14 thoughts on “Excitement At Starbase”

  3. Well what you see is H20 fog, which if become cold enough become snow. What is unseen can be much colder.
    It does not seem like cars would be damaged, but it’s possible, so why park them there?

    1. It does not seem like cars would be damaged, but it’s possible, so why park them there?

      There is a problem with leaving your car parked under a massive tank of liquid nitrogen? Who knew?

      PS, I’m glad to find that this wasn’t a massive screwup on someone’s part.

    2. LN2 is bad but LCH4 OTOH could get real interesting. In my hometown the local fertilizer plant used to store about 6000 gallons of liquified anhydrous ammonia in two big oblong tanks on-site along with who knows how many bags of ammonium nitrate. If the Orange Cloud didn’t get you the White Cloud would.

      1. I guess that LCH4 is cryogenically liquified methane, but what is LCH4 OTOH — never heard of that rocket fuel :?)

        1. What? You never heard of liquid methaned oxy-tetra-hydroxyl?*

          Or maybe I was just too lazy to type “liquid methane On The Other Hand…”

          Maybe… 😉

      2. My favorite description of a bad idea for a rocket fuel that looked good on paper was from John Clark’s book Ignition!

        It can basically be summed up as “CTF/WTF?”

  4. It was a test tank undergoing a test. . Roads were closed. Nobody got a minus 800 degrees shower. No flying exploding fireballs, so, boring by Spacex standards.

  6. SPACEX’S STARSHIP MAY do a lot, but it won’t do everything.

    “The company’s under-development rocket, first outlined in 2017, is designed to send humans to Mars and beyond. But at its unveiling, CEO Elon Musk said that he wanted “one booster and ship that replaces [the existing] Falcon 9, Falcon Heavy, and Dragon.” That means a ship that can also launch satellite constellations like Starlink.”
    https://www.inverse.com/innovation/starship-wont-work
    “If you want to populate Mars, then the Starship is the vehicle to do that,” he says. “If you want to deploy a bunch of constellations and spacecraft in low Earth orbit, 100 tons of payload is just not going to help you.”

    That is interesting point.
    Or most significant factor related to rocket launches in the global satellite market.
    Or as I said before, without it, you wouldn’t have NASA.
    Or one also say that Starship is not competition to other launch companies. SpaceX would be in different market.
    And would say it’s tightly connected to NASA whereas other launch companies, aren’t.
    Anyhow why can’t have raptor option for the falcon second stage?
    And keep falcon-9 to provide competition in satellite market?
    It seems need more competition in satellite market, though I guess rocket lab others can bring it.

    1. Beck is right that it comes down to price. A Starship that costs the same or less than a F9 can “waste” payload capacity if they want. The advantage that Rocket Lab has is the ability to cater to an individual customer on schedule and placement.

      A while back I saw SpaceX was looking for a company to handle the last mile delivery of payloads, something like a space tug. With a large stable of launchers, SpaceX will have a lot of leeway on schedule too. I don’t think Beck’s position that Starship is too big is supported very well.

      Could one of you orbital dynamics aficionados comment on this? Doesn’t SpaceX already do this on F9 launches of Starlink? Why couldn’t Starship?

      “Beck argues that a smaller capacity rocket is better for building out constellations because you can target multiple orbital planes with deliveries to orbit.”

  7. “It seems need more competition in satellite market, though I guess rocket lab others can bring it.”

    Yeah G that’s the thing. The competition is now heating up as it always does when someone successfully pioneers a tech.

    Competition is good even though many competitors will fail.

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