totm nov 2023 SpaceX Discussion Thread

[darthgently]

1 hour ago, Cracktacular said:

Dude, I'm joking. You really think Elon Musk conducts business based upon what is said on a message board? Get real

Wot?  Yeah, the joke was there.  Is there something wrong with pondering what they were actually up to? 

 

Edited Friday at 06:48 PM by darthgently

[Cracktacular]

Sorry I didn't add a In my reply, my bad.

[darthgently]

3 minutes ago, Cracktacular said:

Sorry I didn't add a In my reply, my bad.

No, I realized you were joking but was simply pondering what they were up to.  Adding an emoji would not have changed things.  I wasn’t offended by your joke, nor did it make me rotflmao.  It was a chuckle. But then I pondered what they may be actually up to which may be confusing if you were expecting a ROTFLMAO instead.  Textual communication can be such a tribulation 

[Cracktacular]

7 minutes ago, darthgently said:

No, I realized you were joking but was simply pondering what they were up to.  Adding an emoji would not have changed things.  I wasn’t offended by your joke, nor did it make me rotflmao.  It was a chuckle. But then I pondered what they may be actually up to which may be confusing if you were expecting a ROTFLMAO instead.  Textual communication can be such a tribulation 

So you admit you replied to a joke with a serious answer, and are miffed when I didn't give you a serious answer back? I don't understand.

[mikegarrison]

18 hours ago, AckSed said:

It's a bit like hearing that, oh, I don't know, Greyhound buses will start shipping their own robotic workers to the premises of the business that you work in. Since they own the transport company, they can charge ticket prices to themselves at cost, the business saves money and you're left competing with workers that do not get tired, need breaks or complain about working conditions. In desperation, you quit, then sign on with another company that designs and builds their own robots, but they've lost the first-mover advantage, the robot-worker market has already begun to race to the bottom and Greyhound worker-robots are frickdamned everywhere.

I would not be surprised if eventually the government orders Starlink and SpaceX ownership to be separated for anti-trust reasons.

17 hours ago, tater said:

The dealership thing is a grift designed by the dealerships.

It's more complicated than that. It has to do with anti-trust. When independent dealers started selling cars, the auto manufacturers tried to freeze them out to prevent the competition. Eventually states started passing laws to protect and eventually require independent ownership of the dealerships.

Arguably, it is now the dealerships who are using their leverage (particularly in state legislatures) to squeeze the manufacturers. But it started as a way to prevent the manufacturers from squeezing the independent dealers.

[tater]

 

 

[Nuke]

2 hours ago, darthgently said:

No, I realized you were joking but was simply pondering what they were up to.  Adding an emoji would not have changed things.  I wasn’t offended by your joke, nor did it make me rotflmao.  It was a chuckle. But then I pondered what they may be actually up to which may be confusing if you were expecting a ROTFLMAO instead.  Textual communication can be such a tribulation 

im happy for the filter. humans are really infuriating most of the time. that's why i live with cats.

[darthgently]

2 hours ago, Cracktacular said:

So you admit you replied to a joke with a serious answer, and are miffed when I didn't give you a serious answer back? I don't understand.

No?  Stop being weird

[Deddly]

And on that note, probably best to get back to talking about SpaceX 

[Takes off moderator hat]

[Pthigrivi]

On 10/4/2024 at 1:03 PM, Cracktacular said:

Y'know, I actually agree with you on that one. I thought you were just a pot-stirrer.

Dude, I'm joking. You really think Elon Musk conducts business based upon what is said on a message board? Get real

 

Wait wait wait, is this Exoscientist?

Elon himself said SH drymass would be 160-200t and we are definitely on the higher end given recent hardware addons. Tater thinks we’re less than a billion on OLM, the tower, fueling systems, deluge, and the last 3 years of launch-site development. I think he’s out to lunch. Because SX doesn’t disclose that information there’s no way to know. 

[Ultimate Steve]

33 minutes ago, Pthigrivi said:

Tater thinks we’re less than a billion on OLM, the tower, fueling systems, deluge, and the last 3 years of launch-site development. I think he’s out to lunch.

Every moment of effort spent on it, including R&D, all of the things they've had to change or upgrade, all of the operations and upkeep cost, I guess it could be over a billion. But I don't think "How much did it cost to design, develop, build, and fix the launch pad" is the right question to be asking. I think the relevant question is instead "How much would it cost to replace it?"

Now that they know some more about what works and what doesn't, and they've spent a lot of R&D money, I highly doubt that it would cost them a billion dollars to recover from a reasonable worst case scenario catch failure (which would be something like, Super Heavy manages to take down both the tower and the OLM by slamming into them at Mach 1, and some amount of small damage to surrounding infrastructure).

Even if they would have to rip everything out and start anew, they have built 1 pad, and are currently building a Florida pad and a second Texas pad. They're working through the regulatory process to build a second Florida pad, and I expect them to work on a California pad at some point.

In order for that to work, the marginal cost of new pads probably can't be that high, it would be too expensive for them. They can't drop 5+ billion dollars on launch pads alone.

Well, they probably could, but it wouldn't be wise while they are spending so much money elsewhere.

This isn't a perfect comparison, as the scale is far different, but SLC-40 cost about 50 million dollars to rebuild (and upgrade to match commonality with the newer LC-39A pad) after the AMOS-6 failure. That's a giant fire from a fully loaded rocket that burned for hours. Granted it didn't slam into the tower at Mach 1, and infrastructure at that pad is significantly less than the Starship infrastructure, but it is also significantly more propellant than Super Heavy will have left at that point in time.

Something would have to go very bad for a catch failure to cost them 20x what Amos-6 cost to recover from.

[BlueAngels]

I have everything loaded in the game and all parts are working. But when loading the ships included I get a message saying it's missing KoS. Been trying to install that manually but keep getting the same message, so just wondering if I installed wrong?

If not, what version of KoS is the mod based on? So I can possibly install the right one to make it  work.

[kerbiloid]

So, gentlepeople, now U know wut 2 do 4 Mars.

P.S.
Not a native speaker, so I haven't understood quite well.

Did he promise to send them to Mars, or to Mars and back again, lol?

[darthgently]

3 hours ago, BlueAngels said:

I have everything loaded in the game and all parts are working. But when loading the ships included I get a message saying it's missing KoS. Been trying to install that manually but keep getting the same message, so just wondering if I installed wrong?

If not, what version of KoS is the mod based on? So I can possibly install the right one to make it  work.

I think ya got the wrong forum.  There is almost certainly a forum for the mod you are trying to install.  As for kOS generally, I’ve always found it easiest to rely on CKAN to install it

Edited 21 minutes ago by darthgently