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I concur I make good natured light of everyone. I'm even willing to accept that it happens regularly. For the sake of maintaining consistency, I'll also note that you're now at triple down on missing the joke. :p Nope. False equivalency. Though I would agree that there's a handful of...

Turns out Atlas V had a launch yesterday. Subjectively, if not less than important, the 5m Atlas is always goofy to look at...if F9 was a 747, a 5m Atlas would be...an A380... Anyway, some decent/interesting images from the feed (classic fairing flexing after deployment, etc.) but otherwise...

Is that y'all are WAAAAY overthinking this. :p As Tesla owners, less-than-stellar customer service from Elonco is something most of us have experienced at one point or another. Are we not allowed to make self-deprecating light of that and laugh at ourselves? Sheesh! Anyway, completely...

Lol, I suppose folks rushing to the defense of Elonco while misinterpreting intent is also something that’s pretty consistent. :cool: If y’all would lighten up a bit, at least for a few seconds: There’s plenty of folks who have experienced Elonco’s less than stellar customer...

There's nothing more consistent than customer service at ElonCo. :p

For sure--if in sea mode they can gimbal within the volume of the stowed vac nozzles then three vac motors could be moved radially inward relative to where they currently are in the 3+3. Their minimum spacing would be a function of the vac bell diameter (+ some dynamic/thermal clearances) and...

For better or worse, it kind of doesn't. Whether or not Artemis-1 falls won’t actually make much of a difference in the future of SLS, because the point of SLS is as much if not more for all the ‘other’ reasons [that we’ve talked about here] than the actual mission or its sustainability as a...

Yup. The nozzle gets to be ~as long again as the length of the motor's pumpy bits + chamber + expander part of the nozzle. Just did a quick lookup and the expansion ratio ~doubles from current generation fixed nozzles. Somewhat related: Scott Manley talks about the RL-10. Different video...

Yeah, its mostly just to get the expansion ratio way up without resulting in a lot of sub-optimized rocket volume. Its quite clever, but IMO its a bit of a solution looking for a problem. I guess every trade has its own priorities but when I 0th order the downside of cost and complexity with...

Yes. It’s worth noting that nobody would ever be able to use FH capacity to LEO because that represents an unpractically dense payload for anything but raw material. Even getting close to maxing D4H to LEO is probably a bit of a stretch, though the slightly wider fairing [than Falcon]...

Flames are normal. Closed loop attitude change was just a roll, probably to align the vehicle for side booster separation Trajectory change after side booster sep was interesting. Seemed like a pitch up, possibly just a function of F=ma (more or less). With the extra mass of the side...

Definitely not NASA (or space wings). My brain would quickly receive an icepick as a result of their conservatism and glacial pace. But yes, I've been designing/building/testing/managing/acquiring commercial satellites for 20+ years. Participation here is a bit tough since I can only say like...

I appreciate your conviction here, and at this point all I can do is encourage you and others to look past bias and aspirational narratives.

That's an interesting GEO satellite because its very basic but also very big. On the gold face that we can see (gold is the color of the outer layer of Airbus' MLI) there's only two relatively basic circular reflectors (one stowed on top of the other) that are fed by single feed horns (the...

Eric Berger is clearly a pro-SX, anti-SLS person. He's certainly intelligent, has decent connections, and often has a lot of good stuff to say, but of course he's going to provide biased perspective--anyone who follows him knows that. What’s important is that when reading Berger we don't...

Of course they are. They want to get it launched ASAP. What's important is that not be conflated with the concept of them making compromises, cutting corners, or in any other way rushing to knowingly launch an inferior vehicle ASAP. They're going to launch when they're ready, no earlier and...

Its not the suggestion of a double standard that's the concern, its the application of a double standard. 😉 In fact it is extremely unreasonable to suggest that the range (who is VERY much not NASA) has launch fever or is in any way at risk of compromising with any external pressures...

It clearly does not. It means the range understands that their safety compliance process is purposely conservative and would be completely untenable if made to account for all manner of contingency cases. Instead, their very pragmatic, First Principals approach (which of course is hailed by...

Cryo is generally avoided for long term space use--it’s pretty finnicky versus to pressure vessels. Its actually going to be pretty interesting to see how SpaceX solves that problem when it comes to starship refueling anf long term storage. Yeah, space is cold...but if you're not careful space...

Yeah those kinds of agreements are always a non-starter. It was likely some contractural give from ULA to close the deal; its almost certain they never intended on actually exercising that kind of arrangement. Some of the bigger issues: On the technical side its not like it would have been...

Yep. folks all over the the industry will agree that "critical components" need to be in-house, but they'll also--Elon included--agree that if you can source something externally that's better/faster/cheaper, you do it. In the case of ULA, their core competency is building rockets, and given...

