/sci/ - Science & Math

anime is spaceflight related

SpaceX launch thread will be up in a couple hours. No webcast link yet, or updated launch page on the website though...

>>11788734
Yeah but high quality ore or not, it still takes much more energy to refine iron from iron oxides than to simply melt iron-rich asteroid bits that happen to be sitting right there on the ground.
Simply heating iron oxide to high temperature won't reduce it to metal, you need to blow a reducing agent through the hot ore. On Earth we use either natural gas or coal dust (which is technically not a gas but when the smelt is at high enough temperatures the carbon reacts with the iron oxide to make iron and carbon monoxide and dioxide). On Mars we'l probably blow carbon monoxide through to strip out the oxygen content.
The thing is that on Earth we get that carbon reducing agent pretty much for free, but on Mars we need to use energy to produce that carbon monoxide. This process will be on about the same order of energy consumption per kilogram as the propellant plant's synthesis of methalox bipropellants from water and CO2. Obviously not impossible, but still a big oof.
Consider instead that a fresh colony is likely not going to have the ability to even use more than a dozen tons of steel per year, at least until they get the power supplies and foundry machines necessary. A single good sized chunk of iron-nickel fragment on the ground would easily exceed that demand.

>>11788753
Ah nevermind I’m dumb; didn’t realize it was past midnight here. So tomorrow is launch day, not today. Whoops

>>11788796
No hard feelings happens all the time with me too

>>11788778
yes, you do not want huge bags of salty coins hanging off of your earthmovers
it's less critical for cranes because they need a large area to move in anyway but earth movers need to get into tight spaces (for vehicles, lol) frequently

>>11788768
we'll also use methane on Mars to reduce regolith to just silica and titanium/aluminum/etcetera ores
not sure what you'd use to separate out the silica and such
on the moon I guess you'd use... hydrogen straight off the electrolyzer?

>>11788816
Just excavate a larger space lmao

Reminder: Starship is technically impossible and never fly. STOP THE HYPE

Guys, guys
>reusable
>Saturn Vs

>>11788829
>Reminder: Starship is technically impossible and never fly.

Prove it.

>>11788832
That's basically Starship. Similar height and diameter, similar payload.

>>11788832
that's what New Glenn is trying to do
>>11788828
sometimes you need to operate close to your dirt pile, for example
especially when you're pushing it around

>>11788829
>Reminder: Starship is technically impossible and never fly. STOP THE HYPE

>>11788837
>>11788843
Yeah, but if the US imported some more Nazi scientists and/or if Von Braun lived longer I am sure we would have seen reusable Saturn V's by the 80s. The Germans managed to make acoustically guided torpedoes in WW2, I am sure they could have come up with something that measures wind speed and used that data to self-land.

>>11788821
Pretty much everything except iron is a lot uglier to refine from oxides. Simply heating and blowing a reduction agent doesn't work, you usually need to do electrolysis. Aluminum smelting requires running electricity across some carbon electrodes at very high voltage and amperage, simultaneously breaking the aluminum-oxygen bonds and evaporating some carbon, which reacts to form carbon oxides.

So to make aluminum, titanium, silicon etc, you're paying the energy bill twice; once to make your carbon reducing agent, and again to electrolyse the metal oxide you're refining. It isn't exactly trivial to make a carbon electrode starting off with carbon dioxide gas, either.

Oh, and hydrogen doesn't really work for the application of reducing electrolyzed metal oxides, because metals that bond to oxygen that tightly will actually tell any hydrogen bonded to oxygen to fuck off and steal that oxygen for themselves. This is why you don't try to extinguish a magnesium or titanium fire using water; you would effectively be adding an oxidizer that also vomits a bunch of hydrogen gas as it accelerates the burn rate of the metal.

>>11788837
Reusable Saturn V would get something like 40 tons to LEO, because reusability causes a large hit to max payload. People forget that Starship is actually a 300 ton to LEO rocket that is only meant to be operated in reusable mode.

Damn just to do a demo for Artemis Starship, Elon is going to have to build multiple flight-worthy starships just to get the first one refueled in LEO. How far away are we from seeing the first flight bros

>>11788731
>anime is spaceflight related

>>11788859
Next year, I think. They're building the facility for Super Heavy now.

>>11788851
it was viable starting in the 90s, but engine technology didn't come along until DC-X (mid 90s)
Starship (or something like it) was totally doable in the mid 90s as a sort of Shuttle 2
in the good future that's how it played out, I guess
Shuttle 1 in that case would be dolphin sex double vertical takeoff horizontal landing
>>11788854
I didn't think iron was on that list.
>>11788859
End of this year or early next year. Serious flights starting before the end of 2021.
>>11788862
thank you Char

>>11788863
God damn they don’t sleep in Texas apparently, they just work 24/7

>>11788867
They have 12 hour shifts alternating on three and four day work weeks, and the site is in fact active 24 hours a day, seven days a week.

>>11788862
>>11788731
These are intentionally derailing the thread for an unrelated topic. Fucking ban them

MOLEPEOPLE WILL NOT BE WELCOME ON MARS

>>11788865
>Starship (or something like it) was totally doable in the mid 90s as a sort of Shuttle 2
I'm not so sure. Rocket tech wise, maybe, but software was a lot more primitive back then, and a lot more expensive to make (hardware, compilers, IDEs, RTOSes, etc.). A lot of what Elon does well in his companies is apply modern software development practices to novel fields, and those techniques weren't around back then, so the inevitable delays and cost overruns would have doomed most attempts at a heavy lifter.

>>11788880
Living underground is the most obvious and easy way to inhabit Mars

>>11788878
it's almost like you don't understand how important Mobile Suit Gundam is
aside from the giant space mecha and space lasers and space battleships it's really quite realistic
>>11788883
Ika cute

>>11788865
>I didn't think iron was on that list.
Iron is the exception to the rule, the rule being the requirement for electrolysis of metal oxide in the refining process.
Basically iron is still the cheapest energetically, just not as cheap as on Earth.

>>11788880
Molepeople will live under Mars, enjoy your irradiated testicles.

>>11788669
They're making more it's just a slow process. So it used to be you could get Pu-238 left over from nuclear weapons production, but the cold war's over and we aren't making bombs anymore. Much of the infrastructure that was used to make bombs has fallen out of service and even been demolished. So they're using a special reactor to make more of it and it's a slow process. That fucker's still hogging much of the output. Generally producing specific isotopes is hard.
>>11788719
suck a dick, filthy inner

>>11788895
so can you recover it with hydrogen? probably better to use carbon monoxide that won't contaminate the metal...

>>11788888
Checked for spinning.

Would a purely gravity/acceleration based containment system like this work or would you need a shield to keep the solar wind off? Assume a design lifetime of at least ten thousand years.

>>11788895
>>electrolysis of metal oxide
did somebody just mention MAGMA ELECTROLYSIS? You can make oxygen, iron, silicon, and other materials by electrolyzing melted dirt(MAGMA). It's really nice because it doesn't require precious volatile elements like hydrogen.

>>11788856
>Reusable Saturn V would get something like 40 tons to LEO, because reusability causes a large hit to max payload
So still over 50% better than the Shuttle, with way more volume.
>People forget that Starship is actually a 300 ton to LEO rocket that is only meant to be operated in reusable mode.
That's nuts.

>>11788900
walls would need to be fuck high(~100 km) and as such the ring would need to be big. This means it would need to be made from nanotubes or some crap like that.

>>11788896
Sounds like molepeople cope to me.
My swimmers are strong enough to survive a bit of sun

>>11788908
>walls would need to be fuck high(~100 km) and as such the ring would need to be big.
So a Ringworld, got it. That means physical shielding for smaller rings orbiting a planet or moon.

>>11788909
>My swimmers are strong enough to survive a bit of sun

No they aren’t. Enjoy infertility.

>>11788874
>>11788867
As it should be, most industries are 24 hours now and are much less important/time sensitive.

>>11788913
t. moleman

>>11788917
I unironically have fantasized since I was small of living deep underground in dark, tight tunnels with wider chambers for recreation, sleeping, etc, and would simulate these environments using chairs, pillows, and blankets.

>>11788883
stop spamming anime, noone wants to see your pedo pics pasted on top of space pictures.

>>11788906
Quite absurd really. Still I hope elon doesn’t even fuck around with expendable mode, like, ever. It needs to be established as reusable the second it comes off the factory line to keep costs down. Only time it needs to be launched in expendable mode is if we find an asteroid on a collision course and we need 300tons ASAP to divert it

>>11788920
There is no true expendable mode. An empty Starship can be refueled

>>11788920
>Still I hope elon doesn’t even fuck around with expendable mode, like, ever.
"We launched the entire Gateway and both other teams' moon landers all in one boost. You can cancel SLS now."

>>11788925
I’d be really sad if SLS never flew

>>11788927
Listen here jack

>>11788927
>>11788925
I just want SLS to fly so that Artemis gets done faster. We already wasted billions on it, might as well launch it to start Gateway while Starship sends fuckloads of equipment to the moon.

>https://youtu.be/KEnz8V97Qck
Cool video with Blue origin, SpaceX and Dynetics representation. What do you guys think of the proposed landers?

>>11788920
Remember that Starship is dirt cheap.

>41 Engines at $1 Million Each
>Body is made of stainless steel
> Even if Starship uses 10X as many materials in its tanks as Falcon 9 does, it’s still several times less expensive per kg, and easier to work with.

There is a good chance that expendable Starship is around the same price as a reusable Falcon Heavy, or maybe even a Falcon 9.

