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  @kgoldsholl @arstechnica the FAA won't grant a launch license until the corrective actions are resolved. Launching without a license would be a great way to get fined and grounded.

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  @kgoldsholl @arstechnica I think you're talking about the Starship SN8 suborbital test flight in Dec 2020? It had a launch license but violated public safety conditions without a waiver. The whole operation was grounded and investigated after that. https://spacenews.com/spacex-violated-launch-license-in-starship-sn8-launch/ I think an orbital flight test without a license would be a lot worse, both for public safety and in the eyes of the FAA. It would show blatant disregard for the...

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  @kgoldsholl 🤷 not that I know of, but I've been following Starship a lot less closely lately than I was during the pandemic WFH era.

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  @ecsd @hanse_mina it isn't a GEO network, it's a LEO network. The same satellites that fly over Sevastopol also fly over New York and Melbourne. All I can think of is that they could have sold user terminals with access to the entire satellite network, and maybe ground stations that the military can set up wherever they want to connect the local overhead satellites back to the rest of the internet.

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  @verge https://killedbygoogle.com/ 🫡

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  @wikkit I love the iridescence in magpie feathers. Black-billed magpies were all over Telluride, CO when I visited a few months ago.

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  @wikkit I wish Maia the best of luck, but, to your point, this is why I'm so excited for Stoke.

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  @Nick_Stevens_graphics someone on Reddit (reposted to Lemmy) compared these rates to other heavy manufacturing. SpaceX's worst injury rates (Boca Chica) are more in line with motor vehicle and boat manufacturing. https://sh.itjust.works/post/9070630 There are a bunch of reasons why I don't want to work there, but the health risks don't seem too different from other mfg industries.

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  @ovid it's a pretty hot take for him to call it as successful as SLS in some respects, but I don't disagree with the reasoning: "If SpaceX had stuck an ICPS and the Orion spacecraft hardware on top of Super Heavy, it could have gone to the Moon on Saturday." It seems like they could be operational already if they had a "traditional" barebones 2nd stage instead of going for full reuse. Imagine the possibilities from having a Centaur as a 3rd...

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  @spaceflight "Voyager Station" got totally rebranded and scaled down as Above Space's Pioneer Station. Thank goodness, because the original Voyager Station concept was way too big to start with. Of the 8, Pioneer still seems like the most Powerpointy and least likely to actually happen, though.

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  @tsturm @cstross @arstechnica There's a market for "Not SpaceX" that BlueLA would do well in for awhile. US Gov wants dissimilar redundancy and Amazon Kuiper wants to not subsidize Starlink. Other than that, though...

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  @wikkit they look like 3d printed lattices. The landing is described as somersaults and self-righting, so crushable parts to protect components and absorb energy during their lithobraking seems right.

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  @arstechnica these prototypes can already outperform NASA's $2 billion SLS for about $100 million a launch. They could now launch disposable missions for a $/kg that beats everything else in the world. But they don't need to, because their Falcon rockets, the most reliable and best $/kg in the world, are launching prolifically and filling that need. It stuns me that people still don't understand iterative development.

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  @jbzfn@mastodon.social finally starting to get revenge for what Marco Inaros did

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  @JSharp1436 @skrishna the issue was on the rocket side, which is ULA. Except they're a joint venture between Boeing and Lockheed... This kind of issue comes from not launching enough.

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  @skrishna @JSharp1436 I agree that they made the right call by not launching. I meant that a higher launch cadence would prevent this kind of problem by helping flush out more edge cases. Even though the Atlas V is a mature design, letting rockets and ground systems sit around collecting dust for months isn't great.

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  @Vittelius @notjustbikes That says it was rate limited. Here's another one that hopefully works? https://threadreaderapp.com/thread/1803131603033690537.html

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  @__h2__ My dream for Mars is to see canyons covered with a fish tank for a roof (to grow algae and provide radiation shielding) with adobe houses on the canyon walls and tunnels bored deeper to expand the usable space and offer even more radiation shielding. I'm picturing something like Ceres Station from The Expanse. I know that's literally sci-fi, but it's more fun to daydream than to be a pessimist.