ThatGuyWithALongUsername

That's a bit excessive. For shorter journeys, people are fine, and for longer journeys we can use a centrifuge as @Bill Philpointed out. There's so many other health problems with zero g to begin with anyway, this doesn't really change much. No need to cut off all space travel, that's just completely ridiculous.

Doesn't look like it... as for me, I live in the same timezone as given, so that's not happening.

The, uh, telemetry seemed a bit off... lol. I liked how the RCS manuevers somehow also translated to puffs of the first stage engines, not to mention the whole imitation SSTO thingy going on there.

At first I was kind of torn, but you all are totally right about the lack of Mandarin names, or really any Asian names at all, so I'm going with Gonggong as well.@Hypercosmicmakes a good point about Eris, too. And yeah, 2002 MS4 had better be next. We don't want any unnamed dwarf planets around here!

Yeah, the normal matter isn't the tricky part though... at current rates of antimatter production, if we just smashed atoms 24/7, it would take 1000 years to make 1 nanogram of antihydrogen... forget about anything measured in kilograms, or regular grams for that matter... We would need something a bit more specialized, which I'm sure is possible, but would take a LOT of effort- and a lot of energy, as in actual energy, we'd need fusion first- and I can't see such a system take shape bgefore 2050. After such a system is developed... I'd give it 10-25 years for our first interstellar antimatter rocket to launch. Makes a convenient onboard power source, too, while you're at it.

You kinda answered your own question... Super Heavy could do it, AND will make FH completely redundant. In fact, they probably WILL do that with SH- but if their P2P plans are still around, the launch site won't always be on land.

Well, it WOULD explain the strange barge behavior that we saw earlier, possibly including the "destination: CLASSIFIED" thing. UPDATE: OFFICIAL CONFIRMATION in this Verge article: https://www.theverge.com/2019/4/15/18311945/spacex-falcon-heavy-center-core-drone-ship-rough-ocean

I think they did offer it as a commercial launcher, but it isn't popular. At $85M, there are more capable options that cost less- most notably the Falcon 9. Launching from Wallops limits the inclination, too, which doesn't help. From what I've heard, NG will take any chance they can get to completely discontinue the rocket and launch Cygnus on the Atlas V. I kinda hope this thing lasts another few launches, though, because I live within a day's round-trip drive of Wallops and I haven't been able to see it launch yet. This is why I kinda hope Wednesday's launch is delayed...

That is official, but not a name. It's more of a designation.

He COULD mean regular wings, but I don't see why he would, that wouldn't work very well on Mars. Someone had to suggest it though.

I have the feeling that this is just Game of Thrones related... but then again, knowing Elon... who knows.

Yes. The answer is yes. (Whether or not it will LAUNCH is, well, still up for grabs.)

I kno this is an old thread AND this post is a repost, but this was @Lisias's idea, so don't blame me. (Orignally posted here) I, uh, sacrificed Valentina for cash. So, I have a fairly new modded career game with Kerbalism installed. First time playing in a WHILE, by the way. Oh... and I have quicksaves and reverts disabled. I have two contracts active, one to stay in orbit for 30 days and one to escape Kerbin (to be more specific, flyby Sonnah, since I'm playing with New Horizons, which, yes, still works with LinuxGuruGamer's changes in 1.6.1). I THINK this thing has enough Oxygen to last 30 days... I did basically a ground test of it and it said I had plenty of Oxygen, despite the VAB planner thing saying I had 4 days. For some reason, the idea that it might be considering Kerbin's atmosphere never seemed to cross my mind... and I launched the mission. I timewarped about 4 days until I was so rudely interrupted by a low oxygen warning. Now, of course... I COULD deorbit, but... uh... you see... I kinda spent too much developing this launcher. I mean, you can't just install all these mods and *not* try all the parts! I didn't add up the delta V stuff either, so the first couple of tries didn't actually make orbit... sure, could've stuck with the first design I used to reach orbit, but why not make it better? So... if I had Val land safely, it was all over for the space program. I couldn't complete any contracts, I couldn't even do much science... however, there was ONE bonus to my bad planning... I had *some* extra dV. So, I just... uh... kinda hit Z. Val became the first Kerbal to escape Kerbin's SOI, satisfying the other contract and saving the program... and sealing her fate. Without tracking station upgrades, I couldn't tell how long to burn, and I actually burn way more than I needed too... maybe if I knew I could have fuel left and head back. Oh well. Too late now...

Thanks for the link, I had forgotten about that one... definitely posting this there now!

