https://x.com/SpaceX/status/1804941106221867514

Deployment of 22 @Starlink satellites confirmed

I love that everyone from Starship engineers to Starliner CAPCOM watches NSF.

TL;DW highlights:

• 01:15 Current Starfactory designed to produce 100 ships per year.
• 02:30 Aiming for 200 tonnes to orbit with full reusability
• 11:20 Starlink missions on Starship are not a priority for 2024
• 15:00 Currently design not able to cope with the loss of a single tile on the pressurized tank portion. Future designs incorporating a backup ablative layer underneath tiles.
• 17:30 Mass savings of passive vs active heat shield might not be as much as they originally thought, since the mass of the ceramic heat shield has grown. Elon still confident that passive shield is best for reentry from interplanetary transfer.
• 21:30 Linear-adjacent flow (assembly line) for vehicle production.
• 27:20 IFT-3 loss of ship control. Valves got clogged by ice. Elon confirms that they are tapping off the preburner for ullage gas to repressurize the oxygen tank. They’ve added better “ice strainers” and will add redundant valves in the future.
• 33:45 Reducing number of grid fins is not a high priority.
• 36:00 Still several thousand changes between each vehicle. Primary payload on these test flights is data.
• 42:00 Future raptor versions will have cooling circuits integrated into various parts, reducing the total number of parts, bolted joints, welded joints, and the need for engine heat shields
• 47:30 Long-term goal for raptor thrust is 330 tonne-force.
• 50:00 Separate propellant depot likely not needed for Artemis, just dock tankers directly to Starship HLS.
• 54:30 Tile attachement points
• 56:45 Ship header tank
• 57:45 Pez door test on IFT-3 “had some issues”.
• 1:00:45 Tesla drive units are still used for actuating the booster grid fins and ship flaps. Striving to eliminate all hydraulics on the vehicle.

Side note at 01:40 on Falcon 9 upper stage production: Close to 200 this year, likely over 200 next year.

Stage 1 landing confirmed!

Edit: M-vac shutdown, nominal park orbit insertion.

MECO, stage separation, M-vac ignition, and fairing separation.

Edit: First 20th flight of a fairing half!

Liftoff!

Edit: Per NSF, this marks a new fastest pad turnaround time at 2 days 19 hours 40 minutes between this mission and Astra 1P. Previous record was 2 days 20 hours between Starlink 6-48 and 6-49.

https://x.com/SpaceX/status/1804915890917695587

All systems are looking good, weather is currently 70% favorable, and propellant load is about to begin for today’s launch of 22 @Starlink satellites from Florida

Currently, the highest Q value obtained from a tokamak is 1.53

I’m pretty sure this is the value of Q achieved by the National Ignition Facility, which uses inertial confinement, not a tokamak. As far as I know, the record Q for a tokamak is still only 0.67, set by the Joint European Torus back in 1997.

A

Goodbye

S

O

localized entirely within your Lemmy instance?

Well, not entirely. It federates to other instances, which is sort of the point of Lemmy :)

“Darth Plagiarism” is just… *chef’s kiss*

Specifically Lumiere and Babette, I believe.

We’re going to have the healthiest mice in the future!

the first astronauts warned us about a private space industry. Sure, they can innovate faster and cheaper, but not as safely.

Crew Dragon: 0

Space Shuttle: 14

Eric Berger’s article which was posted over on [email protected] is also a good one.

I wonder if Suni and Butch are secretly happy that they get a longer stay, worried about the integrity of their ride home, or maybe a bit of both?

“Year five, and they still haven’t noticed I’m a donkey”