Rakaydos

can horseflies hover? Bees at least can conceve of motion in a single direction without regard to gravitational arcing. they just need to redefine "foward"

Hard enough for something like this, I guess: http://snap-titeqd.com/products/chemical_couplings/k_series/index.html

Cryogenics are a known difficulty with the process, yes. But unlike zero G, we can test cryo docking fittings in vaccum here on earth, which makes it cheap to iterate.

"Sort by relevant doctorates and experience in field."

Clarification... No data or file transfer, into, or out of, the Caveman file, on any difficulty that disallows saving.

Note that sleep isnt a power requirement restriction, it's a maintenance and garbage cleanup operation. "Safe shutdown", memory processing and filing, and automatic reboot.

Post industrialization climate change, mass media induced factionalization, and controlling the atom, seems like a nasty triple threat that we are not entirely past ourselves, and the nature of the three means that most civilizations will have to deal with multiples at once, prior to expanding beyond their ability to wipe themselves out.

Once again, Kerbiloid thinks throwing tangentially relevant mathematical formula is an argument in his favor, without actually understanding what he's writing.

though, at space combat ranges, the fine aim is more important that the gross turn speed. we're talking fractions of an arcsecond to accurately hit, not degrees per second to track.

A fossil fuel is one you dig out of the ground. A green fuel is one that does not contribute to climate change. So nuclear is fossil, but also green, because the waste, while diifcult to deal with, at least doesnt turn into CO2. Coal and oil, being as they are putting hundreds of years of CO2 sequestration into the air every day, are very much not green, BECAUSE they are fossil fuels.

...and now we're evolving into space-fighter dogfighting. Missiles shooting at other missiles to keep them from shooting at the motherships. But in a passing engagement at nearlight velocities. Which is rather my point. There's a reason modern navies dont field Battleships anymore, it's all about Carriers, and support ships to protect the carriers (Though, instead of taking advantage if the difference between water transportation and air transportation, it's taking advantage of not having to keep humans un-pancaked)

Wont matter if multiple missiles are firing in a volley at the ship. Anything the ship can so, the missile volley can do better... once.

A missile doesnt have to power it continuously. All it needs is a few good shots, inside the killzone of the weapon. Notably, since a missile can be designed to handle higher gs than a crewed ship, and is physically smaller, the range at which a ship can reliably hit an evading missile is SMALLER than the range a missile can reliably hit an evading ship. That gives the missiles an advantage in engagement envelope.

All weapons that fast do is redefine "long range." Past the point where a torch drive CAN dodge your nearlight pellet, a missile (or dronefighter) will be able to follow the enemy maneuvers, enter the killzone, and make it's own attack. Notably, as point defense gets batter, missiles need more standoff range. If ship-style weapons are more effective, then the missile becomes a disposable fighterdrone, with it's own ship style weapon with the same killzone as ship weapons, but still fundamentally a missile, trading mission endurance for evasion and power, fired in the hopes of damaging the enemy before it's destroyed or runs out of power.

Fundamentally, guided munitions will always have a higher effective range than unguided munitions. An active sensor pulse to detect "dark" projectiles doesnt depend on the enemy temperature, but is reliant on the resolution of your detector.

...it literally is.

RTGs are fission, technically. it takes a refined nuclear material and lets it just sit there, glowing, and turn "natural" radioactivity into heat, and then into power. But that's still fission.

Approxmately ten percent of what? Vomiting math terms on screen doesnt defend your position.

That's what I said. H has to actually go down, not just go up slower than D.

Not proportionately shorter, ACTUALLY shorter. The booster was always planned to have the load path from the outer ring of engines go straight up into the the structure of the tank, rather than rely on the puck to distribute the forces. This means that the engines were always going to stick out. This was never a flaw. Aeroshells are simple. The "engine melting" is not a problem of clustering. Regenerative cooling means that the outside of the engines is downright frosty while in operation. It's a problem of the INSIDE of the engine not being evenly heated, so despite being evenly cooled, some copper starts boiling off before the theroetical maximum performance (just shy of "the entire copper lining boils at once") is reached. Also, the date on your article is 2 years old. Not news.

Not if you cant afford to build 2 before the guy in charge retires. Reusables at least get more capability over their lifespan. Build the same number as you would build expendables, you get the same benifits, but also get to fly an order of magnitude more.

Over twice the mass of mars, 5 times the mass of mercury.

"I mean, it's a fluid transfer, y'know?

Bell nozzles are about turning a point pressure (at the throat) into a directional flow. The more of the flow interacts with the bell, the better, so it's a very DEEP parabola. A parabolic antenna, on the other hand, is just a lense, taking a directional signal and focusing it at the focal point. a shallow chord of the parabola is both sufficent, and lighter, even allowing for the stick to put your sensor (or transmitter) at the focal point.

8 hours until we get the latest official numbers.