Bill Phil

Save the Earth from an army of Demons...

The entire reason for the 3.75 meter rocket stages was for an SLS analogue...

Iron Sky. The Director's Cut, however, is better.

Awesome.

Well, if you're new to the game, send a rescue mission. It's a good challenge to try to land near a specific target.

The point would be to reduce the problems associated with free fall, not study centripetal acceleration, which could be done, but there'd be little use. If you can alleviate some issues that afflict the body in free fall, then the health risk of staying in space for long periods is somewhat reduced.

If I recall, it was originally a demonstrator for Nautilus-X. After that fell through, why build a demonstrator for something that won't be built? And so it wasn't built. But there is plenty of cash, the government just doesn't want to uselessly spend it. Thus NASA has only around 20 billion bucks a year, that they have to spend that very specifically.

Twilight Zone theme plays... X Files theme plays... My theory is aliens. But I like the teleporter theory...

Science labs. Apparently my first post was in response to a thread about terraforming Venus. Wait, why do I still call it the Science Labs? Am I a forum veteran now?

Tired. Sleep deprivation isn't very fun... although, I've found that I'm at the point where if I sleep longer, I'm even more tired th day after... maybe just a little bit longer and that'll go away.

Well, fusion is worse... and that would be helpful for spacecraft, provided we can build a fusion engine.

I once sent two probes to Jool. I lost contact* with them before they ever made it, however... *they disappeared

I will say that the greatest thing I saw this month was Halloween and Christmas decorations up at the same time. I love it. Although Christmas does start too early...

20 chambers, but only five sets of pumps.

I just watched the Ross's game dungeon about Armed and Delirious. The following was what it felt like, not the actual video:

-Ross Scott, "Ross's Game Dungeon: Maabus"

Yeah. People just aren't cost effective for science in space. But, in order to do a manned Mars mission, NASA would likely want to send more probes, and out of a total budget of over a few hundred billion...? A few billion for "reconnaissance" would be useful... Essentially, in the process of figuring out how to send a crew to Mars and return them to Earth, we would inevitably find out a lot more about Mars as a side effect.

Huh? A Mars colony with the population ( or at least the ability to support that population) of an O'Neill cylinder (about 10 million, maybe less) would cost way more than an O'Neill cylinder, assuming the quality of life is the same. A colony of a few hundred people is more like a station. But even so, that would be much cheaper than an equivalent Mars base. It'd be way cheaper to just set up a station with a crew of a few dozen people and then simulate Martian gravity than to actually send a few dozen people to Mars. Essentially what Tater is saying is to do just that, not actually build a colony.

RL-10 50+ years and going strong!

Yeah, but that would've been EOR. The Saturn V could only send about 45 tonnes to TLI, somewhat less to a Mars transfer. The plan, as laid out in the late 60s, was to use the Saturn V to build a large, essentially multi-stage, vehicle using nuclear thermal propulsion. Actually two of them, although that wouldn't have panned out, even if they had gone for it. Besides, a new lander would've been needed. A Mars landing takes twice the delta-v as a Moon landing, and the LM was too fragile, and it may not have produced enough thrust.

Somehow, Jupiter from The Planets.

I just hope I can get my hands on one. I know a guy at work who has one in his cubicle.

Too small to be Rama...

All of the planets of the solar system fit between Earth and the Moon.

Get bored. Either that or die in a horrible accident. I don't know what it is, but there's some sort of aura around me that causes things to break in unexpected ways.