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You mean, extremely cold. Not particularly dense, methane is about half of water density, oxygen is about 10% more.
When supercooled they’re a bit more dense than that. But as the sibling comment said, most 30 story buildings aren’t filled with water.
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I'm really interested in seeing how it will perform its "belly flop" landing. Seems like a high risk maneuver https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DdTYMry7fq0#t=1m17s
They've already done it[0], and it was a complete success until a propellant pressure issue resulted in lower than needed thrust, and a hard impact on the pad. [0]: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_qwLHlVjRyw
It’s called a RUD: Rapid Unscheduled Disassembly
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I prefer Mercury.
Ironically Mercury is definitely more inhabitable than Venus.
Mercury on the other hand swings in temperature from uninhabitably cold to about as hot as Venus's uninhabitable surface, and it has essentially no atmosphere. Not necessarily impossible, but it definitely seems more difficult. A little info here, but it doesn't seem to have been looked at in nearly as much detail: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Space_colonization#Mercury
> The fully integrated Starship/Super Heavy launch vehicle will be approximately 400 feet tall and 30 feet in diameter. For reference, the Saturn V rocket from the Apollo program was 363 feet tall. It was 33 ft wide at the first stage, while Starship is 30 ft wide all the way to the top. It's just massive. And it's fully reusable. What a game changer.
400 feet = 121.9 meters, 30 feet = 9.1 meters
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Nice use of "factoid". Most people use this world incorrectly.
Ah, what would be the most common incorrect way to use it? Being a non-native English speaker I'm always fascinated to learn new things like this one.
Trivial fact would perhaps be better as 'factette' or 'microfact'.
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I believe it requires a refuel in orbit to get to the moon. So, two missions, but still super impressive.
Genuine question, how will tankers get into space? If most of the ship's size is already dedicated to fuel that's burnt, that seems to leave little left for fuel payload. I also assume fuel payload would be much heavier than other types of payload, requiring more ship fuel to launch it, further taking up space. It seems like for every full refill you could provide in space it'd take an additional 3-4 ships just to ge…
Starship’s usable volume is over 100 times that of an Apollo lunar lander.
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The belly flop is also how passenger variants will be landing so you do actually need a reliable program....
...eventually. They didn’t launch humans on the Falcon 9 for the first 10 years either. Lots of time to iron out the kinks (though it will likely be much less than 10 years this time)
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They could launch from outside America. They've already said they plan to launch from floating platforms in the ocean...
There are exactly three other countries with the supply chain, manpower, funding, and infrastructure to build large scale commercial access to space. Not a single one of them are members of NATO. Space X doesn't really have many options.
When launching to space you would want to launch to the east to get assistance from the earth rotation. You would want to launch over ocean so any debris/stages don't crash into populated areas. There's not that many places that is suitable.
China has due to geo politics and secrecy three space ports deep inland and it's not unusual that launch stages crash into populated areas. Probably why they've started to launch from ocean platforms.
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IIRC never fired in actual missions; did not help avoid any of the two fatal accidents.
All of standalone LES activation ever in the history of human spaceflight had been successful in saving all occupants' lives. Space Shuttle failed twice on the other hand, each time killing all aboard, and in neither cases of it its integral abort systems/abort modes did help at all. So in theory the lack of capsule-only LES do not necessarily mean safer rocket, in the history and in the statistics it does.
In 1963 a LES killed someone, in 1983 it saved lives.
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considering this is over 50 years after Saturn V, I don't feel this is such a huge feat.
It shouldn't be (given the 50 years) but NO ONE else has done anything close to it.