• Tar_Alcaran
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    8 months ago

    Inter-ship propellant transfer tests NET 2025.

    Which is “not yet”. We’ll have to see if this actually happens.

    I expect launch launch cadence will be sigmoidal, not linear.

    Again, we’ll see.

    especially as pathfinder components for V2 have already been spotted

    That’s good to hear at least.

    SpaceX stretched Falcon 9 too, and nearly doubled the payload capacity between the original Falcon 9 v1.0 and today’s Falcon 9 v1.2 Block 5 fuller-er-est thrust Version 7™.

    Assuming you mean the v1.1 (1.0 is about half as tall), the main difference between those models is in the engines, which are running at design-specs in the newer model. Starship’s engines are, according to many many comments by musk, already running optimally. Although I grant you that might have been a lie.

    NASA and SpaceX jointly tested the docking system a couple months ago

    Nice. Glad to see they picked up the slack in the time since the GAO report.

    Overall, you seem a tad overly pessimistic, which is fine. I just hope you are not underinformed or misinformed.

    I’m very pessimistic, and the massive delays extending the original schedule seem to warrant my pessimism. Remember that HLS doesn’t even exist yet, and musk has a long trackrecord of broken promises.

    The fact that NASA wrote a second lunar lander contract makes it seem like they’re pretty pessimistic too.