Expendable Starship would be amazing too. For $90 Million you can put 300 tons into orbit. That’s $300/kg.

Reusable Starship can put 150 tons into orbit for $2 Million. That’s less than $14/kg!

Ariane 5, which was once the leader in commercial launches, can put 21 tons into LEO for $140 million. That’s $6,670/kg.

>>11788950
You mean 31 engines

>>11788950
Expendable starship wouldn't be worth it.

>>11788950
Look... I don’t want to be a cynical asshole. $2 million a launch sounds fucking amazing, and it’s the future I want. And Elon has done fucking amazing things- so much in fact that it has already created a paradigm shift for me and other people all across the globe. But... two million dollars? That’s fucking insane. There’s no way. I just can’t see it happening. Is that really the future we will see??

>>11788956
I mean in total for both stages.

>>11788961
Right now an Electron rocket is $6 million a launch in purely expendable mode. Reflying a fully reusable rocket for a third of that is totally reasonable.

>>11788966
There are 31 engines on the superheavy and six on the starship. 37, not 41

>>11788948
its so painfully obvious who is better in that chat.

>>11788908
> walls would need to be fuck high(~100 km)
doubt, most of the air is in the troposphere topping out at 12km up
Alternatively:
> up the g's
> use alternative gases with heavier weights like xenon or argon
> curved roofs with fans that redirect escaping molecules, much like the air curtains some stores have that keep cool air in with an open door.

why has this shit not gotten better?

>>11789030
that's retarded. And the only reason the ring in elysium was open was so a drop ship could land in it.

>>11789035
didn't they change the wheels to something more durable?

>>11789035
Perseverance is nothing like Curiosity except in cosmetics. Almost all of the technology, trinkets, instruments, etc. are all extremely improved and upgraded. That being said, rovers are always super shitty compared to what we can do with actual boots in the ground. What a rover can do in months, humans can do in a day.

>>11789035
It's proven technology. Honestly curiousity and the like don't need to use a rocker bogie suspension, 4 wheels would work just fine. You only need rocker bogie if you're climbing literal boulders. NASA's using it because it worked on the first Mars rover. Now while it may look the same on the outside, the instruments inside are better. Not to mention it has a fucking helicopter.

how easy is it to launch to orbit from mars compared to earth?

>>11789047
It also has a MOXIE experiment, to demonstrate in situ synthesize of oxygen gas from the Martian atmosphere

>>11789056
Mars has a delta/v to reach orbit somewhere between 4 and 5 kms and Earth has one over 9, so half as hard or better

>>11789037
it's not retarded, viable for an end of the century type orbital station
where you don't need everything open apart from a few gaps here and there to float through, fuckin just put a plastic tarp over everything else at that point
a system that isn't so fragile has much more long term potential, relying on pressure vessels long term might not be a good idea
at lower temps (artic levels) atmospheric losses gets even lower depending on how unlivable this place is meant to be

>>11789063
mass ratio scales exponentially with delta V
>>11789065
>>unlivable
the point of space colonies is to be lived in. Are you retarded or something?
>> pressure vessels
if it contains an atmosphere that humans can live in, it will still be a pressure vessel. The ground and walls will still have to take the pressure.
>>long term potential
Long term, the gas loss from an open system will be killer.

Might see SN5 moved to pad in the next 8 hours. See you all then.

>>11789045
>>11789038
>>11789047
Obviously it has improvements in science, equipment, cameras and gadgets but they need to be trying different rover concepts. We will most likely have boots on mars by the end of the decade so the scientific gains made by the rover won't be very significant. The current rover design works well on mars but will it work well elsewhere? Is it the best/most efficient design possible with current tech? I'd say no, and hashing our rover designs is going to be more worthwhile than the 4-8 years of rover science that could be done in a few hours once the astronauts get there.

>>11789075
thank fuck I've been having withdrawals

>>11789057
What degenerate rear reaper named that garbage?

>>11789082
No idea, but it’s an acronym that means “Mars Oxygen In-Situ Resource Utilization Experiment”

>>11789075
Is SN5 still getting a nose cone and fins?

fucking hurry up elon i want to go on a moon cruise already

>>11789076
It’s a hard question to answer. I am biased because I helped configure two instruments that are going to fly on Perseverance. The laboratory represents a combination of everything we’ve learned since Sojourner- and in this case is a legacy to everything we have learned from Curiosity. From the sky crane to improved wheels, and all the upgraded instrument packages. You mention efficiency but it’s not like we can design a modular rover and just send it to every planet. The Moon, Mars, Earth, even places like Venus vary drastically (as an understatement) and require unique and ingenious designs of their own. But as it stands, it is the best we can do in terms of geology and astrobiology... even preparing caches for sample returns... without having a geologist there to chisel away at outcrops for direct samples.

>>11789088
Ah thats no too bad then the term moxie is pure faggotry though

>>11789114
That makes sense, its good to hear from someone actually working with the tech. What do you think is the most important piece of equipment on it and what are you most excited about once it gets there?

>>11789057
>>11789088
How effective is that expected to be? I would assume that will be a crucial part of life support in future missions.

>>11789124
I would say the most exciting thing about it is its landing site. We are attempting to touch down at the mouth of an ancient delta. Not only cool for all the fluvial geologists, but really really exciting for the astrobiology. Where there is water, there is life (on Earth at least. We will see if this theory holds across the solar system). As for instruments, the most ambitious thing we’ve got going for us is the Ingenuity helicopter, it will let us scout out sample sites in advance, and plan paths to take so we can minimize rover damage and extend the lifetime of the laboratory. And as for instruments, I’m excited for SHERLOC. I spent a lot of time working on the fine details and we finally get to deliver a UV Raman Spectrometer to the surface of Mars to look for organic molecules and biosignatures with complete confidence.
Still, this isn’t anything compared to what a human could do desu. I dream of being able to do field work on other planets if given the chance. Even just training astronauts at Boca Chica would be a dream come true.

>>11789131
>How effective is that expected to be?

10 grams per hour with a 37.7 pound system using 300 watts. NASA’s intention is to use a 100 times scaled-up version to synthesize two kilograms of oxygen an hour to prepare oxidizer for a return mission, but that’s so far away that I’d expect Elon to get there first

>>11789076
>>We will most likely have boots on mars by the end of the decade so the scientific gains made by the rover won't be very significant.
but we'll have them before the boots ever hit the ground. This should enable those boots to do more than if they went in fucking blind. And fuck you it's testing ISRU tech that'll help people, in addition to the first controlled flight* on another world.
*Vega balloons were the first flight on another world.
>>11789131
effective enough that they're sending it to fucking Mars to see if it works. The payload ain't free.

>>11789148
>UV Raman Spectrometer to the surface of Mars to look for organic molecules and biosignatures with complete confidence.
That's fucking awesome, I had no idea it had one of those.
>We are attempting to touch down at the mouth of an ancient delta.
Is there still water there or is it just looking for old traces of water and life?
>I dream of being able to do field work on other planets if given the chance. Even just training astronauts at Boca Chica would be a dream come true.
With Starship i have a feeling you will get the chance. Thanks for the insight anon, this launch is a lot more exciting now.

>>11789157
>effective enough that they're sending it to fucking Mars to see if it works. The payload ain't free
I have no doubt that it will work, I'm talking more about efficiency and expected performance.

>>11788878
I mean the retardation of it is kind of to the point where it's fun again, but you surely have a point, I guess.

>>11789157
>And fuck you it's testing ISRU tech that'll help people, in addition to the first controlled flight* on another world.
I'm not saying don't send a rover I'm saying they should try different types of rovers. The scientific equipment should be the same.

So how many memes does /sfg/ have now?
>ASS TO ASS
>Proonting
>shelby&fuel depots
>BOING
>piss airlocks
>mariachi musk
>lewd starship upskirt shots
>long march vs chinese rural villager
What else did i miss?

>>11789159
>Is there still water there or is it just looking for old traces of water and life?

It’s a crater lakebed with clay minerals called Jezero crater, and there’s a riverbed to the East which is really obvious if you look at pictures of it. If there’s still water it’ll be meters beneath the ground, but it does carry a ground penetrating radar as well as a humidity sensor.

>>11789159
There isn’t water there anymore (not in liquid flowing form) but chemical analysis have resulted in a “smoking gun” for past water at the landing site (called Jezero Crater). This image shows the rim of the crater where an ancient river carried in clay minerals which can only be formed by liquid H2O. These clay minerals serve as excellent time capsules because they trap and preserve organic matter. Hope we find some interesting stuff.
Also yeah my dream job would be to just train astronauts- I hope I find myself at the right place at the right time to find a job offering and shill my soul to Jim or Elon. I’d be willing to abandon everything just to help further the field of geology and train our future explorers.

>>11789171
>> try different types of rovers
they're trying out a fucking helicopter. That's pretty goddamn different. If you want to test different rovers you can use a fucking sandbox and save the taxpayer millions.
>>The scientific equipment should be the same
and why are we carrying out the same fucking mission? So we can discover the same shit we already discovered on Mars? How about discovering some new shit for once? And you know what Percerverence is doing that NASA ain't done in a long ass time? Some goddamn fucking astrobio experiments. Not since viking have we sent missions to look for past or current life. I shit you not. This whole time we haven't been looking for life on Mars. NASA has been too pussy to even bring it up, because Viking failed bad.

What I don't understand about the rover, they're gonna collect samples for a later mission to return them. Is the plan to have another rover come get the samples and stick them all in a rocket? Like what the fuck are they thinking here

Why did the guberment really send Chris to the ISS? Does one of the Russian cosmonauts know something important?

