YNM

They actually do name their probes using their own words. For the rocket naming however it was just something they stuck with from back when they were doing solid sounding rockets (the other solid rocket names were Kappa, Lambda, and Mu - the Kappa they referred to is actually a mythological creature but is also accidentally a greek letter when transcribed). Epsilon is their fifth solid rocket design iteration (there were something else before the three I mentioned, but it's like barely better than hobby/model rocketry these days), hence the name.

Yeah, hence I said the 'south' part makes it more sensible.

If it's taller than everything in Houston or Dallas/Fort Worth then that's pretty crazy. But yeah that goes right.

Some recent activity : H3 rocket testing continues, they tested the fairing last. And it seems like an Epsilon rocket launch is also on the way, on Uchinoura Space Center (Kyushu Island) : They're opening astronaut recruitment too (I think this has been a while, but the video is only recently up) :

Yeah, I'll admit that, when QoL is naturally decreasing anyway it's difficult to think of it as being any much worse than natural progression. I don't complain on those honestly, the problem is where I live we're known for smoking from very young ages, and that's where it goes wrong. (that being said I won't ever complain for field workers who smokes, it's a tough job.) Anyway just to remind what I was saying is just that we'd naturally remove stuff that's on Martian environment if we find we can't live with them - low atmo pressure, any sort of radiation, toxic compounds etc. ; Mars after any sort of human colony lands there is going to be extremely different than the one the rovers drove around, at least on the small scale (or global scale). Well, the Earth's core probably have more gold and metals than all the asteroids combined, so...

Perhaps not quite "not for a very long time" but "probably only cuts off a few years off your lifespan". Even then if you don't die but you live in suffering through reduced Quality of Life it's not great. That's why I said earlier that we're most likely going to change the landscape there forever, make it easier for us to live, and then those 'pristine' samples would be rare simply because it is not there anymore, not just that it's so far away.

... you do realize smoking kills you slowly right ? If it's faster than that (as implied by "not for a very long time") then it's even more dangerous.

Given that some of us are planning to actually be there one day and change the landscape completely I think it's safe to say it might be priceless - both in that it helps us in doing that, and it might be among those that'd remain pristine.

idk, looks too long to me for a payload bay cover a-la SH/SS... Seems like the 2nd stage is separate from the payload fairing. EDIT : Just looked in detail. Alright yeah there's an extra break line on the very end, so payload bay it is. At 20 tonnes payload capacity sounds like a slightly smaller Saturn-Shuttle to me, without the stupid wings. That being said since this is still a paper rocket we'll have to see how it goes later.

Way I see this, seems like "standard" TSTO where you can land the 1st and 2nd stage. Payload seems to be completely external to the 2nd stage ? idk.

Problem is that at this point we are just basically using Starship as an ICBM but to be fair we're talking military uses.

Human error is a factor, yes, but it's not as simple as one might think. Often the surrounding circumstances make those error more likely and/or have a worse effect than it could've been otherwise. I seriously have no idea which thread this is, I'm dumb like that. I have mentioned this - "If you notice most of the thread that threads lightly on the border tend to be those which talks about either future applications and similar things, or talking about how stuff currently works as is" Honestly ? It's at your own discretion. As long as it doesn't say anything about the standard political process and the messy popular cultural-sociological reality of the scene I think it mostly passes. Also as long as we're not insulting each other. If we're veering into the popular cultural-sociological scene, I suggest talking about it in The Lounge instead where those flames are expected more than here.

And what, burn the victims trapped inside along with it ? I mean mass graves aren't any much better but at least you know where the bodies are and where there aren't bodies. There's a reason the Palu earthquake in 2018 was really the worst one since it involves liquefaction of two villages, where victim's bodies are just trapped inside the soil forever. They're never going to rebuild the villages since a) you don't know where everything was, b) you don't want to build on places where it's possible to happen again (and this goes for the wider city as well, which is why there are talks to completely relocate the city), and c) wouldn't be great to know you're building on top of mass graves of unidentified victims.

That's often how the stories go for many architectural / structural stuff as well, obviously everyone will have the data at that point and you can inquire everything and stuff, they just need to sign it to make it official. And since private companies bent on minimizing cost through mass production will certainly want everything from their own / the widest market possible then it makes sense that Elon will have had to oversee nearly everything.

Yep. There's a good reason this company have "SpaceX's rocket" in their site. If anything that makes it sounds worse... but it's often how it is with "one-man" stuff.