Sounds like an amazing direct imaging candidate to me, along with Barnard's star b. Really quite cool, especially as this is he closest star system to us and thus probably the first system we will explore if / when we figure out a good way to get there. I would bet there's something to fill the gap, we just don't know about it. also a good reminder that it's likely that practically all stars have multiple planets, even if we don't know about them. I really, really can't wait for the day that we'll know more about these solar systems than the existence and radius of one or two of their planets, with large margins of error. If there's anything our own solar system can teach us about these, it's that these planets are all going to be surprisingly unique and all of them interesting in their own right, habitable or not. (No, I do NOT promise I won't repeat this rant with every other exoplanet discovery.) Oh, and with that flung out orbit and high mass, this thing could have nice moons, too.

I, uh, sacrificed Valentina for cash. So, I have a fairly new modded career game with Kerbalism installed. First time playing in a WHILE, by the way. Oh... and I have quicksaves and reverts disabled. I have two contracts active, one to stay in orbit for 30 days and one to escape Kerbin (to be more specific, flyby Sonnah, since I'm playing with New Horizons, which, yes, still works with LinuxGuruGamer's changes in 1.6.1). I THINK this thing has enough Oxygen to last 30 days... I did basically a ground test of it and it said I had plenty of Oxygen, despite the VAB planner thing saying I had 4 days. For some reason, the idea that it might be considering Kerbin's atmosphere never seemed to cross my mind... and I launched the mission. I timewarped about 4 days until I was so rudely interrupted by a low oxygen warning. Now, of course... I COULD deorbit, but... uh... you see... I kinda spent too much developing this launcher. I mean, you can't just install all these mods and *not* try all the parts! I didn't add up the delta V stuff either, so the first couple of tries didn't actually make orbit... sure, could've stuck with the first design I used to reach orbit, but why not make it better? So... if I had Val land safely, it was all over for the space program. I couldn't complete any contracts, I couldn't even do much science... however, there was ONE bonus to my bad planning... I had *some* extra dV. So, I just... uh... kinda hit Z. Val became the first Kerbal to escape Kerbin's SOI, satisfying the other contract and saving the program... and sealing her fate. Without tracking station upgrades, I couldn't tell how long to burn, and I actually burn way more than I needed too... maybe if I knew I could have fuel left and head back. Oh well. Too late now...

Far Future Technologies (in development NFT expansion) has it too.

Hey, at least their landing wasn't foiled by accidentally hitting spacebar... and then reloading a quicksave only to find that they hadn't quicksaved since an earlier attempt they knew couldn't make it... yeah.

The trick is, of course, actually making the stuff. Sure, there are other problems too, like storage, shielding at relativistic speeds, etc., but first and foremost we've only ever made a few hundred proper atoms of this stuff, much less hundreds of kilograms of fuel. Storage might be tricky, and the risk would certainly be too great to launch this stuff from Earth, so it would probably have to be manufactured in space. ...Overall, it's perhaps the best we've actually "got" (as in, the best technology we know should be possible) for interstellar travel, but it's still quite a ways away... I don't think 2050 is a good estimate, though. Taking this a bit further, to get the right amount of antimatter for one ship, we'd need a dedicated particle accelerator in orbit, perhaps with several rings (particle accelerators aren't designed for mass production- discovering a better way to make this stuff would be really helpful here), blasting way 24/7 with the assistance of some humongous power source of some kind (antimatter would also help this problem, but of course you wouldn't have antimatter to start with, so you'd need a more "conventional" fusion reactor). In order to build that in the first place, we'd need a thriving space economy that can actually transport the materials and giant particle accelerator segments around- that we *might* be close to having in 2050. Once you have antimatter spaceships, interstellar travel should be completely plausible and we would even be able to, I don't know, maybe land on something or at leas slow down instead of flying by at relativistic speeds like Breakthrough Starshot would be doing. But, of course... all of this is a long ways off. Man, all of this is reminding me how it would really suck if FTL travel isn't possible somehow. Antimatter would be just about the best there could be, and while it would undoubtedly allow us to finally explore the stars more literally, it wouldn't allow us to ever make that any kind of regular thing, or stray too far from our stellar neighborhood. I mean, I'm sure there's plenty of interesting targets within 20 light years of us, but what about 10,000 light years away? What about other galaxies? And, most pressing among the individual scientific questions to arise here, is 20 light years enough to find another intelligent civilization? That's enough random futurism for today.

I think they have stopped producing them.

Well, we don't technically know that (especially with the P2P launches, if that's still on the table), but yeah, probably more often than not at the very least. I'm afraid I can't agree with @Geonovast here... when it flies, Starship will be the de facto coolest rocket ever in my mind. Just look at a Falcon 9... and make it a lot bigger... and add more powerful engines... oh, and MAKE IT GO TO MARS. Yeah, can't go wrong with that. I WILL miss the dual booster FH landings, though... like what we just witnessed a bit over an hour ago!

I'm late, but... aw yeah, that was awesome!

Pretty sure this is the first time that I know of where NASA is seriously considering Starship. Hardly see it even mentioned anywhere else. Hmm... Also, if this is official, than this is our first look at the updated cargo version, even including some nice detail on the inside.

Aww dangit