This is really well done!

Commenting to boost this post, but roll again if you land on me. Thanks OP :)

What a weird situation. I suppose it’s nice those workarounds exist, even if they’re not ideal.

I think I’ve come to a similar conclusion after IFT-4. Reusability is the top priority, not a stretch goal like with Falcon-9. As such, the expected value of testing reentry is a lot higher than that of orbital maneuvering.

What an insanely aggressive development approach!

It stands for “maximum dynamic pressure”, and is a fluid dynamics concept. It’s the moment when the spacecraft is under the most stress, and therfore where certain things are most likely to fall apart.

It’s caused by a combination of atmospheric density and velocity. To avoid issues, there’s a rough rule of “don’t accelerate too much until you’re high enough that the atmosphere thins out” during launch, and “don’t hit the atmosphere too fast” during reentry.

Here’s a chart for the IFT-3 launch. At one minute you can see that acceleration decreased for a few seconds, to minimize the strength of max-Q.

Interesting that there’s nothing special about acceleration at max-Q, unlike during launch.

Interesting! I assume it involves a smart plug and an automation script that monitors battery level?

Wow, Graphene really doesn’t have charging limits?

I assume this is the discussion you referred to, and I think it broke my trust in the project.

Edit: As far as I can tell, many of the frustrating parts of that thread are from random posters and not devs. I’m still annoyed that such a basic feature is considered controversial.

If it’s only the on-screen flap that had issues, hopefully that points to a minor fix instead of a major one. I wonder what sort of data they have on this. How many thermal tiles were lost on each flap? Where did the issues start? Are the other flaps alright? Hard things to track.

I can’t believe they (maybe) completed the landing burn with a shredded flap.

Between that and the booster engine issues, this seems like one of the best possible learning scenarios.

The Super Heavy hover looked way more stable than I was expecting. Amazing progress.

:(

Today felt like the one.

The lack of vacuum relight is really interesting - I thought that was the biggest barrier to a “real” orbital flight with a payload that can start offsetting development costs.

But yes, everything else about this flight plan is exciting!

Darn. You may already be aware of it, but ProtonDB is an excellent resource. People share their experiences with specific games, and quite often someone will have found a workaround for problems.

(Sorry for the delayed response, my app didn’t alert me)

I remember feeling stunned about how limited the HLS test was going to be. So much effort and money to NOT test critical systems? I hope they keep adding elements.

Under one of the options, astronauts would launch into low-Earth orbit inside an Orion spacecraft and rendezvous there with a Starship vehicle, separately launched by SpaceX…The crew would then return to Earth.

Prudent to test these capabilities, but ouch.

I think you’ve fixed it! Right now the stickies are this thread and the 7-18 bulletin :)

Responding to your comment on thread #54: your early-April comment announcing this thread didn’t appear until I clicked on the link in your reply today. My click seems to have pulled it over. Which seems like a really strange federation issue, given that all your other comments seem to appear in world. Though I guess I wouldn’t know?

If I get a chance this weekend I’ll try to compare some World threads to Sh.itjust.works ones and let you know what I find!

I’ve had luck with Proton GE as a solution to cutscene problems on several games.

Just letting you know that the Lemmy.World stickies are broken again, and we’re still seeing Development Thread #54. I posted a link over there.

I don’t think there’s anything you or I can do about it. Took me a while to realize what was happening.

As always, thanks for these updates! They are very much appreciated even when I don’t actively engage. Additionally, I keep meaning to thank you for posting Nitter links for as long as you could. You’re awesome :)

For those on Lemmy.World, the stickied thread isn’t updating properly. Here is the new development thread: Starship Development Thread #55