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posted by Fnord666 on Monday April 20 2020, @01:07PM   Printer-friendly
from the schedule-for-rapid-unscheduled-disassembly dept.

[20200420_144755 UTC: Update: According to this comment to the thread at NASASpaceflight, the RollLift (which would transport SN4 to the pad) has not finished being assembled. Looks like it will still be a while before testing commences. --martyb]

[20200420_162536 UTC: Corrected timelines and costs; see linked comment. --martyb]

NASASpaceflight has continuous updates of activities at the Boca Chica SpaceX site with many pics and videos, too. The last time I checked, SN4 (SpaceX's 4th Starship prototype: Serial Number 4) is nearing completion of construction and is soon to be transported to the testing platform. Historically, next would be pressurization tests, e.g. with liquid nitrogen, to see if the rocket can handle the temperatures and pressures. Prior testing failures have been... impressive. Should all go well with these tests, next up would be testing of SN4 with liquid methane and liquid oxygen. If successful, static fire tests with the rocket tethered and, ultimately, with a powered hop for a very limited duration and distance.

SpaceX CEO Elon Musk has set a goal of building a new Starship rocket each week. SN4 has been under construction for less than a month. By comparison, the SLS (Space Launch System) has been under development for many years, has cost billions of dollars per year, and has never (not even once) been launched. (Please see this comment for clarification.)

Here are the dates and times of upcoming road and beach closures (and alternates) as announced by Cameron County, Texas coinciding with planned testing by SpaceX:

  • April 20, 2020: 0800-0900 (Primary Date)
  • April 23, 2020: 0900-1000 (Primary Date)
  • April 26, 2020: 0900-1159 (Primary Date)
  • April 27, 2020: 0900-1159 (Alternate Date)
  • April 28, 2020: 0900-1159 (Alternate Date)

(All times are Central Daylight Time; add 5 hours to get the corresponding date/time in UTC .)

Previously:
(2020-04-18) SpaceX Offers NASA a Custom Moon Freighter
(2020-04-03) SpaceX Loses its Third Starship Prototype During a Cryogenic Test
(2020-04-03) SpaceX Almost Ready to Start Testing SN3 -- The Third Starship Prototype
(2020-04-01) SpaceX Releases a Payload User's Guide for its Starship Rocket
(2020-03-10) Another Starship Prototype Explodes, but SpaceX Isn't Stopping


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  • (Score: 3, Informative) by takyon on Monday April 20 2020, @02:25PM (15 children)

    by takyon (881) <reversethis-{gro ... s} {ta} {noykat}> on Monday April 20 2020, @02:25PM (#985102) Journal

    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boca_Chica_Village,_Texas [wikipedia.org]

    As of 2008, only six people were permanent residents of the village, and that number was down to four people in two homes by 2017, with an average of approximately 12 seasonal residents.

    Yeah, no difference at all between Boca Chica Village and multiple U.S. states. Or a couple hours of road closures per day and a "lockdown" that causes millions to become unemployed.

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  • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday April 20 2020, @03:34PM

    by Anonymous Coward on Monday April 20 2020, @03:34PM (#985116)

    Hope there will be no road rage incidents due to the traffic jam.

  • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday April 20 2020, @04:59PM (13 children)

    by Anonymous Coward on Monday April 20 2020, @04:59PM (#985141)

    Or a couple hours of road closures per day and a "lockdown" that causes millions to become unemployed.

    Oh, yeah. There's no intelligent life without employment, the very purpose of intelligence in this Universe is to become employed.

    • (Score: 2) by takyon on Monday April 20 2020, @05:43PM (11 children)

      by takyon (881) <reversethis-{gro ... s} {ta} {noykat}> on Monday April 20 2020, @05:43PM (#985164) Journal

      There's no intelligent life without employment

      https://www.vox.com/2020/4/20/21220931/unemployment-insurance-coronavirus-websites-crashing [vox.com]
      https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2020/04/americas-compassion-for-the-unemployed-wont-last/610243/ [theatlantic.com]
      https://www.thecut.com/2020/04/what-are-some-unemployment-benefits-for-freelancers.html [thecut.com]
      https://www.cnn.com/2020/04/19/politics/unemployed-americans-jobless-benefits-coronavirus/index.html [cnn.com]

      Just bake bread, watch Netflix, and stay the fuck home, guys! When's my next round of Trump/Yang bux?!

      the very purpose of intelligence in this Universe is to become employed.

      The first homeless bum on Mars is going to get their own Wikipedia page. But until then, we can all live like Diogenes RIGHT NOW and it will be glorious. We don't need no stinking robot workers, nuclear fusion, or coronavirus vaccine.

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      • (Score: 2, Informative) by c0lo on Tuesday April 21 2020, @12:37AM (10 children)

        by c0lo (156) Subscriber Badge on Tuesday April 21 2020, @12:37AM (#985289) Journal

        Righto. Currently, an American has one in three chances to survive [worldometers.info].

        Closed Cases: 114,903
        Recovered / Discharged: 72,389 (63%)
        Deaths: 42,514 (37%)

        Total corona cases: 792,759

        US doesn't show any curve flattening - no wonder, doesn't happen by itself - and very will likely run into the problem of exceeding the capacity of the health system everywhere. So, likely, the death ratio will be 1-5 to 1-3 everywhere the infection hits and is not stemmed.

