Those of you with kids, they’ll probably grow up in a way of life where Space Tourism is a way of life.

Pretty wild.

Another reason to teach them to be pilots.

What is so surprising?

We already have space station up there.
We ship supplies up there 3-4 times a year,
We shuttle people up and down 4-5 times a year,
Heck, we already ship tourists up and down (Axiom)

all we need is scale.

With Starship cost of launch in 2-3mln/launch range (~800k for propelant and ~2mln for hardware) and capacity to shuttle 100 people/time it comes down to $20-30k/seat. Jumpseats (small crew space on otherwise cargo missions) should be even cheaper.

Exactly my thoughts. I'm expecting they will push to failure on one of the next flights.

I thought it was interesting that on the Starship,
only the 3 center engines of the 33 total engines gimballed,
and on the Saturn V, only the center engine of the 5 gimballed.

There is way more gimballing than just the 3:

https://youtu.be/gY-UbmBpxAo?si=BfgyCfhuczcDFEir&t=20

the middle ring moves as well, the outside ring is stationary.

Wow, thank you for that!
That is so cool.
and they went from hydraulics to electricity for weight.

I still can't get gimballing straight in my mind,
the amount of power required to move a nozzle,
it hurts to even think about it.

Thanks again.

I would think a challenge of all the gimbaling to steer and maintain attitude is probably the risk of overcontrolling. By limiting the number of engines that gimbal they probably have more than enough authority and reduced risk of overcontrol.

Also less complexity and weight. The best part is no part.

The outside engines are never used again except for initial ascent, there is zero need to wast several thousand pounds for the gimballing hardware for engines that don't need that.

If the pivot point is well located the force required to move the nozzle would mostly be due to friction in the actuators. Of course with 280 tons of thrust that friction might be significant.

Great picture.

Do a close up and look at the engines,
inside the thrust chambers (nozzles).
Some of the injector plates look different,
like some are burning differently.

Hmph.


And I'm so used to seeing "tail feathers" on rockets...

I think they all look like a litter of baby Pac-Men, some a bit more ripe than others.

Hmph.

I see that. Some of the dark spots appear to not be aligned with a nozzle. I’m thinking it’s an optical distortion.

You can see the different colors on all the images.
Including in the gimbal test video.
I posted the same question on the curated FB group the other day.
I think the consensus is accumulated run time or slightly different process / material.

Ch4 doesn’t get sooty like RP1 and they run a “pretty high” EGT