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Hurricane Beryl is projected to hit Starbase as a tropical storm on Sunday, July 7th. They'll be on the leading side of the eye, meaning the heaviest rain.

Yeah, everyone has to learn the same lessons, probably in the same order. My YouTube feed has recently seen compilation videos of early US rocket accidents, from the pad on up. One significant contrast to the US operation is that China launches from inland sites. I was thinking that they...

Not stepping out when there is no traffic around was a regular occurrence in Omar's 12.3.6 videos. There's no doubt in my mind that the software learned to key off other cars at intersections, and I attribute that to poor training. Tesla didn't include enough clips of boring stuff that didn't...

Oh, I think that extremophiles on the exterior of the ISS would survive. The station segments are large, they won't be broken up before reentry, and they won't be forced to tumble. The leading faces will get properly vaporized, but the leeward faces of sections that don't tumble (sufficiently)...

Because the size of the tanks is no longer prohibitive for the amount of delta-V that you need. You've got a much lighter vehicle that can do better with higher efficiency, lower thrust engines. It's a bit like the way that ion engines are great when you're free of a gravity well; they are...

There are lots of different factors that must be balanced. In this case, the size of the tanks. A Saturn V first stage that contained liquid hydrogen would be much larger than the one they built. Just going by the density of the two fuels, the hydrogen tank would be ten times that of the RP-1...

Removing tile. They punch holes to get to the mount points, then remove the tile. I guess he didn't release the pins properly.

Full-flow staged combustion cycle Raptors. They're more efficient than the F-1 engine (327s vs 264s Isp) and SpaceX has put so many of them on the booster that it lifts off at 1.5g versus the Saturn V's 1.2g. Saturn V wastes more propellant getting out of the gravity well because it leaves it...

Given same-mass vehicles. How about same-performance vehicles? The reusable vehicle is larger and burns more propellant, but provides the same performance. So the reusable vehicle is "wasting" propellant while the expendable vehicle is "wasting" a rocket body and the reentry mechanism (which...

It may be a case of bacteria and fungi can survive if they are placed there. https://www.nature.com/articles/s41598-023-49525-z

At least it's a foot in the door. It'll get them operating with reusable hardware and, hopefully, they'll end up going in the same direction as SpaceX - and not pursuing another Space Shuttle. ESA is another matter. I wonder if the inflatable reentry unit is reusable.

I think you mean Starship. The original material was going to be carbon fiber. The idea was to make it as light as possible, improving on Apollo in every way. Then Elon saw how expensive and slow carbon fiber was going to be to work with, and he started thinking about materials from scratch...

I was thinking about that just as it reached apogee. "Okay, time to explode now." It would be interesting to learn how the rocket blew through the holddown mechanism. Was it a failure of the rocket structure, the holddown mechanism, or the foundation itself? See tofu dreg projects. Were...

Absolutely. Starship presents the opportunity. The only real difference between @scaesare and me is that he seems to assume that a reason will be found while I make no such assumption. The Moon and Mars are like McMurdo Station 1956, not Jamestown 1605. McMurdo is not self-sustaining. In...

The problem is that the push will only last during Elon's lifetime. Inertia will carry it a bit farther, but unless another megabillionaire wants to fund the whole thing for idealistic reasons, it's going to falter and fail. We need economic reasons to go to space. We need stuff that we can...

Yes, but if it's all Starlink, what's the point? They might as well call the company Starlink, and refer to the launch business as part of their vertical integration strategy. We want to see Moon colonies, LEO hotels, asteroid mining and the like. SpaceX is building the launcher, but will the...

In watching this week's Marcus House video, they show that the tank received ghetto pressurization. SpaceX put a temporary gas line from the booster quick disconnect to the test tank to pressurize it for the test. So no loading, but definitely pressurized.

He probably made the point because he read the article. Scott's not big on citing sources.

Another video clip of the boosters landing. This time, it shows the sonic boom affecting a cloud layer.

At 1:03 PM CDT on June 27, SpaceX performed the test that @mongo was speculating about, which is to secure the tank on the launch mount, then lift with the chopsticks to apply pressure to the rails. The only visible aspect of the test was the chopsticks moving up, and the landing rail being...

I agree. It'll take time for the folks with money to figure out what opportunities are afforded by Starship's capabilities. If any. Fortunately, we have the Chinese government prodding the US government into more prestige projects, so that'll at least give everyone some time to consider their...

Dream Chaser won't go up in September. The Vulcan rocket will launch with a dummy payload to get the rocket qualified for operational flights. The article also mentions that Amazon won't be ready with Kuiper satellites either...

This is what I'm waiting for. Instead of everything being bespoke, start to create commodity items. That will require not only less focus on the mass, but also on greater volume of demand. There's not much point in creating a commodity solar panel for space stations if there are only two...

