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Google Search summary of plans for Starship clamshell in 2026: AI Overview Yes, SpaceX's official Starship User Guide describes a clamshell-style fairing design, though operational implementation has shifted toward a slot/slit "PEZ dispenser" style deployment system for high-cadence flights. YouTube·Eager Space +2 ? Design Evolution & Status Original Concept: The Starship Users Guide outlines a 9-meter outer diameter clamshell fairing structure. relayto ai Engineering Limitation: A full two-sided clamshell is constrained because one side must remain fixed to house the windward thermal protection (heat shield) system. Reddit +1 Current Focus: SpaceX has largely prioritized the "PEZ dispenser" longitudinal slot door for deploying Starlink and flat-packed satellite constellations rather than a traditional full-opening clamshell. Ringwatchers +2 Future Outlook: Observers note a traditional or single-sided clamshell/chomper style door may still be developed later for outsized cargo, but it is secondary to current V3 iterations and flight cadence priorities. X +2 How Starship's heat shield requirements restrict payload bay door sizing. (th)

This post is for the September issue of the Airloom report: Monthly Update from Airloom Energy - September 2026 Neal Rickner Unsubscribe Sep 30, 2026, 8:59PM (11 hours ago) Friends of Airloom, As we move into Q4, we’re following several power sector signals that continue to show us why our work at Airloom Energy matters, and that what’s been done before won’t be enough to get us to the fast, affordable power we need today. Two leading conventional wind turbine manufacturers are rolling out their largest onshore turbines yet. And the world’s tallest wind turbine just reached its final height in Germany. While they will indeed add needed MW to the grid, this approach perpetuates slow production and deployment, and hits cost efficiency limits they’ve enjoyed for decades by getting bigger in a subsidized energy market. Advanced energy is necessary, but won’t solve our near-term power needs. We all expect the cost of nuclear power to come down as we refine designs and process, but the fact remains that all nuclear projects have come in over-budget and years delayed. Geothermal is applying lessons learned, but as an alternative to conventional energy infrastructure or big wind, these advanced technologies that take decades to mature and scale won’t solve the demand-supply gap we’re expecting in the next few years, at a price developers can afford. Hyperscalers like Oracle and Amazon are building AI infrastructure at a speed and pace that can be seen from space. The power playbooks

My parent's house in SE England is south facing and turns into an oven between May and September. Most houses built in the South of England really need air conditioning in summer months now, but only a small proportion actually have it. My father built his house South facing, to get as much benefit from solar heat as possible. It was a questionable decision, because the UK is heavily cloudy in winter months and gets very little direct sunlight. In summer, those big South facing windows turn the house into a cooker. He will be 76 this year and last summer the heat made him pretty ill. So long as temperatures remain low, he is still pretty strong and his main hobby is sourcing and cutting up wood for his fire. With this in mind, my next hobby project will be an air conditioner for my parents house. It needs to keep the living room at a comfortable temperature at peak summer heat. I am thinking of building a trompe (hydraulic air compressor). This would produce air at a low pressure of 0.2 bar(g). This will then be released into the living room. Expanding air from this pressure will result in 20°C temperature drop. Assuming a water temperature of 20-30°C in the trompe, the exit air should have temperature of 0 - 10°C. The input electrical energy will be used to pump water from a low reservoir (2m), to a high reservoir (3m). This energy will be 12v DC provided by a solar panel. This will provide direct electric power to a submersible pump. There will be no battery storage. I will