>>11789193
Yup! Welcome to the dirty world of having to deal with politics. We’re designing Perseverance to prepare samples and leave them in sealed containers in what we call a “cache”. This is so that we basically have a stronghold on the politicians and we can say “look we already spent the money to prepare them, and they’re waiting for us. We need money for a mission to go get them”. This is because we didn’t have time or funding to include a small rocket with Mars 2020, and by leaving them ready-to-go we can cheaply go retrieve them and bring them back. It is what it is man

>>11789205
Thank God SpaceX exists

>>11789197
Chrischan is going to jettison the entire Russian segment and deorbit it and establish LEO as American territory anon

Nasa says they cant support missions longer than 100 days outside of LEO if we don't have shielding. Do any of the human landing systems include that?

>>11789219
To my knowledge they do not. The two other landers probably just rely on ther metal tin can hulls and fabric interior for protection a la Apollo style. Starship will most likely use this as well. There are other methods, such as a layer of water or a magnetic field- but this requires weight and/or R&D costs.
Tbh Ive been watching a lot of star trek enterprise lately and last night I had a super vivid dream I was on a starship and it had polarized hull plating for heat/particle protection. I woke up today wondering if it could work. I wonder if there’s some alloy or superconductor we could run an electric current through and change its physical properties to create a super resistant heat shield/particle shield. Just food for thought

>>11789229
The Reticulans contacted you

>>11789219
no, but there are huge benefits to not having shielding. Not having shielding will drastically improve our understanding of radiation on humans. Inb4 we already know about radiation. The radiation that humans would be exposed to in space is different from what we have data on. Nuclear weapons and nuclear accidents, some of our prime sources for radiation effects on humans haven't exposed humans to solar protons or galactic cosmic rays. You gotta crack a few eggs if you want to make an omelet.

>>11788888
digits confirm
gundam is space related

>add a little manga

Anime confirmed on topic, get fucked jannies

>>11789219
>Nasa says they cant support missions longer than 100 days outside of LEO if we don't have shielding.
Pressing X to doubt. NASA will relax that policy when they realize a presence on Mars would be established without them.

Not necessarily an issue on the Moon. You don't have to have people in landers for extended periods. Lunar SS will be used as a hab but they'll probably bury it for protection would be my guess.

I had a couple of ideas, you could make a TV series about a bunch of companies participating in a space race, but the trick is, that they are all living around cape Canaveral because the industry is there. So the bosses are all hot tempered lunatics, the likable kind and the series follows the life of the workers and scientists there. Now the gig is that it's very comedic and stupid, I mean no poop jokes and b-roll laughter, but rather the insanity and scale, like situational stuff. Think Cave Johnson from Portal coping on Black Mesa (the objectively more better evil science complex), but then the technology and science is absolutely on point that there's layers of story happening. Like the neighborhood one upping, technological and evolution over seasons

I dunno if it should be real or cartoon, If it was cartoon they could use Kerbals because everything about them is likable, they'd wipe the floor with thrash like minions and you'd have a base audience already.
But real would also be kickass and not even that expensive. You could do a lot with models and greenscreens and even mush a warm fuzzy 60s filter allover it to hide the crimes. The series could catch up to 2020 over time tho...

It goes without saying, that nobody ever dies there and that safety talk is dialed down to 60s "when challenge pissing, wear a hardhat" levels.

The time would be perfect with all that commercial stuff happening right now and I could see a lot of places to ask for funding because raising public awareness and interest is basically a shared goal...

Any thoughts?

>>11789273
>ED is getting spess legs

cant wait

>inflatable habitats
>proonting brown buttplugs
>not considering the superior lunacrete for moon colonization.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lunarcrete

>>11789219
no, which is why the first moon bases are either gonna be build underground, or made out of thick regolith.

A Marine will be the senior enlisted leader for US Space Command
https://www.spacecom.mil/MEDIA/NEWS-ARTICLES/Article/2214429/marine-corps-master-gunnery-sgt-scott-h-stalker-selected-as-next-usspacecom-sel/

>>11789279
what will be the purpose of the first lunar base?

>>11789277
Just used the picture because best ship, I doubt it will be that cool considering how underwhelming the own able stations are and the dirty pr stunt they rigged around them with the betas... I think it passively made me quit for a while because I just lost interest so much there.

>>11788948
I'll take the dynetics solution over the mismatched oldspace stack. I'm not sold on Starship as a lander unless the mission parameter changes dramatically to "build a huge fucking outpost on the surface".

>>11789298
-Building and maintaining lunar telescopes, both radio and visible light kinds
-Sending lunar regolith to spaceships/space stations for building material/radiation shielding
- Operating a mass driver to send large amounts of materials to the rest of the solar system.
- Holding enough people to restart civilisation if earth gets owned by an asteroid/nuclear war/whatever

Th's just off the top of my head, with no particular scientific advancements required.

>>11789298
For NASA it will be research.

>>11789173

>>11789278
sulfur concrete is an established construction material here on earth. It's used in chemical plants as acid proof concrete. It's processed very similarly to regular concrete, you just use a heated truck.
https://ntrs.nasa.gov/archive/nasa/casi.ntrs.nasa.gov/20080022947.pdf

>>11789173
>JWST fuck my launch up

>>11789321
Nice!

>>11789321
I also adapted it for Kerbal while I had the program open, maybe it saves somebody a minute.

>>11789342
This is my Kerbal flag. Looks really nice if you fuck up a landing and plant a flag next to the wreckage in screenshots.

>>11789298
Hookers and blow.

14 hours until the Japanese MOMO rocket launch (pic related)
16 hours until Electron
21 hours until Falcon 9

>>11789075
Can't wait for explosion.

>>11789365
>MOMO
Here's hoping it doesn't provide fireworks again. Ganbare nips.

>>11789313
>$/kg reward for base materials to the surface
"Build a huge fucking outpost on the surface" is implicitly part of the plan now.
>not wanting the giant lander that's actually cheaper anyway

>>11789410
>implicitly part of the plan now
Dude, they're not even guaranteeing the fucking flying fartbox at this stage. The "mission" will probably turn into a single flags and footprints then fucking nothing.

>>11789412
>The "mission" will probably turn into a single flags and footprints then fucking nothing.
Which would be ceding complete control over Lunar presence to SpaceX anyway.

>>11788957
Still massively cheaper than SLS.

>>11789344
Took me a while^^

>>11789429
I think they could assemble and launch a completely fresh Starship with no reuse for the ship or the booster and still be cheaper than a single R25. It would at least be close.

>>11788829
According to all known laws of rocketry, there is no way that a Starship should be able to fly. Its engines are too small to get its huge cylindrical body off the ground. The Starship, of course, flies anyways. Because Musk don't care what humans think is impossible.

>>11789494
>Its engines are too small
It's a matter of thrust to weight ratio, not a matter of "too small". You may to learn the science behind rocketry if you want to actually debate it.
The Merlin engine is really "small" too, but has a ridiculous thrust to weight ratio and they use 9 of it per F9 core.

>>11789506
It's an old meme/myth. The original line is about bumblebees.

>>11789512
It's almost 30c outside and god knows how hot it is inside, my brain is barely functioning.

What is the status of Bigelow Aerospace today? Inflatable space habitats have a lot of potential, I would hate to see the technology sidelined simply because of that company's mismanagement.

>>11789525
fired all employees and are in "hibernation" with the intent of hiring people back, but more likely they just liquidate and someone else picks up all their patents and shit.

>>11789525
Ghost town. I'd like to see SpaceX or at least someone newspace buy them out.
SNC is apparently still pursuing inflatables so there's that.

>>11789525
It's dead, Jim.

>>11789494
>the starship movie but every time they say starship it gets faster

>>11789344
I wish more parts in the game had an option to add a flag to them.

>mfw finding out that the moon has few stable orbits
satellites orbiting the moon are going to need to do alot of fuel aren't they? sounds like a good opportunity for spacecraft that refuel satellites.

>>11789574
I'm a complete mong and don't know shit, but couldn't you achieve orbital corrections from solar power or is electric propulsion not a thing in space?

>>11789590
That's an ion engine but you still use up reaction mass.
I bet you could do station keeping with just solar sails not worry about fuel at all, but ion engines are probably sufficiently efficient that you could outlast the lifetime of most sats on initial remass.

>>11789298
ISRU development

How does a space shuttle stay balanced, not being rotationally symmetric? The engines don't move, but the centre of mass does, both from fuel consumption and decoupling.

>>11789229
Starship has a solar storm shelter in it, we know that at least

>>11789429
Yeah, but why expend a starship for 300 tons when you can launch 3 a day for 450 tons for much cheaper

>>11789608
The Shuttle engines had a very wide pivot range so they can keep the axis of thrust pointing at the center of mass.

>>11789344
Here's mine. Enter the Erotzi Empire.

>>11789344
And now my flag cannot be missed.

Starship Super Heavy first flight will be the most important event since Apollo 11

Astrobotic, the company that own the VIPER water rover mission yesterday seems like it will be a big player in the Artemis program. They have three surface missions lined up (2021, 2022, 2023).

>Mission 1, Peregrine to Lacus Mortis, 2021.
>Mission 2, an Astrobotic rover carried as a payload on another CLPS flight to the south pole area in 2022 (maybe this is on Masten's flight)
>Mission 3, Griffin with VIPER in 2023.

>>11789716
there's isn't enough spotlight on the companies manufacturing the equipment that they're planning to put on the moon

>>11789689
>it blows up

>>11789689
no, but the first successful landing will be

>>11789768
How many times will it have to explode before it becomes ready for a full manned mission? My guess is five, including the one that already happened.

