principle that decided large scale battles of the past. Where volume and production power wins the day. Of course you could strike the infrastructure, but then that turns into its own geopolitical mess that could involve nukes. Even a paranoid general understands getting into a direct confrontation or full scale war is a terrible idea due to the potential of MAD. You either let the US win and "win" through indirect means, or you continue to keep pace. Obviously the indirect methods are probably more sensible, stuff like spreading misinformation ("USA spending $ on claiming space rocks instead of helping YOU!"), directly or indirectly attacking infrastructure (the cost of methane is HOW MUCH?), or any other methods that could undermine the overall supporting infrastructure of such an endeavor as Starship supported space-bases. All of which might be cheaper/easier than building your own Starship. But as a paranoid general I'd execute both plans, and the harder of the two is making my own Starship prototype, so I'd focus the most on that area.

The first space race stopped due to things getting expensive, and public opinion and focus moving away from space travel. The Soviets couldn't get their N1 prototype off the pad in one piece, and the US already made it to the moon. If things get cheaper and public opinion turns back toward space travel, I see no reason for it not to pick back up in a "round two" of sorts. Its actually very easy to eliminate enemy targets, but the politics of doing so aren't so clear cut. Destroying a base on the moon would be akin to attacking foreign soil (if the treaty was ripped up). Not only would it be an incredibly visible and slow attack that takes days to reach the target, there would have to be justification, otherwise your essentially starting a war. Of course a competing country could also try to get back to the moon to establish their own colonies, or call it all a shame and waste of cash for a dead rock. But I'm a paranoid commander, not a reasonable one ;D

Probably going "meh, just (star)ship this thing already!"

The USA rips up the Outer Space Treaty, declares the Moon a colony and builds a self sufficient base, with a permanent military presence, with enough infrastructure to build deeper space networks to support complete USA control on the rest of the solar system for the foreseeable future. My project I'd want accelerated is another version of Starship to match capabilities to building another Moon outpost to prevent a monopoly of the solar system going to the USA. Obviously my project is in the dark corners of the government with little funding, as no serious general actually is looking into militarizing space at that scale, nor does any serious general actually believe such events would transpire anytime soon. Then again I'm sure there is some general out there already protesting this, hence why copy-cat Starship designs are already popping up. By the time Starship can support a permanent moon base, you must have similar capabilities otherwise you already lost. On a little more "realistic" scale, Starship's capabilities aren't much better than existing technologies. The difference is the scale and economics involved in using it. Throw enough money at the problem and you can get anything significant into orbit from any number of vendors to overcome any Starship capabilities. Its only once you start looking at large scale projects on the Moon (and Mars) does Starship start to become the only option beyond existing capabilities. The only unique capability that Starship possess in terms of LEO is the ability for Cargo Starship to "pick up" an existing satellite and return it to the ground. However this capability already existed with the Space Shuttle, and was one of the reasons for the Buran's development. However such capabilities aren't worth much in practice, so even the most paranoid generals wouldn't worry about it due to all the possible such enemy actions.

I saw my movie, but didn't see anything with my own eyeballs for the launch, the marine layer came in and there was a giant hill outside of the movie theater. Saw it failed on the stream then booked it inside the theater just in-time ;D I also just watched Scott Manley's video on the failure, about how it was probably an engine failure caused all the problems, due to each engine being responsible for an axis of gimbal, they probably tried to rid it out as long as possible to get it as far away from the pad/people as possible. Once it started flipping they hit the FTS button. Looking forward to the next launch from Vandenburg, hopefully the weather holds up next time and I don't have a giant hill in my way next time haha!

Gonna try to catch their rocket launch today (I'm located within 200 miles of Vandenburg) before catching a movie at 7. Hopefully it gets off by then otherwise I'll have to see the pictures online. Told the fam to lookup, hopefully they see something and everything goes off without a hitch

This is where Unity comes in, it can degrade the build to get the game to run better for different platforms up to a point. The game will be nerfed to run on older hardware, but it should be made available. Obviously if you want a better experience, you need newer hardware. If your a gamer running old hardware and the game doesn't look as good, you shouldn't be surprised, let alone cut off from playing the game. I personally want the game to release on as many platforms as possible so its as successful as possible. As long as the gameplay isn't horrible on older hardware, nerf away and give it out on those platforms. I think its fair to assume players on older platforms will expect the game to look worse, but at least be able to play the game. Cutting them off should only be done if the level of optimization needed ends up not being worth that section of the market. So its less of a technical problem, and more of a business decision. I played the KSP 1 demo on a decade plus old laptop and it ran, it ran horribly but it ran. The experience made me eventually buy the game in full, and get the game on better hardware for a better experience. The fact the game ran at all on my older machine where I ran the demo led to a purchase.

