What’s the diameter? Starship is 9m, but it looks like this one is smaller? Also, what material are they using? If it’s stainless, why paint it?
why paint it?
To hide the bondo.
China unveils their totally original and not stolen “Buran” shuttle.
I support everyone’s right to steal from Elon.
Elon didn’t build Starship, underpaid engineers did. And China steals from everybody.
SpaceX engineers are overworked, but not really underpaid compared to the industry. But they should probably be paid more given the workload and hours.
Yup. For the record, when I say “underpaid” I don’t mean not paid a living wage, I mean paid less than they’re worth.
Hopefully these reusable concepts will come to fruition soon.
It would be nice to reduce the frequency of situations like this:
(2024-06-22 Long March 2C launch of the Space Variable Objects Monitor (SVOM) X-ray telescope out of Xichang, in case you’re curious.)
That one deeeeefintiely isn’t getting reused.
Also, that’s an interesting colour of smoke, probably venting oxidizer like mad.
Hypergolic oxidizer, dinitrogen tetroxide, one of the most carcinogenic substances known to man.
Oh don’t worry about cancer, it’s so toxic, it’ll probably kill you long before you have a chance to develop any