Yup weird but wasn’t earth’s land mass similarly grouped - Pangaea.
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Not exactly, more pole to pole and scrunched up on one side:
That’s going to affect ocean flows and associated weather systems.
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NASA are officially obsolete. Fucking amazing work from SpaceX at Musk’s direction. He’s Tony Stark and I’m actually in tears watching this. Couldn’t watch it live, fucking inconvenient dying relatives.
Nauseating waste of money
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Yeah, we should have stayed in the caves.
Somewhere in between is fine.
Dinos are dead because they couldn’t deflect asteroids.
Cant think of anything I’m less worried about than an asteroid
Of all the things humanity wastes money on, I don’t believe space exploration comes close to the top of the list. Just a shame such a cringy, detestable man is the current face of it.
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It’s certaiy impressive but also raises questions on my mind.
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To allow recovery the booster needs to carry fuel. How does that impact size etc. during the launch phase?
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Hiw often is the booster reusable? My gut says it will have a finite working life and again how does this translate to efficiency?
Quite honestly given that Musk is more about “look at me” over actual efficiencies i’m wondering how much more economical this is over other recovery systems or even current rocket tech.
If anybody thinks SpaceX would be where it is without Musk, guess again.
To your points @Noo_Noo
- I’ve not done the maths but a few thousand gallons of liquid methane and oxygen is probably a millionth the cost of an SLS core stage.
- It’s designed to be reused DAILY. That’s the plan and a lot will go bang. But my god nobody will ever land an orbital class rocket, can’t be done. If it ever is, it certainly isn’t and never will be possible to land an interplanetary class booster. Ahem.
The figure I saw quoted is that it reduces potential payload by 30%. I suppose the question is how it compared with a parachute recovery system which is what was used on the Space Shuttle boosters but they were effectively recycled rather than re-used.
It’s an interesting one, because the vertical landing and take-off functionality goes back to the 1960s but it was never regarded as worthwhile other than for the lunar landers. I mean the Saturn V was already an outrageous size so you wouldn’t want something that would need to be 30% bigger.
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Do you know what the fastest turnaround is that they have managed so far?
Years ago they hadn’t landed a booster. The Merlin engine wasn’t designed to be re-used daily (used on the Falcon 9 for those who don’t know) The Raptor MK3 is designed to be used daily. Given the utterly astounding launch yesterday, it won’t be long before they’re flying like 747s. There’s a huge number of issues that need fixing for sure. But if you’ve been watching the progress intently (hi) you’ll see the incredible leaps that are being made. Once they’ve fixed the next 1000 problems (having fixed the previous 8 million) then this brute will fly daily. Give it a year.
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its great these advances are being made…im more interested in things like the europa clipper and the JWT…so im asking seriously here…whats the point of what Elons doing? Mars isnt even close to being accessable, there is speculation that the space radiation would do anyone in who went there, so all this money, all this effort, all these funds…whats the actual point?
i know we must continue to push the boundaries…but is there a chance theres a lot of focus on something thats putting the cart before the horse?
dunno…im being genuine here…whats the net benefit in blasting a space vehicle into orbit and landing it on a daily basis?
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Given the complete lack of life on Mars, or our moon, whats the actual point of even thinking about landing on either?
Billions spunked needlessly.
Satellite placement and maintenance I understand, but governments and bellends like Musk sending rockets to land there?
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The people with drive and determination at the dawn of humanity “What’s over that hill?” Those who are quite happy staying put and love the status quo “Dragons and evil spirits, stay here and join me eating these delicious raw carrots we’ve been eating for millennia”
D and D people “Well we’re off to explore, there might be a was of cooking the carrots with dragon fire”
Or something like that.
Getting starship into orbit reliably makes JWS mission, Europa Clipper, Viking, Voyager etc hugely cheaper. A bus to orbit that leaves every 20 minutes has so many uses. Musk will goto Mars. It’s a stepping stone. To where? Exploration is what’s got us where we are today. We all know we’re not going to a new earth or even another solar system in our lifetimes. But we must because there is a tiny chance that we’re the only life in the universe and that makes us precious. Even @PeachesEnRegalia
We’ve done the moon, let’s goto Mars. Ask yourself this, would you rather Musk just pocketed all the money? I’m very happy that he’s spending it on real life thunderbirds and broadcasting it all in 4k. It’s fucking wonderful 
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