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I didn’t hear him speak, but it sounds like he was trying to say that there’s an unavoidable baseline 1/50 risk of LOM for lunar missions (if the vehicles and crew are working perfectly) due to MMOD, and that the goal is to beat down the other sources of risk through repeated flying and...

When discussing orbits of a single body, where there’s no possibility of confusion, I agree with you. When discussing one of the non-elliptical orbits that can arise due to the gravitational influence of both bodies in a two-body system, maintaining the distinction is kind of important.

I wonder if they considered bringing back the “iBook” branding. That one, for those who remember it, was definitely associated with entry-level hardware.

SpaceX has built, launched, and operated more communications satellites than anyone else, ever. It wouldn’t be too surprising to see them bid on this.

I wonder if Isaacman has a spare jet he can lend NASA while this one is out of service.

My understanding from the interview was that Vast is planning for as many as four two-week missions over the three-year lifetime of the station, not a mission every two weeks.

Send Jonny Kim.

According to Eric’s book Reentry, the NASA decision-makers were almost unanimous in wanting to award a sole source contract to Boeing, not based on politics, but just because they had so much less confidence in the newer companies. The book claims that it was Phil McAlister who persuaded...

The use of adaptive mesh refinement (AMR) in CFD dates from the mid-1980s, predating SpaceX.

Yes, to be pedantic the asteroid belt is about 500 times further away than the moon, not 1 million. (And in terms of ∆v, it's basically a wash since both are dominated by the 12 km/s needed to reach and leave earth orbit). Still ambitious for a first launch!

I would be a lot more concerned about cumulative micrometeoroid damage to an inflatable, soft-sided habitat on the lunar surface than I would for one on the Martian surface, where the atmosphere should be enough to provide protection from such things.

I don't really see how it would. Any company launching for an external customer will simply pass the FAA licensing fee onto that customer as a (relatively small) line item, so it won't hurt their bottom line. And since the charge is based on payload mass, it also won't affect their ability to...

A space-based data center also has to contend with a higher radiation environment than one on earth, especially if it's orbiting high enough to get 24-hour solar power (which also introduces latency issues). It will need some combination of bulky shielding, rad-hardened processors (which will...

Given that broken rockets can endanger the lives of innocent passengers and innocent people on the ground, I think it would be a lot more ethical for them to just leave the company.

As Wickwick sometimes points out, many young SpaceX employees treat it like a graduate program: they work ridiculously hard for several years right out of college, build the experience and the checkmark on the resume, and then use that to qualify for a job elsewhere that pays well and lets them...

Maybe greybeardengineer? He hasn’t posted since he was ejected from a Rocket Report thread last November.

I’m wondering if there will be any complications to redownloading my digital Switch games on the Switch 2, like having to deauthorize the original Switch. I’m guessing there won’t be any easy way to transfer game saves without a Nintendo online subscription.

Chimpanzees such as Ham, the first great ape launched into space by NASA, are of course native to Africa, though there are no wild populations in Kenya. Ham was born in Cameroon.

According to Wikipedia, Crew Demo 2 in 2020 was the 85th flight of Falcon (I think they’re lumping 9 and Heavy together). Most of Falcon 9’s missions have flown in the last three years.

That's all well and good, but the responsible next step would be to test this solution for unforeseen issues without human lives on the line.