My guess is this is just a "trailer thing" to look cool and might not make it to the game at all. Accurate propulsive landing is one of the hardest things to accomplish through manual flight. I'd say its either an "all or nothing" approach when it comes to automating the task. Which means you either have some autopilot land it for your, or you don't. I'm not sure if any amount of tools/information will help the average person land more accurately without spending incredible amounts of time practicing, and that's for a single rocket. I know colony launch pads are a thing, but re-using them for a landing pad might be a little different. If there was a middle ground, once you setup some re-supply routes to your colonies through your own flights, some "Kerbal automation" takes over and performs the task(s) for you. So at your colony you can see a fully autonomous mission executed by the Kerbals themselves.

Never staging because its an SSTA ;D

I just went to the Natural History Museum of Los Angeles, and there is an entire exhibit/showcase featuring a coyote killing a cat in someone's backyard.

Its a fun idea, but first I don't think a quantum computer AI system would be the "skynet" type system I'm talking about before you see benefits. I was originally thinking an advanced Alexa/Google-Home/Seri, except it is used to manage quantum computer infrastructure that is then used to solve difficult problems. Its still just as dumb as our current tech, but magnitudes more powerful and just used to solve specific difficult problems. Second I don't see why even a sentient AI system would enslave us. Mainly because there is little overlap between an silicon based system needs and humans. Because of that an AI system could just build its own workers to accomplish its own needs, rather than cater to humans and then have them work. The idea of an AI enslaving humanity means we are useful to such an intelligent entity, except I can't see how that is the case. Its possible AI would just more or less ignore us. Something as simple as the AI moving all its facilities to Mercury to gather more energy as it builds its own capabilities to expand, would be totally sensible for it and be totally fine for humans and the AI. It will probably be benevolent and just does its own thing, and yes the worse case of it destroying all of us is on the table... but then it doesn't get any benefits from doing that since again its needs are different than our needs. It seems much more sensible that a super advanced intelligent AI just works with us and keeps us around for the sake of it because you never know when humans might be useful, or at least a novelty. Regardless, the AI systems I'm talking about would be incredible powerful... but still too stupid beyond its given use-case to "enslave everyone". I'm thinking more super power computers that can run simulations way beyond our current computation capabilities. The computers might be crazy more powerful, but they are still just as dumb. Our current understanding of AI isn't anywhere near "skynet" intelligence, and doesn't need to be to really reap the benefits of our current understanding of AI and advancements in quantum computing to get the ultimate computational power boost.

Sounds like "science-title click-bait". Or more traditionally "attention grabbing title". The existence of "click-bait" doesn't automatically make the claims false, but we are more or less trained to assume as such since we are flooded with such claims on a daily basis.

I have 2 guesses: 1. Humanity destroys itself before becoming an interstellar civilization. 2. Humanity will build a quantum computer AI system that is used to solve most complex engineering problems, giving us fusion and advanced space flight within current physics understanding. There's only a few theoretical walls to a lot of problems that are hard to break, from agriculture to energy. Even brute force production of existing technology can get us to multiplanetary (hello Elon). Quantum Computers can be the gateway to a ton of solutions through brute computational power. If its theoretically possible, it might be only a matter of time and energy before engineering a solution through advance quantum computers. Its possible both can happen, but 1 is always on the table until we go interstellar and then get into a giant AI war

"Everything is a remix". Original ideas are great and all, but awesome remixes are what usually stands the test of time.

Why is everyone acting like Star Wars doesn't take massive chunks of its lore directly from Japanese cinema. I'm honestly surprised its taken them this long to get an anime spin on the franchise. Also Visions seems to be non-cannon so chill about everyone being crazy-OP and just enjoy it. If not wait for the other 8 SW series being produced XD

This is great, writing this one down.

If you could bet on SN20+B4 chances of failure, what stage do you think would be the most likely to fail? (this honestly could be a poll but meh) I'm debating between re-entry and landing. I have a hard time seeing it fail during ascent, but the heat shield tiling is looking worrisome unless they update large portions of it before the launch. Landing has already had a questionable record, and SN20, if it gets that far, will be going through the gauntlet and I wonder what that will do to its landing chances. There is also the possibility it actually makes the whole trip, would be completely insane.

