SpaceChampion

5 hours ago, Ser Scot A Ellison said:

Scrubed.  Frozen valve.  Dang it.

Yep. It's a full Wet Dress Rehearsal now.

Good animation of the flight path to expect when they finally launch:

View of the interstage area between the Starship and the Super Heavy booster.

Updated time is 1300 UTC / 8:00 Central for the beginning of Starship's orbital launch window.

I have hopes for the launch but there is a high chance of a scrub, despite no known issues being worked on and the weather looking great, because it always takes a while for the ground team to learn how to fly a new rocket.
 

The NASASpaceFlight forum stream:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eN57x2a_waw

SpaceX stream:

Everyday Astronaut's stream:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6Vb9hFqF6i0&pp=ygUSZXZlcnlkYXkgYXN0cm9uYXV0

Deadpool prodcer Dan Crevello will be showrunner for Paramount+'s Dungeons and Dragons streaming series.

https://variety.com/2023/tv/news/dungeons-and-dragons-series-paramount-plus-drew-crevello-showrunner-1235583780/

Interestingly, Hasbro apparently wants to sell off eOne, which is it's tv/movie arm that is co-producing it with Paramount Pictures.

9 hours ago, RumHam said:

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That's really straining though. Like if that happened, I think many would argue the show jumped the shark by introducing such a retcon. 

What I could see, is one or two people who worship "it" taking him in. Associates of the dead guy in the cabin. But if you're gonna pull a "it turns out we're not alone out here" you do it as the cliffhanger. They hung it on "Javi's alive!" instead. 

 

What if it's inherently a bad show?  Then it's not straining at all, it's just being itself.  Shark jumping isn't out of place in a circus.

The acting and actresses are great, I don't think the same about the story and have low expectations for all of it.

Not spoiler protecting that, i said what i said.

I can't tell one Aethel-arse from another, so I needed this recap:

Starship (the 2nd stage) currently only has 3 Raptors engines for Monday's Integrated Flight Test.  In the future it'll have 6 engines, and likely will be stretched another 10 meters, making it only 9 meters shorter than the 69 meter Super Heavy booster.

Since they are maximizing reuse, there would be far more Starships than the boosters.  The launch tower (Stage Zero) is intended to catch each booster on the "chopsticks", and is capable of lowering it into place immediately onto the launch mount for reloading propellants and stacking the next Starship on top of it, a process that should take just hours, and allowing multiple launches from the same site per day.  This is needed for the Tanker version of Starship, which would need to launch 5 Tankers for every one Crew/Cargo Starship to be sent to Moon or Mars. 

Extended operations in low Earth orbit vicinity would either not be reloaded with propellants or not need more that one Tanker.  The likely plan is to construct a large Fuel Depot in orbit to store propellants long term for future use.  This is the part of the SpaceX's Artemis contract which is publicly vague, at least until they prove the concept of in orbit refuelling and long term propellant storage.  I'm sure they've given NASA a detailed, aspirational plan for the depot.

What to expect for launch operations and flight profile:

They're not planning on recovering the rocket, so Starship is intended to splash down near Hawaii and sink.  These versions of Starship and Superheavy are obsolete, so they're not losing components they would have reused anyway, aside from flight controllers electronics.

They currently produce a new Raptor at a rate of one per day.  So theoretically they could do a new flight with new engines every 6 weeks or so.  Permission to fly Super Heavy though appear to be limited to 5 times a years during this test phase, so every 10 weeks is possible if they stretch the testing out to the end of the year.  After that Starship/SH would probably be reliable enough to launch from KSC.

I'd guess their goal for the 2nd test flight is to land the Super Heavy booster on the launch tower chopsticks, since recovering the booster with its 33 engines is more materially important than perfecting recovery of Starship.  They'll land Starship a few times on water before they attempt a landing on legs on the recovery barge.

I would expect Starlink satellites to be launching to orbit this year on Starship, ASAP.  It's just an easier target to reach than the HLS version needed for Artemis, but also helps gets to HLS by perfecting flight and in-orbit operations.

After that would be an in-orbit fuel transfer test, needed for Artemis.  Possibly developing the depot technology at the same time or after it.

They want to fly hundreds of times before carrying humans, so that means hauling lots and lots of satellites, propellants and water to orbit.  If they only launch Starship once a week beginning next year then it could take 2 years to get to that stage.  But I think they'll fly more often than that.

With luck, 2025 will see the first human missions.  The first of those will likely be Polaris 3, Jason Isaacman's private mission, and then two Moon flybys, one being the dearMoon mission paid for by the Japanese businessman Yusaku Maezawa, and the other paid for by Dennis Tito (who has flown to space 3 times already).  He is currently 82, so would be breaking John Glenn's (77) record for oldest human to get to orbit, but not William Shatner's (90) record for oldest human to get to space, though that was only a suborbital flight with Blue Origin.

The 4th human flight for Starship would be Artemis 3 mission to transfer NASA's astronauts from the Lunar Gateway to the surface of the Moon near the south pole.   But in between the HLS demonstration mission would demonstrate a lunar landing of Starship HLS without a human crew on board.

On the books for the 5th flight is a second human landing on the Moon for the Artemis program, some time in 2027.  The date really depends on when the SLS rocket is ready....   

