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Wjolcz

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Posts posted by Wjolcz

  1. Now this is a thread I want to post in.

    One thing Elite taught me is that having limpets helps a lot. You could probably grab anything from the ship without ever touching, seeing or getting anywhere close to it. Just send a drone, fill up your cargo, worry about contamination later (you could probably scrap the cargo section or the whole ship if treasures were precious enough).

    When it comes to the crew, even on the ISS you could end up with some nasty bacteria, fungi or viruses (especially if the journey is long). Although the smaller the crew the less likely it is to happen. If you ever happen to encounter a ship like that the crew are either all dead or they beat the disease long time ago.

  2. 2 hours ago, Scotius said:

    It could be, if Starship was carried by a interplanetary mothership as a cargo\crew shuttle.

    Gateway Foundation wants to build O'Neill cylinders and do just that. I don't think they will though. I also think I will be very old when I see the first one.

  3. 1 hour ago, tater said:

    STR_7.jpg

    STR_5.jpg

    Is it really better to launch without stowing the flaps? Seems like they could minimize the aerodynamic load by keeping them close to the hull.

    I guess one reason not to do that would be because stowed aero surfaces can induce torque, so it's better to keep the whole thing symmetrical. Kind of how front ailerons canards can make a plane pitch up.

  4. 6 minutes ago, sevenperforce said:

    With all the buzz about Dragon 2, looking again at Dragon XL.

    NSF-2020-03-27-18-54-00-196.jpg

    Getting to NRHO at 300 s isp means it needs to be 18% props. FH's side-core-reuse throw to TLI is what, 18 tonnes? I am surprised it only delivers 5 tonnes of cargo.

    Why would it need to deliver more? The crew of whatever is put in the lunar orbit probably won't be any bigger than the one on ISS.

  5. What really boggles my mind is how can there by anyone still defending this rocket.

    I remember a couple of years back when I thought SLS was needed for one mission and that was the Europa Clipper. However, newer and cheaper ways to launch payloads are coming along and SLS starts looking like a rocket designed and built 40 years too late.

  6. I've been "playing" Duolingo for almost 300 days non stop now. I love this app. Once I finish all the Chinese lessons I will probably learn some other language.

    中文不难!

  7. 11 hours ago, sh1pman said:

    What kind of fly rate will they need to have to drop the cost to $1.5M/flight? It sure sounds great but where to find so many payloads?  

    By sheer statistics: if you have have 100 people on Earth and only 1% wants and can afford to go to space and/or build something up there then that's one person. If you have 8 billion people on Earth and only a fraction of the 1% who can afford that wants to do it, then... that's more than one person.

    If you can build it cheaply enough, they will come. If you can build it cheaply enough for almost everybody to use it then there's a good chance almost everybody will use it.

    And there are plenty of military projects that can be done with this. And those camo guys seem to happily throw money at almost everything, even if it's hypothetical pseudo science.

  8. 1 hour ago, CatastrophicFailure said:

    Better yet, go full wet-workshop: vent the tanks, cut some holes, and now you’ve got a good sized garage for your rover, too. :cool: Could even return the Raptors for reuse.

    Was thinking about this too. The only issue I see with this is they would need some sort of tipping mechanism. I wouldn't do that with engines. Instead, they could use a steel wire crane-like design. Would require some beams and welding but it's probably doable.

    D-model-of-an-ancient-Greek-crane-by-MSc

    Pretty sure we've discussed it already. Don't know if it was in this thread or not.

  9. 1 hour ago, Space Nerd said:

    So, I'll say both purple, indigo , and red plants are plausible, is that correct?

    Going with black is the safest bet. Reflecting red is probably a bad idea since these plants would want to absord as much light as possible. If red is bounced off then that leaves IR and maybe UV. IR is less energetic than red.

    Although, maybe by absorbing infrared these plants could get hot and 'boil' some special absorbent to get energy. I don't know what kind of absorbent would be needed though.

    One thing I know however is that siamese cats have a special protein which is supposed to produce melanin but because their bodies get too hot (for that special protein) it unfolds and never makes any melanin. That's why they are mostly white. So perhaps plants could figure out something similar but with sugars?

  10. So if they load the propellant will they also do the static fire, or fully load, unload, load again and then static fire?

    They need to fully load it anyway, but if something goes horribly wrong when it's fully loaded and firing then it will be a massive fireball. So probably do the static fire with as little prop as possible.

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