It’s the structure that rolls under the rocket to allow techs to work on the engines and stuff while it’s vertical. It rolls out of the way, behind some heat shielding, before and during launch. Looks like the heat shielding failed or it moved, either way it got cooked.

Source: everyone’s favorite internet rocket Scotsman

A redneck missing half his teeth can make meth in a Gatorade bottle in a Wal-Mart bathroom. I could probably figure it out. But that would be pretty bad for my career.

As an actual professional organic chemist, ironically, these make my eyes hurt.

Reusable

Let’s save that term for hardware that’s demonstrated reuse in operational flights. So far, I think it’s only Falcon 9, New Shepard, and Electron that have launched paying customers on a reused booster.

In this case, they tried to weaponize the law against an enemy and it didn’t work.

Let’s see what they do next. Do they drop it? Does he suddenly fall down some stairs or shoot himself in the back of the head three times? Basically, are they wannabe fascists or the real thing?

Well, my rocket can get 250 tons to LEO. It’s also just a CAD model but like 75% of these are too.

SpaceX was founded in 2002, and announced Falcon 9 in 2005. By 2010 they launched, in 2013 they started propulsive landing experiments, and in 2015/16 they landed on a pad / a drone ship. About 13 years from founding to reuse, and ten years from F9 announcement to reuse.

Blue Origin was founded in 2000, declared first stage reuse a priority in 2013, announced New Glenn in 2016, launched in early 2025, and landed in late 2025. 25 years from founding to reuse, and 9 years from NG announcement to reuse.

I guess the difference is that SpaceX was making money in those intervening years, and Blue was content to, uh, do a lot of simulations I guess.

I am once again begging people to not post headlines that start with “Trump, 79,” that doesn’t end with. Well. You know.

I am once again begging people to not post headlines that start with “Trump, 79,” that doesn’t end with. Well. You know. The start of the party.

The view from the NSF stream right now looks like the lower section blew open sideways. Maybe they were pressure testing the methane tank and it didn’t go well?

So that’s a proposed upgrade from about 2,460 kN to 2,847 kN per BE-4, or about 15-16%. If nothing else it’ll help NG do something other than crawl upwards off the pad. (For reference, Wikipedia says Raptor 1 was 1,810 kN, R2 is 2,260 kN, and R3 will be 2,750 kN.)

Also, this part about the heavy variant just bugs me:

The vehicle carries over 70 metric tons to low-Earth orbit, over 14 metric tons direct to geosynchronous orbit, and over 20 metric tons to trans-lunar injection. Additionally, the 9x4 vehicle will feature a larger 8.7-meter fairing.

Rocket companies saying their paper rockets do something (in the present tense) is terrible. It does nothing yet. It’s a design, not a vehicle. But BO can’t even keep that present-future tense consistent within the same paragraph.

That is the perfect image to react to many, many terrible jokes.

I’m not actually much of a fan of SCP stuff (sorry, I’ve tried, bounced off it) but I really enjoy this guy’s other science fiction. If you’re into this world, give this book a shot.

It was such a godawful movie but this got a chuckle

I understand your sentiment, but a lot of that isn’t right.

Early iPhone apps were going for $10-20. So many developers being okay with just data harvesting plus so many devices out there made the $0.99 / free with ads model dominate – people got used to “free” apps from the big guys (Facebook, Google, whoever).

iOS apps are pretty resilient to OS updates. They usually only totally break when huge changes happen (dropping 32-bit support, etc) and those happen once a decade.

Tons of Windows software didn’t survive the 3.1 to 95 transition. A bunch died on 98 to XP, too. In the Apple world, a lot got left behind on the Mac when they went from PowerPC to Intel processors in 2007, or when they dropped 32-bit libraries.

In the revolutionary context, the extra days were all piled into the end of the year. Kind of a special short month, or more realistically a set of days not in a month. But yeah, leap days were added there when necessary.

Twelve months of five weeks of six days plus five or six days at the end for Christmas and New Years would absolutely rule. As long as weeks became 4+2 and not 5+1, anyway. I say we drop Thursdays and just keep the rest of the day names, they’re fine.

I’d say the evangelical base won’t appreciate sex with teens but… given their track record they’ll probably say well actually sex with teens is just a-ok with us now

Both 5e and the 2024 rules only crit / crit miss on attacks. But Baldur’s Gate 3 introduced them on checks, which muddied the waters.

BG3 also did drinking potions as bonus actions, which 5e did not do but many DM’s (including those in several well-known real play shows) did as a house rule, then they incorporated it into the 2024 rules.

What a mess.

Please stop writing headlines that start with “Trump, 79,” that don’t end with. Well. You know.

The trouble with appeasement is that you’re eventually pushed to the point where you won’t cave anymore. You say no. And they punish you for it.

And now, all that appeasement has meant nothing. You sold your soul, you didn’t fight back, you did damage to yourself or your reputation or your customers or whatever. But you’re right where you would have been if you didn’t appease at all.

You have an enemy. If you didn’t, they wouldn’t be making you do terrible things. Do you want to tell them no to their face now? Or after they’ve recruited you into their scheme for years?

It’s sunk cost fallacy as international strategy and it’s terrible.