>>11789689

More important.

>>11789798
I don't know, but it probably will explode a few times. Hopefully that doesn't happen with people on it. I'm still skeptical of elon's 'it will be so safe it wont blow up' strategy when it comes to LES. It's rocketry, things go wrong occasionally even with well engineered systems. I suppose intensive redundancy might make it work

>>11789812
I think the point of it exploding a lot now is that when it does fly it won't explode even a little.

>>11789820
but what happens when it does explode? even with well engineered aircraft, an engine occasionally goes out or a line ruptures. but planes don't tend to just blow up when a small error occurs, unlike rockets

>>11789824
>but what happens when it does explode?
Why were the people of the age of discovery much more willing to cope with disaster then we are today?

>>11789843
You have a point, but congress are the ones with the power to fuck over private spaceflight (and thereby humanity) if elon creates bad PR by blowing up a bunch of colonists. the risk isn't really about the colonists themselves

>>11789843
Life is very easy which makes people weak-minded and generally psychologically defective.

>>11789843
Probably due to the culture of safety that NASA made for itself after Challenger happened. It was quite shocking for them to discover that the Shuttle was so unsafe, but they couldn't decommission nor upgrade it at the time so the only way to deal with it was to be obsessive about safety.

>>11789824
Depends on how the government is going to treat Starship, if it's treated like an exploratory vehicle ala Shuttle or Saturn I can see delays but in the end any payload or crew lost will be excused. If however they treat it more like a commercial vehicle ala passenger planes, the level of tolerance for catastrophic failures will plummet, especially since while SpaceX has demonstrated a lot of success they don't have a half century defense/aerospace contractor pedigree which could help shield them from federal ire, like Boing! does. They managed to blow up several hundred passengers before anybody took action against them.

>>11789850
>>11789856
>>11789862
Honestly at this rate I wouldn't be surprised if modern civilization on earth collapses soon after mars colonization.

>>11789880
You’re delusional if you think civilization collapsing is possible anywhere. This isn’t the Bronze Age.

>>11789880
Modern civilization will never collapse. Everything is far too interconnected for anything short of world ending events to cause that. The world treating Mars like Apollo 2.0 and just ignore space again once the flags have been planted is more likely.

>>11789612
I had no idea, do you know any more about this?

>>11789908
it's just a functional necessity that they've acknowledged, nothing specific about it

>>11789903
modern civilization might not be able to collapse fully, but industrial society could suffer a massive shock caused by some unforeseen catastrophe that may set us back decades. you're right that in a global society, there will always be some other entity to pick up the pieces. i'm particularly worried about the near term consequences of technology on society if we don't manage things smartly

>>11789908
No, but it's in the operators manual
>>11789891
>>11789903
I'm sorry, if you think modern society is invincible, you are insane.

>>11789903
Being ignored is probably desirable. Most people are idiots, so it’s best to keep their influence and their genes in the crab bucket.

>>11789891
Civilization doesn't have to collapse, it just has to become financially and socially unstable enough to where advancing space exploration isn't feasible anymore

>>11789927
"modern society" and "civilization" are two completely different concepts

>>11789943
True, I should of specified there will always be some sort of society. But I wouldn't be surprised if we could get sent back to the 1800s by a large enough disaster.

>>11789933
>final nail in the coffin of oldspace
>SS is accelerated to meet demand to get off this planet
Everything went better than expected.

>>11789273
Kerbals don't fear death, you could make it a running gag that actual astronauts are complete red shirts and nobody talks about deaths, but suggests so, like everybody always wishing them luck whenever they see them in an ominous way.

>>11789947
exactly. although that would probably have to be nuclear war. i've read too much apocalyptic sci fi though, so i'm getting worried about information chaos. more realistically, a global agricultural collapse caused by climate change has the capacity to fuck us over, as nobody has retained the skills to locally grow food

In other news, reminder that we could have an array of cheap space telescopes by now, but NASA has opted to spend decades on this over-engineered moneyscope that probably won't work anyway

>>11789927
Modern society is indestructible except by, say a meteor or nuclear war. You’re insane if you think otherwise

>>11789982
>as nobody has retained the skills to locally grow food
It's not that hard to figure out enough of the details to get started.

>In other news, reminder that we could have an array of cheap space telescopes by now, but NASA has opted to spend decades on this over-engineered moneyscope that probably won't work anyway
That's not a telescope. That's a grant farming machine.

>>11789995
Anybody who says oldspace is inefficient isn't paying attention to their accomplishments. Just look at JWST. They have learned to play the system perfectly. making simple projects into over-complicated money pumps is the peak of capitalism

>>11789993
Modern society is very weak, it'd probably take less for it to collapse then that.

Does anyone know where the docking ports are on Starship?
Also have a Nautilus-X pic, I really really love this design. It’s modular too, so you can throw on a bunch of stuff as needed

>>11789298
mining?

>>11790002
>govt funds and oversight leads to explosive pork
>capitalism
Imagine being this confused.

>>11790016
Literally forgot the photo. Anyone i’m support of this thing? I would love to see it become a reality

>>11788898
Yeah, the steel industry is working on ways to smelt iron with hydrogen right now so it can be carbon neutral.

>>11790002
>Government non-contractually redistributes resources away from citizens to social projects it deems necessary with no legal accountability for how those resources are spent.
>Capitalism
Look, I know that starvation probably reduces the average pinko IQ substantially, but come on man at least try to get your definitions squared away.

>>11790021
They're contractors. They're a for-profit company in a capitalist environment. NASA doesn't have their own spacecraft fabrication bureau or anything like that. Obviously the government contracting is the problem, but to say it's not a result of profit motivation is not seeing the forest for the trees

and no, i'm not suggesting we nationalize space before you call me a commie

"Boeing"? More like "Boring"

This post was made by Allison Gang, fuck you Boeing Gang!

>>11790037
>capitalist environment
All large corporations operate independently of a 'capitalist environment', what we have instead is a hybrid where governments and corporations are deeply integrated.

>>11789076
We need to try a screw drive type rover. That shits not getting stuck in dust pits.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=djrqktlYQ0k

>>11789173
>Launch kitty

>>11789947
That’s not possible either.

>>11790060
How well does that do on rocky surfaces though? Ideally you'd want something to navigate both. Tracks work just fine basically anywhere.

>>11789982
>more realistically, a global agricultural collapse caused by climate change has the capacity to fuck us over, as nobody has retained the skills to locally grow food

Climate change is a dead meme from the 90’s and early 2000’s.

>>11790069
They have already invented that.
Of course you'll want something a lot lighter, but the concept is still the same.

>>11789546
>not every time a starship explodes it gets faster

>>11789273
>Starship has a solar storm
So HBO's sillicon valley but with rockets.
Could definitely work, the problem is that everyone knows stuff about computers and businesses and can see the humour in things. Rocket science has a higher boundary meaning you'll have to rely on low tier sitcom troupes which would be shit.

>>11789779
This.
People seem to focus on explosions now, but that it's definitely fixable.
What really worries me is the landing.

>>11790085
Yeah, weight is the only reason I can see not to use tracks, but SS basically solves that. As long as you aren't putting an actual armored tank on board it'll be volume limited rather than weight limited.

>>11790094
Same I feel sorry for the test pilots who have to bear the first landing. Hope they’re wearing their brown pants. Fucking last minute suicide burn, I’m gonna have to see if fly a couple times before I would get in one

>>11790110
>test pilots
u wot, m8.
All of the kinks in the landing will be worked out autonomously. There are no pilots on SS period, ever.

>>11790117
Yeah but after the demo missions they’re probably going to do the equivalent of a Demo-2 mission and put test pilots on board. Also there’s NO way it can be 100% automated. I know we have the tech for it, but there’s still going to be a way to put it in manual mode

>>11790125
Manual controls on a rocket are a meme on par with "drive me closer so I can hit him with my sword". They exist to make former pilots feel adequate. By not having manual controls all that happens is you cut out an extraneous system and a lot of training/experience requirements on the part of the passengers.

>>11790125
Same anon I just want to expand on this. I believe once SS becomes a common thing it WILL be automated. I just believe that it will most likely have a navigation/communications room, and there will probably be a way to manually control it/provide new input if need be. That being said they’ll probably do a launch with veteran pilots on board and fly it in LEO, put it in manual mode for a bit, and land it- at some point. They will have tested it autonomously plenty of times by then but they will do a “first crewed mission” eventually. And it will be a scary landing

>>11790148
Has Elon mentioned anywhere that there will be no manual controls or are you making an assumption

SN7 test tank is on the move

Kathy Lueders has been selected to lead @NASA’s Human Exploration & Operations Mission Directorate. Kathy has successfully managed both the Commercial Crew & Commercial Cargo programs and is the right person to lead HEO as we prepare to send astronauts to the Moon in 2024.
https://twitter.com/JimBridenstine/status/1271468279140360193

>>11790159
You're the one making the assumption that it will have manual controls. The problem is there is absolutely no reason to think that. You do realize that safely landing or launching SS will be far beyond the ability of humans in manual control anyway, right?

>>11790167
>Kathy has successfully managed both the Commercial Crew & Commercial Cargo programs

So great choice then?

>>11788923
Yes there is. A Starship with not TPs or flaps or header tanks, on top of a Booster with no legs, and burn both stages to completion (Booster dies on reentry and Starship is unrecoverable).

