Yeah, it wasn't the best example star but my point was that just because it's small doesn't mean anything about how much mass it has, which is the point that I feel like the headline was missing.

I wonder if binary gas giants are possible. Think two Jupiter-sized planets orbiting around a star. For some reason, I find that idea vaguely terrifying...

Starship orbital test flight definitely, and hopefully followed by another flight with a successful landing of both the booster and the main ship!

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It's a reasonable assumption. What would we be able to do with transmissions that look like random background noise anyway?

Probably best practice for all aboard being able to assist in the event of an emergency though

"Never tell me the odds!" --Corellian spacer saying, usually involving ridiculous odds and slim chances of survival

As I found out not too long ago, that debate was already mostly settled when I learned it and is long-settled now -- gas giants have a icy-rocky planetary core formed in the accretion disk along with the other rocky planets, and the much larger mass that they build up allows them to hold an enormous atmosphere during accretion while the rocky planets will bleed or evaporate most or all of theirs away. (See perhaps NASA's brief on planet formation -- I feel like Wikipedia's article is skirting the gas giant issue so probably has some conflict between editors.)

A failed star is a brown dwarf, which can form as part of a binary just like any stellar binary. The reason this particular system isn't that is that they say it's specifically a Jupiter-like gas giant. Further, they obviously got the mass since afaik methods of finding exoplanets will always get the orbit (by wobble at least), and the article says recorded the light during transit, so they would have calculated the radius; thus they'd be able to calculate the planet's density. Now, the density of Jupiter is 1.33 g/cm^3. Compare a brown dwarf, which as a failed star has no (or very little) core fusion to provide pressure that counteracts the enormous compression that's from the gravity of its enormous mass (about .07 solar masses, which is still huge) -- it is thus degenerate matter (in the core at least), as in a white dwarf, and at least in one case the average density was calculated at 108 g/cm^3. There would be plenty of other evidence to line up too -- I'm sure they weighed the possibility that it could be a brown dwarf, or at the very least a very unusual type of planet that must be tested for everything.

(And just for fun, the densities of main-sequence and off-sequence stars are all "known" (more or less -- it's not pure hydrogen or pure clean fusion), because math. I can't find a simple list, but you can find masses and radii -- anyway, as a type-M star, it is about 5 g/cm^3; compare the Sun at about 1.4 g/cm^3 -- more mass means more pressure inward, but also more fusion so more pressure outward,(See Thompson, Astr 1144 Lect.10, OSU)

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Eh, it took SpaceX several years to scale to that sort of launch cadence. I certainly wouldn't expect Old Space to miraculously reach a flight every other week within a year.

> why ULA went with BO has never really made sense can anyone tell me why?

Aerojet's AR1 engine was way behind in development. In short, they didn't want to design it unless someone else was paying for it and that made development drag out. BO, on the other hand, was building the BE-4 on its own dime regardless of whether someone else was interested in buying them. Aerojet basically has no ambition as a company.

It's also thought that stars and planets form in fundamentally different ways, so an actual failed star like a brown dwarf should be different from a planet, even one of about the same size.

You better call the Krell and get a visa first or they'll send monsters from the ID to meet you.

Fair point

I still doubt they're gonna have the ability to pump out 2 rockets a month in less than 3 years

well i think there are other reasons than height that might stop you from getting the shuttle pilot position

Our hubris as a scientific species is out of control.

ULA has already sold over 40 launches to Amazon.

Costumers are not an issue at the moment.

It’s not a tiny star. I’d say it’s pretty average honestly. Some people might even say it’s a perfect size or even big!

If you mean whether or not the first launch works or fails, 100%. If you mean the program as a whole, your way off, but I don’t think that’s what you’re saying.

ULA’s customer’s needs are quite different from SpaceX. They’re able to launch payloads to orbits and velocities that SpaceX does not offer, and the military, NASA, and many private entities already have contracts lined up with them. ULA and SpaceX are both launch providers, however they occupy different markets and there is a lot of demand for both. They aren’t going anywhere anytime soon.

Because you have to fit inside the Space Suit and safety harnesses. Nasa isn't going to install a child seat into the Space-X Dragon.

Starship, nothing even comes close.

(But some of the new smaller reusable rockets are cool as well, so hope we will see some).

It doesn’t make sense to you that space flight may have at least the same prerequisites as most fun-fair rides?

Well..us. We intentionally beamed signals into space.