Agent86

I was wondering if there was such a thing as an android app that will alert you when a spacelaunch of a some type is coming up? Maybe something that prompts you a hour prior, and tells you what, when, why and where, and maybe links to a livestream if one is available?

They used like, two whole rolls of duct tape, so it's practically good as new.

A face mask to keep your eyes from bleeding and to keep your lungs pressurized, and a booth which sprays your naked body with a rapid-setting, oxygen infused foam which sets to a thick, flexible consistency to insulate and augment your skin tension, which reacts to low pressure by forming a very tough outer skin, while the inner layer remains gooey and permits the oxygen within it to migrate around and interact with your mask in a way to give you extra oxygen. Any breaches due to cutting or impact would self-heal like one of those self-patching bicycle tires as soon as it met vacuum. One size fits most, and no bulky life support tanks. Its basically a booth that turns you into the Michelin man.

Can the unmanned progress modules be fully docked remotely, without any assistance from crew on station?

I just hope they don't find out about the reptilians living inside the moon. They would have a field day.

If there were an impending threat to the ISS, and the station needed to be abandoned, but was not physically damaged in any way, how long could it be maintained in a livable condition for using teleoperation from the ground? Can its orbit be adjusted remotely to prevent orbital decay and eventual reentry? If this was indefinite, how long could it run with zero crew providing maintenance and repairs? Could it reach a state at which some combination of factors left it in orbit, but ultimately unlivable due to conditions onboard, such as a wholly failed life support system or toxic/corrosive interior atmosphere?

I had an idea for an opposite-shuttle, where the shuttle is ditched on ascent, and the payload continues on to ascent. Purpose being, the shuttle barely touches space, then glides back down to the runway to land and be re-used, while the main stage continues on to orbit. The key to the design is that it maintains symmetry in all three modes: Lifter, shuttle, and mainstage. Each mode has at least two-way symmetry. Changing the loadout on the mainstage can easily be compensated for by adjusting the thrust limiter on launch. At launch, the thrust limits are heavily skewed. As the shuttle loses mass, the thrust of the mainstage is adjusted to compensate. Engine cutoff occurs just before the shuttle tanks are emptied, leaving a little in reserve in case a push is needed to complete a large cross-range glide back to the runway. Landing involves two steps: 1. Falling. 2. Hitting the deck as softly as possible. I haven't include the .craft file, since the design is very easy to replicate.

This shuttle I built has but one booster and no off centered engines. Two large cargo bays and space for 16 passengers allows me to bring whatever I need to fulfill most orbital station/ground base contracts. Pitch on ascent is controlled by throttling the engine on the booster.

There is a very loud bang at T -30 seconds. Does anyone know what this is?

Team Google.

That was loud as balls.

I cannae do it cap'n! I just don't have the power!

Does anyone know how far from the launch site is the barge positioned?

Which is more important to you when designing a mission? Are you happy with an ugly pancake lifter, so long as it gets the job done as efficiently as possible, or do you sacrifice delta-V, part counts and usability for a sleek, visually appealing vehicle? Personally, I prefer to build a craft that looks great, no matter how inefficient it is, by using lots of unnecessary parts to create shapes that differ from the shape of typical stock parts, but I keep mods to the bare minimum.

I'd say a transonic U boat or UUV would have a fairly complex method of maintaining a supercavitation bubble, and that system would likely be dependent on a constant density of the water it's moving through. Just like low pressure, high pressure, or shear winds can create turbulent forces on an airplane, the same forces would affect the underwater vehicle. The difference is that if an aircraft drops ten feet due to a wind shear, it's still in the air. If a transonic U-boat drops even a few inches, it would come into contact with the water, and disrupt its trajectory, possibly even stop it. You could probably adapt a CIWS like those currently in use to shoot down anti-ship missiles with bullets made of compressed lead powder which would disperse upon impact with the water, and with a high enough rate of fire, CIWS could be made to target an area that the submarine is calculated to pass through, dumping hundreds of kilograms of lead powder into the path of the torpedo and increasing the density of the water, collapsing the bubble when the submarine passes through it, and hopefully crushing it, or slowing it down long enough to take it out using conventional weapons.