Starship News

[MossRoad]

Love the wide open doors to the "parking lot"!
Who needs to keep the warm air inside?

Hey, you better have everything you need to survive in that suit to begin with, right? Just stopping by for some plastic silverware, jerky, two liter of off-brand soda and some St. Patrick's day decorations (that's the net holiday, right?).

 

[lilranch2001]

Hey, you better have everything you need to survive in that suit to begin with, right? Just stopping by for some plastic silverware, jerky, two liter of off-brand soda and some St. Patrick's day decorations (that's the net holiday, right?).

Don’t forget the Tastykakes

 

[MossRoad]

OOooooo!!!

 

[BackRoad]

If one was stationed at a base on the near side of the moon, AI (Claude) indicates the duration from New Earth to Full Earth and back to New Earth would be similar to the 29.4 day duration we see from New Moon to Full Moon and back to New Moon.

For all of you who are laying awake at night wondering about that...

 

[MossRoad]

 

[EddieWalker]

I just watched a video about the moon Titan and all it has to offer. Except for the extreme cold and its distance, it seems like a great place to go after they get establish a base on the moon. They just have to make rockets go a lot faster!!!!!

 

[MossRoad]

Yeah 6-7 years one way. That's a lot of Tang™

 

[ponytug]

I just watched a video about the moon Titan and all it has to offer. Except for the extreme cold and its distance, it seems like a great place to go after they get establish a base on the moon. They just have to make rockets go a lot faster!!!!!

Just.

It would be interesting, that's for sure.

Going faster is "just" some more energy to accelerate, and to decelerate, with a heavier rocket to handle the stress. Doable to a point, I guess. Any ship that could be built on the moon, almost entirely with lunar resources reduces the energy cost of leaving the earth-moon system, but one would still have non-trivial amounts of energy to accelerate quickly (quickly being 1-1.1gs), and then decelerate. Personally, I don't see even the moon base functioning just for "Murphy's Law" sorts of reasons, cracks, leaks, missing duck tape, glue, etc.

Except that Titan has basically the same radiation exposure issues to get there, and then because it sits at the edge of Saturn's magnetosphere, with unclear (at least to my mind) radiation levels once there, as variations in the solar wind seems likely to drive radiation storms on Titan.

It looks to me like another one way trip, and short stay visit thereafter to me, with the added bonus of hydrocarbon rains.

My favorite astronaut candidate;

Deinococcus radiodurans - Wikipedia

en.wikipedia.org

It can reassemble its genome after then DNA is shattered into tiny pieces, and survive the vacuum of space without protection.

All the best,

Peter

 

[MossRoad]

Tardigrades are cuter....

 

[MossRoad]

 

[ponytug]

They are rather adorable, and nearly as radiation resistant as deinococcus radiodurans.

All the best, Peter

 

[BackRoad]

Looks like the progeny of a hippo and a pig...!

 

[Phil Timmons]

still mighta been better to do several smaller rigs that self-assembled in space . . . .

All your eggs in one basket, as it were.

 

[rontaki]

Looks like the progeny of a hippo and a pig...!

That would be my high school picture. . .

 

[riptides]

Starliner report released - Type A failure. Cannot be graded any worse.

 

[ponytug]

NASA chief classifies Starliner flight as "Type A" mishap, says agency made mistakes

The most troubling failure revealed by this investigation is not hardware."

arstechnica.com

Reading the excerpt from the pilot's testimony is pretty stark, and very nearly a loss of life event. "...loss of 6DOF control, four aft thrusters down..." is as bad as it gets in my book...

Kudos to him for getting it docked.

All the best, Peter

 

[otlski]

My company provided equipment to support the mass properties side of Starliner. About 8 months into a 12 month delivery, I was projecting we'd be 2 months late. I notified Boeing and they called for a conference call. I knew I would take some licks but since Boeing was months behind, it thought it would not be that bad. Fast forward - An angry Boeing VP told me that I was holding up the entire U.S. manned spaceflight program.

This was 9 years ago in 2017. Boeing still has not performed while our installed measurement instrument has been flawless.

 

[riptides]

No

My company provided equipment to support the mass properties side of Starliner. About 8 months into a 12 month delivery, I was projecting we'd be 2 months late. I notified Boeing and they called for a conference call. I knew I would take some licks but since Boeing was months behind, it thought it would not be that bad. Fast forward - An angry Boeing VP told me that I was holding up the entire U.S. manned spaceflight program.

This was 9 years ago in 2017. Boeing still has not performed while our installed measurement instrument has been flawless.

Not Boeing related, but at the start of my career I was in SpaceCraft Flight Operations, we needed to switch out a data driver on the ground that was active to the spacecraft. I was told to reformat the secondary driver. Only problem was the secondary was active. Someone told me to proceed over my observation and objection. It was heated for a moment. I proceeded. The SpaceCraft went into safe mode. From then on I was known as "Mr. Formatter".

Amazing that some people get into positions of power and just override process, procedure and others.

 

[sd455dan]

Administrator Isaacman sure took the Bull by the horns. Glad to see some change. Some of the press conferences before he took over came across as whitewashing. The report was honest reminds me of the Earth to the Moon scene about the lunar lander leg.

Leaders like Tom Kelly are what will get us safely back to the moon. Isaacman seems to have the "right stuff".