>>11790173
I admit it is an assumption on my part yeah. And of course I expect landing to be autonomous. I just think there will, at the very least, be a “control input” terminal located somewhere on Starship yknow? Even if it does barebone stuff like fire RCS thrusters or something. How is having the option a “meme”, unless Elon has specifically said so himself

>>11790198
also expendable Starship only needs 3 raptors (the vacuum ones), no?

>>11789297
SPACE MARINES

>>11790167
Makes sense, elevate successful project heads, dump the failures, force all the contractors to compete on merit. Bridenstine seems to be getting into his stride, hopefully he sticks around to keep unfucking NASA.

>>11790167
And of course there's one comment that had to pull in the OMG GREAT SHE'S A WOMAN OMG OMG OMG.
She got that position on merit, not because of the contents of her pants. She's done a great job on Commercial crew and cargo.

>>11789365
>14 hours until the Japanese MOMO rocket launch (pic related)
live stream links
https://youtu.be/e19TkjNDWTw
https://youtu.be/88yBalrZp-U

>>11789173
4ASS and its many terrible ideas for spaceflight.

>>11790220
I'll be asleep when that shit goes up/explodes unfortunately. But I guess I'll watch it with my morning coffee tomorrow.

>>11788961
>Is that really the future we will see??
Yes, with only one major stipulation; we need to keep improving the designs over time, and can't fall into the trap of thinking that what we have is good enough forever.
Reusable Starship will hit the market and be at most as expensive as a Falcon 9 from day one, and will drop from there. Whether or not they get the marginal cost down to $2 million depends on how long they're willing to keep redesigning the manufacturing and logistics of Starship and retraining their labor force.

>>11790210
The guberment might fuck him though. As soon as Trump’s term is done I’m scared he’s going to get replaced because
>anything drumpf man did is bad and anyone he appointed is a bad person so let’s cancel the whole thing and go back to climate change earth-observation satellites

>>11790203
It sets the wrong expectations. You don't want people to need to get used to having a pilot on board, especially when that pilot is always doing nothing. It's just extra expense.
And Elon is the autonomy guy. Let's not pretend Dragon would have manual controls if it wasn't made to meet NASA specs.

>>11790222
>4ASS and its many amazing ideas for spaceflight.
FTFY

>>11789030
>doubt, most of the air is in the troposphere topping out at 12km up
Doesn't matter, if that upper layer of 80 km of rarefied air isn't there, your 12 km of troposphere will expand to fill that column, except it will find itself leaking into vacuum since it won't be confined on the sides anymore.

>>11789173
>piss airlocks
Best idea by far, not a meme

>>11790229
this is why im voting for trump, that and he's keeping the h1-b's out so it makes it easier for me to get a job

>>11790227
Well seeing that SpaceX is about to stop production of everything and turn into “the Starship company” i’m hoping everyone moves out to Boca Chica and they are prepared to just keep iterating and iterating over the next decades to make it as cheap as possible. Exciting times anon let’s hope Elon lives a long and successful life

>>11789072
>mass ratio scales exponentially with delta V
Yes, and since Mars requires half the delta V, you go from needing two very mass optimized stages to reach orbit around Earth to only needing a single stage built like a brick shithouse to get to Mars orbit.

>>11790230
Hmm good point. I suspect he will try and lobby Jim for full automation on Artemis SS

>>11790167
This might just be speculation I guess, but it makes me feel like she knows what she’s doing

>>11790229
If that happens, then SpaceX can just keep trucking along. Maybe Blue Origin too if they stop sniffing their own farts.

>>11790242
>h1-b
The rocket?

>>11790024
>>11790016
It apeara like there’s one on the nose.

So what would the mission be? It departs the EML2, flies to Mars, enters orbit around Diemos, departs, breaks back into EML2?

I can see it requiring a “Taxi” to take crew from high mars orbit down to a lander in LMO.

Still it’s a cool design. I wonder if it would work with regular Ion engines or even Methalox or regular storable propellant.

>Mfw it still requires several SLS launches to refuel

Pic related is what I think is a better design. It’s smaller but it only needs 6 EELV launches to Resupply (or one SLS, but that shits expensive). It can take a crew of four to mars and back, and it pretty light (37 tons dry).

>>11789187
>and why are we carrying out the same fucking mission?
The same as this current rover are you stupid? Why are you getting so butthurt? The guy actually working on the rover wasn't even mad at the idea

>>11790263
DST is such a gross looking hunk of junk in my opinion. It doesn’t look futuristic at all, more like a flying trash can with solar panels the size of texas. and it’s small as shit hahah

>>11789114
>The Moon, Mars, Earth, even places like Venus vary drastically (as an understatement) and require unique and ingenious designs of their own.
I'd agree with you there, but only because the big objects of the inner solar system all have very different surface environments, most importantly their atmospheres and the consequences of those environmental conditions on the surface topography over the evolution of the solar system.
Looking out farther, there are a large number of objects that are functionally equivalent in terms of surface conditions, with the only major difference to consider being radiation flux. Other than Titan and Io, pretty much every large moon is the same from a rover perspective; Very cold ice ball with high to low levels of irradiation from charged particles (solar and cosmic). The Saturnine moons apart from Titan are a good example of what I mean, specifically Rhea, Dione, Tethys, Iapetus, and Enceladus, which all have nearly identical surface conditions (except Iapetus, which has a large area of dark material coating an entire hemisphere).

>>11790260
>The rocket?
h-1b. IT people from india. companies like disney lay off their entire american IT work force to bring in cheap IT workers from india. h-1bs are the bane of the IT industry.

>>11790250
Even if Lunar SS has a manual mode I think they will find it easy to maintain distance between LSS and SS. LSS is the super special NASA version that flies with an order of magnitude less crew than Mars missions and two orders of magnitude less than E2E, carrying only highly trained astronauts. It's the certified autism version.

>>11789148
>Still, this isn’t anything compared to what a human could do desu. I dream of being able to do field work on other planets if given the chance.
Based. You'll get your chance to use a shovel on Mars, anon. I promise.
We're all gonna make it.

>>11790287
I bet Europa looks awesome from the ground

>>11789173
HOP WHEN

>>11790295
>Yup, that's ice

>>11790302

>>11789207
"You'll get your 50,000 kg Mars sample return payload when you secure our damn funding!"

>>11789173
JELLY BABIES

>>11790085
Tracks are maintenance heavy and eat a lot of power, wheels aren't and pass much more power down to the actual surface. Curiousities wheels failed because they were gambling to shave weight off the movy bits on the heaviest rover ever. What tracks excell on, is mud, something you don't have on the other planets. Also if one track cloggs up or jams, your rover is fucked, if it looses 2 of 6 wheels, you're still somewhat mobile, not even mentioning the extra weight of tracks.

>>11789977
Good point.
It could have the same issues as Generation Kill, being too specific, but the basic principle of rocket science isn't that complicated and more importantly, it's exciting. It shouldn't be too technical anyways. I mean would you watch a show where they expect you to solve for x in every scene to stay on board?
I have to watch Silicone Valley at some point.

>>11790280
hate to tell you but the majority of spacecraft in the future are going to be ugly as fuck

>>11790304
Ice is badass, and it’s got a bunch of weird scar-looking features and brown material

>>11790287
I’m afraid it’s more complicated than that. Cosmetically they might all look the same from our optical photographs, but each SSB in our solar system has drastically different surfaces and conditions. And because the mineralogy of each surface is so unique, we need special suites of instruments depending on where we are going and this in turn requires drastically different hardware. Again, it’s way more complicated than “let’s just build one type of rover and send it to Ganymede, Callisto, Titania, etc.”
t. had to work with hardware concepts from many different rovers and none of them could be directly carried over to Perseverance

>>11789238
How amoral of you. Just shield everything manned that we build in the future and we never need to break those eggs.

>>11790295
earth is the only planet that would look cool from the ground unfortunately

>>11789977
I meant
>>11790091
"Good point.
It could have the same issues as Generation Kill, being too specific, but the basic principle of rocket science isn't that complicated and more importantly, it's exciting. It shouldn't be too technical anyways. I mean would you watch a show where they expect you to solve for x in every scene to stay on board?
I have to watch Silicone Valley at some point."

>>11790280
Take a look at pic related.

It’s basically a bigger version of the DST. It requires twice the power (1 Megawatt vs 500 kilowatts) and can carry more crew (6 versus four) and can even bring Orion along with it instead of having to dock again with the Gateway.

It also has more delta V as it can go straight from LEO to mars and back.

It’s also a lot heavies. DST is about 100 tons fully loaded, while this vehicle is 230 tons.

I actually really like this design. It has enough mass margin that you could give it a rotating centrifuge.

The paper didn’t specify how much fuel it needed to complete a mission departing from the EML2, though, so as it stands it requires over a hundred tons of fuel every mission.

If you wanna read more here’s the link.

>https://www.nasa.gov/sites/default/files/files/NASA-SP-2009-566-ADD2.pdf

>>11790333
I’ve seen Mars pictures and it looks radical and bodacious so I’m gonna have to disagree

That one Venus picture is cool too

>>11790260
H1B visas, they allow foreigners to live in America for up to six years per renewal so long as they're working, and hypothetically they exist to supplement specialty fields with insufficient worker populations already extant in the country. In reality they've caused some pretty significant damage to the US's native worker population because basically any company who can will happily ship in foreigners who work slave-like hours for shit wages because they can just return to their home country when they're done bleeding our economy. Shit wages here can be a kang's ransom in some other country, so they're happy to do it.
In an ideal world Trump will completely eliminate L-1s, TN-1s, H1-Bs and H2-Bs, totaled up they allow foreigners to displace probably several hundred thousand American workers.

