StrandedonEarth

Except all 13 lit for the landing burn

That was freaking incredible!!! Nice catch. Not sure what’s up with Ship, telemetry is weird…

I enjoyed it although it was heavy on the sociopolitical aspects, which is not my cup of tea. But I didn't feel like I was slogging through it. That said, I haven't re-read it as much as I do other books

Have you read Kim Stanley Robinson’s “Red/Green/Blue Mars” trilogy? It lays out a reasonable plan for terraforming, assuming a healthy space economy

As our doctor said when our kids had a string of minor illnesses, “let them eat dirt!”

Nice. I’d be pretty nervous too, although I would think/hope everything was tested first

Or simply a highly portable means to assay core samples

Well, the original plan was for 12m diameter. I think one reason it was scaled down to 9m was to fit under a standard warehouse 32’ roof, before they decided to do the initial builds in tents

Ah, my bad. I misread/ took the wrong meaning

Oh, we care. The more, the merrier. Not putting too many eggs in one basket. Competition/backup. Yadda yadda yadda. As long as they can get enough of a flight rate to be useful...

Terminology is iffy. You’re describing what I know as a “water rocket.” What I know as a “bottle rocket” is a very small rocket firework (thinking <1cm dia, ~3-4 cm long) attached to a long thin stick for stability. The stick is placed in an empty (glass) pop bottle for launching, hence the name “bottle rocket”. Which explains why other replies are talking about one kind of powder propellant or another.

Sunday 1am means Saturday 10pm my time. While I usually want to be asleep by then, it’s a Saturday so I don’t have to be. Hopefully they can launch at the start of the window; because I may not be able to stay awake for the whole window

In microgravity, any impulse will cause an acceleration, however small…

Hmmm. The neat thing about supporting the ‘lith cover with air pressure is that if there is a leak, or the airlocks need to be cycled rapidly, the pressure would remain nearly constant as the roof sags. The downside is that leaks wouldn’t naturally slow due to lessening of the pressure differential.

This is what I get for posting while waking up. Rubber needs to be cured with temperature and pressure. Although the silly concept of a “bomb cure” occurs to me: spray the butyl liner, close the doors, pump in a calculated and measured explosive mix of gasses, and detonate, filling the chamber with hot, high-pressure gas. As a bonus, this will test the structural integrity of the chamber. Yeah, I know, crazy idea…

What if they used butyl rubber, which is used for the airtight liner in tires?

I’m hoping someone will take advantage to launch fleets of asteroid prospectors (could double as locator beacons) while figuring out how to mine and hopefully refine asteroidal regolith. And then get the product to somewhere useful. Of course, it would help if the target had some volatiles for propellant as I’m not keen on filling space with streams of rubble from mass drivers…

“We want to do a TVC test with this specific pattern…”

I see it more as replacing the current Euro service module with a Starship-based SM, with refilling not requiring separation of Orion

An expendable Starship as a launch vehicle for Orion has the advantage of also being the space tug by simply meeting up with a depot and refilling, So not really expendable, just not landable.

Looks like more of a matte finish instead of polished. Possibly thermal reasons? I noticed on one of the clips of IFT5 returning, not only the engines were glowing yellow, and unsurprisingly the grid fins, but even the intertank section appeared to be glowing yellow, before fading to orange and red…

I’m pretty sure $10M is for just Starship, not the booster as well. So not an entire Moon rocket for just $10M And then there’s the cost of outfitting the ships. A cargo ship shouldn’t take much, but a manned ship? I reckon the price of a manned Starship should be at least double a cargo ship by the time it’s on the pad, and then there’s the price of the payloads in the cargo Ships.

The radial and normal ejections balance each other out, the prograde ejection only slows the bus a tiny bit. Net result is likely the bus going straight, without spinning/tumbling. But that’s just my WAG

You would think the launch tower computer comms would be hardwired in with armoured cables. But that’s one of the purposes of testing, is to find the weak points. Some weak points could and should be anticipated, but not all can.

Is that profitable as in operations, or it has turned a net profit over the initial investment into the system?