https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_qwLHlVjRyw

“On December 9, 2020, Starship serial number 8 (SN8) completed a high-altitude flight test as it successfully ascended, transitioned propellant, and demonstrated a first-of-its-kind controlled aerodynamic descent and landing flip maneuver – which will enable landing where prepared surfaces or runways do not exist, including the Moon, Mars, and beyond.”

The fins are attached to the body at hardpoints that are capable of withstanding the forces that the aerodynamics places on the fins, so there may have been surprisingly little damage to the test article’s body.

You are having a relatively easy time of it and you have all along, you just have been fooled into believing in a bogeyman.

I spent 25 years living and working elbow to elbow almost in the thick of 12 million people within a radius of about 25, 30 miles.

You have been scared into believing something that is as safe now as it ever was — it was NEVER safe — is too risky now. Well Lee, when you’re responsible for your own fear that’s one thing, but C19 believers want me to be responsible for their fear and health.

See, non-answers, avoidance of reality, on the part of credulous, gullible people who believe without question what they are told by “experts,” has gotten to critical mass. Sensible people understand that fear is a tool of war and that mask/social distancing/lockdown is a battle for liberty. Non-sensible people are still pretending that arithmetic lies but doctors with vested professional, financial, and political interests, don’t.

You do the math.

“In space, no one can hear you scream.”

(Unless you’re watching “Deep Impact,” in which case it’s: “In space, no one can hear you snore.”)

janyuary: You weren’t paying attention like you are now.

1, You are wrong, plain and simple. I tend to take notice when friends and family die or are hospitalised. I have had both having to spend a week or 2 in bed with the regular seasonal flu, but none in the ICU or die, of which I now have had both due to Covid.
2. I stated that sensible measures, without overkill are a good idea. I commute every day, and the wearing of masks seems like a sensible idea on a crowded bus or train. Not everyone has the luxury of being one of the, quote “Smart common sense people (who) go where they don’t have to wear masks”. I stated that basic hygiene is a good idea, are you suggesting that I have been frightened into washing my hands a little more often?
The knee jerk reactions of many here who seem to not bother reading my posts before insulting my intelligence is the reason I now only post on space stuff. There is no discussion to be had here, there are only lectures on why I am stupid, blind, and just plain wrong, and that I am just just reading from the song sheet of the left. The really ironic thing is that these lectures are inevitably given by those of you reading from the song sheet of the right.
@David M. Cook, your comment is correct, but I have no doubt that 3d printing is the future for superlight load bearing components
https://youtu.be/gEg07XU7vcY
I also have no doubt Elon is on the case, and will utilise this tech when the time is right. @George C, I envisage a time when there are racks of 3d printed components ready to go… signs of fatigue, or a strut has flown it’s optimal mileage? Just change it out…

Khan Noonien Singh
“It is very cold, in Space.”
https://youtu.be/5vwHLMs04XA?t=12
0:07

In rocketry, it seems to me that the art of understanding and combining metals to withstand certain kinds of force must be in big and critical demand and the folks who figure it out must be obsessed! Metal in general seems straightforward, yet in sea vessels when wrong metals are put together, bad stuff can happen. That must be about a thousand-fold more true in rocketry. What an incredible amount of cooperation, miracles, must happen to make a rocket fly. I’m cheering SpaceX and they’re sure cheering me in these glum days!

For the elderly, even the common cold can develop into pneumonia and kill. Sort of like Wuhan flu kills the same demographic.

Every single public health official and hospital administrator must be dragged before a military tribunal, and then put before a firing squad for their treason against the real American people and for serving China’s interests.

You weren’t paying attention like you are now. The many ugly flu pandemics I experienced in my life, it makes common sense that if it kicked butt among fairly healthy, witnessed first-hand over a period of at least five decades, then it stood to reason that some would be hospitalized (I have known folks hospitalized by flu over the last 50 years) and that weak and elderly would more likely die from it.

Certain people have allowed themselves to be scared into believing that something is too risky when in fact it is as safe as it was a year ago, two years ago, 20 years ago, 50 years ago, with regard to viruses. People have been frightened into believing in a threat that the arithmetic fails to prove.

Smart common sense people go where they don’t have to wear masks. I talked with a diesel mechanic who said he had work coming out of his ears. It occurred to me: his clients need him more than he needs them. The smart folks I know personally who’ve seen through this from the beginning have turned out to be a surprising group of mostly working class (read no higher education) folks who know how to build and do things, like electricians, mechanics, fabricators, heavy equipment operators. Without them, all the King Newsoms of this world would cease to operate.

It is at the point now where hysterical people overcome with fear such that they force it on others while ignoring common sense, have become dangerous, rather than annoying. Sadly … there is nothing for it but ugly dispute, dealing with people overcome with hysteria such that they ignore arithmetic … well, put it this way. Any society that abandons arithmetic even when it assures them that their fear is in vain, is poised to be conquered.

Most don’t even recognize that it is plain, planted fear that motivates them; they have been so successfully brainwashed that they cannot distinguish between real and bogeymen.

I agree with them. NASA (especially as a governmental agency) should not do developments projects in the field of space transport technology based on chemical rockets these days (60 years ago was a different situation) and should leave that entirely to industry. NASA is to focus on basic research and the management of government contracts for industry. I like Elon Musk’s development philosophy of fast, iterative prototype construction, even if these vehicles are not perfect at the beginning. That’s exactly to my taste. But nothing teaches more and faster than dealing with reality. SpaceX learns a lot with each prototype. The loss of one or the other prototype doesn’t matter much.

SpaceX Boca Flyover 12/22/2020, Starship SN9 arrives at the launch site!

The point remains ABUNDANTLY OBVIOUS that 99.9 percent will never be GOOD ENOUGH for authorities.
And no matter how much I screw up the arithmetic, it still ends up being a tiny smattering of our population that this virus has “ravaged,” and the numbers are clear and obvious even if you do the math wrong by a magnitude of FIVE — it is STILL illustrative of how dangerous it is to argue about angels on the head of a pin. Everyone who argues about whether or not social distancing and masks are effective, are fiddling while Rome burns.

The only way to achieve a 100 percent success rate in stopping a virus, is to eliminate whatever creature the virus infects. This is a farmer with a pretty spread of 500 acres choosing to destroy the entire crop because one fifth of one acre — less area most average building lots — was tainted.

It is disheartening to see folks talk of “progress” in developing a vaccine for a virus that arithmetic says is pretty well harmless to far and away the majority of Americans. This arithmetic has been in front of every single person paying attention to this “pandemic” since day one.

Getting custom DNA/RNA made is easy these days. Sequencing a virus and understanding some of the larger structures and DNA segments that generate them is straightforward. So figuring out the DNA you need, order it, then turn into a vaccine could become much simpler.

Which would be wonderful. But with everything, be careful for unintended consequences.

(Amusingly, Tesla, when they bought Grohman Engineering in Germany, kept the contract with a company that makes RNA printers for this purpose).