Bill Phil

You... you do realize that building a payload costs more than launching one, right?

Sea Dragon would cost a lot. Remember, we'd have to develop the engines. But, even more expensive: develop a payload. No, we're not aiming at space colonies. We might be had we maintained a permanent presence beyond LEO for 50 years, but we haven't. This December will mark 50 years after Apollo 8 orbited the Moon. 50 years.

They've already spent 7+ years and billions of dollars engineering this thing. You want it to take another 7 to get off the ground? X-33 suffered major issues. The aerospikes performed worse than SSMEs. Sea Dragon, while an interesting idea, represents a very large investment. A space race won't help anything. The last one only got us 12 men on the Moon, no lasting permanent presence beyond Earth orbit, and some cool probes on other planets. All for showing off. Shuttle could actually fly. X-33? Not even capable of that.

No. He-3 is in the parts per billions in the lunar regolith. You don't need much He-3, sure, but you would be processing millions of tonnes per week. On the Moon. This is the kind of thing that takes huge amounts of money and time to set up, and the He-3 on the Moon may not even last all that long, provided we do eventually access it and want to use it. Our energy needs aren't stagnant, meaning we would need to increase the amount we extract over time, and eventually we would exhaust the source. Some have calculated that it would last a decade, others about a century, if we're lucky. Compare this to the constant energy from the Sun, and the Helium-3 on the Moon doesn't really help us all that much. Especially when considering that we can take advantage of the neutrons released by D-T to help breed tritium.

Yep. Using SRBs was a mandated requirement for SLS. At least for Block 1.

Built my LEGO Saturn V today. While watching Babylon 5.

No. Congress is responsible for NASA's budget. NASA can only do things Congress allows them to do, and NASA can only dedicate the resources that Congress allows for each project. NASA is very capable of doing great things. But NASA is on a short leash, only allowed to do the things Congress tells it to. Congress approved the Shuttle, but did not approve nor fund the rest of the STS concept. No space tugs, no nuclear tugs, no eventual Mars missions. This was back in the early 70s or so. There have been concepts abound for Shuttle replacements. Many were proposed before the Shuttle's retirement. But not a single one was developed, because they needed to be approved by Congress. NASA isn't given a lump sum and then allowed to spend it in any way they see fit. Each program is funded individually. And what those programs are is also dictated by Congress. There's a reason SLS is jokingly called the "Senate Launch System." Congress mandated NASA to develop it. Not to mention that the Shuttle was heavily influenced by the military... the payload bay size, the size of the wings, and so on. I wouldn't put any money betting that the military would be any better.

Oh, you want to talk to Congress then.

People read quite often. Well, at least small snippets...

I'm not a fan of teen drama... from what I've seen it at least starts out that way. I don't think I could get over that for the rest of it.

A number of NASA employees would like a word with you... Alright. That's not happening, so we're good. It's probably just a reorganization of already existing assets into a single branch of the military, or something like that. But militarizing space may be necessary for large scale space development.

Ol Boom Boom may suffice...

Project Orion was considered for military applications back in the 60s. (Seriously considered... we came closer than is often believed to using it) But that was mostly nuclear deterrence. I mean, they envisaged a squadron of "bombers" carrying loads of nukes and deploying them to glass the enemy nation. I doubt that nukes will be placed in space. It may just be as simple as separating Space Command from the USAF, or maybe rods from god might be the goal...

Ah.... Summer belongs to you...?

Any space colony is arguaby completely useless. Even for existential problems, Earth will be better for millions of years at least. Venus's upper atmosphere is the only natural place that appears anything like Earth's environment in terms of temperature, pressure, and gravity. I am in no way arguing for a Venus(or Mars...) colony, but in those terms, it's better than Mars. What we need for progress is development in life support systems to limit resupply needs as well as development in space manufacturing and resource acquisition and of course improvements in our space transportation infrastructure. Gunning for colonies at this point is jumping way over the gun. At this point we've only landed small payloads on Mars. We need to develop that technology before even a flags and footprints mission, let alone setting up a colony. Oxygen. Makes up almost half of the lunar regolith. He-3 is a terrible justification for the Moon. You'd have to sort billions of tonnes of regolith to get what we'd need... I think we need to get 50 years of history back.

What matters is the opinion of the government. Sadly, there aren't enough people who do understand technology and risks. The human mind focuses on failure, not success, and humans are horrendous at risk assessment. I won't say that they "fixed" Apollo 13. The SM remained nonfunctional. Rather, they prevented three deaths. Definitely an accomplishment, but far from "fixing." I'm not worried about the engineers. I'm worried about management. Musk has said that he'll provide the transportation, but what they do there is beyond what he plans on doing. I would never start a colony on Mars, personally. I wouldn't go there to live if given the choice, either. Maybe a quick visit, but that's not really possible given our technology. If we're talking about Venus, we may as well just ignore planets altogether... L5 all the way! With a low-g pool. And the ability to come back to Earth... More like fourth... 1 - Earth 2 - ISS (humans have actually been there long term, but even so, it's a distant second to Earth - with an environment better than some areas on Earth, but no sustainability) 3 - Upper atmosphere of Venus (even more distant than the ISS - acid is also present around the area most commonly proposed to colonize and resources are an issue) 4 - Mars

Yeah. And there was one year where the news reported loads about shark attacks but shark attacks weren't very high that year. Ratings.

I've reasoned to use Tylo gravity assists for Jool system missions. They're easy to set up and you can almost always use it to capture at Jool. Aerobraking is too risky thanks to heat. As for the Mun? It's not all that worth it. Maybe if you're doing a KEKKJ run and you're trying to minimize Delta-V as much as possible it may be useful, but beyond that... not really worth it.

Publicity. A space mission will be highly publicized. Tens of thousands of deaths in car accidents is something local news handles on an individual basis (and barely), not global news. That's the underlying issue. Any deaths in a major space mission will be highly publicized. See Challenger, Columbia, and the high risk of losing Apollo 13. This then leads to the program suffering even more than just losing people. Same with nuclear reactors. The risks and consequences of improper management are highly publicized. Safe operation isn't news worthy. Meanwhile we have major industries and systems that cause thousands of deaths when operating exactly as designed.

Well, considering NASA contracts are a major source of SpaceX income...

Didn't Rush see that one? I seem to recall that Countdown was inspired by STS-1.

Lagrange points are only interesting in the real world for our Moon thanks to the instability of most low orbits around it. In KSP, there's no instability. So you can just get a station high above the Mun and it'll have roughly the same effect.

The logistical issues was the entire reason for Blitzkrieg. They had to win fast so their logistical shortfalls wouldn't take too much of a toll.

Morale. Or psychogical warfare. I mean, if I was fighting a T-Rex, or even something worse, appeared, I would probably give up.

I once saw a 24 hour analong clock. Pretty cool.