Bill Phil

As long as it isn't Dale Cooper. Then again...

The biggest problem with surviving in lunar orbit for months is the instability of most lunar orbits. You can put a spacecraft in hibernation for quite a while. Of course you still need a relatively big rocket. Fuel cells are arguably more complex than solar panels.

Hits ya right in the feels. Thank you for this. Off we go into the wild black yonder...

The book is so much better. Considering that it has underwater mechs fighting zombies, Iron Maiden music used to attract zombies, zombie hordes visible from space, and so much more cool stuff, that isn't surprising. Okay, diving suits and not mechs, but still. Also, the cure in the book is actually faked. No free lunch, the only way out is through. It's also an actual war, with logistics, tactics, and strategies that come into play, eventually liberating most of the world, with the occasional unthawed zombie still around. Still not entirely scientifically accurate, but it makes sense how they deal with the zombies. There's a huge "battle" where everything hits the fan, and it turns out modern warfare isn't effective against zombies. It's also more focused on the aftermath and consequences of a zombie outbreak than the actual outbreak.

I was almost the first to post, but I decided it wasn't all too great of an idea... Put what you want on the poster. Many things can be done.

Except that the aerospikes developed for X-33 had worse performance compared to the SSMEs. SL ISP, vac ISP, thrust, T/W, you name it. We could probably do better now though. So how many reflights do they think Block 5 cores can get away with?

Not really much. Most of the mass was propellant. The biggest benefit would be smaller electronics. But even then you'd just use the extra mass to bring more to the lunar surface, I'd think.

Steam was released in '03...

Last I recalled Atlas V and Delta IV will be flying into the 2020s. And BO is planning on building engines here afaik. Alabama just needs a better NASA program than SLS. MSFC hasn't developed a rocket in 40+ years... not counting SLS of course.

While his explanation isn't correct, you can use a black hole for propulsion by reflecting the hawking radiation it gives off.

Smallsat launches, I suppose. Falcon 1 demonstrated 180 kg of payload, although it could have probably done more. More generally: Can we all just take a moment and revel in the sheer number of orbital rockets in development and in use? This is certainly a slow period for manned spaceflight, but for unmanned? Holy snap!

I usually use stock parts, and the occasional engine plate which itself needs to be stock.

Just finished watching Twin Peaks recently. As such: Also some jazz music that sounds suspiciously similar to some music from a certain space game we all like...

Well it was never intended to be used much.

That's because SLS Block 1 isn't a LEO vehicle. ICPS is part of the 70 tonnes to LEO and is intended to send payloads BLEO. The biggest problem is the core. It's underpowered. It has ridiculous gravity losses. This hurts performance quite a bit. Not to mention performance varies depending on which engines they choose.

A variant might, but it's too late now. ICPS is based on the larger DCSS variant, and is better for larger payloads than Centaur, atm. A two engine Centaur might be good for heavier payloads to LEO.

Centaur isn't as large, it would need to be stretched or widened for Orion. Probably better for lighter payloads though.

Well, at least ICPS will see some actual use...

The micrometioroid impacts are more akin to sandblasting than large projectiles. The protection of a spacesuit is more oriented towards abrasion. Well, at least as far as I know. Also, bullets have more inertia than your average micrometioroid, and are harder to stop. Even "bulletproof" vests aren't bulletproof, but bullet resistant.

Well, in truth, machining and coding are not comparable. I've got a little bit of experience in both, and I can tell you that coding was way more complex and sensitive. Just changing where a line of code was could improve the performance of the software massively. In my experience coding and software can be different based on what day of the week it is, the position of the planets, season, and the state of the weather... There's a very real possibility that 1.4.2 was extensively tested and some of these issues never occurred during testing. How software behaves is so sensitive to things like OS setups, hardware, and so on, that there's never a guarantee to how it will behave. The real issue here is likely to be that the testers probably have very specific hardware and software setups that do not adequately represent the average user's setups, thus leading to inconsistencies with how the game behaves. Of course, the game was never very stable to begin with. Imagine if a machined piece changed shape massively based purely on who was using it and on random other factors and that you had to find the root cause in the tooling, and you'd get somewhat close to the issue at hand. I've had the landing legs explode on one mission - and work perfectly fine the next. I've had probes destroyed and probes not destroyed, even when doing the same thing. Software is just a different beast. One time I read a thread about the Forum not working on Firefox. Thing was, I was using Firefox and it was running fine. The product can be perfectly fine and still not work. Of course, these bugs do need to be squashed. They're very problematic if not downright game-breaking and should be eliminated ASAP. Hopefully 1.4.3 is stable.

The square of the orbital period is proportional to the cube of the semi-major axis. Doing a basic calculation and making some assumptions the orbital period of the transfer orbit is 91 years. Of course, doing the actual math would be more accurate.

Result of a real quick google search: https://www.jpl.nasa.gov/edu/teach/activity/lets-go-to-mars-calculating-launch-windows/ It's not perfect, and is simplified. But it does help explain what's going on to an extent.

To administrate an organization, you want someone who's good at administrating, not necessarily a scientist. Having a passion for science and space would help quite a bit as well, of course.

Same could be asked of humans...

It's 900 m/s on the TLI leg from what I can find. Total delta-V is in excess of 12 km/s for the trip already. There's over 1 km/s margin. The time reduction is 1 way as well. I can't do the math myself right now but I can once I get home.