>>11790244
>stop production of everything
No they're not. They're going to focus development specifically on Starship. That's not the same. That means they're not going to bother tweaking F9 and FH past block 5, nothing more. They're going to keep on tweaking Crew Dragon as contracted by NASA.

>>11790344
personally i would find this cool, but i think most people would agree that endless desert is a little bland. good thing we're not going there for sightseeing

>>11789982
>nobody has retained the skills to locally grow food
That's completely untrue.

>>11789596
Would a ion engine be enough to keep the ISS in a stable orbit instead of having a Soyuz give it a boost now and then?

>>11790016
Normal SS - leeward side
Moon SS - nose

>>11790345
Don't forget student visas and OP1 visas. Really we just need to shut off all immigration for the next century.

>>11790294
Fingers crossed. If I go I’ll shitpost from Mars
>>11790323
They’re already abysmal. It’s 2020 and we’re about to launch the most bastardized robot to the Moon (VIPER)
>>11790293
Anything made by NASA after Apollo has to be certified with some autistic seal of approval. Jim seems to be transitioning away from that though. I guess it won’t have a manual fly mode
>>11790327
The ice is super colorful because it’s made up of these weird organic molecules called Tholians. It’s the same thing that blankets Titan and creates these weird organic sand dunes with strange properties. My old thesis advisor gave me a lab sample of some we recreated in the lab back in the early 90s. Also his advisor’s advisor was Carl Sagan. He’s sick, I need to check in with him and see how he’s doing :,(

>>11790358
I would give everything i have and will ever own just for the chance to scrub toilets on Mars.

I’m 18 now. Will I be able to go there? My current plan is very very pessimistic, and it entails me saving up $250,000 over the next 25 years in order to buy a suborbital hop on New Shepard.

My ex literally asked me if I loved her and I said no. She asked who I loved then and I just pointed up at the nighttime sky.

>>11790367
Mostly agreed, I do tend to think there should always be a little immigration for healthy low level cultural exchange. Current immigration rates are stupid though and ought to be reduced by at least a full order of magnitude.

>>11790360
That's a lot of mass to push around and I don't think you could properly station keep the ISS with long period low thrust burns. Could be wrong. It's much harder than doing it with sats around the moon anyway

>>11790370
Don’t spend a cent on BO anon that shit is dumb
> My ex literally asked me if I loved her and I said no. She asked who I loved then and I just pointed up at the nighttime sky.
New pasta alert
Can I ask what you’re interested in? Are you in college/about to go to college. Get a degree that will make yourself useful. Really anything but gender studies should be enough. Look into the field of STEM

>>11790368
>these weird organic molecules called Tholians
uh oh

>>11790345
You need to be a US citizen to work on anything related to rockets or space

>>11790206
No, not enough TWR

>>11790370
>My ex literally asked me if I loved her and I said no. She asked who I loved then and I just pointed up at the nighttime sky.
Wow man so deep

>>11790370
I cringed.
Better start training now.

>>11790382
I wish ITAR applied to full-company-plus-contractors instead of the narrow definition it has now. Amazon and Boing would have to fire so many pajeets.

>>11790370
>She asked who I loved then and I just pointed up at the nighttime sky.
Discard thots acquire the stars

>>11790229
i hate how climate and earth observations is being brought into this conflict against manned space exploration

that shit is important too and could lead to things like climate (and maybe even weather) control using space mirrors to regulate heating of the world's oceans
that would shut up all those climate change whiners (whatever side of the argument they are on)
but it would need more research and observation to figure how control can be achieved

>>11790358
They can stay home then

>>11790381
My bad, they're called Tholins. I don’t want to fuck with Tholians. Hermaphroditic non-humanoids would fuck me harder than a mirror-universe dominatrix T’Pol

>>11790390
But Blue Origin is a separate company from Amazon?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8nr68HypgvY
SN7 test tank being rolled out.

>>11790397
Mirror T'Pol with long hair was so hot.

>>11790398
AWS has multiple ITAR-controlled regions called GovCloud.

>>11790379
I’m going into college this August. I’m doing Pre-Med because I want to be a doctor. Moreso it’s so I can acquire funding for my space travel ambitions.

>>11790386
Yeah she didn’t like it though so yeah

>>11790391
Yes

>>11790393
Yeah especially annoying since we can probably do most of our climate science with cubesats these days but someone like Biden would require a hubble-sized telescope just to virtue signal to the liberals and Greta

>>11790401
I'm kinda amazed that they're driving that thing around so quicky. I would've expected it to be going slower than walking speed.

>>11790393
It's such a ridiculous "competition" for resources too, why not send up manned weather monitoring stations? That way you can get more people living and working in space, and climate scientists can get much more accurate large scale data, since sensors in space are in a much more stable and isolated environment. Build a habitable space station module which can attach a wide variety of tools.

>>11790402
>Mirror T'Pol with long hair was so hot.
TFW no qt Vulcan space gf

>>11790406

sn7 tank on the move

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8nr68HypgvY

>>11790370
>just for the chance to scrub toilets on Mars

Raises an interesting question, what kind of society it would become in your lifetime and if growth in population and with that genuine poverty enabling shit pay for labor on Mars (in a poll of people who could have all bought a house back on Earth) keeps up with technology deleting helljobs. If the rockets are really coming back empty, it wouldn't take long to have a version 2 that can also come back and reenter loaded with minerals which are readily available on Mars and rare on Earth. Then there's your ultra rich mining colony and I don't see them sending pickaxes for that either.
So my guess is, the big thing they'll need there is system operators and high level maintainers.

>>11789173
"I don't understand this reusable meme..."

>>11789298
Develop a knowledge base in terms of working with regolith on the Moon (how well does it pack together, what are the optimal methods of operating digging equipment, etc).
Build some compacted-regolith structures (a level, flat, and possibly surfaced landing pad near the base and surrounded by a berm to catch fast-blown particles would be great, the same pad build on the other side of a hill connected via a simple road even better).
Develop resource extraction, starting simple and small (ie baking carbon and sulfur and water out of regolith from various locations).
The goal of any colony in space is to develop the technologies to enable self sufficiency of course, but that requires a lot of little steps in order to build up an industrial base. It seems best to start off with low tech high utility things like figuring out how to effectively build roads.

>>11790411
Are they building a new hopper?

>>11789335
>imagine the smell

When speaking of air launch to orbit systems, would a large BWB aircraft be a better mothership than the current Stratolaunch setup? The launch vehicle would be mounted above, rather than below the carrier aircraft. The wingspan could be potentially much shorter and the vehicle can carry far more fuel.

Y/N?

>>11790423
I think is the initial prototype fuel tank for the booster. I might be mistaken. All I know is this is a new type of steel. 304L.

>>11790411
Oh shit, I didn't know they were making another bopper, haven't been paying too close attention since SN4 was kill.
So SN7 will only be a test tank like SN2 was?

>>11789608
>The engines don't move
The engines do move though, it's called gimbal range

>>11790415
Even low level maintenance shit will favor humans until somebody develops a robot arm as simultaneously strong and dexterous as the human one, and an AI to drive it with spatial awareness and reaction time the same or better than a human counterpart, all of which would then have to be optimized till it's cheaper than a human to employ.
We've seen that it can take robots tens of minutes or even hours to perform a simple task like walking over some rubble and then turning a valve, while a human could perform that same task in about thirty seconds.

Bros I’m gonna... I’m gonna...
HOOOOOOOOOOOOP

>>11790430
think they are gonna do pressure tests to check how the new steel handles.

>>11790438
>Bros I’m gonna... I’m gonna...
>HOOOOOOOOOOOOP

>>11790437
robotics are coming along pretty fast. we've got robots 10x better than what we had 15 years ago

>>11790430
This is for Super Heavy.

>>11790445
Granted. Personally though, if I were in a position to lead up a colony project, even if I could replace people with robots I'd probably avoid it. Part of the whole reason to have a colony at all is to establish a significant population of people, I'd reserve high quality robots for things ONLY a robot could accomplish.

>>11790024
>whatthefuckisthispieceofshit.webm

>>11789608
The RS-25's were sticking out at a ridiculous gimbal angle when attached to the tank and the boosters so the angle of thrust was fairly centered. Additionally, the rather dramatic roll maneuver was done with vernier thrusters in the front and RCS jets in the aft.

The more you know.

>>11790451
It’s not that bad all things considered. Not only is it cheap to launch, it provides a ton of livable and workable space, and protection against high energy particles. It looks like shit here I guess but that’s because it’s a NASA computer model. It if we’re in space it would look a lot cooler.

>>11790206
If you're aiming for max payload to orbit, you need all 6 engines. If you're aiming to send a small payload on a fast trajectory though, you can reduce the propellant load on Starship enough that it barely makes orbit (thus allowing fewer engines without gravity losses killing you) and just refill it in LEO with some Tankers. Refueled, reduced engine count expendable Starship gets more payload to the outer solar system than any other option.

>>11790450
There's no reason to reserve robots for things like that. Once there is communications infrastructure established, there could be entire bases that are robotically operated for resource extraction or construction before humans arrive. This tech would open up so many possibilities for colonization

Reminder that orbital HTOL spaceplanes are feasible but nobody has the guts to dumb billions into the R&D

>>11790451
https://youtu.be/hObbL4DCesI

>>11790280
based as fuck

>>11789277
>>11789304
I was watching some Star Citizen vids yesterday and was blown away by the gap between it and ED. I mean I know SC isn't/never will be finished but nonetheless, ED need to get their shit together. SC at least looks like it has the potential to be absolutely amazing. ED looks crumby in contrast.

