mikegarrison

Their flight plan included a dog leg to avoid flying over some islands (Channel Islands National Park), but they have now diverged from that and appear to be cutting the corner on that dogleg. Climbed to FL300. They flew between the islands instead of around them. They have entered their racetrack pattern. They are at FL300 instead of the planned FL290, but I assume an extra 1000 feet of altitude is, if anything, good.

Well ... flight aware still saying projected 11:40 takeoff, even though it is now 11:56. OK, as I typed that, they changed it to 11:55 scheduled takeoff. "En route". The takeoff may have been delayed by weather. It appears there were some cells near the airport. Their takeoff route was a loop to the north and east, apparently to avoid flying through the weather. They are now at FL275, following the flight path. Now (12:20) crossing the coast and heading out over the water.

Flight was eventually scheduled for 11:40, but no word yet that it has taken off. Flying laps around a "racetrack" is the same thing we do for noise testing, except our racetrack pattern includes simulated landings or takeoffs.

Shuttle launch windows to reach the ISS were anywhere from 2.5 minutes to 10 minutes wide. This depends on how much fuel the vehicle has for trying to change their orbital parameters. None of this "let's wait 30 minutes and see if the winds are better" stuff.

https://flightaware.com/live/flight/N744VG This says 11:50.

They were scheduled to have taken off an hour ago. Do we know if it happened?

I think we seem to be getting away from the original question. It did not seem to be in the context of a telecom sat, but rather a relay to a rover that is far from the Earth. So you would definitely have two different points to aim at -- the rover and the Earth. Probably you have some kind of antenna to point toward the Earth, and likely another antenna that you use to contact the rover. The question was whether they would use two antennas or whether they would use the same antenna but alternately point it between the rover and the Earth. I am fairly confident that they would use two antennas rather than trying to re-acquire both the rover and the Earth over and over. The ill-fated Mars Climate Orbiter was designed to talk to the Earth and also to be a relay for a lander. Here's what Wikipedia says about it: So we see that in this case, there was one antenna designed to talk to the lander, and a separate antenna designed to talk with the Earth.

Yes. She's even referenced by name in the novel, actually, although the protagonist decides to work with a fictional rival instead of the MIT lab.

Mechanical counter-pressure? There is a novel by Steven Gould (the novelist, not Stephen Gould the late paleontologist) called Exo in which the use and development of an MCP spacesuit is a major plot point. (So is teleportation, so it's kind of a science-mixed-with-fantasy genre.)

My assumption is that a real-time relay would need at least one antenna for reception and another for transmission. A spacecraft designed for asynchronous data transmission might be able to use the same antenna for both.

Those suits are so very "Tesla". I prefer the look of the Boeing suits.

This makes no sense at all.

I wasn't actually hoping to be prophetic.

Every source I've seen indicates that the posigrade motors really were only for separation from the booster. I read that, at least when used in the suborbital flights, they only provided about 5 m/s delta-v.

Exactly. I had considered the airlock and MMU issues before I wrote that. The Canadarm was also an important tool for the shuttle when doing work like that.

It's almost like you guys are trying to work out whether a train or a ship is better for bringing cargo to Los Angeles. If the cargo is coming from Denver, then the ship isn't going to help you much, but if it's coming from Tokyo, the train is the one that won't work. Needs differ, and so the parameters of the problem are different. If you just want to bring seven people to the ISS, Dragon or Starliner will be much cheaper than the Shuttle. If you want to send a crew to somewhere else in LEO and have them stay there for while they replace some instruments in a satellite, the Shuttle was your best choice. Saturn V was never used to launch anything other than Apollo and Skylab because there were no other missions that actually made much sense for it.

Sounds like a good idea. The longer such meetings run into the night, the less productive they get.

Apollo 14 did take quite a bit more radiation than the others. Seems like avoiding radiation exposure when reasonably possible is smarter than just ignoring it, even when it's not strictly *necessary* to avoid it.

Does that include consideration of avoiding the high-radiation parts of the Van Allen belts?

Looked like no big deal to me. Wingwalker was right there judging everything. Seems like the pilot stabbed the brakes hard at one point, which is what made the nose dip, but I've certainly done the same trying to back up a car into a tight spot or something.

People in this forum seem to ignore the fact that the Shuttle was basically an entire space station that was launched every time -- often also with a satellite at the same time. Comparing it to the cost of launching a capsule is very misleading, except in the context of saying, "Now that we have the ISS, we don't have to launch the whole station every time."

Welding is "additive manufacturing".

Everyone plays this game differently. Me, I like role-playing. I like to build a science base on Minmus and use that lab science. I put a nuclear power plant out there (Near Future), a lab, an ISRU set-up, a tanker, connect it all with KIS/KAS, and "science the bleep out of it". Minmus is ideal because of the high science potential, the flats, and the low gravity for tanker operations. I do lose some efficiency when launching to other planets, but I don't mind. Tanking from ISRU makes up for that. If I use a life support mod, it makes the base even more complex. But I don't expect other people to play the game the same way.

There are a few other issues. Like, for instance, limited or no toilet facilities. (Of course, Apollo didn't have any either, just a supply of plastic bags.)