DDE

*angry Russian noises*

What is the closest historical equivalent to the Mainsail?

Something's funky is going on with the most recent military Soyuz-2.1v launch. NORAD is reporting not four but a full eight satellites, but all but one evade visual detection. Speculation abound. https://forum.nasaspaceflight.com/index.php?topic=48521.60

Ionizing radiation creates various reactive oxygen species of water, which can cause considerable damage when ingested - or when they're already inside human cells. Neutrons care not for your chemical bonds.

Apparently, Oryol is still to be integrated with Soyuz-5 (as well). https://ria.ru/20191020/1559988866.html

Chapter 1

Fake water tower!

The Blight is over-the-top stuff, an alien terraforming parasite that is methodically decreasing the amount of oxygen in Earth's atmosphere. That, and NASA went underground because USG was trying to have them disperse bioweapons for worldwide population control. Great worldbuilding, guys. I think you're at least partially overestimating the effect. Social media made the cauldron boil, but bad ideas were just as able to proliferate.

I'm not sure there are. We're in the era of Big Science. Big Science is boring and inaccessible to laymen. In fact, I blame this for much of the drop in confidence in science overall.

https://www.rt.com/russia/471070-us-diplomats-russia-military-site/

Automation needs maintenance. You'd basically have to give up on constant repairs. There's a naval precedent to it, and it wasn't nice.

Let'a be honest: if you're willing to effectively conscript all future generations of the crew for your mission, you'd not bat an eye. In pure theory? None, because starship crews will target the upper echelons in terms of IQ, and the bell curve for males has a fat tail in the genius region. In practice? Most (given automation of physical labour, probably all) of the jobs will have a percentage of women, but there are none for which they emerge as a distinct first pick. The usual personal inclinations - which correlate to stereotypical gender roles - cause a bias towards people-oriented jobs, of which there will be a fair amount. Unfortunately, the other side of the coin is, "Do you want your buddy to be too weak to haul you out of a fire-stricken compartment?" It'd take some time for me to div up the citation, but all-female teams perform significantly worse than all alternatives.

Yes, but actually breaking these devices on some of the old-school tanks would inherently lead to people looking through them also getting killed.

...how the heck did he know about my lander designs?

It does a better-than average job than other materials against charged particle radiation. But there's no real need to go for such elaborate solutions compared with polyethylene. And for the inner anti-gamma belt, you want something on the uranium end of the periodic table.

Counterexample: they're also trying to put a free electron laser on a ship, while we're stuck with arclight-pump solid-medium ones. Hell, they've already put a diode-based one on the USS Ponce.

Nobody wake Ghandi.

http://nuclear-submarine-decommissioning.ru/node/1235 Rosatom found a contractor who's going to tow the barges to the nuclear submarine disposal site at Saida-Guba.

Try spinning your armour (or ship). That's a good trick. Mad Jack wants a word.

I'd argue that superior missile launchers (e.g. muskets) pale in comparison to later advances in mobility and communications. The British advantage was rather slim. Ever read Arthur Clarke's Superiority? The tech in COADE is basically already obsolete. Actually, you do something slightly different: FTL is an enormous bag of worms. The smart writer at least keep the lid firmly on, and puts up a guard detail to keep the hard sci-fiers from prying it open. You do realize that it would take a star-powered DEW to even come close to a relativistic kinetic, whereas the kinetic energy of a superluminal object should actually be greater than infinity? The giant DEWs are the cheaper choice in this scenario, and they'll have serious trouble preventing the planet they're on from getting shattered. Impulsive shock means even a surface blast would lead to very fun consequences.

Using them as a base is reuse. Back when BFR had a singular, primary mission, Zubrin suggested that bringing the whole shebang back to Earth was ridiculous and that the vehicle should be split into a Mars lander/base and a reusable Earth departure stage, with the occasional base module including a smaller ERV for the handful of quitters.

It'd probably be smarter to make the pressure hull loadbearing. Also, all Western submariners disagree with your statement. Silently.

It's a cosmonaut-sized payload, and I'm not sure if they had any other Soyuz seats to spare in the near future.

Wasn't he scrapped? I think there's a term for that kind of voter.