Winter Man

I like their mind control program, and that'y MY OWN OPINION. But the Soyuz is pretty nice too.

I liked the way that Philip K. Dick story got around it, with a giant telescope so powerful it could see into the 'previous' iteration of the universe, just slightly ahead of 'now'.

Pretty much Wallace and Gromit, then!

Maybe in America, yeah. The trick is (I mean, we're talking someone with the funds to build an orbital rocket) to launch it from a more screwing around-friendly country.

When I last checked Rutherford Appleton were working on a rudimentary energy shield for satellites, to with the intention of eventually scaling it up to ship-size. Don't know what their progress has been, this was about 5 years ago.

An infinitely dense shell around you should do it.

That was pretty much the plot of Stargate Universe, taking a ship beyond the observable universe (over a massive timescale) to get a better idea of some hint of sentience they detected.

The fact that we have a cosmological horizon (the edge of the visible universe) shows that one area of space can move faster than the speed of light relative to another, as it's the point at which objects are travelling away so fast as that their light will never reach us.

Why, with a gravity keel of course!

You're ignoring the first bit, where it's pointless.

You could, but it'd be pointless. You'd need to construct such an enormous ship to create the first bubble, you'd be better off just sitting in that. You're only going to get to your destination when the largest bubble gets there anyway. That and 'half the distance to the target' for anything remotely interstellar is so ridiculously enormous you'd need galaxy-scale mass/energy.

You can't tax someone into bankruptcy in the UK, there's no property tax.

Seems whenever I scroll through the suggestions on here, there's always a bunch of really nondescript titles (I call them buzzfeed titles) that have no information in them at all. Just thought for the sake of clarity it'd be good to introduce a rule that states a brief description should be in the title of threads.

Could be worse, could be ol' Victor's fan in a box.

They're a subsidiary of Virgin Group, which is a British company. Sure, they operate in America, mainly because there isn't a decent desert with an ocean to the west in Europe. You're right about Branson though, he's renounced British citizenship because he lives 40 or so weeks of the year on his private island. Yeah you're right, it's nothing like the X-37, that was a typo. I meant the X-38, the lifting body experiment the Dream Chaser was developed from.

I'm constantly amused by the wildly pessimistic views certain people have regarding the efficiency of a properly managed team. Goes both ways.

I think eventually Virgin Galactic will have proper orbital ambitions too, they've already looked into firing 2nd stage rockets from under White Knight II, so you can add that to Britain's list. France are due to test the IXV this year too, which is pretty much the X-37 but worse looking; the thinking being they'll develop it into an ESA-run Dream Chaser competitor. Oh, and there's Copenhagen Suborbitals. I'm sure they'll get to orbit. Some day, at least.

Know what'd be a great use for NERVA? Shuttles between Mars/LMO. Get yourself a space station in orbit to serve as an extended stay hab, launch ground modules from Earth and have your station crew go between the two without any need for permanent life support function on the ground for some time.

Yeah, it's a ceramic composite. Basically like carbon fibre you normally see, but instead of a polymer bonding it together and giving it its rigidity you use a ceramic like zirconium carbide or something.

On that note you could stick a hunter-killer satellite up. I mean, with SSTO planes it's pretty much a given we're going to stick a fuel depot up there that it can refuel from to match all those different orbits.

Yes there is. There's profit to be had. Private companies could put up their own GPS network that's more accurate than the one offered by the US military (and not subject to said military's whim) and license the tech.

There's no customers because there's no SSTO precedent. There was no demand for 4 hour transatlantic flights before the first passenger plane was built.

They did, and in the 20 years previous to the precooler testing. Hydrogen tanks have been built before.

Of course it would, yeah. Doesn't mean it couldn't be pushed through with relative ease before 2019 though, all it'll take is decent project management. Ceramic skin? There's a company in Newport that can make it. Airframe? You've got Airbus in Bristol. Engines? Rolls Royce also in Bristol. It's all right there, it just needs putting together.

And who's to say they can't just contract out the construction to Airbus down in Filton? Pretty sure they'd love a slice of that sweet SSTO pie.