I gave up on ED recently after grinding my way to a Federal Corvette and getting bored at the lack of genuinely interesting things to do.

>>11788918
just move to coober pedy then

>>11790478
Erectile dysfunction?

>>11790470
Is that even feasible with one ion engine? That thing isn’t going Warp 1 anytime soon, much less Warp 0.000000001 lmao. It does look cool though. At least it’s modular so you can stick different propulsive units on the back depending on the mission. I’d live in it

>>11790322
>Curiousities wheels failed because they were gambling to shave weight off the movy bits on the heaviest rover ever.
What I don't understand is why they went with aluminum when titanium is both a realistic option for that application and would probably save mass while also having effectively infinite lifetime, due to titanium's fatigue limit.

>>11790328
>each SSB in our solar system has drastically different surfaces and conditions
Rhea, Tethys, and Dione are literally identical except for surface gravity.

>>11790478
Scam Shittizen is never getting finished.

>>11790485
Probably due to cost. Curiosity wasn't a senator's pet project so it had a budget it had to meet.

SRB segments anyone?

>>11789181
Thats super interesting. Yeah i have a feeling they are going to train a lot of people for it, make sure you start networking now, you're already in the agency which helps a lot.

>>11790428
What
>>11790437
said, that and every thing you will see or touch there will
>A: have been shipped in a rocket for a lot of cash per kilo,
or
>B: come form very early industry built out of A parts.
So chances are that until they have enough industrial strength to have a market for shit products, they will be swimming in top of the line technology.

Coming back to my pickaxe, they won't send up cows to pull plows, but rather latest gen autonomous tractors because they are more efficient and save labor for the profitable part of your industry, my guesstimation is mining and I mean administrative stuff because there will also be top of the line equipment. Not saying there won't be technicians who repair the self cleaning toilets, but my point is that labor scarcity will eliminate all helljobs eventually and much faster on mars than here.

>>11790461
Some of the engines are purely for redundancy so I don't think it needs all 6

>>11790499
>What
Made from a new type of steel, 304L. Higher chrome content, lower carbon content.

>>11789205
God that sucks

>>11790501
>having extra engines for spare
Something like this would never fly with oldspace. They would probably demand that the main engines should be made from some expensive rare material to make it more reliable, only to drag down the project and blow out the budget.

I can't wait for the "keep it simple, stupid" era of spacecraft design.

>>11790489
Yeah at that point it’s just differences in gravity and structural geologic features. You could get a modular lander an all three, but other than looking for water what would be the point. Desolate hunks of rock. There are a lot more interesting places to study which are all wildly different. By the time we have the free time to explore these moon we’ll already have starship and we could drop some cubesat-rovers on them I guess, that would be neat.

>>11790343
>It also has more delta V as it can go straight from LEO to mars and back.
Don't forget that it would take multiple years to actually use that delta V budget, anon. SEP isn't really good for manned spacecraft unless you're going so far away that the electric propulsion system actually has time to accelerate to a great enough top speed compared to a chemical vehicle's coasting velocity that the transfer time difference is small, or if the delta V required before you have any chance of refilling propellant is too great for chemical to be an option.

Electric propulsion would be a decent choice for capturing into Jupiter or Saturn's sphere of influence, if you departed from Earth or Mars using chemical propulsion to reduce the transfer time. Using both chemical propulsion and electric propulsion on the same vehicle can give your vehicle the delta V necessary to maneuver to one of the planet's moons and land there, thus allowing you to set up ISRU and eventually give yourself unlimited delta V in-system (provably not after just a single mission of course).

>>11790521
NO ALL OF THEM ARE PRECIOUS UNIQUE AND INTERESTING

>>11790510
look it was one time and she was practically asking for it.

>>11790360
In principal yeah, but you'd need an ion engine array larger than anything that has even been build by several orders of magnitude, which would require a significant power supply upgrade, and they'd need to be always-on in order to counteract the drag forces. If you were gonna use SEP on the ISS to station-keep, you'd probably want to boost the ISS's altitude by a few hundred km at least.

>>11790524
You’re right you’re right. I hope i’m not offending anyone here but why the fuck would you want to become an art or english major or something, when we are literally at the doorsteps of a new dawn of exploration. There are so many cool solar system bodies to be explored. I hope starship brings us into a new age

>>11789205
this is the most based move NASA has ever pulled actually

>>11790531
To inspire people to do great things like explore the universe.

>>11790505
It's actually got an extremely low carbon content, so low that it basically generates zero carbides when welded, allowing you to slap steel straight through the welding process and straight into action, and can eliminate the need for annealing in almost all welds. It's also very corrosion resisting, including during and immediately after welding, allowing it to be worked in even the shittiest environment.
https://www.aksteel.com/sites/default/files/2018-01/304304L201706_1.pdf

>>11790370
>My current plan is very very pessimistic, and it entails me saving up $250,000 over the next 25 years in order to buy a suborbital hop on New Shepard.
Dude, in 10 years you'll be able to buy a $2000 ticket to ride Starship 250 km up and 20,000 km across on a point-to-point transport hop, don't worry about it.

>>11790540
I'm only certified for 316 and it's been over 20 years since I picked up a TIG tong.

>>11790423
The answer to this question has not been 'no' since 8 months ago, anon.

>>11790427
Double fuselage airplanes are a nightmare due to torsion loads, so a single wide-body fuselage aircraft would probably be better, yeah.

That doesn't change the fact that air launch is a total meme due to the advent of propulsively landing boost stages, of course.

>>11790545
Shit man, that's more than me, my understanding of welding is purely academic.

>>11790551
>That doesn't change the fact that air launch is a total meme due to the advent of propulsively landing boost stages, of course.
That assumes anyone besides SpaceX is able to make propulsive landing work. So far I haven't seen it.

>>11790552
I just looked it up, it's the same as 316L regarding carbon content, but it's got really high chrome content. 316(L) has a really high molybdenum content, which makes it retardedly resistant to corrosion, which is why it was used for what I worked with. Namely plumbing for the north sea oil operations.
I'm not a metallurgist at all though, there's probably a reason they're testing this, but I don't know why.

>>11790494
Titanium is only ~$20/kg, anon. Material cost is literally a non-issue for space probes. Even the finicky welding issues of titanium wouldn't be a real problem, because those rover wheels are small enough that you can fabricate them inside a glovebox containing pure argon atmosphere.

>>11790499
>you will never wrestle an EVA suit onto Bessie, hitch her up to the wagon, and haul a cart full of iron rich meteorites back to the colony blacksmith
Don't do this to me, man

>>11790564
It's not the raw material that costs much when it comes to titanium, it's turning it into something useful that makes it costly. A pipe flange cost a fuckton because it's hard to make it and keep it pure.

>>11790558
I’m pretty sure New Shepard made it passed the Karman line and made a propulsive landing, but that’s only going straight up and coming back down and also Blue Origin is gay and does nothing of substantial value

>>11790501
Starship literally cannot achieve orbit with full tanks and a full payload unless it has all of those engines, anon. You're thinking of redundancy for landing. Starship stages low and slow enough that it's doing most of the work to get to orbit, and it must accelerate fast enough that it doesn't end up passing apoapsis and falling back down before achieving orbital velocity.

>>11790566
By the time you've got enough resources to keep Bessie fed and watered those iron-rich meteorites in walking distance will be long since used up.

>>11790559
It might simply be cost, the 304 and 304L types are the most common class of all stainless steels, and thus I'd assume they ought to be the cheapest of all stainless steels as well. If they can still stand up to the 8-10 bar pressure range in spite of being a bit less strong, it would be better to use them as it will reduce material costs for Starship mass manufacture. 304/L is also used very often in specifically automotive moldings, so perhaps Elon is thinking that he might be able to directly apply existing car manufacturing equipment to the Starship manufacture process which ought to greatly reduce manufacturing costs, since the equipment itself will represent a massive up front investment if it has to be created from scratch.

>>11790570
I'm still amazed that Blue Origin is taking so long to put people in New Shepard.

>>11790531
>why the fuck would you want to become an art or english major or something
Some people are just masturbatory about their own species/culture like that. In a space colony those people get dessicated and ground up to feed the composters.

>>11790580
Dangerously based

>>11790576
Yeah, but there's probably a metallurgic reason they're testing this one for this tank over the one that just blew up too. Cold rolled stainless steel is dirt cheap unless you're forking out for something really fucking exotic and they're not. Everything they've used so far is straight off the shelf bog standard shit.

>>11790558
It's a technology locked behind a paywall which involves developing the landing software and being willing to waste a few attempts before you get your algorithms optimized. Anyone can do it given a few years and a few attempts, but they can't if they're afraid to fail in the process.

>>11790411
>>11790428

>>11789278
>not considering the superior lunacrete for moon colonization.
Thats literally what the proont meme is

elon pls

>>11790603
You know exactly what the lunarcrete will be made with and it ain't sulphur.

>>11790580
Humans are the best thing that exists in the entire universe barring hypothetical aliens

>>11790618
By that logic, Donald Trump is the most powerful being that we can prove exists.

>>11789313
Wtf happened to that comment? Are you kidding me mods?

>>11790625
Yes!
Humans are hot shit. Don’t see any orangutan bootprints on Luna

>>11790628
Maybe he deleted it himself?

>>11789313
>build a huge fucking outpost on the surface".
If they have the ability that is qhat they should do

>>11790632
We've had the ability to do quite a lot of things for decades. We don't have the political will to do it.

