Simon Ross

Given that you people are actually paying millions of dollars of your own money for this thing to be in orbit for the last 2 years, maybe you kinda deserve an answer as to what the hell the thing is doing up there ? But hey..It's only your money Simon

Again, it just another level of complexity to the design (and additional weight) if you have to add parachutes to a lifting body. The problem is without them, Dreamchaser really doesn't have a safe abort mode during boost phase. Yep it can glide a bit, but it's cross range ability is pretty limited. At the end of the day you have X amount of energy at a given altitude and velocity, and that is all the ship will have at it's disposal. Getting back to a prepared runway under those circumstance seems a pretty remote prospect. Simon

The single biggest problem for a lifting body design is simply the lack of abort options during the launch phase. If there is ever a malfunction with the booster, effectively a lifting body crew has no choice then to bail out of the craft before it hits the sea...hard ! Simon

While the romantic in me would love to have seen Dreamchaser win one of the spots, the realist in me thinks that NASA made the right choices. Boing were ALWAYS going to be selected, vast experience in providing manned flight systems, a history of technical excellence and not forgetting that all important election coming up :-) So it really just came down to SpaceX and Dreamchaser. Ultimately I think the biggest factor was simply technical risk rather then simple cost. Yes, a lifting body design has some inherent advantages over a ballistic capsule, but it is also a more complex design path. Add to this the fact that SpaceX seem to be much further down the path with Dragon One, it really was a bit of a no brainer. Simon

@Seret Ever manually dug coal ? Simon

In a word...NO With most of the easily obtainable fossil fuels already gone, no way do we come back to even our present level. It's why we are in such a tight corner now ! We have pretty much thrown away 50 years thanks to the anti nuclear Cassandra's. By now, we could have pretty much been TOTALLY independent of fossil fuels for power generation. You know you are in the s**t when even the anti nuclear brigade regard Fracking as a worse option then fission reactors ! Simon

Like many others on this post, my immediate reaction is HOAX ! However... I am increasingly aware that our understanding of the forces that drive the universe are still woefully limited. Even in the last decade or so we have had to accept the theory of dark energy/matter simply to explain the huge gap between the theoretical mass and the actual mass of the universe in which we live. So how would we view a device that tapped into dark energy/matter that could produce a net surplus of energy/useful work. Pretty much the same way we currently view EM I would suspect. Yet the device would not actually break any conservation laws, it would simply use an energy source that we don't currently understand and cannot directly detect. Simon

Honestly, what a pants post !!! The OP starts off a discussion between the relative merits of IOS and Android, and sensibly asks posters not to go into rant mode. The OP then goes into total Apple fanboy mode in direct contravention of his own request to others !!! Way to go pal !

Again folks, be careful how much you read into this. CZ-9 is still a PAPER study, not hardware in development. In reality, it is about at the same stage as the Saturn V was in 1963 or the N1 was in 1966, with a lot less funding or political pressure. Simon

The complexity of a moon landing mission using only the CZ5 is fraught with difficulty, the Delta Ve margins are way too tight and you might as well throw safety out of the window. As you say, it would be more cost effective longer term for the Chinese to develop a true SHLV capability. They do in fact have an ongoing study for a SHLV the Long March 9, but it really is just that, a paper booster. Much as I dislike it, SLS really is the only game in town when we are realistically talking about a lunar programme capable system. Simon

@FCISuperGuy Maybe I am missing something blindingly obvious here, but how does even the heaviest CZ5 configuration (CZ-5-504) give China a credible moon landing capability ? Simon

@Brethern Didn't say they would do it, what I said was they are the only nation that can do it Simon

Simple answer USA No other country is even in the ball park in terms of potential genuine heavy lift capability Simon

Well, actually being 54 this year, I kinda felt middle age for me started around 51ish You can still do all the things you ever did, it just takes longer to recover :-) Simon

Maybe it's just me, but I simply don't see Matt Damon working as Mark Watney. Don't get me wrong, he's a fine actor, but he just doesn't work for me in the part. Personally I would go with someone like Nathan Fillion or Mark Wahlberg as they seem to have the sense of humour needed for the role