This site is sci-fi, but one particular passage intrigued me. https://www.weyland-corporation.com/sci … phere.html Fighting the Vacuum On low-gravity moons (such as those in the Zeta Reticuli system), the challenge is not just radiation, but 'Atmospheric Escape'. Without a magnetic shield, the light gravity is insufficient to hold onto the gas we produce. The MAG-Shield provides a 'Magnetic Pressure' that helps to compress the atmosphere and keep it pinned to the planetary surface. This 'Magnetic Gravity' is what allows us to terraform worlds that would otherwise be permanent vacuums. We are extending the reach of humanity by redefining the laws of planetary retention. We provide the weight for a weightless world. The corporation provides the grip. This is pretty much exactly the idea I have been attempting to explore in this thread. Using a magnetic or electric field to hold down the ionosphere, which in turn compresses the gas layers beneath it. One of problems with attempting to do this with a magnetic field is polar wind. At the poles of any bar magnet, magnetic field strength diminishes and field lines become vertical. Earth loses tonnes of atmosphere per year to polar outflow. On a smaller body with much less gravity, the problem would be worse. One way of mitigating this problem is by using a magnetic mirror. This squeezes the field lines at the poles, turning back most ions that would otherwise escape. The primary magnetic field would be produced by a superconducting

This post contains a first cut at building a classification table for special days on Earth and later on mars # Custom Holiday Registry for Mars Business Calendar MARS_HOLIDAYS = { 1: "NEW YEAR'S DAY HOLIDAY (Mars Year Launch)", # Future civil or orbital holidays can be added here: # 100: "Mid-Spring Solstice / Station Sync", } def get_sol_classification(sol_number): if sol_number == 668: return "NEW YEAR'S EVE HOLIDAY (Buffer)" elif sol_number in MARS_HOLIDAYS: return MARS_HOLIDAYS[sol_number] elif sol_number % 50 == 0: return "Skip Day (Rest/Sync)" else: return "Standard Business Sol" (th)

tahanson43206 wrote: This post is intended to offer links to a pair of files to help readers and members to perform aerocapture and aerobraking maneuvers at Mars. Many thanks to SpaceNut for creating a new forum in the Engineering Category. In the mean time, the files may be downloaded from Dropbox: PDF file of instructions for spreadsheet: >> https://www.dropbox.com/scl/fi/7tr322ng … 8iknm&dl=0 Spreadsheet >> https://www.dropbox.com/scl/fi/wmmvjko9 … g0fwq&dl=0 (th)

For RobertDyck ... this topic is more appropriate for your inquiry about military operations relating to the Iran War of 2026. There are multiple points of view... We have the US, Israel and Iran as primary participants. We have China and Russia as major powers assisting Iran in significant ways. In addition, numerous nations in the Middle East are directly affected by the conflict. In addition, we have a great many nations who secondary victims of the conflict, or who are actively supporting Iran. I don't thank there is a single nation actively supporting the US or Israel. The traditional allies of the US were stiffed by the current administration before the conflict began, and none have chosen to actively support the US. Your opening series in Politics inquired about the obvious failures of the US government to support ships in theater as they would do in peace time. We have at least one forum member who is knowledgeable about military tactics and may have opinions about military strategy. We currently have no one (that I know of) who is an expert in these matters. However, since male humans persist in using violence or the threat of violence to try to achieve political ends, It seems to me your inquiry is worth while. (th)

If this image link works, it will show Earth as seen from Mars. This image came up in discussion of how to create the Business Calendar for Mars for Mars Year 39. (th)

I want to evaluate some factors about Starship. I do regard myself as an inferior in the matter of rockets at least, but not necessary always without tricks for strategy. Today Starship in a theoretically reusable mode lifted 56 tons to orbit with a larger fairing than Falson 9, and in theory eventually for $10,000,000 to $20,000,000 cost if the Starship process were fully active. Even if payload capacity does not expand, it is very competitive for money concerns, already. I expect that payload capacity will expand. But there is a trick that I think many have not considered. If a ship has flown 10 times then you might strip the reentry features off of it and launch it an eleventh time expendable and bring 2X to 2.5X as much payload to orbit. Query: "What is the payload capacity of Starship if the 2nd stage is expendable?" Quote: Copilot Search Branding Like Dislike Starship Payload Capacity with Expendable 2nd Stage If the Starship second stage (Ship) is expendable, its payload capacity to low Earth orbit (LEO) would be well above 200 tonnes, according to SpaceX’s own performance estimates orbitalradar.com orbitalradar.com . Why it’s higher than the reusable case In the fully reusable configuration, SpaceX targets 100–150 tonnes to LEO orbitalradar.com orbitalradar.com +1 . This limit comes from the need to recover and land the Ship, which reduces the amount of propellant and structure that can be carried. If the Ship is not recovered and is instead discarded after the missio

