RyanRising

Put me in the doubters camp then - if there is such a gap (between NASA missions), I don’t think SpaceX will put any additional people on the lunar surface during it. I doubt a viable market will exist for selling people trips to the moon when they’re just starting to have the capability, and putting more boots on the moon isn’t as close to the The Mission as putting additional work into getting starship ready for Mars. While those two goals aren’t necessarily contradictory, I don’t think putting people on the moon outside of NASA’s program so early on advances the latter goal enough to be worth the extra development and support you’d need to make it happen.

Is this post somewhere the rest of us can access it did you get it from one of those super secret invitation-only treehouse clubs?

Another flight down, another flight down, it hasn’t yet bit the dust.

In this case, SunlitZekova I believe was talking about mating the payload to Starship inside its fairing, which should be a very different process indeed

National Team’s lander didn’t have an airlock, they just depressurised the cabin. I think Dynetics’ proposal did that too. Seeing as the lunar starship airlock we saw was shown by NASA as progress by SpaceX, and that it doesn’t look like the NT mock-up, I think it’s reasonable to think those are two different things.

Here’s a picture of the interior of the NT lander mockup: Doesn’t look very similar to the airlock shown to me, besides being white and cylindrical.

Perhaps, but there must be some spectacular cloud banks before you get down to where it’s all obscured. Not that I’d volunteer to go down with the probe, mind you.

Why do they need a header tank for the booster? Shouldn’t ullage be working in the correct direction anyway, like with F9?

Wonder if this means SpaceX is under cyberattack for their involvement in... uh, recent events? Can I even talk about the war? At any rate, I've seen the prefix "cyber-" pop up a lot more recently and it hasn't gotten any less silly.

I know this is a bit of a silly concern, since almost all of us already own KSP, but how do you propose one would submit an entry into this challenge without making any purchase? The challenge is to do something in KSP, and KSP is a product you must purchase to use.* *Technically this may not be the whole truth, but expanding on that would be against forum rules. Also, are we supposed to be able to download that wireframe model at the bottom of the OP? It says it's unavailable for me.

This is the same Raptor 2 (#5) that was present at that recent presentation as well as some parade today. Doesn’t look like anything too significant to me.

I was able to catch a glimpse of the rocket’s plume in the sky this morning. Wasn’t spectacular, and I was far enough away not to hear anything, but it was still a great way to start my day off.

While that’s awesome indeed, I think the capacity of a hypothetical expendable Starship, even with those optimistic mass figures, is one of the least interesting things about the vehicle. Sure you can get a large amount of payload flung out, but that’s really only because the rocket is so big. The exciting thing for me is not just that we have a massive rocket, but that all of it can then land itself and be put back together. Then flown again, and again, and again. I doubt we’ll see many expendable starships flown once the rocket reaches operational status, ‘cause they’re not really what makes this whole thing work. …also 475 t to orbit from a ~5000 t vehicle is above a 9% payload fraction to LEO, which is unprecedented from an orbital rocket and I doubt we’d see it from one with steel tanks. Even the aluminium and hydrolox Delta IV heavy, something you’d expect to get if you’re optimising for GLOW, still falls short of 4%. The Space Shuttle, including the orbiter as payload, only managed ~6.5%.

Which version was that for? ULA still operates under that “dial-a-rocket” idea where they put different amounts of boosters on it, so I’d think there would be increasing prices for increased capability.

Huh. I didn't expect they'd actually find someone willing and able to take their tin cans. Thought those things were pretty high-maintenance as display pieces, and just massive to boot.

You’re going to have to be a bit more specific, but by “sea of pixels” do you mean the artefacts you can see around edges and find details? If so, that’s caused by the default depth buffer mode, since it disables MSAA by default as mentioned above, and tries to compensate with SMAA. I don’t know what you mean by “settings that aren’t included in the list of scatterers in the game,” so I can’t offer any insight there.

I've seen an alternate theory that the engines they're talking about now are the BONG config, which explains why they would just now start being assembled when the first Vulcan engines should be finishing up qualification. Still, why they'd be working on those when they have a customer clearly in more urgent need of the engines than they are eludes me. I'm more inclined to believe the engines failed, but that's not what I'd expect from a "medium-performing version of a high-performance architecture."

It’s no longer possible to disable the depth-buffer mode in the latest versions of Scatterer, is it?

@kerbiloid I’d like you to address this. Were you unaware or aware that a Dragon has flown multiple crewed NASA missions?

NASA does not have this requirement. DM-2 and Crew-2 were both flown on Crew Dragon Endeavour. Both were NASA missions. Were you unaware of this?

[snip] I was pointing out that you were wrong about Dragon being a “single-use crewed spacecraft that can be reused as a cargo box.” A very cursory amount of research would show you that this statement is wrong, so why make it? Same goes for the “maiden ship for every crew” - by merit of the reuse we’ve seen this is clearly no longer a requirement.

While the first part only has most of the evidence suggesting the reuse is effective, the second statement is demonstrably false. Crew Dragon Endeavour and Resilience have flown twice, with people on board. I’m really not sure what you’re trying to say here? [snip]

At least as of a while ago, that wasn’t the case: https://www.nasaspaceflight.com/2021/05/dragon-resilience-return-first-operational/ Additionally, the Demo-1 trunk apparently reentered earlier this year: https://aerospace.org/reentries/crew-dragon-demo-1-debris-id-44064-reentered And the Crew-2 trunk is currently in a 413x404 km orbit: http://www.stuffin.space/?intldes=2021-030B Maybe it’s some crew safety thing, but this doesn’t seem very responsible to me? There’s probably something I’m missing.

Right, I'm aware of that - Dragon basically has its service module in the capsule. I would have thought they'd deorbit the trunk to avoid it becoming space debris, that's all.

Odd - I would have figured they'd de-orbit the trunk along with the capsule. This was probably known info before, but it's new to me.