I wonder if the new staging ring could have reflected enough exhaust back up into Starship to have caused damage. It looked like there was something escaping from separation and I don't recall V1 doing that.
With the benefit of hindsight I bet they wished they'd been a bit more conservative with V2 given the teething issues. (i.e. fly with fewer revisions so they can perfect parts of the system - but it seems like they're going for broke to reach for the Mars transfer window and have the funding to survive the consequences)

Planned EOL was 2013ish & "Investigations into extending ISS lifespan to 2028 started in 2010"
So... the controversy is replacing the program with something new after twice the initially planned lifetime? And 2028 was the extended EOL anyway?

So this was already planned... outside chance it could be 2030, beyond that would require megabucks investment per public info.

and...

This was never the intended space station and it's not in an orbit useful for anything other than international relations. (aka Russia can launch to it, would use too much fuel to get to a useful orbit - that said, maybe we avoided war due to the coordination required and the cost is justified on that basis - I don't have the inside baseball info to judge that one)

I support replacing the ISS with something in a useful orbit that has a more useful role, building on the lessons and experience gained with the ISS.


We're (the US) about to get two new private launch vehicles that are on track to be even more affordable. Starship with 'bigger than Saturn' lift and New Glenn roughly splitting the difference between Starship and Falcon. Small launch companies are trying to break into the light lift market as well.
I hope they all succeed.
Assuming they do...
We can put up a new station with 1/20th the inflation adjusted launch cost of the ISS and 1/50th of SLS (or less).
If practicality mattered, we should be making speculative plans for what new 'we couldn't before' thing we could be doing with the ISS funding as a replacement, then zero in plans once we have operational versions of those vehicles.

But... won't someone please think of the elected representatives with a net worth under 100mil? We can't disturb this 60 year long tradition of graft!
The political powers controlling the modern version of Project Mockingbird won't stand for it! Crazy the amount of GO funded NGOs involved. Wild tracking that activity starting since Tesla gained traction. (like the og Electric cars from Detroit are 'Green' but not Tesla)

I learned about it early Nov 2019, saw video and still pics from Wuhan then. The US officialdom denied anything at all for months, denied a pandemic was spreading until they'd shorted the stock market. Until then 'it's racist to close the borders or cancel the giant parades'... I wonder how many more died because of that. Just delaying the spread until the proper ventilator protocol was discovered would have saved so many... (delay by any means possible for example, and use different settings or you make it worse - which is why almost nobody on vents early in the pandemic survived)
Totally reasonable to unperson anybody who raised the alarm before the elite had shorted the market right? Can't have them losing money to save little people lives and especially must silence any voices mentioning what they did! I mean, the nerve!

NASA budget should go to science/exploration/boundary pushing missions. Launch was a necessary means, not a core objective.
Apollo/Shuttle eras launch wasn't a private industry endeavor.
It is now, which is fantastic! Mission success!
Now NASA doesn't have to divert attention to launch and can focus on things only NASA can do/fund. Assume Starship economies of scale, then what previously impractical ideas deserve reconsideration? Just Falcon changed everything. Imagine proposing an over 6,000 sat constellation in 1980 via Delta or Shuttle?

Not paying attention, or playing word games? Teachers/School systems have always indoctrinated. They don't stop at reading/writing/arithmetic. We call it acculturation if we like what's taught. Elementary schools teaching about holidays for example, though even that's an argument nowadays.

The argument is over 'with what' and who decides. Recent controversy has been over allegations that activist teachers are deciding to teach against the values of the parents (or a handful of videos with teachers saying so).

I look elsewhere 1st now since they've shitified the UI, tripled the ads and moved to destroy Ublock. Even adding ad pre-rolls to Discord... Yeesh
If I must used them, I use Freetube. Now that I've moved my subs to it I find it's much better.

Worse, the NAV in my car shows the speed limit of the road I'm on. It's WRONG a great deal of the time. It'll show the feeder speed limit while on the freeway for example. The car has a auto brake/collision warning feature. It's also wrong, nearly caused me to be rear-ended so I had to disable it. The lane keeping feature tried to steer into a barricade one evening (at an exit, it thought the space between the lanes was the lane, tried to steer into the divider barricade). I'd want to sue for fraud if that data were used to increase my insurance rates. The data are as defective as the system, before you get to the e-stalker spying.

Beancounters? Douglas vulture capitalists extracting shareholder value to themselves maybe more like?

My car has this, flashes warnings on screen and (if not disabled) tries to apply brakes. It's... well, in the past 50 activation events there was a car who'd cut me off once. The other 49... wrong as hell. Then there is the 'lane keeping' safety feature. Multiple times I've had it jerk the wheel to steer INTO barricades. It sees the break down lane white stripe to the right of the main lane and the one to the left of the exit as I'm exiting and decides the right freeway stripe is the left marker, and the left exit stripe is the right marker and steers straight for the barricade between them. Terrifying when it does that at night in the rain. Absolutely horrible system...

Buying software has meant a purchase. It used to be that way. The copy you purchased was yours, you owned it. Not a revocable license. You were still restricted by copyright law from making copies the same as any other product (like a music CD).

In the US there is a city extending from Boston to DC. Big doesn't require monolithic. It'd be a good idea to get a section of the line city working so flaws can be iterated out/designs changed etc as sections are made. (i.e. assume it'll have unforeseen issues, and foreseen issues where the implemented solution isn't working as planned and so plan ahead for revision stages)
I'd like to see the giant desalinization design built and iterated. Once past the new design teething pains that'll have application world wide, including Southern CA.

As soon as '# of followers' became touted as a indication of political following, Twitter became bot infested.

The true number of bots was never disclosed.
There isn't an accurate public metric to judge the number of real users now or then, so the rest is guesswork.
As a public company, they had investment incentive to allow bots to the extent they could claim they're actual daily users. There may have been direct payments for that in addition to the blue check pay-offs. There may be other competing incentives that make eradicating them less the obvious choice it looks like now as a private company. (advertiser $ perhaps?) I don't think we know the actual user count, then or now. Lots of political grandstanding both times.

Douglas, Boeing's management was out maneuvered in the merger and engineer led decision making is long gone. That's been replaced by the 'suck shareholder value into our hands' corner cutting management Douglas was known for.

Meanwhile A separate question is how this flaw waivers/self certification/backroom deals? They're flying their new planes under the same cert as the '60s versions... which should be ok if operating/maintaining is the same. So... look at picture of the 737 original release version cockpit and a Max and see if you can find any differences... the crashes were about a system designed to move plane controls without pilot input or control to fake handling of the 60s aircraft - using sensors with no redundancy! (Douglas management made redundant safety critical systems a very expensive upgrade option - making everything an upgrade including basic safety increases profits dontcha know)
If I seem salty - that started after I looked into the causes of the Max issues. Just wow.

I remember the dishonesty being demonstrated then, the publisher block voting etc making a mockery of the awards. I remember the personal attacks and invective meant to cover that up.
Why did the Hugo's have any shred of credibility to lose, exactly? We've known this is who they are for years.

Definitely a method for excluding anyone ADHD, Aspergers, any sort of introvert etc. Or do you think it's looking for folks who're most likely to accept managerial abuse?