@INiallAnderson Catching a booster is probably an important step that needs to happen on Flight 14 to meet the flight 15 KSC goal. It seems like it will still be awhile before they get to a 1 booster produced per month goal.
@LightAtNightKJ@KenKirtland17 A return boat. It lowers risk by not having to refuel starship or some other musical starship mission profile in order to get astronauts home.
@EagleAIView@KenKirtland17 They wouldnt actually do a TLI. Just a very brief burn for data. Starship would probably be deorbited in a controlled manner in the ocean.
@HipernovaStar@ScottLikedSLS A Blue Origin low Earth orbit
Rendezvous doesnt really add much value either, but Jared wanted to increase SLS launch cadence so NASA has more opportunities to practice launching SLS or doing spaceflight operations in general.
@INiallAnderson I believe they are grossly oversimplifying things by saying they are attaching a "docking adapter" to a version 3 ship. Thats a good enough explanation for the general public. The rest will nerd out discussing at what point does a prototype become HLS.
@INiallAnderson Since when did SpaceX adopt a waterfall approach to things? They are not going to rollout a completed HLS Starship all of the sudden. What is more likely is that we will see HLS components attached/installed on a V3 body and they will dual test with other things.
@DJSnM People are forgetting why NASA/Jared changed the Artemis III profile. No one was going to be ready for a moon lander except for Orion and SLS booster. Jared didn't want NASA sitting around that long and forget how to launch SLS so they did this simpler profile.
@booster_10@megagoose11@jackywacky_3 At some point every starship flight going forward needs to be in pairs to perform testing and practice docking/refueling. There would be little value in a single flight.
@booster_10@megagoose11@jackywacky_3 If they have a successful raptor relight next flight, they have plenty of time to in the year to wait for two stacks to be completed in order to attempt to do a prop transfer demo. If this next flight fails then yeah I agree.
@bscholl Also, SpaceX have also gone backwards in simplicity on some things. The v3 booster is a lot more complicated than the v2 because they wanted to allow the outer raptor engines to start up without GSE support. The total systems required to catch a booster and ship is "complicated"
@bscholl While I have no doubt SpaceX engineers can simplify things, a main landing gear and raptor has completely different functions. If a landing gear fails, the risk of those passengers dying goes up significantly. If a raptor fails, its buddies take over.
@100MBTC@INiallAnderson@Ringwatchers Im sure that conversation went beyond carbon costs from an environmental standpoint. It was known that at some point they would need a pipeline because trucking it in was a costly logistical nightmare in more ways than one.
@Cbiggs90@INiallAnderson Right, but this wouldn't be LNG, SpaceX would take the natural gas and turn it into LNG themselves and immediately put into storage takes