Meanwhile the spike in gas prices from the war might just make the Cybertruck look a bit less ugly, just like Elon Cheney hoped–kidding! Quit throwing rocks-OW!

I’m having a hard time deciding about James Carville. Does he look more like The Crypt Keeper from ‘Tales from the Crypt,’ or like Jim Carrey’s Fire Marshal Bill character from his days with the Wayans Bros. on ‘In Living Color?’ Or maybe just like The Third Orc From The Left in any given army of Mordor scene from ‘The Lord of the Rings’ trilogy?

The scariest part is he’s only 7 years older than I am. I hope I’m not his doppelganger if I am fortunate enough to reach his current age.

Now, if I could somehow possess him, Pazuzu style–and wanted to stir up controversy…my attack on Trump would have been something to the effect of:

—-“why didn’t the President do this during his first term? Then he only wanted a wall. Now that undocumented labor is scattering–and tariffs have prices up–did Wall Street give the Donald marching orders to pick up where Cheney left off?”

That would be an example of what I would call a bipartisan attack, in that it might play better across the aisle.

If I were still in possession of Kelly, I might also say “you know, if we had perfected Shuttle-Derived Heavy Lift Launch Vehicles (SD-HLLVs) years ago….we could have had a few rods from God strike Fordow without telegraphing our punches a week ahead…as is the case when you mobilize our antiquated, logistical nightmare that is the WWII/Cold War-era Force projection that has likely cost American taxpayers more money than Artemis…and that in only a few days.”

That attack might play to Hawks and Doves alike.

Hey Kelly? Call me.

——-signed, James Carville.

Another reason that NASA sticks with simulations is because it can. SLS does not vary far from the tried-and-true rockets of the past eight decades. One of the reasons for reusing so many Shuttle parts is to remain close to a known working rocket. Past simulations are already reasonably close to the new design.

SpaceX, on the other hand, is doing things wildly different from the tried-and-true. We haven’t seen testing this extensive in two-thirds of a century, at least not in the U.S. SpaceX is reinventing the orbital launch vehicle, and they are pushing engine technology beyond what has been done before.

They are in full combat with the rocket equation while they try to put huge payloads into orbit on reliable rapidly reusable rockets, as Musk has called them. Those huge payloads are mostly propellants for use in getting large masses well beyond Earth orbit. While they fight the rocket equation to the death, they are staring-down the impossibility of huge payloads in a reusable rocket. It is hard to imagine, but it keeps looking like physics blinks. This is why so many people are so much more enamored by SpaceX than by NASA.

NASA once did the impossible, as explained by President Kennedy at Rice University, one hot day, but now they are struggling to do what they once could do four times a year. NASA engineers redefined the mission profile in order to make the Apollo mission possible. NASA made the physics blink, and we Americans put more trust in them than they turned out to deserve. They are, after all, a government organization run by government employees, funded and overseen by two branches of government. Embarrassingly, NASA can no longer even build a space suit.

Many people think that Starship is the be-all end-all of spaceflight, but it is undergoing compromises that other private commercial space companies can overcome with spacecraft dedicated for use outside Earth’s atmosphere. Some of those companies may even be able to build a better Starship.

When we had let government do things in space, all we got was what government wanted. Now that We the People are doing things in space, we are getting far more and getting what We want.

“”relentless testing and iteration””

What a great phrase. When people ask me about a rocket blowing up during a test, I try to teach them about “test to failure.” Sometimes they listen. Just what are the limits? Outer space is very unforgiving. Tis better to have tested and failed, than never to have tested at all.

Jeff Write wrote about fake AI crap out there. Trust, But Verify is more important than ever.

I do have a bias – a trust simulations about as far as I can throw the computer.

Feynman never said any of that–and even if he did, he would have been as wrong as NYT was about Goddard.

ISRU allows Mars Direct refueling that Starship is to use (if successful) and the MEM was going to use hypergolics.

Not that lifting off Mars is easy of course:

I want to highlight two numbers — 19 and 39 — in order to illustrate how SpaceX does things versus NASA. Not only has SpaceX already completed eleven test flights of Starship/Superheavy, it has tested or flown 19 and 39 prototypes of each, in one manner or another. The company has a very rich history of hardware and testing as it ramps up towards operational flights. This practically guarantees that those operational flights will not only occur relatively soon, they will be relatively safe and robust.

This is a critical point, and it cannot be repeated enough.

But there’s more! As the new 3-part YT series Zack Golden is doing on launch pad development underlines, the Starship launch pad has evolved as much as the rocket itself has! There is a world of difference between the pad that Flight Test 1 launched off of in 2023 and what is now emerging at Pad 2, and that includes everything from the tower to the propellant and deluge systems. So it is not just your rocket that has learned from relentless testing and iteration; it’s the launch pad you lift off from, too.