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124.4 meters (408.1 feet) tall, 9 meters wide, 5,500 metric tons at launch with a TWR of 1.6. Should leap off the pad and hit max Q in 45 seconds. These engines are grossly overpowered for the launch mass, which implies another stretch. And they're a work of art.

I have to go see one of these launches one day.

And they're not done. Raptor 4 is in the works. They really are going to Mars. The long dry spell of "boldly go" is coming to an end.

This is about getting wholesalers to pay them to take the data about where they source their stuff and who they sell it to at what rates so Amazon can replace their step in the chain as well.

"In modern cars, it can only help visibility"

Until the screen fucks with your night time vision.

Fuck that just get ones of those retina-searing flashlights out of China and just aim it at your side view mirror.

Back then most emulators were just an executable and a couple smaller files. Throw a full library of games on a ZIP disk, head to your friend's house to play games.

Those cards would be worth far more than the data at the moment.

Installing more than one modern AAA title.

Everything in the visible universe is subject to lunar gravity now. That's how gravity works.

>arguing it unfairly advantages startups

Way to say your dealers suck.

Simplify. The best part is no part. The parts omitted never fail. They don't require maintenance, supply chains, continuous improvement.

The Moon is target practice. We need to get away from innovative bespoke engineering, into industrial mass production with continuous improvement. To do that we need to fly often. Mars just doesn't have the launch window availability. The biggest part of the challenge is that we were born in the bottom of a deep well. To toss enough stuff out of the well for a long journey is critical. Boosters that reliably fly on time often and cheaply enough to get ships and fuel out of the well. Ships that carry fuel into orbit and return over and over since the vast majority of the material we need to send out of the well isn't payloads or ships, it's fuel. Kilotons of fuel. Once the factories and processes are set up for that going far beyond the Moon is fairly easy. But with a narrow opportunity every two years that's not going to happen in a human lifespan. It's not enough refinement cycles per year.

I see this accelerating the Mars objective, not deferring it.

This is the crux. Optimization of supply chains to eliminate inventory makes them frail. Or, to quote Wirth:

Premature optimization is the root of all evil.

The last of the US federal helium reserve - including land and equipment - was sold in 2024.