[Updated pinned/intro post] I'm Mack Crawford, a 3d artist bringing the past, present, and future of spaceflight to life. I hope my work inspires someone out there

@ZanxorT @KenKirtland17 I have heard some claims that the Polyus failure was intentional, as internal Soviet politics made it impossible to cancel but a successful launch was seen as too provocative. Not much evidence, but it's a fun idea

@tarabomp Some schools already cover this era in history classes, though usually not super in depth

@cyberprince_rwo @Peter_J_Beck @RocketLab It's a cool company, but "just give them tens of billions of dollars to fill every role of an entire industry" is not how anything works.

@cyanoacry @funmaxxing_ @Orbital_Perigee "Low risk" is not 0. Debris can come down anywhere along the flightpath of a rocket, and you can't guarantee that all failures will occur in the bounds you want them to. This is not a solvable problem, unless you want a 24000 mile long exclusion zone

@peterrhague @deltaIV9250 With those solved, the next limiter is probably just stacking time. SLS takes several months to be stacked and they don't have facilities to do it in parallel. Would need to reactivate more of the VAB that's been mothballed or turned over to other users

@BellikOzan How do you put a wide fairing on that? And if you're not going to, then you don't need so much mass capacity anyway Just do the Sidemount HLV with reusable pod. Cheaper and more volume than this

@space_jm_ @gomeaf314 An abort during booster stage flight on a rocket with large SRBs is probably not survivable. The capsule ends up having chunks of burning aluminium/rubber raining down on it while its still under parachute And an abort system *worsens* safety on a high-flightrate vehicle

@RMcreeferson @Rainmaker1973 The SLS rocket, combined with the mobile launch platform it sits on, weighs nearly 8000 tons. The Crawler Transporter (which itself weighs 2700 tons unloaded) places this whole stack on the pad with a precision of about 3 millimeters in any direction 20 tons is *nothing*

@space_jm_ @gomeaf314 It's going to get someone killed.

@NASA8500 NASAs budget has been basically constant for decades, even with huge programs like Shuttle, ISS, Constellation, JWST, Artemis starting/stopping. They'll find something to fund

@h3xenbrenner2 "Why didn't the Fellowship just ride the Eagles to Mordor?" The Eagles:

@ChiefScientist @bscholl @NSheryka Its only got 1 seat, and can't fly without a pilot Also, for tourists, you can already rent out a surplus fighter jet and (in a handful of locations) go supersonic. A supersonic MiG-21 flight in South Africa is only $10k

@KenKirtland17 @deltaIV9250 Plus, SLS is already (both architecturally and programmatically) a ludicrously unsafe vehicle. Huge solid boosters (I have zero confidence in a boost-stage abort), a flightrate so low that the people building it will *never* be highly experienced, major upgrades on every flight

@NoLifeJordan69 Oh wow I thought this was KSP at first, its a real company And its got an aerospike

@NoLifeJordan69 (I think the reason I went with radial tanks was so they could drop off in pairs as they were depleted though. So more like the early drop-tank Angara concepts than Proton)