Elrond Cupboard

It's most likely tidally locked around a flare star. What was wrong with mars, at this point?

I'm 56, the only way I'm going to see it involves biology, not physics.

Thing is though, orbital vs sub-orbital looks like an either or; what DO you call a flight, it's under propulsion, so definitely a "flight", that isn't orbital and doesn't pass the Karman line?

All of its flights were sub-orbital. I'll grant you it never climbed above the Karman line though.

If it's hot enough (or cold enough) anything will be an issue. Not really comparable.

Dinitrogen tetroxide is fun, sort of goes with hydrazine too, Doesn't cause horrible burns if I get it on my skin, though.

The thread title reminded me of https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Surface_Tension_(short_story). A great yarn, easy enough to find as a PDF on the net.

Strangely fitting, given Osiris Rex.

Yup, same reason the moon appears to be upside down.

That mission was such a total disaster that it was miraculous he lived long enough to be killed by chute failure, but yes, sort of... Actually "miraculous" is unfair, the poor [redacted very minor expletive] was a damned fine pilot who managed to get out of everything recoverable, but short of repacking his own chutes, in flight, he was screwed.

If we wish to discuss this, we should probably read Popper's "The logic of scientific discovery." Which is the seminal work in the area. It's easily found in PDF, but, although out of copyright in most sane countries, it still labours under copyright law in the U.S.; I have a link here, but I can't post it. annoying.

Given what an unforgiving target Mars can be, that's kind of good; maybe four will make it.

I could speculate pointlessly, but frankly there are only a fairly small number of entities that I could give a damn about, and all of us will be dead, so... To date smart humans have tended to be herded by dumb humans; I have no reason to believe that will change, at least in any timescale that I can imagine.

That's getting horribly close to positing a preferred frame of reference.

Is the LOX at the top or the bottom?, Black wouldn't be good for boil-off.

They're getting the hang of it now, there'll be more, then it'll be commonplace, then you'll be calling them out when it fails.

It's a lolcat, isn't it? Be honest now...

Pi is irrational. It cannot be expressed as a ratio of integers. It is also transcendental, and thus would make a pretty poor choice of numeric base. However, with the proviso that the 0.5s in the original diagram are out of place base Pi makes the scheme complete, if pointless.

To be fair, the 0.5s don't work in base Pi. 0.5 is only a half in base 10.

They work if your base is Pi.

When we have a form of electricity storage with a better energy density than cordite.

Yup, if you need to deliver a significant amount of energy cheaply and efficiently, hot lead (or depleted uranium) travelling supersonically is a pretty good method.

Well, you might need some serious thermal underwear.

Being a computer programmer I work in base 16 a lot of the time, you get used to it.