Bill Phil

I love these forums... According to the almighty Wikipedia, it's a dip, which is a type of sauce, which is a type of condiment...

Sounds interesting. I'd love to see what you've got so far.

That one too. It does work though... and sometimes efficiency isn't necessary... Blasphemy! The only Gundam is UC Gundam! Of course I'm joking. I do prefer UC though. Great job, though.

I do chuckle at my first mission that made orbit. Solar orbit, that is. Skipped kerbin orbit entirely. No images... we're talking 2012 or so. I also get a good laugh at my first Mun landing... straight down for... what - 50 kilometers?

MOL technically had an orbital flight... it was just a mockup though. They tested the hole in the heatshield idea on the Gemini B by separating the capsule before the mockup entered orbit.

No problem.

Each planet should also be really far away... Still, looks pretty great.

Hubble was delayed 7 years, 10 if we count the mirror mishap... by comparison 3 years or so isn't too bad. Of course, JWST is much more delayed than Hubble. Also, some may consider the ISS (used to be Space Station Freedom) to be much more bloated and much more delayed...

The Shuttle program cost billions even during years where there was not a single launch. The system and infrastructure could not sustain launch rates high enough to have decent costs. The requirement for a crew was a major disadvantage, and there were concepts for cargo only variants, delivering 70 tons or more to LEO.

Yeah... It's certainly an awesome display. Although any display with a Saturn V is, by definition, awesome.

I grew up and spent... well, all of my life around MSFC. I've got a lot of family and friends employed by NASA, Boeing, Raytheon, and the like. I 100% agree. The vertical stack is amazing. I used to have to take I-565 to get to MSFC while interning at NASA, and after turning onto the exit to get to the gate I normally use, a view of the Saturn V would appear right in the middle of the road. It was breathtaking. Standing beneath it is always a great experience as well. They've also got some test articles set up on their side in the Davidson Center. So you get one on its side and one standing upright. There's also a display of an LM mockup, and one of the reentry capsules (Apollo 16). MSFC is where the Saturn V was designed/developed, so I think the display is appropriate.

Yeah. That might be a better idea. Can't you take multiple telescopes and get similar results to a single large telescope?

There's a good exhibit near Huntsville, Alabama. I've been there quite a bit. Seeing the Saturn V while driving around, even though it is a fake one, is always a cool moment. Yeah. The Saturn V is gigantic. The first stage especially so. And it doesn't even get the upper stages to space...

Reusability is worthless if you don't launch enough. That's what the Shuttle suffered from. More reusable vehicles would be great. But there needs to be demand for the services they will provide.

The Space Shuttle was expensive, yes. But it was still reused. Blue Origin reused a rocket before SpaceX did. Many will say that it wasn't an orbital class rocket, but it very could've been, had there been a second stage, and maybe a third stage.

Some forum-goers put links to their fan works in their signatures. That way, when they post somewhere else in the forum, there's a link for the work. Whether or not it'll be effective is debatable. But having him put a link in his sig and then have him just be active around the forums could help somewhat.

Maybe. Although JWST isn't designed for maintenance, from what I can find. If it was, a remote maintenance probe might be a good idea.

Yeah, but BFR is much larger, allowing a potential successor to not use the fold-out method, and thus be much simpler in design, reducing cost significantly.

And BO (before SpaceX), NASA, USAF...

More like 4 times. As in, no human has even been that far from Earth. That would require much more money. It may be cheaper to just send another one, and if BFR works, you could probably send a bigger one for less.

Probably not. I doubt that JWST is even designed to be serviced, unlike HST. Even if we could get out there, servicing it may not be possible.

You can lower the heating for the game. In my experience Laythe gets hot real easy.

Any colony on another world will be an artificial environment. I'd say that if there was any real colonization effort, we'd need considerable investment in life support technology. If not massive amounts of investment. Beyond that, there's still a lot that would need to be done. Not impossible by any means, but going as far as Mars would be problematic as a starter colony, and going to the Moon is problematic as it doesn't really provide much in advantages. And even further beyond that, colonies will be unpleasant places to live, unless we make them in such a way as to be quite comfortable. But that would practically guarantee a massive economic cost to Earth. And from a growth potential perspective, Mars and the Moon would maybe double the total area we could use. But there are ways to get more area. Using the entirety of Ceres as radiation shielding for orbital habitats, there's enough for thousands of times Earth's area, and radiation shielding is the majority of the mass of such habitats. Definitely more potential for growth than any planet or major moon.

Huh? Helium-3 on the Moon is in the parts per billion. In Jupiter's atmosphere it's much more abundant, but still hard to come by, as even though Helium makes up over 20% of the atmosphere's mass, Helium-3 makes up a very small fraction of that Helium. Still more abundant than the Moon's surface, by orders of magnitude... And provided fusion power is in use, the required energy to extract it may be less than the amount you get from burning it... But that's a nitpick. Anyway, great work on this update.

2112 might be more relevant...