I would guess some demo missions to Mars might be possible in 2025, dropping off some construction materials for a future human mission to build a proper landing pad or even a landing/launch tower.

But certainly the 2027 launch window is on the company's collective mind, for transferring cargo.  A first human landing could be in the next launch window in 2029.

Export this nonsense to the U.S. where it belongs, and let it stay there!

Serious question though, has some airhead corporate nepo baby been promoted to the Pizza Pizza board of directors and decided they needed to make their mark?

Oh then there's this:

The best take I've heard about the whole Mandalorian series is Din is the itinerant knight Lancelot, with Bo Katan as King Arthur.  Lancelot's role is like Captain America, maintaining his values and honor while resisting the world that wants him to change, or like Mad Max, wandering from situation to situation helping initiate change in each place.

Starship is Go!  FAA has issued the launch license.

The stream is schedule for Monday, April 17th, with a launch window beginning 12:00 UTC / 7am CT (local) / 8am eastern.

Quote

SpaceX is calling this Starship launch an "integrated flight test." It is the first time that the massive Super Heavy rocket will have taken off and the first time both vehicles will fly together. Under the nominal flight plan, the Super Heavy rocket will boost Starship toward space and, after separation, attempt to make a controlled splash down into the Gulf of Mexico about 30 to 35 km off the coast of Texas. SpaceX will not attempt to recover the booster on this flight.

In the meantime, the Starship vehicle will attempt to ascend to an altitude of 235 km and become "nearly orbital." Starship's engines will shut down at 9 minutes and 20 seconds into the flight, after which the vehicle will coast for more than an hour before entering Earth's atmosphere over the Pacific Ocean. It will not complete a full orbit and is expected to make a high-velocity splash down about 225 km north of the Hawaiian island of Oahu. On the nominal timeline, this will occur 90 minutes after liftoff.

9 minutes ago, Ser Scot A Ellison said:

Is this a lander for a Galliean Moon?

Orbiter.

https://www.gov.uk/government/news/jupiter-icy-moon-explorer-begins-journey-to-discover-new-worlds

Quote

On arrival in 2031, JUICE will circle Jupiter and fly past moons Ganymede, Europa and Callisto, making observations and taking measurements, studying the Jovian system as an archetype for gas giants elsewhere in the universe.

Finally in December 2034, JUICE will transfer into orbit around Ganymede, becoming the first spacecraft ever to orbit a moon other than Earth’s. While up close and personal with Ganymede, the mission will investigate the giant ocean that scientists believe hides under its icy crust, seeking evidence of habitability.

On 4/12/2023 at 7:31 PM, Mexal said:

Only 4 episodes into Beef but it's amazing. What a show.

what a 9th episode!  That was the craziest escalation i've ever seen.  The finale was back to a more intimate tone though, and it worked.

Made me laugh with

18 hours ago, Mexal said:

Only 4 episodes into Beef but it's amazing. What a show.

Yes, it has some great character work in it.  I've got 2 more to watch i think.

23 hours ago, IheartIheartTesla said:

Picard S3 season finale (last 2 episodes I think) are being aired in IMAX theaters in 10 locations for free, and you can score tickets by registering tomorrow at 1 PM EST. I dont live remotely near those locations, but some of youse lucky mooks may be able to wrangle something.

Seeing it in IMAX sounds like a better idea than how I saw All Good Things on the Skydome jumbotron in Toronto.

IMAX is headquartered nearby, but I don't see it playing in Canada....  grrrr.

Presumably if they're taking 2 years to get a new season of these things they'll alternate.  If they get 3 series going simultaneously I imagine they'll learn more towards shorters season, maybe 6-8 episodes each.

I haven't been keeping track very well of what other nations are doing in their space exploration missions, so I missed Japan has a spacecraft in lunar orbit right now that will land on the Moon soon.

Meanwhile, something blew up real good on a Centaur V.

The Mars helicopter Ingenuity has set some records:

I'd give that 4 months before they change the name again.

A long way to go for China trying to catch up to SpaceX but too few are even trying, so kudoes to these guys.

Size comparison of Saturn 5 to Starship to the Space Shuttle stack.

A couple of highschool girls discovered a new proof for the Pythagorean Theorem.

2 hours ago, Werthead said:

So I think this show could be promising. The real question is that if it's set 40 years after the OG show, so presumably no Clone Club or if they do appear it'll be with different actors, so what's the point of making it an OB show? A direct spin off following say Felix tracking down other clones in other parts of the world (with perhaps rare cameos by Maslany) would be more appealing to OG OB fans.

The point was always using the show to question the nature and ethics of the science.  Having another crack at transhumanism seems worthwhile, especially with all the scrutiny that "longtermism" and "Ethical Altruism" is receiving now.  Advancing the timeline 40 years seems worthwhile to question a lot of things that might be coming, and the consequences of corporate or government control of these things.

There are worthy extensions to the series on audiobook written by a stable of great sci-fi writers covering Clone Club the previous cast, with an adult Kira and Charlotte, new clones, and the big public reveal to the world that the clones existed.  The other clones don't need to be tracked down, they know who they are now.  I don't know if the new series will incorporate that, but I don't see why not.