Sky_walker

It's Siberia - people don't care. Though even if it'd happen in a middle of new york - they'd probably find a reason for why they got nothing to deal with that. BTW: that comment: ^ lol

Jesus, not again thorium theorists. Energy density (MJ/L) : Uranium: 1,539,842,000 Thorium: 929,214,000 Get out with your "ultimate energy fuel".

Yes, well, some do, some don't. My fan doesn't get "banged around". If I would "bang it around" I wouldn't care if it's bladeless or not as long as it blows air - in which case this whole discussion is pointless. Why exactly would you want to use bladeless fan for a bimp or VTOL? And a jet-powered bladeless fan? o_O what kind of nonsense is that? For bimp or VTOL you want your fan to be as light as possible* for the thrust it provides and at the same time reliable - in which case: bladeless fans work against the design. *including energy source - eg. fuel

ESA published full, 2 hour, replay of the event: http://www.esa.int/spaceinvideos/Videos/2014/07/ATV-5_liftoff_full_replay Yes... well... I'm not a big fan of their presenter. Find her mildly annoying. Wish they'd hire someone else and they'd stop fooling themselves into thinking that random burger eaters are watching the video (cause that's I guess who they're addressing with texts like "fairings - it's that rounded end, it's the nose of a vehicle housing our precious passenger"). Wish I would speak French - perhaps French commentary is better.... Don't get me wrong - I'm fine with teaching people about structure of a rocket, but that can be done in some professional wording, without resorting to the descriptions that sound like aimed at the people with IQ below 70. Just listen to the lady at the minute 8:00 of the full replay I linked above - professional, solid, well-informed, and at the same time: friendly enough for average joe. She did much better job than the lead presenter.

This. (10char)

You're off from doing stuff for the cube sat? I thought you were busy helping to make it happen - in which case you wouldn't have time to do almost anything else, lol.

Well, rockets are a very special case in general - they're build for a specific launch. Probably the closest thing to resembling ships reflagging would be Arianespace launching Soyuz from the French Guyana - as far as rocket itself is build in Russia and Ukraine - it's "flagged" in France (as Arianespace is French company) and launched from France (French Guiana is a part of France). So - yes, rockets can "change nation" much like ships do. Whatever it might or might not happen with, say: Falcon 9 is a debate back on a level of what Red Iron Crown mentioned about nationalization - and it's a pure speculation, though in a current state of things it's unlikely to happen (I believe there is a congress permission required for that?). Ok, you got a solid argumentation here, and I agree with your point of view on the independent launch capability, though in 21 century we've got world so interconnected that if US would want to become truly independent from China - as in: stop importing anything from them then none of the companies would have any launch capacity as sooner or later US would simply run out of resources and hardware that they're importing from China - but well, that can be said about pretty much any country these days, so let's skip it for now as we're drifting offtopic here. It basically boils down to one problem - if individual can represent his own country (and by that: corporations they own). If you agree that random civilian / civilian corporation can - then the answer to question if "Do american private companys represent America?" is an obvious yes. If you don't - then the answer is not.

Encourage brilliant summary of what this whole topic is: babbling nonsense.

Sir, you just won the thread.

And there we go - ATV-5 safely in space: Here is a video for those who missed it: Mission summary: Timelapse from the launch preparations: And the gallery: ATV5 on flickr + ESA website Gallery. Docking with ISS is planned on 12 August - so we have nearly 2 weeks till some photographs of ATV-5 in space arrive. This launch marks 60 successful launches in a row for Ariane 5. Here's some more detailed information: On Arianespace (including orbital data), ESA (including info about some of the experiments) and Airbus (quicker overview) websites.

Hm... so you propose geographical location? Where company is determines which country it represents? IMHO that's a huge oversimplification. Just the fact that company is located in America is somewhat meaningless to whatever it represents America or not - or if it can represent it all. Again - the example of flag on a ship. It's barely a testimony to the place of registration. Yes, that pretty much sums up my point of view. You are correct, however I was talking here about a major shareholder. "Yes it does" what? Could you explain what you mean by that? Cause I see "yes it does, no it doesn't" here.

Oh yea, Thales Alenia. Good luck with that - Mars One got $500k - that's not enough to order any of the ISS modules they made (excluding all of the scientific equipment ISS modules had). That's not enough even for a modified ATV - which was produced in larger numbers than any other possibly-suitable module they ever made. And we're talking here about spending an entire Mars One budget on that one thing alone. That's the problem - they don't have any budget to buy a professional equipment. Even if we'd assume that by some miracle Mars One would suddenly multiply it's budget times 10 - it's still not enough even to cover launches themselves (FIY: Most of the modules they want to send require at least heavy launch vehicles (if not super-heavy) which means significant expenses).

If you wanted to have a survey limited to the Americans - point it out at the very beginning. If not - ask questions that are not country-specific. Or at a very least - give an option "Non US-citizen / Don't know" (BTW: For future reference - every survey you make should include "don't know" option for pretty much everything with exception of basic demographics (like gender/age/county - that's pretty much it) - otherwise you will get skewed, meaningless results).

