YNM

Ah, right. Now it makes sense, at least a bit.

Starlink is an internal customer, you might as well count every launch as a loss/sunk investment. Revenue is from the end users (those who pay 99 USD for them), maybe a few FCC grants but that's about it. Reuse does slash the cost it takes to launch but since the reused form is the final form of the rocket, you might well argue that now it doesn't make as much profit than before. And as we can see while F9's launch cadence is now much higher than pre-Starlink, the external customer launch is much less frequent than it used to be. NG is supposed to be a reusable rocket. Development and new production does take up most of the expenditure, but the idea is to somehow spread the cost, right ? That's my concern. Yes I know Bezos have an even deeper pocket but as a business it doesn't look good if you're relying on capital rather than revenue. (I know that's what he did with Amazon, though... just to gain market.)

More like Falcon 1 - Falcon 9 Expendable - Falcon 9 Reusable Prototype (grasshopper) - Falcon 9 Reusable in 10 years (2005-2015, 12 years to 2017 if we count to the first actual reuse), and at the same time Raptor, then Starship then SH (we're about 2 years in). So yeah they should be aiming to get stuff launched first ASAP. Then they can toy around with how to actually nail a landing. The real question is the general lack of payload for the targeted launch cadence. SpX have to basically make their own payload, so unless Bezos' other ventures have something in plan they'd have a hard time using their rocket to the fullest. Building a space station is a payload-making business sure but they're manned payloads, and it takes a while for that sort of stuff. But perhaps scale plays a role as well, esp. given how this is a brand new start (New Glenn isn't using anything from New Shepard when it comes to the land-back bits).

Want to ask something about the forums. Now that we have the quote function folding up into extendable boxes, there's a bit of an interesting result if you're quoting someone who put in the spoiler box inside it. It works as intended if you press open the spoiler first but then press the expand option; however if you're doing it in reverse then it glitches through the rest of the forum. I know it might be difficult to fix, but just wondering if the forum devs are aware of it.

Honestly I think they should... Has to be some feasible way of re-entering something that large intact.

Or it could melt the ship's metal and results in sinking. idk. Or you can explode the fuel... Honestly kind of wondering why they haven't used drones really. Strap some firecracker to it, produce enough distraction, board the ship with no-one holding them back, before you know it you're in the controls.

I'm actually kind of wondering if space environment would be an advantage in this regard. No organic contamination, to start with. Regolith is just metal oxide, some aren't even fully oxidized that the smell they have when returning from lunar EVA was from the dust oxidizing further. Although to be fair the metals are mixed up, and I'm not sure how would one separate them into separate elements (silicon, aluminum, iron etc) without chemical process. Not really well-versed in metallurgy.

Correction : It's only possible through automation. You'll never 3D print anything by moving the nozzle with your own hand manually. And that shows it's pretty complicated as dumb humans can't do it.

Or they have enough production lines with enough workers in each of them, and combined they finish one rocket engine after the other one every 48 hrs if averaged out. Before the pandemic and all, airplane manufacturers (as in, commercial airliners) produce one more aircraft every week or something too. This just shows their commitment to the scale of what they're working, not necessarily that they're making one airliner within one week from scratch to final furnish. Same goes for Raptors. What a difference in production scale makes, everyone.

If you can tell which payload is the "hot" one, and which is just a stack of Starlinks...

Plenty of space to return home objects, sure...

Nuclear rockets generally aren't used in atmosphere, they'd only work in space. LH2/LOX rockets produce H2O. So will your "steam" nuclear rocket. It's all the same - you wouldn't see anything, except for white when it reflects sunlight from certain angles.

We already have LH2/LOX rockets, those basically produce the exact same exhaust gasses.

Will have to be the with-upper-stage version. Honestly I'm wondering what's their C3 is supposed to be with LM-5, kinda thinking they might need additional stages... If Orion is even going to fly with any frequency. More like Dragon, or maybe Starship...

Better yet :

Yeah I was wondering because of this. There are sail plans that can go very close to the wind and make good progress.

You can beat the wind using the wind itself. Wonder if we can do the opposite way (going upwind with nothing but windpower)...

Honestly even offset with increased weight they might still be getting net benefits. Even assuming that each material have the exact same strength, volume-wise it's 2.75 times cheaper to use steel, and strengths are more related to volume (dimensions ie. thickness) than weight.

Cylinders are only better since it has uniform strength and cross-section in all directions. Though rarely does tall buildings are made as cylinders, mostly due to footprint and available land, and to a small part for aesthetics, but also because since you'd make the structure out of elements smaller than the whole cross-section anyway the extra hassle required isn't of any particular advantage. With the exception of slip-forming the tower (like you would with chimneys or cooling towers, or in one case a test lift shaft), if you're doing steel truss / braced structures then triangular or rectangular is easier to deal with. Now the individual elements are a different story - cylinders esp. steel cylinders have very good properties and are often used regardless of the shape of the building. The launch pad have cylindrical slanted columns.

Wouldn't they have like trenches, blast pads etc. ? Also probably not quite a few meters, more like ten meters. It usually takes about a week for concrete to properly solidify so from the final topping add a week or two. They also still need to modify the crane but that can be a 1/2 day job if they have enough workers and shift.

Point is however you need the fuel depots and tankers. Hence why if your goal is to put the very first stone then yes SS-based architecture makes sense. But as we're heading towards the later phases we'll have to pick something like that shuttle/taxi from surface to orbit (and vice versa) more.

Although to be somewhat fair there isn't a lot of design that'd work commercially (right now) for a lunar lander... An orbit-surface shuttle still needs someone else to do on the orbit part. Meanwhile SS (and SH) is basically a competing architecture to SLS and Artemis, almost. Their commercial goal is basically providing everything vertically and not just focusing on one part - as the whole thing has to be set down in the first place. So while picking SS makes sense now I honestly still hold out for some design that might be more useful once we have a surface-orbit transport need the same way we have surface-orbit transport needs on Earth (except we're doing downmass much more / as much as upmass on the Moon, at least short-term).

Since that tower used to be an open structure in the times of Apollo and Shuttle as well I guess it makes sense. They just put mesh over it, doesn't really change the openness I imagine.

Right, so now they're going with the shorter boom so they could lift heavier stuff. Also those concrete pump cranes have reached their limit as well. I guess on the final segments the big one is going to see more action than just stacking it up...