Comment by GMoromisato
1 hour ago
There is a lot riding on V3. SpaceX cannot afford to take too many launches to get V3 solid. If 2026 is another 2025 (3 V2 failures in a row followed by 2 V3 successes), then they can forget about landing on the moon before 2030.
My hope is that Flight 12 goes nearly flawlessly (at least gets to soft splashdown) and they can start testing in-space refueling in July/August.
If they can demonstrate in-space refueling by the end of 2026, then they have a shot at a lunar-landing demo in 2027 and a crewed-landing in 2028. But a lot has to go right for that to happen. Here's hoping it does.
> then they can forget about landing on the moon before 2030.
A crewed Moon landing before 30 is really implausible. Everyone is late, but the latest NASA OIG report put the Axiom suits very late (somewhere ~2031 if everything holds, but it notes it might not hold).
Small edit, 2 V2 (not V3) successes (flights 10 and 11).
question: what will happen if orbit refuelling goes wrong? Won't it destroy everything in orbit?
> what will happen if orbit refuelling goes wrong? Won't it destroy everything in orbit?
No. What is the mechanism through which you suspected this could happen?
Kessler syndrome presumably?
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Presumably the effect of any explosion would decrease proportional to the volume as it expands. Is there much volume in space?
Liquid handling in microgravity has always been weird. Big gas bubbles in the fluid, surface tension effects causing liquid to float in balls in the ullage, stuff like that. Turbopumps break if they ingest a larger bubble.
There could be some odd failure modes I would think. Failure to pump the liquid, broken pumps, who really knows? My guess would be that a failure mode would be a big spill, a failure to pump, only partially refilling, or broken turbopumps before an explosion.
A probably very naive question: why not pistons?
Seems like you could use peristaltic pumps
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Have you met hardware guys? This is not how they operate, in my experience.
Are you trying to say that "hardware guys" don't care if they're working to advance the agenda from a Nazi?
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I mean I might be a hardware guy myself depending on your definition. I've never dealt with rocket engineers.. Are they "hardware guys" according to you? If so it seems you are using that term incredibly broadly.
“They [sic] guy is a freaking nazi”
Presumably you’re at least fairly intelligent, nonetheless propaganda has done its job. Fascinating…
Just FYI, engineers are one of the groups most likely to lean right.
I’m hopeful tomorrow’s launch goes flawlessly!
Propaganda? He literally performed nazi salutes at a high visibility event. Not to mention all the wacko stuff he posts on twitter. A brilliant innovator can also have significant mental health issues.
> Just FYI, engineers are one of the groups most likely to lean right.
leaning right is one thing. Supporting Elon and Trump and MAGA is leaning far right.
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Aren't theories supposed to include some conjecture? This here is pure deduction.
That's makes a lot of sense becuase the Nazi's were notorius for not having good rocket engineers
The whole DOGE debacle and in general the broad radicalization of western male youths has made me very cynical about the ethics of "young brilliant engineers".
not to say the archetype you describe doesn't exist, but disappointingly I am convinced they are far from the majority.