>>11790625
Yes.

>>11790167
She is very competent it was a good choice
>>11790216
Where is the comment? I fucking hate the SJW cancer but i don't think anyone believes this woman isn't a good pick for the position.

>>11790625
This is true though. So far we have only observed human beings and other Earth life to exist, and not ayyliens. Humans are supreme on Earth for now at least, and among humans America is supreme among countries (seethe, yuropeons and changs). The President of US is the single most powerful American. The President of the United States is Donald J. Trump. Thus, Donald J. Trump is the most powerful being which can easily be objectively proven to exist.

>>11790668
Gone now, but there was one NEED MORE WOMEN IN STEM type reply when I posted it, probably deleted it when they realized who the fuck she really is and how long she's been working on this.

>>11790672
>This is true though. So far we have only observed human beings and other Earth life to exist, and not ayyliens

There are aliens they annoy the Navy

>>11790686
ayy lmao

>>11790701
Why won't they talk to us anon?

>>11790706
We’ll meet our siblings one day

>>11790173
Yeah, look at what happened to the Virgin flight, the pilot pulled a lever to do a manual-only step at the wrong time, and it went out of control and crashed. Fortunately the copilot didn't die from the pilot's mistake, but it set their whole program back by at least 5 years.

>>11790721
One day we will. One day.

>>11790495
Honestly this has me hyped. It seems like NASA is moving faster because spacex is btfo of everything.

>>11790748
I'd contain my hype if I were you, that shit is just getting stored. SRBs has one thing going for them, shelf life and they were not really behind schedule compared to the rest of the program.

>>11790706
Look at the fucking state of the world.
Would you? Honestly?

>>11790631
It got deleted because I reported the anime post for being off topic. Mods are petty

>>11790757
Yes. I’d work to convert the local population to the beliefs of my interstellar nation and then annex the Earth.

>>11790633
The ability to make it happen with insane funding and popularity is a lot different than the ability to put it in an existing and available cheap rocket

>>11790790
The world is full of brain dead people who run on whataboutism. Space exploration will always be unpopular.

>>11790753
Idk man there has been a lot of sls movement lately

>>11790792
Yep, which is hilarious because its basically mirroring the start of air travel.

>>11790802
On shit that wasn't really behind schedule, yes. Core stage is still behind as fuck with main contractor being Boing. The test fire that was supposed to be a full 8 minute burn is nowhere to be seen. It's going nowhere fast.

>>11790485
>>11790494
It's not just Aluminium, it was extremely densely forged aluminium. Titanium... can cause sparks? And Nasa is afraid of sp... ok this is bullshit I have no idea and whatever the material was, they would have had the same problem with Titanium if they did the same weight shaving.
Carbon and Magnesium may also have been contestants.
I just wanted to say it's not just Aluminium. Still tracks aren't the way, but speaking of worm drives... could I interest you in a pre dreadnought war on mars? Avenge Thunderchile?

>>11790813
Oldspace is so fucked

>>11790843
That's the worst part, they're not. Because as far as the senate is concerned, it's working as intended. It's brought X jobs to their constituencies and is continuing to do so.

>>11790846
The senate is going to get shit on when the public finds out how starship is already finished, better than SLS and cost 20 times less. Trust me, the American public will go nuts when they hear an 18-20 billion pricetag on something that spacex did in a few years. If NASA doesn't get their act together they are going to see some severe political problems.

>>11790857
They can just deny starship from flying for 20 fucking years if they so fucking please to remedy that shit. I wouldn't put it past them either.
Politicians are cunts only focused on one thing, themselves and getting theirs.

>>11790648
Wait a second. How did the camera film survive the radiation?

>>11790862
>They can just deny starship from flying for 20 fucking years
How? The US isn't some communist dictatorship. They legally can't just demand a company to stop working on whatever they're doing without reason.

>>11790870
Oh they can work on it, but nothing fucking launches without their say so, a rocket is considered an intercontinental missile in case you didn't know and nothing gets launched without the government giving the go ahead.

>>11790874
Congress is also not the FAA.

>>11790880
Spare me, the FAA does what the government tells them to do and if they get told to ground someone to justify burning mad stacks of cash on their orange turd, they fucking will.
Don't underestimate politicians hanging onto their positions.

>>11790884
>"the government"
It's not a monolith. If Congress tries passing a law restricting Starship launches it's getting fucking vetoed.

>>11790886
It's not about passing laws. If you think that, you truly do not understand how politics work. Everything is done under the table and in backroom deals. You play ball or you don't have a fucking career in politics and go home after you served your first and only term. That's just how that game works.

>>11790889
>LOL DUDE IT'S OVER JUST GIVE UP
>JUST IGNORE THE PRESIDENT AND VP CONSISTENTLY WORKING TO MAKE THINGS EASIER FOR COMMERCIAL SPACE
>>>/chaz/
Fuck off blackpill stoner shit.

>>11790889
You're forgetting that the US is not like China. There are checks in power in the US government that stops it from doing whatever it wants to someone's rights without a valid reason to do so. At most, the FAA would come up with some silly excuse that wont hold up when SpaceX takes the issue to court.

>>11790874
I'm siting with anon here, sure the Government could rig some gay shit, but then nothing stops Elon from just going literary every else, Europe, the Chinese, MASA... Now that being said, I don't think there's even enough public interest that anybody will shit in a air circulation unit because the Government overpaying for projects which unfold at the speed of... government isn't news to anyone.

Hell he could even go to Australia given that he now has a space and a tunneling company he just has to switch the names between them.

>>11790898
>but then nothing stops Elon from just going literary every else
ITAR

>>11790900
>ITAR
what's that?

>>11790904
ok what's he doing exactly to not be allowed to flee country?

>>11790895
You have a very strange way of interpreting posts explaining how corruption in the system works.

>>11790896
And who the fuck do you think are doing those "checks"? It's the same fucking people involved in the same games. Take lobbying man. It's interest groups laying down the political course countries take, not politicians. Where the fuck are the "checks" on that shit?

>>11790898
>>11790904
>Nothing is stopping him
Yeah, except for ITAR. - International Traffic in Arms Regulations.
Are you fucking children?

Oh sweet, NASA made Bose-Einstein Condensates on the ISS.

https://phys.org/news/2020-06-quantum-state-space.html

>>11790904
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/International_Traffic_in_Arms_Regulations

tl;dr Elon trying to bring rocket tech to other countries would get him thrown in federal prison

>>11790911
>hurr durr durr everything is corrupt nothing works right
If you really believed that you'd be taking up arms.

>>11790911
Fuck off communist.

>>11790911
>Are you fucking children?
I'm from not the US and it's kinda decadent to expect to expect the world to know every one of your colonial little laws/everybody in the world to be a US citizen, mate.

>>11790918
>If you really believed that you'd be taking up arms.
No, because I'm not fucking 18 years old anymore. I'm old and jaded and don't really give a fuck anymore.

>>11790920
Get fucked. I don't fucking support that shit.

>>11790921
Neither am I. You are on the internet, all the information in the world is at your fingertips.

>>11790918
>Elon trying to bring rocket tech to other countries would get him thrown in federal prison
Thanks, that's what I was asking. Discard my point.

>>11790862
>They can just deny starship from flying for 20 fucking years
No way in hell, they wouldn't have the public support. They can not put NASA astronauts on starship for 20 years but spacex will just send their own people.

>>11790911
>And who the fuck do you think are doing those "checks"?
A branch of the government that's separate from Congress and who are under no obligation to follow what Congress nor the President says. Again, the US isn't China.

There are also elements within the US government who want SpaceX to succeed because that would mean US dominance over SpaceX.

>>11790925
>There are also elements within the US government who want SpaceX to succeed because that would mean US dominance over SPACE.
Correction.

>>11790922
hey let's not bitch at each others, I looked it up,
but I just wanted to know what it means without reading the entire constitution and you bringing it up, chances were good that you could elaborate like >>11790918 did.

>>11790924
>Oh no! That rust bucket rocket is dangerous! Look at this exploding thing! Besides he's making it in a tent!
What fucking public support?

>>11790925
Grow the fuck up man, it's the same people from the same two fucking parties. The Democrat party will find democrats innocent and Republican party will find republicans innocent and that dance will go on and on no matter how many times they get caught with their dicks in the cookie jar. It's all bullshit.

Oh and in case you autists took it literally, "20 fucking years" was indeed hyperbole.

>>11790933
>LOL JUST GIVE UP
>GROW UP MAN
>IT DOESN'T MATTER
>t. burned out GenX loser who never did shit in his life
I hate you niggers more than the Boomers. Go die.

>>11790941
Go do shit, chase your dream, but grow up when it comes to politicians. They are not your fucking friends and they are not your fucking replacement daddy.
Ok? Now go play some fucking Fortnite you little shit.

>>11790933
>What fucking public support?
SpaceX fans who are of voting age, Trump and his supporters, elements within NASA, the USAF, pro-company rights people, and so much more.

>Grow the fuck up man
No. YOU grow up. You're following the exact kind of doomer view middle schoolers who just learned what political corruption is subscribe to. How about you actually look up the political situation SpaceX tied up in rather than your childish simplistic view of things.

>>11790411
Speaking of the civil war trail, this is apparently the site of the last battle of the american civil war. The confederate forces won (they were actually supplied by french troops on the other side of the border), but it didn't change much.

>>11790884
Spare you? Fucking idiot. Tell me what agencies besides the NTSB have any real influence over the FAA? Commercial spaceflight literally would give the FAA more jobs.