https://encrypted-tbn0.gstatic.com/images?q=tbn:ANd9GcQGMtnP...
* And supposedly with a 20% power increase to boot!
I show someone and then I tell them, that's not the rocket exhaust. That's the exhaust for the engine that runs the fuel pump for the rocket.
Hope we get to see those images. Would be awesome to see a 3rd person view of starship in space.
Congratulations, everyone, at being alive at the best point in human history so far!
And they won't attempt a catch with the first V3 booster because it's not worth the risk. They can build a new booster every couple of months. It takes much longer to build the launch/catch tower, and they don't have any spare towers yet. A catastrophe during a booster/ship catch would set them back a year, so they'll only attempt a catch if they're confident it will succeed.
If Flight 12 blows up in space, they've already got Flight 13 almost assembled. It might delay them a month, maybe. But if a returning booster destroys the launch pad, it would delay them much longer--maybe a year.
With those stakes, it makes sense to not try a booster catch until they're sure it's going to work.
He occasionally mentions the aspirational 100x reduction in launch costs.
AI slop. Yuck, Youtube. Surely Google could have AI moderators catching this crap.
My very first exposure to "AI spam" was trying to watch one of the Starship test launches, the second one if I remember correctly.
That was around the time that Elon bought Twitter, so he removed all publicity video streams from third-party platforms like YouTube and moved them to Twitter's streaming service.
I wanted to watch this on my big TV, so I was hunting through YouTube for the stream. I found the most likely looking one and watched as Elon got up on a stage, started waffling on about how this is the "future of humanity" and then with 40 seconds to go before the launch the (entirely realistic) AI voice was dubbed over and started offering "double your Bitcoin if you transfer to this account", with the obligatory QR code in the corner.
I was actually impressed by the audacity!
The really frustrating thing was that YouTube then promptly blocked all content even vaguely related to the launch! It was impossible to keyword search for anything that said "starship", "spacex", etc.
It was a scary preview of instant corporate censorship.
I'm sure the person (or bot!) at YouTube "meant well", but sheesh... they just erased the online presence of dozens of legitimate space-fan channels like NASA Space Flight. And NASA. And SpaceX's official channel too!
Ironically this meant that the only remaining matches were 100% scams.
My hope is that Flight 12 goes nearly flawlessly (at least gets to soft splashdown) and they can start testing in-space refueling in July/August.
If they can demonstrate in-space refueling by the end of 2026, then they have a shot at a lunar-landing demo in 2027 and a crewed-landing in 2028. But a lot has to go right for that to happen. Here's hoping it does.
No. What is the mechanism through which you suspected this could happen?
2018.. Young brilliant engineer starts working for spaceX, absolutely the most exciting space company, on an awesome new rocket that will finally be a better launch vehicle than Saturn 5 and be able to enable all sorts of cool space stuff. Just a naive young nerd, dont really know anything about Elon, not into social media.
2024.. The Elon stuff in the media is unavoidable and obvious, they guy is a freaking nazi, suporting trump, supporting right wing parties in EU.. The talented engineer either leaves or stops giving a shit and quiet quits.
This process times several 100, in an experimental rocket design project, where any tiny flaw can make the whole thing fail.