Mastodawn

Charlie Stross Mar 18, 2025

An important point is that if Musk dropped the stupid, implausible, 100% reusability requirement they could take the fins and heat shield off Starship v1 and have a WORKING heavy lifter with a reusable first stage and disposable upper stage and a payload comparable to Saturn V that'd cost not much more than Falcon 9 to fly. Which would really be a game-changer in its own right—just not the insane "let's colonize Mars" toy Musk fantasizes over.
https://bsky.brid.gy/r/https://bsky.app/profile/did:plc:66lbtw2porscqpmair6mir37/post/3lknd6qs2m22g

Ketan Joshi (@ketanjoshi.co)

Starship is the cybertruck of SpaceX - the moment when a Musk company runs out of plagiarised, borrowed and bought technologies and start having to rely on the deeply shitty brain of Elon Musk "how did SpaceX get here?.......Musk isn’t an engineer and doesn’t understand iterative design" https://www.planetearthandbeyond.co/p/starship-was-doomed-from-the-beginning

Bluesky Social

Show thread

RalfMaximus Mar 18, 2025

@cstross

I figured he was outright lying about Starship when I saw his proposal to land one of those ON THE MOON.

On its tail.

With a long-ass ladder so astronauts could climb down to the surface, then back up again. Like it's the cover of a 1940s Heinlein paperback.

There was nothing serious about that idea and he MUST have known it. And yet.. so many "smart" people nodded along. wtaf

Show thread

ReferenceDesk Mar 18, 2025

@ralfmaximus @cstross
I just read something from one of the teams that landed a private ship on the moon. Basically, you've got two design options to keep the COG centered during descent: two pairs of fuel/oxidizer tanks arranged in a flat square, or one pair stacked one on the other. The former leads to a wide, low, stable lander, the latter to a tall one that's prone to falling over if there's the slightest error in your attitude and thrust controls.

Show thread

RalfMaximus

@ReferenceDesk @cstross

Yeah! And THAT is one reason why the Apollo LEM looked the way it did. Special-purpose vacuum rated squat bug machine perfectly suited to its task. Not a hint of aerodynamics or heat shielding anywhere near it.