Rakaydos

If I recall correctly, the obstructions were estimated to be right in the middle of the F-class star's (brighter than our G class sun) goldilox zone.

the're checking if aliens are shning giant lasers at us to try and communicate. They didnt find any in the information they looked through. (9 hours f observation over 6 years)

You know what the phrase "laying the groundwork" means? This is literal groundwork. From what other posters say, they literally have to drain the swamp before they can build anything, and they have to build it with the weather and seasonal flooding in mind. It is probably the most time connsuming part of the whole endevor, which is why they're starting early.

Also, GSO launch capability is also lunar and interpanetary capability. The MCT is going to need something like 3 launch pads, going my the most recent leaks- One habitat supercapsule and two orbital refueling tankers. Since the MCT plan is supposed to be finalized and publisized this year, starting work on the nessisary super-saturn pads is probably needed.

Then why did you even bring up space colonies? people are completely irrelivant to my point. Goverment funded RLVs are a pork project. Commercial RLVs are a new thing- give them a decade at least.

Just one? lets say Opportunity Rover. Pathfinder was a more traditional frontier outpost, but it's dead now. I'm not saying we send people. I'm saying that cheap, mass transit will allow us to shift from sending Explorers like Pathfinder and Opportunity, to sending miners, builders, crafters to the frontier.

While there were some people in the west before the railroads, the railroads were one of the biggest drivers of westward expansion. Being able to send robotic probes cheaply will result in many more robotic probes. College campuses will pool money to put rovers on the moon, even on mars. People wont come for some time, it's true- but robots are just as much paying passangers as a 19 century pioneer.

SpaceX will design planet specific landers for the same reason railroad companies historically lay new track- more destinations is more customers. by bringing down the price of X tonnes of cargo to Lunar surface, or Y tonnes of lunar material returned to orbit, SpaceX would be enabling entirely new industries, lowering the bar a startup would have to cross to get started.

If the plan is double falcon heavy, double LOR, do you need extra propellant? With a crasher stage, the Dragon 2 can return to lunar orbit with existing propelant. rendevous with a second Dragon2 with booster, fly both capsules back to earth.

Apollo 13 was already off free return (aiming for the landing site) when the accident occurred. they had to burn back onto a free return trajectory (and a faster one) as their first course correction, before shutting down the command module. Mind, instead of having a LEM Lifeboat, you have the return capsule- there's no reduldant life support if an accident on the scale of Apollo 13 happened.

If my understanding of the mission architecture is right, Apollo used a less efficient (but safer) trajectory. Instead of a free return orbit, circularization, landing and rendezvous, this proposal calls for a transfer to lagrange, a fall straight to the moon, and a crash burn to land, followed by a direct ascent.

What would the point be? If pluto had an atmosphere, it would burn up before successfully aerobreaking, and if it didn't, it would be instantly destroyed by the impact.

If SpaceX can get the crasher stage to work right, can DragonLab land in lunar gravity under RCS alone? Ignoring return for now, just as a delivery platform, say for a rover charging base or something, for long term robotic exploration.

Before Dragon V2, Dragonlab would probably be a better testbed for this. It's aready designed to be customizable, to match the customers desired expiriments, so adding extra fuel tanks for earth return shouldn't be an issue. Practice precision lunar landing by visiting a historic Apollo site and take pictures.

Off the Shell exhaust? You said it's impossible, but what does it even mean?

I think it's actually a bit more than 100 tonnes, but it was less than 150 tonnes. But that's for a single cable, you need at least 2 for regular maintinance.

A Thermos is a vacuum- walled cylinder. With some sort of cowling around the engine that maintains a near vaccum around the rocket, where the seal is broken and the cowling dropped/pulled away at, say, T-30 seconds, might help in that regard. Fredino, your quote after the video explicitly calls out the "Next generation Vehical after Falcon" as a "fully reusable Mars Transportation System." He's pretty clearly talking about the MCT, and we already knew the MCT was going to be huge and methane powered..

Where is this supposed methane falcon mentioned?

The problem with a larger diamiter is that the Falcon 9 diamiter is already the exact maximum legally transportable (with a waiver) over interstate freeways. The cost difference between a chartered barge through Panama to get the rocket to florida, and hiring a trucker to go directly is enough to make up for a LOT of delays on the launch end.

Theres a large gap between a mission running on consumables, a mission relying on imported durable goods (imported manufacturing machines) and self sufficency.

Actually, I was talking about turning the hazardus radiation into benificial heat for the terriforming effort. I'm asing about the planetary warming made possible by turning the planet's entire atmosphere into a radiation absorber.

Which is the reason for the argument of 50 km vs 56 km. (1 bar pressure vs room temprature exterior)

Given an artificial atmosphere that perfectly converts ionizing readiation into thermal energy, how much heat would Europa and Ganamede receve from this radiation?

Woud the magnetic field of an active fusion plant be enough to protect a habitat from stellar radiation?

Now, replace the "Decade" in his post with "Century." Makes much more sence, right?