The Artemis program was way too late in realizing that they would need a crew lander and EVA suits…

I think the value proposition is more about national pride and security, so they can keep launching things if they have a falling out with other countries. Like when Russia decided to start a war and take Oneweb satellites hostage. Imagine a world where the US elected a crazy nationalist who wanted out of NATO…

Or the mythical Dragon XL?

They want to control the descent and not risk a bunch of huge chunks crashing through people’s houses. Or worse.

The ISS is too low to cause Kessler syndrome.

Part of why the commercial stations won’t be ready is because the ISS won’t commit to a deorbit date, so they can’t predict the market!

2030 should be the absolute latest, or the leaks on the Russian side will take the whole thing down.

Just when I thought I was going to bed… Thanks for the link!

This has some great shots (boosters in the megabay, tons of engines, and the scale in the factory) but the interview questions didn’t really feel worth the time. I’m sure they had to cut some good stuff, but there was a lot of the usual reusability talk and too much of Tim’s “joke” ideas. The nuggets about their manufacturing philosophy, icing, and Raptor 3 upgrades were cool, though. Post-flight part 2 coming soon?

Surely these will be well informed and level headed comments

All those SDA commsat contractors better hope the DoD wants to maintain “dissimilar redundancy”

Yeah, as soon as Blue Origin changed to refueling, they switched from being a safe backup plan to possibly an even less likely plan A. Even if some people there have worked on crewed vehicles before (Orion? Starliner?) the company has no experience that compares to SpaceX with Dragon.

I’m really hoping the 2-3 month cadence speeds up to monthly now that the vehicle is more reliable and controllable (and not needing as many mishap investigations…) and they’re presumably improving pad hardware and procedures.

SpaceX posted this on Twitter. It’s the WB-57 then a buoy cam.

I just wish we had a video of it!

Trying to catch the next one feels pretty spicy. The IFT4 booster was coming in pretty hot in the video SpaceX posted. The next TX tower is starting to come together, though.

That was an incredible success and improvement. Control authority worked. Engine relights worked. Both stages for to their splashdown.

Put Starlinks on the next one!

Update: it worked, and the views were great

The gridfins started getting active and I got some bad flashbacks, but they reigned it in for a really impressive soft landing

We’re still flying half a ship!

Absolutely incredible performance. There are obviously some areas for improvement (booster engine out, flap seals), but the booster soft landing and ship controlled reentry were both huge steps forward.

On to IFT-5! Put some payloads on it!

Destin has too much of a Huntsville bias. Listening to old heads wax poetic about Apollo and how things “should be” or whatever then complaining about Starship is totally missing the point of Artemis and the roots of its issues. SLS and Orion couldn’t be much worse if they tried, and NASA was way too late on contracting HLS and suits. And a rover. And a hab. It isn’t SpaceX’s fault that their pie in the sky idea that was RFQ’ed way too late is too big and complicated for what Artemis 3 needs.