What if we want to send 1000 tons of cargo to a destination that is 20000 km away from us? We have two options: launch a starship 10 times, or fly the An-225 7 times (4 times with full payload to the destination airport and 3 times without payload back to the base airport)

So Starship and the AN 225 have two main things in common: they are both capable of carrying large volumes and large masses of cargo, making them ideal for quickly delivering humanitarian goods or military aid over long distances.

But there are some differences:

So I calculated how much it would cost and how long it would take to transport X amount of cargo weighing between 100 and 1,000 tons to a destination between 1,000 and 20,000 kilometers.

The timer starts when both vehicles, are fully fueled and the cargo bays are already loaded. They leave the launch pad/runway at the same time. And the timer stops when the last vehicle arrives at its destination.

I calculated Starship's time efficiency with these formulas:

• Starship is X times faster: AN 225's time is divided with Starship's time
• Starship is X times more expensive: Starship's cost is divided with AN 225's cost
• Starship is X times more time efficient: (Starship is X times faster) is divided with (Starship is X times more expensive)

But currently the only AN 225 is destroyed. But there is still a small chance because there is another fuselage that is 70 percent completed. And it will need at least 500 million $ but at the moment Ukraine have more problems than to rebuild the AN 225. And Starship also needs to be fully and rapidly reuseable to bring down the cost per mass.

Not being able to afford to buy all of the Starship flight patches, I would like to print them and display them for fun in my home.

Has anyone done something similar with printing them on laminated printer paper or photo paper?

Thanks.

It’s early days, but the actual launch dates for flight 2 for Ariane 6 and Vulcan Centaur were close to predicted, based on Wright's Law and the industry average launch cadence learning rate. Following the same curve, New Glenn flight 2 won’t launch until September of this year. The Starship test campaign continues to accelerate at a rapid pace, with a learning rate of 52% and a current cadence of 49 days between launches. Elon has predicted weekly Starship launches by year end; this learning rate predicts a launch every three weeks by then.

Since Blue seems to be making a go of New Shepard throwing millionaires up to 100 Km for 5 to 10 minutes and doing "very" short term microgravity science, could SpaceX revive the 7 passenger Dragon design, add big windows and sell seats and science stacking it on a Falcon 9 first stage (no second stage, no trunk) and lob it out over the gulf up to 150 km or better altitude before the booster does an RTLS and the capsule lands just off shore. Even shoving a second stage and payload, the first stage tops out at better than 120 km before it starts to fall back, so with a super light payload and not going downrange, it ought to go WAAAAY up there... Cheap relative to a full stack, more seats and much longer duration compared to NS, meaning they can charge more per seat and per lb of science.

With Super Heavy seemingly well sorted, why can’t we operate the Superheavy system like a Falcon 9, with a disposable 2nd stage? I feel like that would be MUCH more useful for the near term than waiting until Starship gets ironed out. Vast can start sending up modules, ride share programs could be put together for large satellites, and for $200-300 million a launch you’d blow every other launcher out of the water on price-performance

So a few days ago there was a falcon 9 second stage reentry seen from Europe(where I live) but I missed I because I didn't know ti was going to be visible.

Do you know any website where I could see the trajectory of the rocket live and predict where it's going too be reentered?

p.s. I know there wasnt much info abut the nrol launch but for other launches they probably give more data

I wondered, since the payload price-per-kilo is so low for launches, are there any regular-joe that has made their own "homemade" satellite and paid to have it sent up into orbit?

Seen today at 9.00 pm over Milan, Italy. Fast progression east to west, crossing the sky in 3-4 minutes.

Initially I thought the lightly cloudy sky was reflecting an airplane lights, but the swirl moved following the light, that became dimmer over time.

Could it be the NROL-69 Falcon launched today? The time doesn't really checks out, it is listed as launched 2.30 hours before.

Update from my previous post, I finished modelling and printing the booster! It's so tall! The scale is 1:144, so 6.25cm diameter and around 84cm tall!

Files for the booster are available here if anyone is interested, however the ship is not posted yet since I need to fix some issues with the heat shield fitment and the forward flap position.

A sketch is to be provided of booster, and a picture of the printed starship, note that it is modified, and may not be fit for flight currently. The sketch is very basic