Kibble

Your British? *looks two inches to the left* Yorkshire, huh. Honestly, I have no idea how important royal titles are to politics - that was more of a thought experiment than trying to make a point! They certainly are less important today than they were seven hundred years ago though.

It hasn't been very long (several hundred years) since sovereign states didn't even exist - people were loyal to an individual. Several hundred years from now "nations" may be as irrelevant to politics as royal titles are to politics today.

I want to be excited about this thing, but they keep using the made-up word "decelerate"!

This is a real and intentional effect of Real Fuels. Propellants with extremely low boiling points - like liquid Oxygen - naturally boil off since the ambient temperature is much warmer than the tank.

A simple Google Translate reveals that that is just another in an endlessly expansive line of pork jokes.

This is getting extremely off topic - is it really nessecary to discuss the entirely subjective issue of what's "cool"? On-topic, I would really hesitate to abandon all connection with Shuttle hardware, like how Delta II scorned its Thor heritage. But if we have to, how about a name like Discoverer or Journeyer? Something that evokes its horizon-expanding role in human spaceflight. Plus it sounds super 80s!

I could debate alot of what you said there (you're really not claiming to know better than professionals are you?), but I will just attach this image of Block IB, purportedly from CDR documentation. Honestly, I have not seen the full document, because it is only accessible to people who can afford the full L2 NSF account, but I trust the author of the article this was posted on to not just lie about it! As you can see, it looks like Space Shuttle because it's based directly on Space Shuttle, and uses the same insulation, and even if ground controllers needed extra confirmation that the rocket wasn't rolling other than modern avionics and telemetry, it has those big white boosters, doesn't it!

Woof, new procedural textures!

I disagree with that!

Once I conjectured an invasion by intelligent extraterrestrial aliens who were like those extreme deep sea fish with huge gaping mouths that hang motionless waiting for prey - not a good body plan for making anything! (They co-evolved to symbiosis with another, somewhat more physically-able fish, which is how they had any civilization at all.) But then they find humans, and our magnificently dexterous appendages! The obvious choice is to move their entire civilization to Earth with an invasion to assert dominance, and have us humans build giant bathysphere habitats for them.

Not to stir up trouble, but recent official documentation in anticipation of CDR has portrayed Space Launch System with an unpainted core.

Why couldn't we have lasting Lunar infrastructure based on Orion?

Thor is the name of a currently flying rocket stage, directly derived from the missile of the same name.

It depends on how much infrastructure you want to protect. If the situation is dire enough that you can abandon your satellites, ASATs will always be enough to keep away invaders (unless said invaders take the form of a large deliberately directed meteor). If you want to protect your satellites too, it becomes more complex - you'll need infrared space telescopes staring at every orbital maneuver the aliens make. If they make a hostile move, response would probably take the form of a sophisticated spacecraft injected onto an orbit that will coincide with the alien spacecraft's path, rendezvous as close as possible, and detonate itself, like Soviet coorbital ASATs IS-A and Naryad (Briz KM). EDIT: Actually an orbital spacecraft is one of the worst ways to do that. The fastest way to get something anywhere in the world on short notice is an ICBM.

Meteor is a fun name for a rocket! I also think Friendship deserves some consideration.

Are the congress/money/government/funding jokes ever going to stop?

Plus "Space Station", and even "Station" are very recognizable and catchy! "System" is a generic and IMHO ugly word.

Haha yes. It never flew though.

Black Knight was not derived from Blue Streak. In fact, it was designed to test and verify the Blue Streak reentry vehicle. The rocket engines you are portraying appear to be the RZ2 rocket engines, not the four-chamber Gamma rocket engine used on Black Knight, or the eight-chamber Gamma used on Black Arrow.

Like I said in another thread, it's just a name. Depending on how you use the word "shuttle", any orbiting space vehicle is a shuttle - regularly travelling between two points. Really? Even military missiles have proper names. It should at least be a pronounceable acronym.

This is wrong. ESM was designed to be, and is still capable of, putting Orion on TEI from the Moon. You also don't save a staging event anyway, Dragon is not designed to launch without the trunk! ICPS is also restartable. In fact, Falcon 9 upper stage is only rated for two restarts with its chemical ignition system, while RL10 can restart any time as long as the tanks are pressurized. Orion on System Block I can orbit the Moon and come back. You are way underestimating the importance of L/D ratio during Lunar return. Without that capability, a capsule can easily miss its reentry corridor, and the astronauts will die. That entirely depends on what mission architecture you use. Which mission architecture is "best" is an opinion. You don't want a BLEO-capable capsule for BLEO flights? Tell that to the only ever flown piloted BLEO missions in human history, Apollo! Or to the next-closest to flown BLEO capsule, Soyuz 7K-LOK, which massed 10 Mg. And even then, Blok-D was used for LOI. Falcon 9 second stage can't do LOI.

Atlas III retains the same upper stage, formerly-Shuttle adds an upper stage, both rockets stretch the core stage, Atlas III changes its primary rocket engines and staging set up, Shuttle adds a fourth rocket engine, Atlas III elides its solid boosters, and Shuttle stretches its boosters. I guess the differences are pretty comparable!

Looks like the British Blue Streak MRBM, which became the first stage of Europa! Woof! I do hope we get Black Arrow and Black Knight.

Being a critical role in flying human beings beyond low Earthling orbit, facilitating deep-space EVA activities, primary habitation space for short-duration missions, and protection during high-velocity reentry.

Realism Overhaul fixes many of the more physically-impossible things in KSP. But no mod even adds a simple adjustment for rocket engine plume shape based on air pressure!