Shapelock was long theorized to be an effective adhesive on plastic, but never used it in 7 years. Decided to finally apply it to the front wheels & made a test blob.


For this application, it was easier to use hot air than boil it & reheat it with hot air after applying it. It melted the plastic slightly. No amount of hammering could kick the test blob off. After a 10 mile drive with 5 at higher speed, it was declared a success.


The repaired shaft was misaligned, there's absolutely no way to release the shapelock & we know the consequences of misaligned wheels, so they still have to be replaced. Creating shapelock fillets around the bearing is another necessary step in fabrication.

4 months after the last wheel failure, the same left front wheel broke off again.

https://www.rcgroups.com/forums/show...e#post38834656

& the right front tire continued to have wear problems. At least it got a good video before it died.

19 minutes at 7m18s per mile (2 min 40 sec)

If the price is based on 100 passengers, with only 40 staterooms, they're planning on people traveling in family units with some of those families having kids young enough to sleep in the same room. The actual price per room is $500,000.

This is might have been Elon's parent's organisation, but it's definitely not the mane social organisation today. Lions still insist the mane customer will be confirmed bachelors looking for the ultimate retirement home.

Most families today from baby boomers to generation X to millenials still have a single male breadwinner earning most of the money & a "partner" earning pinch money.

What's advertised as $200,000 per person is really $500,000 a man has to produce for a room, whether traveling alone or with 2 family members. There might be a way to split it with a room mate, but that still hits $250,000. Suspect that's the mane way most of us will go, but since we wouldn't have to sleep at the same time, there wouldn't a real need for each person to have an entire room.

https://www.instagram.com/p/BRwgf8bgGWV/


Our 1st & only view of the inside of the interstage. It probably would have cost a few thou from the BFR budget to put a roof on it or strip out all the guts, so Musk said forget it. They did strip out the pushrod that ejects the 2nd stage & hastily strung an extension cord to a warning light. The extension cord had a little left over. 2 wires in mid air appear to be additions. They could be a radio antenna used by someone else. What are the chances of retired Falcon 9's being sold as cell phone towers?

You can see everything mounted directly on the convex top of the LOX tank. Not content with plain old rods, they used horn shaped rods. It must be the most weight optimized way to transfer torque from a narrow diameter to a wide diameter.

There's a triangular enclosure which could only be a triple redundant brain box, where the 3 computers are mounted symmetrically. All the software flying the 1st stage & the IMU are probably in that box, all calibrated for its orientation on the LOX tank. We also see what could only be the nitrogen thruster tank & the pesky hydraulic fluid tank. Surprising such a small tank is all the nitrogen it takes to fly it back. There's no effort to balance it by mounting the tanks symmetrically.

The torque rods are already looking a bit rusted. The guy obviously doesn't know a 4k copy of the video is stored on the quad copter, but barely knows enough to hit send on an instagram app to upload low res telemetry.

10mph in modified flip flops (3 min 37 sec)

Was quite pleased by how stable it was at 10.9mph. For most of its life, it couldn't go straight at 10mph, even when completely empty. It now goes straight even with a camera pole on it. Better living through FIR filters.

Still fielding software ideas, came up with this: the Big Falcon Simulator, a very high fidelity simulation of a very large rocket, with the highest quality models & sounds possible. It would accurately simulate flights or have a racing mode with knockdowns. Previous simulators have horrible graphics. They especially need realistic flames.

City running in 360 (2 min 28 sec)

You always had a hard time finding your place in this world, haven't you. Never knowing your true worth. You couldn't settle for less than an ordinary life. You feel like you were meant for something better. Something special.

Mind blown beyond the capacity for rational thought by today's Elon photo, the BFS oxygen tank mold, now sitting at 801 S. Reeves Avenue in Long Beach. We now know the current state of progress in building it, the tanks won't be made in Seattle as previously thought, & they can't begin making the tanks until the factory in Long Beach is up. It's going to be very much a space going ship built in the traditional birthplace of ocean going ships: a harbor. Mass transit in space begins as mass transit around Earth began, by sea.


Watching SpaceX move ahead with the giant rocket in a tent, as the permanent factory remanes bogged down in years of paperwork, is quite a contrast to Bezos's traditional approach of spending 3 years building a proper factory before starting a single mold.

With US still over 1 year away from being able to launch humans into space again, what a story it would be if someone stowed away in a cargo mission. It would be like a Doolittle raid, but a raid against bureaucracy & management. It would be riskier than Alan Shepard's 1st flight, because the cargo modules have no launch abort capability. Beyond that, it would be the same as that 1st flight, despite all the concern about minutiae in the flight termination system, life support system, & micro meteoroids. Indeed, much of the last 8 years of pain has been micro meteoroid shielding standards.

The stowaway would be a man, of course. He would have a food supply & a bathroom hidden somewhere. Once on the space station, they would have the issue of feeding him, not having enough room in the Soyuzes to evacuate the station, the life support system encountering loads not seen in 8 years.

The real drama would be the consequences of stowing away. Would he be shot for treason? Would NASA give up on human spaceflight entirely because they couldn't enforce enough meaningless regulations? Would private space programs tolerate more risk?