I want to believe:

https://youtube.com/shorts/lYpwN_IRok0?si=g2-oyoLg7cr086zo

I thought I had read that SpaceX didn't patent most things?

Largely no elon has said on a couple of tours with tim dodd if they wanna try and copy that be my guest.

Most of the things they are working on with starship they are already a couple versions ahead in the drawing room if not the production floor.

I think they were walking through the raptor fab facility and Tim asked if he could film it. He basically said good luck trying to copy it lol

Is capture autonomous?  Hear me out.



When the time comes, fly a starship over there with a welcome present and let their system recognize and catch it.

Tangentially related, it looks like Ariane 6 has had a successful first launch.

It will be amusing to see how it competes with Starship in the launch market.

Outdated compared to Falcon. Starship is going to be like a BC-304 from Stargate by comparison.

Attached File

Flight 5 Super Heavy booster moved to the pad at Starbase pic.twitter.com/Jc8yAa07ni

SpaceX  (@SpaceX) July 9, 2024

vid

The booster passed the nearly complete Starfactory on its way to the pad pic.twitter.com/0u6xakXzEp

SpaceX  (@SpaceX) July 9, 2024

I've said this ad nauseam, but my brain just can't comprehend the scale of these effing things.

And if they catch it?

OMG.

That might just become my new desktop background

What is it?

What are we lookin at there?

Grid fin.

I looked at it a couple times and couldn't figure it out.  Saw your post and looked again, stared at it for a few seconds, then my brain finally corrected for the optical delusion, and "whoa, it is a grid fin."

Kind of what I would expect when the richest person on the planet designs a meat tenderizer for his secret villain base.

Thanks,
My brain was totally making the negative space positive. Thought it might be some new reptile inspired overlapping scale heatshield

Took a solid 30 seconds to get my brain to correct that.

I had to stare at it for several moments before my brain accepted it.

damn, it wasn't a autostereogram.

If you aren't familiar with the grammar of the Times front page layout here it is: The top right story is the lead story, the top left story is the sub-lead everything else above the fold is the important news of the day. Today the New York Times says the second most important… pic.twitter.com/LUizzFS1Pn

Mike Pesca  (@pescami) July 8, 2024

If you aren't familiar with the grammar of the Times front page layout here it is: The top right story is the lead story, the top left story is the sub-lead everything else above the fold is the important news of the day. Today the New York Times says the second most important story is mounting pressure from senior congressional Dems to push Biden out of the race. The 3rd most important story is a shocking French election results upending all expectations. The MOST important story is Elon Musk's successful space launch destroying nine bird nests.

What’s worse, this story is super misleading!

In one instance it claims, “three years of data collected by the Coastal Bend group near the SpaceX site indicated a 54 percent decline in the threatened piping plover population through 2021.”

This is false. The frequently cited… https://t.co/iX9aefeLLr

SpaceX  (@SpaceX) July 10, 2024

What’s worse, this story is super misleading!

In one instance it claims, “three years of data collected by the Coastal Bend group near the SpaceX site indicated a 54 percent decline in the threatened piping plover population through 2021.”

This is false. The frequently cited study conducted by Newstead and Hill (2021) is outdated and unreliable for describing potential piping plover population trends over time.

The 2021 study did not consistently perform field visits during the same time of year. In some years, surveys included periods when piping plovers were actively migrating and in other years surveys only included months when winter residents were likely to be present. They also did not always check both kinds of habitat that are present during each survey.

Point being, the piping plover population being sampled was inconsistent across years. This is important because the occurrence of piping plovers at any given location at any given time is highly variable. Presence or absence may be due to a wide variety of factors unrelated to changes to the population size; birds may simply be someplace else. And, the more times they looked for piping plovers in a year, the higher their population estimate was.

It's also important to understand piping plovers do not nest in Texas. With very few exceptions, piping plovers observed in Texas are either migrating to or from wintering areas further south along the Mexico Gulf Coast or in the Caribbean, or reside in the vicinity over winter. Piping plovers tend to return to the same wintering areas year after year, even when conditions at those wintering areas change due to extreme weather or human-caused disturbance.

Now here’s the kicker: In response to questions about the reliability of their study, Newstead and Hill reanalyzed their data and published a follow-up report (2022) which found no significant change in population abundance of piping plovers at Boca Chica over time. A decreasing trend in abundance over the first three years of the study was balanced by an increase in the final year of the study (once data from additional survey visits was added to the analysis).

For our part, we have conducted nine years of monitoring using a protocol developed with US Fish and Wildlife Services, and for the past two years we have ensured consistent sampling throughout the year by surveying monthly. The findings show little to no strong evidence of trends, either increasing or decreasing, for any of the target species, including piping plovers.

The New York Times specializes in tediously misleading propaganda https://t.co/CRWburGllu

Elon Musk  (@elonmusk) July 10, 2024

Is there anything these liberal faggots won’t try to ruin?

Just one thing. The rapacious excesses of the financial sector. But why should they stop? They have been swinging their political power around like a hyperviolent child with a sack of doorknobs for decades now and so far the only resistance they have encountered is a few of them got shot in Wisconsin and some lawsuits here and there.

First launch of a new vehicle usually has issues and yes, they did an excellent job with JWST. I remember a lot of people in GD and the wider internet who were being quite vocal in their expectation that the rocket would go boom or there would be some other fuck up that would destroy or render useless one of the most expensive scientific instruments ever created.

Yep. I had to let my eyes go out of focus.

You're looking at it from underneath, the blue is the sky. That photo is cool as hell!

Child sex trafficking.

The USA.

Such prang!  So kaboom!

Now you really screwed me up!
The blue is the sky????

My mind wouldn’t process it properly until I zoomed in on one square.

OK OK OK!
Now I see it! The white is the horizontal frame above.
My wife saw it immediately but then again, her IQ is miles above mine.

Holy CRAP that messed me up lol.

I was staring at it trying to make the "blue = sky" make sense and the suddenly it just popped and I could see it. What a crazy picture!

I first saw mirrored dragon scales.

Once they told me it was the grid fin, my brain was like, oh, got it!

Even the grid fins have reality warping powers!

Just FYI
They've been doing some sort of Cryo testing of the booster at the OLP today.

~2 launches a month!

We are committed to assessing the environmental impacts of all FAA licensed commercial space operations. We will hold public meetings on @SpaceX’s proposal to increase the number of launches and landings of Starship/Super Heavy Vehicle in Boca Chica, TX. https://t.co/nqmmKrVMcB pic.twitter.com/PGzamCSHa0

— The FAA ?? (@FAANews) July 12, 2024

https://www.faa.gov/space/stakeholder_engagement/spacex_starship

Attached File


That usually means launch is only a couple of weeks away.

Nice, launching on the anniversary of Apollo 11's launch would definitely be on brand.

Last weeks update showed they had not finished the tile replacement.  I suspect they will do that before they do a full stack test.

How in the hell did they build the starfactory that fast?

Brownsville is a pretty small town, things must be kind of crazy.

The first next generation Starship Block 2 nose cone with many big changes has rolled into the high bay to begin stacking the first Block 2 Starship! Awesome!

7/14/24 pic.twitter.com/YQxiLmozE9

Starship Gazer  (@StarshipGazer) July 14, 2024