        Don't stem the civid19 infection and you solve the unemployment crisis, with 50-100 million less Americans - that's in the ballpark of WWII causalties [wikipedia.org] except is going to happen in America only.
        If this is not gonna have an impact over economy, I don't know what else will have. I'm not even going to contemplate the number of deaths that will follow after, due to disrupted line of supply for basic needs.

        I hope I'll see you all on the other side.

        --
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        • (Score: 2) by Immerman on Tuesday April 21 2020, @01:08AM (5 children)

          by Immerman (3985) on Tuesday April 21 2020, @01:08AM (#985300)

          >an American has one in three chances to survive

          Nope. I made the same mistake a couple weeks ago, and freaked myself out for a while. Then I realized the problem:

          This disease lingers, which means that someone who is recovered caught the disease several weeks ago. Meanwhile, if it kills you it'll probably do it relatively quickly. You're pulling data from two different points weeks apart on an exponential growth curve. It doesn't really tell you anything useful.

          If you want survival rates, you need to look at a time window where all the patients outcome are known. Can we say that 2 weeks after catching it you're either safe or dead? Then we can look at all the people that caught it at least two weeks ago and find the survival rate from that, with no lopsided counting of all the new cases that will remain uncertain unless dead.

          • (Score: 2) by c0lo on Tuesday April 21 2020, @01:33AM (4 children)

            by c0lo (156) Subscriber Badge on Tuesday April 21 2020, @01:33AM (#985304) Journal

            Offtopic anyway.

            The mortality rate is still computed based on the same set: the total deaths in active cases with known outcome (i.e. mortality in hospitalized cases).
            Whether or not this is representative on long term or for the entire population remains to be seen, indeed.

            --
            https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aoFiw2jMy-0 https://soylentnews.org/~MichaelDavidCrawford
            • (Score: 1, Flamebait) by takyon on Tuesday April 21 2020, @02:33AM (3 children)

              by takyon (881) <reversethis-{gro ... s} {ta} {noykat}> on Tuesday April 21 2020, @02:33AM (#985322) Journal

              Whether or not this is representative on long term or for the entire population remains to be seen, indeed.

              Sorry, c0lo, you won't get to see 50-100 million Americans die from coronavirus like you wanted. If you prey hard enough, maybe you'll see a respectable 5-6 million dead Americans.

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              • (Score: 2) by c0lo on Tuesday April 21 2020, @02:58AM

                by c0lo (156) Subscriber Badge on Tuesday April 21 2020, @02:58AM (#985332) Journal

                Sorry, c0lo, you won't get to see 50-100 million Americans die from coronavirus like you wanted.

                Mate, I think you've taken a step too far in assigning that "wanting" to me.

                --
                https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aoFiw2jMy-0 https://soylentnews.org/~MichaelDavidCrawford
              • (Score: 3, Touché) by Muad'Dave on Tuesday April 21 2020, @11:33AM (1 child)

                by Muad'Dave (1413) on Tuesday April 21 2020, @11:33AM (#985392)

                If you prey hard enough ...

                Now you're expecting him to eat people?

                • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday April 23 2020, @09:43PM

                  by Anonymous Coward on Thursday April 23 2020, @09:43PM (#986217)

                  Obviously not! He's harvesting scalps for toilet paper.

        • (Score: 2) by takyon on Tuesday April 21 2020, @01:09AM

          by takyon (881) <reversethis-{gro ... s} {ta} {noykat}> on Tuesday April 21 2020, @01:09AM (#985301) Journal

          That has nothing to do with the AC minimizing massive sudden unemployment vs. some temporary road closures.

          But the death rate you have come up with is very optimistic (in favor of a viral killing machine). Hint: people can get infected, recover, not be reported, and may not even notice any symptoms.

          'Stealth Transmission' Fuels Fast Spread of Coronavirus Outbreak [columbia.edu]

          “The explosion of COVID-19 cases in China was largely driven by individuals with mild, limited, or no symptoms who went undetected,” says co-author Jeffrey Shaman, PhD, professor of environmental health sciences at Columbia University Mailman School. “Depending on their contagiousness and numbers, undetected cases can expose a far greater portion of the population to virus than would otherwise occur. We find for COVID-19 in China these undetected infected individuals are numerous and contagious. These stealth transmissions will continue to present a major challenge to the containment of this outbreak going forward.”

          --
          [SIG] 10/28/2017: Soylent Upgrade v14 [soylentnews.org]
        • (Score: 1) by khallow on Tuesday April 21 2020, @03:05AM (2 children)

          by khallow (3766) Subscriber Badge on Tuesday April 21 2020, @03:05AM (#985334) Journal

          US doesn't show any curve flattening

          Only if you don't look. For example, the growth in active cases per day and the number of deaths per day has declined over the last couple of weeks.

          • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday April 21 2020, @12:02PM (1 child)

            by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday April 21 2020, @12:02PM (#985394)

            See that upward slope? [worldometers.info] Doesn't look like a flat curve to me.

    • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday April 20 2020, @06:09PM

      by Anonymous Coward on Monday April 20 2020, @06:09PM (#985172)

      Must be why I'm retired, wear a red hat and spout nonsense.