Using engines with infinite TWR might be a perfect example of that. You don't know which engines are massless and which are not, so by accident you might get an enormous bonus in performance to your small satellite, one that never should be there if the engines used wouldn't be massless. Cache data that requires more complex calculations. But having parts attached to other parts and passing properties along is stupidly-easy, even for Unity.

Totally agreed. People often look for a problems where there are none. Biomes are fine - research tree and the way science is handled isn't. Either re-scale the tree (say: multiple required science times 4 or more for each tech, especially the high-end techs) or change the way science is gathered, so that you wouldn't be flooded by it after a simple clickfest and focusing on just one branch of a research tree (move science instruments all over the tech tree, change they way you obtain science for majority of instruments - instead of having a clickfest - make us actually do something (Eg. for thermometer: fly from high down to low atmosphere measuring temperature differences, or measure temperature in whole 24 hours cycle)). Besides - we had tons of excellent topics with various beautiful ideas on how to make science interesting and how it all affects the biomes, research, and how it encourages people to actually explore. Fact that you can research whole tree without leaving Kerbin is IMHO a great mistake from the development point of view.

1. it isn't enough 2. it is broken (obvious example: nose cones)

"country's technical capabilities" is such a vague term that I don't even know how to approach it. Let's take for example Atlas V: Rocket owned by a private company build and designed by experts from all around the world, running on Russian engines, with majority of hull manufactured in US out of components made in US and China and resources extracted, again: all around the world, launched for the US-owned facilities. Now compare that to Angara rocket: Under a full control of Russian government, designed by Russian engineers, running on Russian engines, with all of the components manufactured in Russia and resources extracted mostly in Russia, launched from Russian facilities (major objective of Angara rocket program is to make Russia fully independent in rocket construction). As far as I'm concerned - Angara is a perfect example of a rocket representing country's technical capabilities. Atlas V - represents a power of private investments if anything at all.

It actually does. What they charge you for are services around it or a specific implementation that isn't public domain.

Is it just me, or this sentence makes no sense at all? This. And also: It'll be horribly expensive to manufacture and very prone to failure. (You will most likely have to handle 6 engines (for symmetry) 4 of which are going to be a very new technologies barely going out of the experimental stage.

More like: Does Richard Branson (with his Virgin Galactic) represent US? Or does Elon Musk represent US? o_O And Europe does not? To me United States of America (mistakenly referred to as an "America") represents a country in the North America. Don't mix ideology with countries. That's the way that leads right into nationalism. So when they take contract form Estonia - they represent Estonian government? If they take contract from Kazakhstan they represent Kazakh government? I think that if they represent anything - it's their owners and the power of private enterprisers. So in case of Space X - they represent Elon Musk. In case of Virgin Galactic - they represent Richard Branson. Yes, companies that operate in a country are bound by it's laws. Nothing new here. As for "they could be nationalized" - first of all: they are not and it's extremely unlikely to ever happen. We are talking here about current state of things, not about what might or might not happen. But for a moment let's think it might happen and if so then: If Latvian government will ever buy stocks of the SpaceX - company will automatically count as a part of Lativia? I don't think it works this way.

Everyone do. Ice is a key to the moon colony.

So where is that poll? Cause I vote "No". Space LAUNCH capability. And yes: they don't. Suck it up 'Murcians. If it's like ships - then they don't. To quote Wikipedia:

See it live on ESA blog(Alternative link on ArianespaceTV) Transmission will begin on a night of Tuesday to Wednesday from 23:27 GMT (London) / 01:27 CEST (Paris) / 19:27 Washington / 20:27 local time, take off is planned for 20:47:38 local time. Weather forecast looks good, so it seems like we'll have a perfect launch As of now Ariane already awaits at the launch pad. Arrival to the pad: Below shot from a Final Assembly Building (BAF) before transfer to the launch pad: As you probably know - on July 29th, tomorrow, we'll see the last flight of ATV to the International Space Station. Georges Lemaître, or simply: ATV-5 will take off from French Guiana. It will set two new records: For ATV series it will be the heaviest one ever bringing over 10 tons of supplies and fuel to the ISS. For Ariane 5 launchers, weighting 20 tons in total it'll be the heaviest cargo lifted by the Ariane-series. You can read more about the flight. As far as the future of ATV will belong to it's role as a service module for NASA Orion capsule flights - for now it's the end of ATV as we know it, but it's yet to perform 2 major experiments - first one being a test of the new automated rendezvous system allowing spacecraft to dock without an aid of specially designed reflectors or nav markers on the ISS like all of the other spacecrafts do (so future ESA crafts will be able to automatically dock with everything as long as it has a proper docking bay ), and the second one will be recording deadly reentry of the ATV into atmosphere and transmitting data back behind the vessel to the Iridium satellite while still surrounded by the plasma.

Cause they don't have money for someone else to design and develop all of the hardware needed for them. Not even remotely close to truth. There are whole companies living just from selling components and platforms for the satellites. Want some examples? There's a whole category on wikipedia with various satellite platforms: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:Communications_satellite_models - some were made in '80s, so don't think that it's something new.