Close ups of the tail fins and the hull exterior have little hex tiles covering the entire tail fin assembly. There's also different sizes of tile. Exciting to see if that will be enough structural reinforcement.
Yeah, the tile complexity is worrying. I hope they're able to simplify that or fully streamline the manufacturing and attachment. From the outside, the tiles seem like a Shuttle re-run, and refurbishment of those was one of the long poles in reuse.
I used to follow Starship so intently, similarly NASA things, but Musk's antics, politicising of everything he touches, the increasing use of NASA as US propaganda, has all really put me off it. It's hard to get excited about these things anymore, which is sad because they're otherwise legitimately exciting.
Why is everything today has to be "good" or "bad". Where is the nuance? Where is seeing things as they are - an exciting endeavor built by thousands of people, one of them has flaws you don't like.
The rise of moralization of everything is really killing online discourse. It's gotten to the point where people will now mostly criticize and support ideas based on who proposed them, and not based on their merits. Tribalism at its worst.
I'm with you. Everything government that at least still pretended to serve the public interested and greater good has been openly captured by individuals and movements concerned with some more selfish agenda.
NASA has been propaganda since Operation Paperclip, sadly. It's hard to politicize something that's always been political, even if Musk gives Peenemünde optics a run for it's money.
Reading reports of people objecting datacenters build in their states I wonder how Florida residents feel about the Spaceport ? It will certainly be more distruptive than datacenters.
SpaceX has openly advertised their intent to turn starship into a faster long distance travel alternative to airplanes. Their intent, should all go well, is to have many, many, spaceports.
For their conventional space launch operations they also want multiple... to target different orbits, and to parallelize the high volume operations they anticipate.
There's already two Starship launch sites. The one in use in Texas, and one (LC-39A) in development at Kennedy Space Center, Florida. And there's good reason to believe they've begun planning a third in Louisiana. https://forum.nasaspaceflight.com/index.php?topic=64900.0
On a more serious note, the Cape Canaveral area / Kennedy Space Center has a large amount of empty land to build space infrastructure. The island has been dedicated to space facilities since the 1960s. Both SpaceX and Blue Origin have facilities there.
Gotta pump that Grok IPO /s Seriously though, the whole SpaceXAI makes zero sense to me. SpaceX was a wonderful company and there was zero need to pollute it with Twitter and a service that creates sexual images of people without their consent.
> Liftoff will occur at 6:30 p.m. ET on Monday (May 19)
https://www.space.com/space-exploration/launches-spacecraft/...
The rise of moralization of everything is really killing online discourse. It's gotten to the point where people will now mostly criticize and support ideas based on who proposed them, and not based on their merits. Tribalism at its worst.
"People" were always like that and will be so..stupid. Let me quote Agent K from MIB for you.
> A person is smart. People are dumb, panicky, dangerous animals and you know it...
NASA has been propaganda since Operation Paperclip, sadly. It's hard to politicize something that's always been political, even if Musk gives Peenemünde optics a run for it's money.
What other company would you rather see funding go to?
What SpaceX has accomplished is just phenomenal.
For their conventional space launch operations they also want multiple... to target different orbits, and to parallelize the high volume operations they anticipate.
There's already two Starship launch sites. The one in use in Texas, and one (LC-39A) in development at Kennedy Space Center, Florida. And there's good reason to believe they've begun planning a third in Louisiana. https://forum.nasaspaceflight.com/index.php?topic=64900.0
On a more serious note, the Cape Canaveral area / Kennedy Space Center has a large amount of empty land to build space infrastructure. The island has been dedicated to space facilities since the 1960s. Both SpaceX and Blue Origin have facilities there.