The article at the link below is about an interesting variation on the space solar power theme. The startup in focus has secured funding to design systems to send power from one satellite to another, and (apparently) the will be sending a test package to space soon. The comments at the end of the article both worry about such systems being used for military purposes. This would definitely be a case of "dual use" technology. https://www.wired.com/story/space-laser … ng-energy/ Sep 28, 2026 7:00 AM Space Lasers Are About to Get Their First Real Test Generating Energy Startup Star Catcher is launching a system that, if successful, would be the first time energy has been beamed between two separate spacecraft. Courtesy of Star Catcher Google, SpaceX, and a host of startups are all planning to build data centers in space. But for those plans to work, they’ll need power. Lots of it. Star Catcher, a startup based in Jacksonville, Florida, aims to provide it by concentrating the sun’s energy and using lasers to beam it to satellites’ waiting solar panels. The company is preparing to launch its prototype system aboard a SpaceX rocket this week that will transmit energy to another satellite in orbit. Don't just keep up. Get ahead—with our biggest stories, handpicked for you each day. If it’s successful, it would be the first time lasers have beamed energy between two untethered objects in space. But the idea of generating solar power in space goes back decades. It showed up in a 1941 s

https://www.bing.com/videos/riverview/r … &FORM=VIRE Quote: The Diesel Shortage Hits America || Peter Zeihan He gives some valuable information. Without the effects of the "Jones Act", Diesel Trucking costs about 10 time as much as to ship by water. For energy, electric trucking is about 1/3 that of Diesel trucking, so Electric Trucking may be about 3.3 times as expensive as water transport, (Ignoring the effects of the "Jones Act" on water transport. That is if I am tilted a bit in favor of Electric Trucking. There is the possibility that some internal and costal barge transport will eventually have energy savings by being electric. In any case Electric Trucking and if enacted, internal and coastal Electric Water Transport are offering energy cost shrinkage. But of course Data Centers are going to provide Energy Cost Rising. But New things like Solar, Wind, and Geothermal are likely to provide more energy, more in the South West and less in the North East except for the potential of wind on the East Coast. Obviously Starlink and Starmind may reduce competition for energy from Data Centers. But the North American and maybe the Whole Americas may experience Distance Shrinkage as per cost of transport. >>>> That brings up an interesting thing about the Panama Canal. Will Electric Trucking become somewhat supplemental for the Panama Canal? Electric Trucks can recover some of the energy of an altitude climb, by dynamic braking on the way down. Query: "How long is the Panama Canal

This paper describes a liquid piston, isothermal air compressor. https://www.researchgate.net/publicatio … AES_System Mechanical wind turbines drive piston hydraulic pumps, generating compressed water at 350 bar. The water is then used to compress air by flooding a tank containing a metal lattice structure. This metal structure absorbs the heat generated by air during compression, as water flows into the vessel. The heat absorbed by the metal lattice structure then conducts into the water. A very simple compressor system, that is capable of producing high pressure air with almost isothermal compression. The compression phase should be upwards of 80% efficient. Using this system, thermal storage of compression heat is not necessary. This would be a good way of producing compressed air for automotive applications. Compressed air cars would be hybrids. A small, single cylinder IC engine will generate mechanical power. The waste heat from the engine (about 70% of the energy contained in the fuel) can be used as expansion heat for a secondary compressed air engine. By using air in combination with an ICE, the effective fuel economy of the vehicle would increase dramatically. One of the neat things about compressed air energy storage is that a carbon steel pressure vessel can be practically immortal if well maintained and protected from corrosion. Corrosion protection requires that the air entering the tank is dry. Provided this can achieved and so long as stresses remain beneath y