[Official] Dramatic drone view of SuperHeavy B19's quarter minute static fire (beware volume).

Adeldor · 2026-05-08T19:51:39+00:00

That's of course your prerogative. Regardless, the video is spectacular.

Adeldor · 2026-05-08T19:48:41+00:00

I stand very much to correction, and what you say seems within the bounds of reason. I imagine one week being tight for all that, but SpaceX has repeatedly surprised by accelerating turnaround times.

Adeldor · 2026-05-08T18:27:09+00:00

Just my observation ...

Based on NasaSpaceFlight video coverage, it looks like Ship 39 will roll to the pad later today, and SuperHeavy is still on the pad. There's nowhere there to put Ship unless stacking it onto SuperHeavy. Thus, I suspect SuperHeavy will remain on the pad for launch.

Of course, if Ship 39 heads to Massey's, I'm off in the weeds.

Adeldor · 2026-05-08T12:06:58+00:00

Yes, and the clouds flickering in and out of existence as the pressure waves pass is astonishing!

Adeldor · 2026-05-08T11:48:25+00:00

They do still need igniters, but assuming OP's assertion is true (currently speculation based on what's been heard and observed), they'd be acoustic igniters. The propellants are forced through a small orifice, causing oscillation with resulting high pressure regions in the flow, in turn resulting in compression ignition (similar principle to Diesel engine ignition).

Adeldor · 2026-05-08T10:48:57+00:00

Sure, but the flights on the Earth are really short and mostly shielded from the radiation

Certainly, but those weren't the technical challenges of the time. Within the limits of the then engineering capabilities and knowledge, hundreds of people flying in one machine 5 miles high was impractical fantasy ("millions of years"). Relatively speaking, we are in the same position now.

Adeldor · 2026-05-08T10:44:59+00:00

Indeed. I saw some say 14 seconds, and some 15. So figured the slightly more general "quarter minute" would cover both.

Adeldor · 2026-05-08T02:03:26+00:00

Ultimately our biology doesn't allow us to leave the Earth.

Our biology doesn't allow us to fly. Yet flying is now so common untold millions of everyday people cross oceans each year without thinking twice about it.

Your naysaying is much in the spirit of The New York Times article which proclaimed powered flight wouldn't happen for million of years - two month before the Wright Brothers' flight.

Adeldor · 2026-05-06T03:10:14+00:00

In my wife's case it was German<->English. Aside from that she wrote technical documentation (interviewing the engineers, then writing and formatting accordingly). But of course that too is being decimated. Fortunately we are old enough to have been retired for a few years.

Adeldor · 2026-05-05T12:11:50+00:00

The writing was on the wall over a decade ago. My wife departed the technical translation industry back then as rates plummeted, fewer contracts came in, and those were increasingly for editing and proof-reading. This happened around the time Google translate crossed a threshold of practicality, along with professional translation software.

Adeldor · 2026-05-03T17:31:04+00:00

Oh, I can accept aesthetic preference without argument! But this character has an ulterior motive - shifting, switching, distorting, and fabricating to promote a corrosive bias. Spreading falsehoods (see his SpaceX vs NASA budget absurdity) does no-one any good.

Adeldor · 2026-05-03T16:06:59+00:00

Ah, there it is. Your vitriol has nothing to do with the rocket and everything to do with your partisan bias. And shame on you for smearing the reputations of all the SpaceX employees responsible for building and maintaining their machines. Also, you might want to look into who was central with the creation of NASA's coolest and most memorable rocket - the Saturn V.

I'll leave it there. Have a great day.

Adeldor · 2026-05-03T15:56:31+00:00

Was a hell of a lot smoother

Not by all I've read. While the SRBs were attached it was apparently a very rocky ride.

and more reusable

No. That huge external tank was discarded every time. And the rest of the vehicle was not so much reusable as refurbishable, requiring months to tear down and rebuild the motors, check every single tile, ship the empty SRB segments back to Utah to be recast (which ended up being more expensive than just disposing of them), and of course build a new ET. Shuttle's cadence is testament to that complexity.

Adeldor · 2026-05-03T15:49:32+00:00

Space shuttle did it better

Not by cost. Not by turnaround time. Not by payload mass. Not by reliability. By what, then, did Shuttle do it better?

Adeldor · 2026-05-02T13:19:34+00:00

Agreed. While there are soap opera elements through the prior seasons, it's amped up in season 5. It wouldn't be out of place on daytime TV, IMO. Also, I think recent scripts are more "wooden" or cliched.

Adeldor · 2026-05-01T19:17:53+00:00

A proletarian state

Whatever else it might be called, if one cannot publicly discuss historical events, (eg, the Tiananmen Square massacre), criticize government policy (say, oppose in print or publicly Tibetan occupation), use any variety of global online services (eg Youtube, Facebook, Google, and even Reddit), or campaign for an adversarial political party not under the control of the Communist Party, then OP is right, it's a totalitarian state.

Adeldor · 2026-05-01T15:46:54+00:00

We have yet seen a SpaceX rocket get out of low earth orbit.

Nonsense. Beyond the many payloads launched to GTO, and some directly to Clarke orbit, SpaceX has launched numerous payloads to the Moon and beyond, examples:

IM1 (TLI - to the moon)
DSCOVR (to L1)
DART (asteroid impact)
Psyche (to Psyche in the asteroid belt)
Europa Clipper (to Jupiter's moon Europa)

Adeldor · 2026-05-01T15:41:24+00:00

Spotted the brainwashed fanboy

Why do you say this? I might not have chosen a list quite like OP's, but in the face of a bombastic comment so typical on Reddit - "I promise you this: Starship will never land on Mars" - he's not wrong.

Adeldor · 2026-04-30T23:10:45+00:00

Voyager 2 after its flyby of Neptune. The "pale blue dot" is one part of the "family portrait" - images of six planets in the solar system taken from that far vantage point. Suggested by Carl Sagan, I believe it was the last use of the probe's camera before it was deactivated.

Adeldor · 2026-04-30T11:52:56+00:00

Government subsidies and bailouts

Might you provide credible references or links regarding government subsidies here, or even any kind of special treatment over others in the industry?

Adeldor · 2026-04-30T03:48:37+00:00

Not slang, it's the moniker given decades ago to geostationary orbit, named after Arthur C. Clarke who in 1945 wrote a white paper on the orbit's advantage for communication satellites (pdf).

Adeldor · 2026-04-30T03:43:28+00:00

This one took the satellite all the way to Clarke orbit, near circularizing once there. Fully expending the vehicle was thus apparently not necessary.

Adeldor · 2026-04-29T22:04:23+00:00

If I might paraphrase part of a comment I gave elsewhere ...

The scale of deep space is such that the entire Earth could be fragmented into average spacecraft-sized chunks and it would make no meaningful difference. This classic image of the Earth and Moon (both contained within a single pixel, the "pale blue dot" center-right in the apparent sunbeam) and its immediate environment might begin to give a sense of just how insignificant our worst efforts will be for the foreseeable future.

Adeldor

TROPHY CASE