Pretty much. There isn't anything else to do anyway (and no-one else to do things with - as well as for - you), and at some point you'll die sooner or later. Even if I don't end up killing myself voluntarily that means I'd have to learn to use a boat or use an airplane, I live on an island and otherwise I can't get anywhere else (failing that it's still a pretty large island). Might still end up killed trying things, but at least it's somewhat fun. Would have to grow food, maybe get some fuel (speaking of which, you'd have to take from the tanks directly so still a chance to be killed) and electricity (generator, then PV and batteries if available, might get electrocuted). Honestly the one thing you'd really need to do is to get really clever and make sure everything can run autonomously - or at least while it wouldn't run it can keep shut and/or keep stuff from going wrong. Will have to take on creating the only remaining "news" - weather and advance warning. Only after that one can think of doing things they always wanted to do, but honestly doing that to the entire world alone is going to take time. idk. Hence taking the short route isn't that unthinkable, to be fair.

The common mosquito killer we have at home is 0.15% transfluthrin and 0.15% permethrin. I mean obviously don't direct it at your cats, but best as I can tell it's fine really. We even use it to pursue rats and stuff (they're not going to die but they're going to stay in one place or move off pretty much, which then we can take it and throw it outside).

Yeah I just remembered that post. Funny how you look at something, see something else again and then forget it.

How many engines are they producing now on average in a given period ? Assuming they started in like 2016 that'd be up to 181 engines in 5 years (so 5 per month) but should be a lot faster.

You try standing next to a landing Starship 300 m away, few times a day, when you know your family members or friends might've died due to the ground shaking, and you don't have a house to live in (or it's not safe to be in your house anymore). Yeah. Even developed countries struggle, in a way, to adapt to these things. There's a good reason they keep the 3.11 death toll open. Although the other option is to be completely submissive, and it's honestly not great either.

For one I don't think people would accept a giant rocket coming in and out day and night even with the clearances international airports have. Here we build stuff up to the airport fence so it's really only 300 m from a private dwelling / community facility max in most cases. The sound and vibration would probably be something people don't accept when it's the last thing they want to have (like in the case of earthquakes, esp. if they continue for months). And no I question you can land on flooded grounds like in the case of tsunami or tropical cyclones, or in places where there are a lot of water anyway (welcome to East and SE Asia where we plant our sustenance crops in mini-swamps all over the place). I will admit that this is true. Back when we had the 2004 Indian Ocean earthquake and tsunami there were basically a huge amount of tension in the area beforehand due to separatist movement, and it could be said in a way that the disaster made for breaking of this tension; but something people have also pointed out, albeit I'm sure there's not a lot of it overall, are humanitarian cases where they themselves have some amount of motivation either politically or religiously. Will say that since I can't find any sources of it (nor am I going to do it now) it's probably not as bad as what people have been telling me in the past and more recently. That being said it's why partly they've been holding off foreign aid a bit longer when the 2018 Sulawesi earthquake and tsunami happened. While the area worst affected itself isn't having any terrible problems beforehand, nearby are areas that are politically and socially "hot". Also there are weird cases like some volcano eruption - esp. in 2010 Merapi eruption where some of the populace just wouldn't heed the gov't warnings until the person the public trusted died in a pyroclastic flow himself. Usually there are emergency power generation ship that you can send instead... back in 2016 we had this contracted, and they helped through various disasters in the years after.

Have you not seen a place after a storm ? Or earthquake ? Or tsunami ? Or how strong rocket exhaust is ? (and trust me lahar is even worse.) Last thing we need is for someone to blindly fly a 9 m diameter tank into the middle of a wreck to create an even larger wreck. Plus disaster relief isn't just about food, water and meds. It's about providing people with support for how to get back to their life. Landing a giant rocket once doesn't help much.

You can. There are objective results on nearly all of this, and even if the nooks and crannies are different, we can tell that there's exactly a mountain ahead of us in our sight when discussing those topics. However, the thing that's not really allowed is talking about the way how politics ties with everything IMO. The details about who's "making problems" etc. or who's taking the wrong decision and faulting/shaming that group is IMO the one that this forum tries to avoid. Science is at least grounded purely in results; when it comes to planning and design it becomes even more difficult to separate out the technical, scientifical, observational truths from the personal views of the people around. If you notice most of the thread that threads lightly (yes, pun intended) on the border tend to be those which talks about either future applications and similar things, or talking about how stuff currently works as is (esp. exploration agencies which are almost always going to be tied to a government or - worse - military). Way I see things here is that we're at least trying to adopt just culture - ie. this is a place to put your ideas or views out but not necessarily to say that someone else is guilty of having the false perception. So IMO as long as we're not doing personal attacks because you think someone else is guilty of having the wrong idea about things it's OK to discuss just about everything relevant under the Science and Spaceflight topic.

Like we have a choice to wait ?