Some LC-36 updates. Now that we’ve had access to the pad and integration facility we can share a bit of good news. The propellant farm, oxygen, liquid hydrogen and LNG tanks are all in good shape. This is good luck because these are very long lead items. The water tower is also good. The big support tower is damaged, but it can be repaired in place rather than torn down and replaced. The booster “Never Tell Me The Odds” and the three GS-2s that were onsite in the integration facility also look good.
I’ve seen some speculation that we might move directly to the 9x4 configuration, but we won’t do that. Rate manufacturing of 7x2 is going well, and we’re going to continue that at pace as planned and store the stages for use. In addition, we had already been working for some time on eliminating our transporter-erector in favor of an alternative vertical conop, and we’ll now go directly to that; so we don’t need a new transporter-erector.
We will fly again before the end of this year. Gradatim Ferociter.
@TheMonkeyJungle Falcon 9 is one of the most reliable rockets ever flown with over 650 missions to space and all 78 crew members returned safely from space. Including 2 who were stranded on the ISS due to Boeing’s capsule issues. Just to give context.
@C_S_Skeptic Wait sorry you’re saying only companies that don’t make money go IPO? So every company actively traded on the stock market? Or am I missing your point?
@badvibecoder@Playerinthgame No need to be dismissive with your language. Let’s talk about it.
I’d be curious to know how many companies over the last 10 years or so would have been auto included per this new rule. Let me try and find this out.
@extramicrowave@AthletesInSpace At $2T valuation, SpaceX will make up ~1% of the S&P500 fund. So not exactly “drained” even if this stock completely collapsed.
@CR15PYbacon@Spaceguy5@PebMet1 For sure. It was a mix of both—Northrop and NASA designed and primarily assembled by NG.
Kinda gotten away from the main point, that I think industry partners have always been part of NASA’s mission implementation. LEM for Apollo by Grumman etc.
@Spaceguy5@PebMet1 What is being discussed here? I believed this to be discussing that there are differences between how NASA runs its own vs contractors?
Did NASA drawing up and awarding the contracts for CCP, HLS, CLPS, that list out contractual requirements not count as “having a huge say”?
@Spaceguy5@PebMet1 Why are those top ones part of this? Are they not used by NASA to accomplish their missions?
Dragon has done its job.
Agree that the execution of the latter missions has been far more sporadic. How would you like to have seen those handled differently?
@Spaceguy5@PebMet1 What parts do you think are going horribly wrong?
JWST worked well.
Dragon 1 + Dragon 2 worked well.
Falcon 9 + Heavy worked well.
Electron works well.
ULA’s rockets have been excellent at their mission deliveries.
I’m curious if you think these all should’ve been NASA?
@Spaceguy5@PebMet1 And there’s a reason NASA has outsourced so much of its mission to companies. All space endeavors have risk. You have to balance time / preemptive engineering work with the situations that allow you to find and attack the unknown unknowns.
@thunderf00t@CentristRadial What do you think the next year will look like for this calculation on starship? Do you anticipate any payload will be placed in orbit?
@C_S_Skeptic@firejuggler1aw@BladeoftheS Can I get your prediction for what starship has done in the next year? I want an actual prediction so we can compare what reality is in a year. Just to get an idea of how in touch you are with the aerospace world & predicting things. Since so much of your content is focused on it