RyanRising

We sure do need some legs, Elon. We sure do. Maybe not on the tower though.

As long as we're complaining about stolen firsts, even if the real firsts were unsurvivable: At 37 seconds in, they say Orion will travel over 280,000 miles (ew, miles) from Earth, farther than any human spacecraft has ever flown. I assume that means a spacecraft designed to carry humans inside, but even so, Snoopy's ascent module went to heliocentric orbit! That was NASA's own doing. They could have clarified returning spacecraft, space capsule, survivable journey, but as it stands it's just false from any angle I can see that statement from.

I was quite confused until I remembered we have those heat distortion effects now. I guess you could’ve done what HotRockets did, but ehhh... Did you end up working with HB Stratos on the afterburning engines, and if so, did you end up incorporating that cool TEB ignition flash they tried with the Whiplash, just on ignition instead of 1/3 throttle this time? Or does that partnership not actually exist?

Raptor still has a ways to go, obviously, and I'm not sure if I should, but I feel kinda glad this wasn't some issue with propellant flow again due to the bellyflop. SN8 had its partial ullage collapse, SN10 had its methalox cocktail fizzy with helium, so while obviously a leak in an engine is no good, it's got to be slightly vindicating that the problem wasn't something that resulted from the patches they needed to make the bellyflop work. There probably won't be one silver bullet, based on "getting fixed 6 ways to Sunday." I have no real insight into this, but it sounds like the fix would involve both updating the plumbing or procedures to make sure that specific leak can't happen, and improved placement of redundant sensors and controllers such that a similar fire would leave the avionics with enough information and brains to try startup anyway.

Why not video? They've got the cameras for it, I know they do.

I’d certainly want to keep the thing if it showed up in my backyard, but I suppose that’s not for everyone and if it took out some of my stuff I’d have to relinquish it in order to claim damages.

I'm pretty stoked to hear about this inclusion. I know features shouldn't be what really makes me excited about KSP2, moreso the handling of large part counts and the architectural improvements you can get from writing the game over again, but that's a really nice feature to have.

what. Well, I suppose I didn’t really need to sleep tonight anyway. Still, flying so early in the window would be quite unprecedented, wouldn’t it?

Perhaps lower production volume is what gets you? If you don’t make as many things, each one tends to cost more.

They aborted a flight just after ignition on March 3 (then turned around and flew that same day!) so that probably counts as a static fire. ‘Twas static and the engines fired.

How do we know 0.38 g isn’t enough to keep away the worst health problems associated with living in decreased gravity? As I understand it, the only two data points we have for long term habitation in differing accelerations are Earth surface gravity (fine) and free fall on the ISS (not fine.) It seems to me it would be difficult to draw any any conclusions about Mars gravity beyond “it’s somewhere between the two extremes” from that. Why isn’t that the case?

They don’t appear to be - recently they got rid of the catch arms on the two fairing recovery ships that had them. Probably the juice wasn’t worth the squeeze with catching them out of the air.

Is Starlink about the most routine space launch there is nowadays? Or is there some other configuration and mission that still launches more often?

That’s awesome! I’ll test it as soon as I get a chance and let you know how it goes. Surprised you decided to take up the mantle again.

the interview was a whole lot of nothing, but i guess you can't really expect much. They are hiring.

Pretty sure the N1 lifted off a few times, so they can't honestly claim SLS has the highest thrust of any rocket ever even if it does fly. They sure can claim it's the highest thrust flying if it does fly before Superheavy, though. (sorry for double-post, dunno how to insert a quote into a post I'm editing) Why is the EUS heavier than the S-IVB? 4 RL-10s > 1 J-2? Or did the S-IVB have a common dome where the EUS doesn't. and the insulation required for that is lighter?

Does the Raptor really have significantly more thrust than the SSME? I was under the impression they were both just about 2 MN, a little less at sea level.

I know I saw a Twitter thread where someone bought that thing with their stimulus check, but I cannot for the lift of me find it right now.

Unless plans have changed, calling BN1 a booster is like calling SN11 a spacecraft.

I think the story with that is they forgot to include credits the first time around, and reuploaded it to fix that.

https://www.jpl.nasa.gov/news/another-first-perseverance-captures-the-sounds-of-driving-on-mars gonna be honest, that sounds a little rickety. Still cool, though!

I know, I meant in the video I linked. Surely SpaceX has some up close & personal footage of that kaboom. I guess they’re saving it for the eventual “How not to Fly a Mars Rocket” (or your preferred title) montage that I really hope is going to show up eventually.

Official SpaceX SN10 recap video is up: Plenty of new views, and we get to see more of that shot (yes!), but they didn't acknowledge it blowing up afterwards. I guess that wasn't part of the flight.

Sorry if I sounded like I was trying to say IVAs do get the appreciation they deserve - they definitely don't. I'd just like to throw in that the occasional look around and outside a porthole is something I really do like to do, and many of the magical moments this game brings wouldn't be as magical without the ability to do so. It's a bummer the majority doesn't seem to think that's as important. I am, conversely, really happy we're getting IVAs for these parts as well!

I’m always a little saddened to hear how unpleasant working on IVA spaces is - they add so, so much to the experience of using the parts, and the game wouldn’t be the same without the ability to look out the window and appreciate your accomplishments from the scale of your crew. But since making them is bad enough that every time they’re mentioned it comes accompanied with a frowny face, it’s hard to say that (IMO) the best part of having crewed modded parts is worth it. It’s a wonder we get any mods with them at all. ooh, pretty.