Shpaget

Ahh... the dreaded seven engine approach.

Air breathing engines have vastly superior ISP than rocket engines, so why not use some of that? Turbofan/jet to get up to speed, then ram/scramjet to punch upwards out of the atmo, then your vacuum engine.

To be fair, tape is still number one choice for data archiving. That being said, archiving != usage. That tape is being constantly used. It is amazing that it didn't fall apart from purely mechanical manipulation.

Are the accuracy and precision in stationary situation good enough to consistently hit the target? Can you consider the time of flight negligible? If the projectile takes a fraction of a second to cover the distance and you robot is not moving all that quickly, just ignore the movement, point the shooter in the general direction of your target, spray and pray. Or are you lobbing your projectiles in high and slow arcs?

Just do whatever this book tells you not to. https://www.amazon.com/Avoid-Huge-Ships-John-Trimmer/dp/0870334336

Given the ability, you would opt to squirt high speed jets of hypergolics at your face rather than carry a lighter in your pocket?

How often do you find yourself in need of lighting a fire in everyday life, where such ability would be desirable?

Specifications CREW 2-5 UPMASS up to 2,270 kg DOWNMASS up to 4,540 kg PAYLOAD BAY DIMENSIONS LENGTH 5.2 m WIDTH 3.8 m (fwd) 5.6 m (aft) HEIGHT 2.7 m (fwd) 4.0 m (aft) VOLUME ~93 m3 *SPECIFICATIONS SUBJECT TO CHANGE Yeah, $5 they'll change. Anyway, 90 on demand capability, but "Deliver anything under 2270 kg anywhere on Earth in under an hour".

IPS matrix LCDs have almost 180 ° viewing angle. Is that not enough?

According to Wikipedia article on Alcubierre drive: So, even with the 99% efficient solar panels (max theoretical efficiency is not that high), your Moon sized solar panel is still about one entire galaxy of energy output short of providing enough energy for one ship.

When dealing with fission, neutron management is the name of the game. This is achieved by usage of different materials to absorb, reflect, moderate, propagate etc. the neutron to achieve the desired effect. Also, geometry is a big factor so by properly designing the reactor, and supplying the correct amount of fission fuel, in the correct geometry with correct combination of support materials you can achieve the desired result. In case of NSWR, this specific combination is achieved only for a relatively small amount of fuel/propellant in a specific part of the engine that is designed to withstand these energies.

You're a few orders of magnitude off.

The system where the planet Krikkit is is surrounded by a dust cloud, blocking the view of the Universe. Eventually, the locals figured out spaceflight, found the rest of the Universe and decided that it would have to go. In any case, making general assumptions based on sample size of 1 is not sensible.

For some context, Saturn V and Starship are about 3000 tons. The Nimitz aircraft carrier has two reactors clocking in at about 630 tons each. Securing a 30 ton object is a problem we've solved a long ago.

Why is that a problem? Propulsion system attached directly to the core, in line with propulsion vector. The rest of the ship is built around it, everything is attached to the core, add a bit of cosmetic plating so the core is not "outside".

You have a society capable of making magical drives, but worry about their ability to soundly engineer the floors? Just don't have your core sitting on the floor, but rather the floor sitting on your core. Problem solved.

If you know now that the ship didn't (will not) arrive to the future, you still have backwards time travel of information, which is exactly the same thing as the problem you're avoiding.

Makes you wonder about the point of classifying orbital parameters. If Tomppa can go to their garden and take multiple pictures of you super secret spaceplane, then post the info for all the world to see, imagine the capabilities of those you are actually hiding the info from.

While the end of its life is a loss for scientific comunity, and humanity as awhole, we should keep in mind that the original primary mission was supposed to last only five years. We got 40 years of extra science out of it. In addition to this malfunction, the RTG is also at its last useful decays and very soon will no longer be able to produce enough power to sustain the probe anyway. We should not mourn the loss, but celebrate its life and achievements. Congratulations to the entire team that was involved in design, manufacture and operating it over the decades.

The first group of Alaska Airlines 737s return to service. They expect to finish all the inspections by the end of the week. https://news.alaskaair.com/alaska-airlines/operations/as-1282/

Update on this front! Sierra Space performed a full scale burst test of their inflatable habitat. They achieved 77 psi (5,3 bar), or 27% above NASA's recommended level of 60,8 psi before the module burst, so they are happy with that. The habitat called LIFE 1.0 (Large Integrated Flexible Environment) is cylinder 9 m in diameter, 6 m tall. With the volume of 285 m^3 it is about one third of the volume of ISS. oops, I now realize there is a Sierra Nevada thread, which is actually the parent company of Sierra Space (I always thought those were two separate entities).

From FAA https://www.faa.gov/newsroom/faa-statement-recommending-visual-inspections-boeing-737-900er-mid-exit-door-plugs No words on whether anybody found anything on ERs.

Does this surprise you? Were you expecting something else? Are you confusing yourself by writing out all those decimals? This is equivalent to (4*(pi^2))/(pi^2). Square pies cancel out and you are left with 4. I wouldn't.

Leg extension was a bit out of sync. Another good launch.

Like I said, my stand is not focused just on aerospace but on general concept of self control, including other industries like food production, animal husbandry, utilities etc... One of the regulations over here is that food manufacturers (among others), are allowed to control themselves, with government inspectors taking a back seat. If the manufacturer finds irregularities, they are required to report it to the gov inspectors and then conduct self controls more often for some time. These are not only a burden but may lead to recalls and drop in public approval of whatever the product, resulting in loss of profits for the company. That means that the manufacturer is continuously in conflict of interest and there is always at leas some incentive to neglect the reporting of issues, just kind of fix it and hope the public never finds out. Just because an inspector is not an employee of a company they are inspecting, doesn't mean they are less competent than the in house personnel.