The ISS is a unique situation because of the planned Axiom Space station. That's supposed to attach to the ISS, build up to self-sufficiency, then detach and operate independently. It would be an ideal situation to salvage hardware. I assume that it isn't done because of many other...

It's Bloomberg, so I can't see the whole article, but for those who can. SpaceX Tender Offer Said to Value Company at Record $210 Billion

Remember that NASA spreads out the money in order to keep multiple launch providers solvent. After giving SpaceX up to $843 million, lining up ULA or Blue Origin for a single launch contract would be consistent with past government expenditures. I wouldn't be surprised to find that the...

https://www.nasa.gov/news-release/nasa-selects-international-space-station-us-deorbit-vehicle/

I doubt Jeff bothers with envy. He's a competitor, and he doesn't like being #2. In his mind, he may well assume that he's #1, and that if anyone else is claiming to be #1 then they're somehow cheating or doing something reprehensible. Like polluting the environment. From what I've seen...

"Visualized" in the sense that they appeared in the visualization, not "perceived".

My impression is that they're experimenting with different formulations of the neural networks in each minor version. They throw a 12.4 at us, collect data on it, then gain understanding of which bits of that formulation work and which don't. Then they move on to 12.5, which will have...

The county just repaved the suburban four lane divided highway by my house. There are sections with no markings on the asphalt. FSD didn't even blink. It still visualized the lanes, including turn lanes, and kept its lane like always.

You took the words out of my mouth, especially about the repetitious exclamations and the fawning. I'll pile on with Tim's bad habit of generally trying to get technical with Elon to the point of offering suggestions. Elon made the mistake of entertaining one of Tim's suggestions in the first...

I had to dig a while, but here's an old 2020 quote from Elon https://www.cnbc.com/2020/09/01/elon-musk-spacex-starship-to-fly-hundreds-of-missions-before-people.html “We’ve got to first make the thing work; automatically deliver satellites and do hundreds of missions with satellites before we...

Some points from the Tim Dodd interview. IFT-4 left off two tiles. One had a single layer of ablative material installed and the other had two layers. The single layer burned through during reentry, but the double did not. Elon didn't know if the single layer burned through the stainless...

Is that discussion authoritative in any respect? SpaceX will fly Starship experimentally until they think it can handle operational missions. Then they'll go operational and launch satellites, propellant, space stations, etc., until they think Starship can handle manned missions. Then...

Part two.

SpaceX relies on flying their vehicles to understand them. They don't do piles of ground testing the way NASA and its contractors do. Elon has spoken of the process, where you find the most egregious problems in the first flights, then more and more subtle problems as you fly more. At some...

As I understand it, they plan to send samples to other countries. I just didn't know if the US was on the list. The US and China still have many ties in science, technology and industry.

The movie version of Danger Zone for the highlight reel. The sound track starts very calm, which can match the free fall section. The music kicks in when the booster interfaces with atmosphere. From there, it would be a bunch of edits of the grid fins vibrating from the violence of descent...

I wonder if NASA will get any of that material.

To add to @ecarfan's information, Elon said right after IFT-4 that he was hoping that they could go for a catch attempt on the next flight. The booster completed a soft landing very close to their virtual tower on IFT-4, so they seem to have enough control to at least get close to a catch. I...

Define "safe for humans". Everything involves risk, and people die even in the safest of systems. Do you want to know when NASA would allow their astronauts to land that way? When the FAA would certify SpaceX employees to land that way? When the FAA would allow paying customers to land that...

The NSF guys think that they'll fill it with something as well, to match the booster landing mass. So I guess it has the ports after all, despite my inability to find them. There are road closures on the 25th, 26th and 27th, so whatever test they have planned looks to be imminent.

The tanks are pressure tested to 8.5 bar, but apparently the operating pressure is 6 bar, and the engines will certainly be operating. That's 87 psi. The external stringers are about 10 meters long. The lift pin is positioned in the middle of a stringer, so say that the arm contacts the...

Yeah, the tanks are certainly pressurized. I was thinking that the external stringers would suffice to avoid any damage. The top of the booster is the only thing using the arm as a registration point, and there's not much mass there.

Number three. The goal is to eliminate variables of motion. If the booster is against the left arm, then the left arm doesn't need to move, and the booster gets a bit of stabilization from that arm. At the same time, the target position for the right arm would be known precisely. I'd let the...

My expectation is that the rails will be raised long before the booster approaches. They'll leave the left arm static, bring the booster down and "lean against" it. As the booster is moving to lean against the left arm, they'll close the right arm on the booster and throttle down, allowing the...

Here's Tim Dodd's interview with Elon. It's over an hour long and is the first of two parts.

Definitely. It makes perfect sense now that you describe it. Static tests before introducing any dynamics. My guess is that they won't fill it with anything. The height of the test article is probably determined by the minimum lift height of the chopsticks. It hasn't been pressure tested...