BFR!!!!! Stand one of the early SSN-774s on it's tail on the launch pad in Texas and it will be about 4-foot thicker than the Starship minus the sail but it will also be 20' shorter! Space-X's end-goal is to throw something that big (albeit much lighter) 40 miles up for the booster and into orbit for the Starship itself and get it all back, minus the fuel. .....and then do it again a bunch of times! They're loading fuel for Starship IFT 4 as I type this. (Edit: Preparing to load fuel?) Good Luck Space-X!!
Idle speculations while FSD drove me to Texas: 1000 tonnes of methane So mix it with the liquid oxygen and set it off. At least a 1 kt explosion. With about 12 time more energy than TNT, ~12 kt, in the range of small, nuclear explosives. Bob Wilson
The first strat nuke was 16kt. The second one was was bigger by 20% (21kt?) but killed fewer people because they missed their primary target (the city) and exploded it behind a hill over a large arms factory after pitching it out of the aircraft following a radar guided approach - and the fun didn't stop there! The aircraft Bockscar - currently on display at the ASAF museum in Dayton was almost shot down, and it almost ran out of fuel - with over 600 gallons on board AND it landed so badly at the divert field that they almost plowed into a row of parked aircraft! "Mr B29" (as the Japanese called it) was the single most expensive programme in WW2 and it was nearly as unreliable and dangerous as the F35...... Perhaps we need to send the Ukies all of the F16s we can spare and send their opponents all of our F35s!
Thanks! If folks haven't already, look at how the rocket noise shreds the clouds. There is a reason why distance is your friend. Hearing protectors help but don't do a thing for your body. Those are serious shockwaves similar to being too close to a large bomb explosion. Bob Wilson
I hear tell that the FAA up-checked more flights under the current profile and that Starships and their boosters are in serial production. This tells me that we may not have to wait very long before another IFT. I’m not sure what the feds will require for dry landings but they now routinely land falcons at Kennedy and ships at sea. I do not expect a very long wait for Starship to start hauling hardware and some of the squishier cargo. This will expedite the buildout of the Starlink constellation which Musk has always said he wants to use to fund some camp-outs on a certain red planet. Since I fix phones and cell towers for a living this is somewhat interesting to me personally but I’m already on a glide-slope for retirement - so I don’t wake up at night with sweat soaked sheets over it.
