B787_300

YOu are correct. The flow needs to be expanded but the benefit of an aerospike is that the air is one of the "walls" of the nozzle. the other is the spike itself.

@Darnok and @p1t1o, and others, Please keep it on the topic of Metric / Imperial. If you would like to discuss what science is please make your own thread.

I would like to point out that the burning of fuels when not in a combustion chamber is non optimal. The reason rockets have combustion chambers is so that all the reactants can react. They have to be a certain length based off the chemical reactions L* value and increasing the temperature and pressure in the combustion chamber increase the rate of reaction. If you are trying to burn them outside it will be much harder to control. Also you will have a LOT of unburned propellants in the design that you are proposing. and Hydrazine is not something you want to let escape unburned.

Please keep it on the topic of Metric/Imperial As an engineering student Metric is much much easier to use and makes more sense because everything is interrelated and the unit conversions are just factors of 10. I feel that I am a bit behind because when someone says 20 m/s i dont have an idea of oh that is a standard road speed of about 45 mph.

as he said in his post that was at the beginning of the site and for using the word Kerbal. That was then dropped as far as i know and no further legal action was taken.

I did and it is not SQUADs fault that the site was shut down. The owner just got burned out and the costs started going up. SQUAD had nothing to do with it.

The http://kerbal.curseforge.com/ is the one with no ads.

No it was not. I never hated it. Disliked it because of ads sure, but that is what an adblocker is for. Once again adblockers if you dont like the ads. And it wont die unless SQUAD decides to do it because of things like contracts.

Locked at request of Owner

do you know about when the video was posted? Because I am 99% sure that it is not currently implemented on Centaur.

@fredinno I would like to point out that the article you linked was from 2012 and nothing has come of it yet. At this point they will probably only put IVF on the Centaurs AFTER Vulcan is in production.

Source on that? Because I have seen that no where.

Yes I was. Nothing in the Upper stages of the current Atlas or Delta is very new. Also Regarding the RS68 RD180, The RD 180 is a RUSSIAN engine that is then brought to the US and used. The RS 68 is a totally American Designed and built engine. As to why ULA did not bid with the Delta IV for the most recent contract is because the Delta IV is so much more expensive than the Atlas V and more expensive than the Falcon 9 and the way the contract was worded lowest price had a HUGE advantage over older and more reliable launchers.

No, most upper stages use Helium as a Pressurant and Helium likes to escape. It is a "breakthrough" as in no one has done it before, but they are still pressurizing with other gasses and using essentially a IC engine to power the upper stage and do the pressurizing. Also ULA is not going to go away anytime soon. While they will lose some business and maybe lose their 800 Million subsidy they will survive.

No Planet 9 is not named yet. It is official that pluto is not a planet (it is however a Dwarf Planet). I personally wish it wasnt demoted but then we would have had to promote other Dwarf planets like Ceres, Vesta, Sedna, etc to being planets.

in all honesty there is really no need for a space suit. As has been said before any hole that is really big enough to cause issues mean you are getting sucked into space and the station or hab is now a vacuum. a small patch kit is much more likely and useful to have on you at all times. In the Case of the ISS most of the wall space that could be punctured is pretty thick and is designed with 2 layers. and then has other stuff in front of it

In space flight existence does not create demand. I mean the Russians had Energia and they launched that monster rocket twice. FH has the benefit of it is useful because it can take some of the DIVH business and do more massive things. (although the FH fairing is undersized)

hey everyone... Friendly mod here and a level 2 certified rocketeer. I merged this thread with an older thread so that the knowledge and posts dont get lost. Enjoy and dont hesitate to ask questions

First off the planet has to be confirmed. Right now all that says it is there is some really fancy math that looks at the orbits of other bodies and looks at historic disturbances. Right now this paper is nothing more than a possibility on paper (although it is a good possibility (3.8 sigma IIRC)) Once the planet get confirmed then the IAU would have to meet to determine if Planet 9 sufficiently cleared its orbit. If if did and the IAU decides to name it then this discussion should happen. Historically the planets are named after Greco-Roman Gods. Depending on if this planet was flung out or was a rogue that was captured they might or might not follow the convention. If it was flung out then I would bet we would have a planet named something like Janus, Vulcan, or Quirinus. If it is a captured planet then the naming might get more interesting with other mythologies (norse would be my bet) getting thrown into the mix. No matter what name they choose it will likely not be chosen by popular vote and will have a LONG history (as in Hundreds of years). While it would be interesting to call the planet Eeloo, it would simply not happen.

Honnestly the easiest way would be to treat the rocket as a point mass and then use the basic kinematic equations. if you want something more precise that takes into account parachutes wind speed and direction then you would want to use a program like rocksim (more accurate, but costs $$) or openRocket (free, not as good)

the static fire will probably not be next week. I would bet the static fire would be like the week of the 11th or later as I dont think that 39A is ready yet.

hopefully it is like wash off (soot is decently easy to remove especially on a smooth surface), test, refuel, relaunch.

The second stage was relight because the next mission SES 9 requires it. Also it is cool

Actually no Kryten is right in this one. This mission is at or below the profit line for SpaceX. Also Orbcomm has little say in when they get to launch. They chose to move their payloads from F1 to F9 and as long as SpaceX places them in the right orbit they dont really care when it gets launched. And also if they expeceted these sats to be launched years ago why didnt they have the sats built? They were just finished like 3 months ago.

No in the Omnibus Spending Bill the RD180 restriction is lifted.