Rakaydos

More like 10 dimention string theory. Gravatons are a closed loop and not bound to the skein, and so can actually jump between manifolds. In theory, Dark matter could potentially be real matter in a nearby universe, that cant interact with out own except with gravity.

There is one overwelming pro to developing a self-sustaining presence on another world- making it significantly harder to kill off the human species.

Point of order- there are entire threads on this forum about how to manage a venus habitat and mine the atmosphere for materials to steadilly expand the habitat, without ever touching the hellish surface. side effect would be to reduce the atmospheric pressure, which is a bonus for long term terraforming. Still no -reason- to go, but we could go there and stay if we wanted to.

Magnets... how do they work?

There are only 4 rocky bodies it is possible to do a parachute landing on. All other bodies REQUIRE powered landings.

Supposedly a company wants to make a kevlar lunar space elevator in 2020... so that might be possible by 2030.

Kr-2l "Liberty Bell" Just need to model a crack into it.

I envision a cycler "ship" as something closer to a Gundam Space Colony- huge, built out of an asteroid that was shifter into a cycler orbit. So you launch a small capsule into a cycler intercept, dock, and spend the next few months as tourists looking around the Cycler. before getting back onboard your (refueled) capsule and getting off at the next planet.

...that's not exactly a fair comparison- most of the ISS was put up with the Space Shuttle, which was pretty much the most expensive means of getting cargo into space that was ever used. You could launch all three Falcon Heavy launhes for the price of it's theoretical competition, the SLS.

My eve lander is having problems with the parachute-spars shearing off the decouplers during reentry testing. (been testing at kerbin to save time.) Which decouplers best resist aerodynamic failures from a lateral shear force?

Does that mean the Aerospike, nasa 4x, and LFB are naturally lower drag than their attach-point-allowed relatives?

What would you consider the "endgame" of space infrastructure, given our current understanding of physics? If space exploitation became a global priority, what would you like to see in our skys?

Spaceplane parts and stock cargo bays. Shouldnt you be saving bill now that you know how to fly?

Piloting for non-pilot kerbals! 1) point to the maneuver node manualy. 2) spin really fast 3) turn on engines 4) hold on tight! Its called spin stabilization, and it makes real life rocketry so much easier. I cant help you wih the stayputnics, unfortunately. i thik they should at least have reaction wheels.

Didnt there used to be a huge river through there, before the Industrial Revolution?

180 degrees (L3) isnt stable. But 60 degrees is- they'd be in each other's L4/L5 lagrange points.

Actually, I was saying that every launch there is 40 separate engine firings, and one engine simply isnt recovered. By rotating the more-worn engines to the unrecoverable stage, they avoid the cost of refurbisment while getting the most out of their design.

How much money would spacex save if theycput their money where their mouth is on the "40 firing cycles per overhaul"? By which I mean, lets take that figure as a statistically significant quality control benchmark- An engine that has not fired at least 40 times has only a tiny chance of failure. If they dont chech the engines every flight, there is a tiny chance of something going wrong. Thats the likelyhood of the risk, now whats the magnatude? The falcon 9 and fh carry fuel for a powered landing. If an engine fails in flight, it and its counterpart can be shut down, and the other engines burned longer. If nessisary, they can burn recovery-fuel to make up for the engines loss. Youll lose the whole otherwise recoverable booster, but the customer's payload is safe and on target. So, the risk is low and the cost is not being able to reuse the whole 9 engine booster if 1 engine fails at the wrong time. Thoughts?

40 firing cycls, not 40 launches. The center Merlin fires 4 times per launch. Still, if they rotate engines every launch, even a falcon heavy will only need togo through (8+4) x3 firings before being rotated to the upper stage... which by my matth is exactly 40 firing cycles befor E discarding.

That doesnt work. Or rather, if it did work, it would have been more efficent to simple move more fuel from the second stage tank to the core first stage and keep them docked until the first stage is in orbit. At which point the second stage is only useful for GTO and GSO payloads. Unless you've got some stage-burnout numbers that suggest otherwise, I find it far more likely that the core does a boostback to land on a barge, is refueled, and ICBMs it's way back to the launch site.

As far as the central core returning to pad, I would assume there's a step being left out- landing on the automated barge, being refueled, and launching again back to the pad.

Particularly if you need to match the inclination of the hellas bason on mars's rotation, with the inclined trajectory mars would be launched into by passing "under" jupiter as your videos show. How does mars get back to the ecliptic afterward? (or if the flyby wasnt very inclined, how did the helas basin get so far south?)

Arnt the l4 and L5 points stable? (that is, falling out of the point changes your orbital velocity such they you fall back into it) How do you get a jupiter flyby from the stable lagrange points?

At that point, why not inflate the tarp you're using for containment? give the whole asteroid a minimal pressure to keep the slurry from evaporating. Also, I would prefer asteroid mining be done in-situ, because that way you can have asteroids in useful orbits (like, a mars cycler) be turned into habitation on the spot.

The real value of this is in combination with other space based infrastructure. Find an asteroid in a good starting orbit, and push it into a Mars Cycler orbit via lunar slingshot. Mine the asteroid, use it to build a deep space habitat -in- the cycler orbit, and use the habitat as a safe waystation on trips to mars.