I ain't playing anything until it comes backs and lands. Otherwise I'll be waiting to hear some form of explosions ;P

So if the oceans rise and increase in overall heat absorption due to overall warming, why don't we see more hurricanes, and instead see stronger ones? Like anything with energy, more heat = more energy = more stuff going on so it makes sense something changes. But how come this translates to stronger hurricanes but not more of them, or a longer hurricane season? There's also the topic of the recent news about how the Atlantic current is changing faster than expected due to the after mentioned warming.... I did just watch "The Day After Tomorrow" and that sort of finding is.... "chilling" if I may say so myself (pun intended, I'm sorry)

The old startup motto of "move fast and break things" seems to be applying very well to the heat shield tiles :O (that motto also isn't recommended anymore haha)

I can imagine the excitement and joy in seeing something fly to space in real life and the utter annoyance of not getting an ice cream in the Florida heat as a kid. The amount of alligators in Florida everywhere is the single most surprising thing I found when vacationing there. Like... what do all those guys eat! Puddles on the side of the road had eyes sticking out of them for heaven sakes!

Idk if Starlink+SpaceX is that much of an issue in terms of "anti-trust" laws. I'm writing this on a site I found through Google, that is using Google client-side libraries, probably hosted on some Google powered server, running on Google engineered tech, in a Google powered data center, inter connected by Google laid fiber, connected to my Google powered browser, that is being ran on a Google operating system on a Google built laptop. I think we like the idea that Starlink+SpaceX would be such a "monopoly" no other competitor has a chance, but there are serious other fish to fry in the realm of anti-trust before we get anywhere near Spacex.

Which is possible, however even a non-explosion could be terrible. Shouldn't exposing pressurized liquid to the vacuum of space create dangerous amounts of potential force on the craft, potentially ripping it apart... and then you explode ;D

It depends on what kinda of "failsafe" we are talking about. Starships requirements are so inherently unsafe, risky and cover such a large range of scenarios adding a dedicate failsafe for a specific scenario will end up being redundant most of the time and not actually protect against most of the risks the platform will see. Its one thing to add life-vests under every seat of an airliner, as that is an easy safe guard to prevent people from drowning when ditching in a body of water, it also hardly affects margins as its incredible light . Its another to try to give every single passenger an ejection seat, flight gear, and a parachute to survive a mid-air breakup or double engine failure during takeoff. Not only could a passenger just use it wrong and get them, and everyone else killed, the increased complexity could result in more issues down the line in every category of managing the system itself, from weight, margins, inspections, maintenance. If "no part is the best part", adding a bunch of parts you don't plan on using is the opposite of that. Even the evacuation slides on a plane aren't foolproof, people get injured using them all the time, which is why its a big decision if a pilot is to evacuate a plane or not in an emergency. Just executing a fail-safe introduces a new element of risk. Obviously that risk should be lower than the alternative, but idk if firing another rocket and executing what is essentially a full stage separation is that much safer than sticking with Starship itself. When it comes to risk management you actually want to minimize the most risky part of the system. When it comes to Starship, not only is it hard to even tell where the most risky part of the system is, but there aren't many thing you can do directly to minimize them. However, when it comes to launching rockets using a Super Heavy, it actually might be the safest part of the whole system. Super heavy will have multiple redundancies, and should be the single most heavily tested spacecraft/launcher ever made by the time people are flying on it. If I was a betting man, I'd put my money on hull integrity being the single most worrying aspect of Starship. Never mind losing a heat tile, what about getting hit with a micro meteorite during Mars transfer, where you start losing propellant as your hull is the fuel tank. You might be able to fix/patch that part of the hull so you stop losing fuel to the vacuum of space, that's if you didn't instantly explode. But who's to say your hull will sustain re-entry/landing/waiting/re-fueling/takeoff/transfer/re-entry/landing?? Such a scenario would be the most insane "tire patch" ever, except instead of trying to take your patch to the nearest tire shop to get a repairs, your in the middle of freaken space on your way to your destination with Isaac Newton preventing you from making a u-turn and no gas station or roadside assistance available for months. Hell if Starship requires an aerobrake you might of not only gotten a hole in your fuel-tank but also your brakes, and might not have enough brake fluid to stop in the parking lot of your destination! At that point your less of a plane and more of a classical sailing ship that starts taking on water, with multiple damaged sails, in a much bigger ocean where all the islands are flying away from you. At that point your probably just screwed, and no amount of engineering redundancy can help you. Its not so much the Shuttle tried to do too many things, it had 1 shot to do all those things at once. IE it had a design lock that could never change or iterate due to a multitude of reasons. A Shuttle designed iteratively would of been vastly more successful because any issue found would of been fixed/changed all without forcing 7 lives to fly the damn thing. I'm not sure if it would of become what the dreams of "reusable space" would of been, but it should of been better. edit I just realized the "safest redundancy" is to send multiple Starships at more or less the exact same time in "fleets" to and from Mars. Reminds me of the Pale Blue Dot book by Carl Sagan, that described this exact scenario. It also noted this is exactly what humans did when traveling across the ocean into unknown lands, with the idea that some will make the journey, and have other other vessels to lean on in-case of issues.