At the risk of stating the overtly obvious, it’s worth noting that electric propulsion requires a massive amount of DC power to charge the field and huck molecules out the business end. The good news is that it’s a very compatible concept with communications satellites (most GEOs, most...

Yes they’re all ‘hand built’. It’s on a production line, but not something like at an auto manufacturer. Like all engine lines (to be fair, I’ve never seen raptor) its more or less a pulse line with high human interactions and much less rigor applied to things like takt times and like...

Except that’s not the use case. Generally people don’t choose to fly when the point to point driving distance is tenable, they’re connecting through a hub. As is the case with many hub and spoke airlines, there are enough people who find great convenience in anchoring at small/local airports...

Minus step C, which is a function of ULA being a customer (and so is not part of the NG BE-4 flow), that’s basically the same process used by early/low volume Merlin/Raptor.

Yes. There's a lot of good data that can come out of that kind of experiment, AND its much easier to set up that kind of experiment than, say, something that's going to the ISS.

Don't get me wrong--no question Starship will be in commercial service and launching multiple times a month long before the end of the decade. Its just really hard to see a practical reality where they would launch multiples a day from the same area in the next ~7 years. The commercial take is...

Its not just gravity. There's the launch environment, the space environment, the altitude, etc.

Lots of good stuff you can do with this kind of mission.

Good news is what you’re concerned about is a bit of a rare and perfect storm. FWIW in 8 years supercharging up and down the 5 I've never come across a mis-statused charger. Certainly where feasible its always a good idea to manage reserve so you can get to (or backtrack to) the closest...

Yep. Pretty likely for Falcon. Probably ot so much for starship in for foreseeable future—maybe next decade?

We'll see how competent the FCC is if/when the they strike SX's egregious attack on Globalstar.

Bummer, as that's a great way to get short term missions to space...

Upper state relight 5 times.

Bluewalker 3 Article AST is in the direct to mobile space. They want to put up like 200-or-something sats with 600m2 arrays. Shred of reality, heavy dose of hope. Physics, as it turns out, is.

Jesus. There's so many concerns with that. Hopefully the FCC shuts it down.

That doesn’t check out for me. Besides the fact that most will contest the subjective/opinion-based aversion to working with Russia is plenty sufficient contextual justification--it’s not like some extremist principal to oppose a straight up invasion--Russia demanded that the [part] owners of...

On the surface, sure. Far more important is the self serving element. Its clear that megaconstellations are going to be the source of increasing scrutiny and regulations as time moves on, and as the existing megaconstellation SpaceX is currently the only entity impacted by all of that. Of...

Ecoflow ∆ Pro batteries are one of the most cost effective products on the market for the specific purpose of low-effort AC power; as that was the intent of these batteries he's right to be stoked. There are other solutions that provide better capacity/$, but they're not the literal...

Mr downer makes some good points…

From the land of biggest-problems-to-solve, the pin is fine. It does seem reasonably straightforward to have the keycard (does anyone actually use them?) or the phone/app share credentials.

We recycle this kind of perspective from time to time; in the context of giving travel advice its worth encouraging folks to not over-index their personal perspectives. For folks looking for travel advice, “always” is hyperbole. This location--like most on the 5 between the bay and LA--gets...

Tounge in cheek nature of my response aside, I'm on board with honest questions/statements. I'm even on board with [logic based] skepticism of Blue (over SX) because of what they keep away from public domain. I'm not on board with uninformed statements, which is why we're here.

Good point. We should definitely apply the same rigor to Blue that we do SX in this forum. ;)

BE-4 can throttle way back. New Glenn can hover.

SN has a decent, if not top level article on supply chain woes. Its worth noting that on the chart showing the past 10 years of smallsats, starlink represents basically all of the "Mini" sats and OweWeb acconts for a significant portion of the "Micro" sats (at least for 2019-2021). That's...

Most of the actual landing logic transfers. The new part is the horizontal energy. Agree its not easy; main point is that--given where they've gotten to thus far--there's no logic in them not trying to land the thing. Basically all the pieces are there except the actual kind of boat they're...

Because: 1. The NG program does not contemplate major iterations like falcon had (from 1.0 to landing legs to FT...and everything in-between). Whether or not one agrees with the philosophy, near as makes no difference Blue is planning on full success on their first launch. That's one (of...

To make sure the lead doesn’t get buried, the rejection is based on Starlink not meeting the 100/20 threshold. SpaceX (and LTD) didn’t perform to the level they said they would. Simple as that. It’s also worth noting there’s more RDOF subsidies available in the future, and SX will surely...

NG is upgrading the Antares with Firely at the business end. That’s good news for Antares and great news for Firefly.