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DDE

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Everything posted by DDE

  1. DDE
    Well, they returned the samples in 2010, and are acquiring another set. And no, the dichotomy between asteroids and comets is getting shot full of holes, such as centaurs and main-belt objects with cometary charecteristics.
  2. DDE
    Didn’t know Lavochkin were back to having crew in their vehicles.
  3. DDE
    Japan would like a word.
  4. DDE
    16 Psyche is an exposed protoplanet core, and some describe Mercury as one.
  5. DDE
    There was one odd EULA on Steam that allowed the representatives of the publisher to inspect the location the game is being played in, and the device it’s being played on, at any moment in time without prior warning.
  6. DDE
    And that’s where you part ways with Rogozin (good riddance?). The average Musk basher will argue, foaming at the mouth, that they can’t possibly be saving money because muh refurbishment costs and muh lost payload fraction. Never really tried bringing up Soviet reusable designs with them (which would have been myself, were I arguing out of nationalism rather than general jadedness). Could turn out interesting. Technically they are: they’re waiting for NIIMash and all of the other learned and respectable people that are part of Roscosmos. No-one else’s claims (or deeds) will do - the solipsism of a conspirologist. Naturally, they’ll keep waiting for a while.
  7. DDE
    ...overall, in Roscosmos’s point of view. They see only two billionaires toying around with reusability while every “credible” space program at best pays lip service to the idea (Vulcan’s engines, the proposed Ariane engine flyback...), and thus they decide (buttressed by skepticisim dating back to the Buran era) that reusability is a “fancy marketing trick”. At which point @sh1pman punches the screen.
  8. DDE
    Come on, it’s the stand-up guy child of a Shuttle and its ET, and looks a lot like an early Starship design. Fairly low-risk as far as reusability goes. Entirely unrelated. I think Roscosmos will have to up their game to beat those mental gymnastics.
  9. DDE
    Your silence makes it legal. We’re talking commercial disputes, of course, where at your own signature (the one that you made by accepting the EULA all that time ago) you may consent to the case being arbitrated under North Korean law, and everything in between.
  10. DDE
    I’m not entirely sure that’s a problem. I mean, aside from reusability not even being on the horizon for the SLS given its launch tempo.
  11. DDE
    Ignorance is indeed bliss. Basically, they’ve added a clause that basically guarantee they emerge victorious in any legal dispute.
  12. DDE
    They result in rockets that fit the requirements. Said requirements amount to assured access to space at any cost, and nothing else. There is no reason for anyone involved to jump over their heads and try to design something that is competitive. ...except that Irtysh is of course competitive, because all of Musk’s rockets are being faked in a Pentagon parking lot, or whatever.
  13. DDE
    Don’t forget that the reason for all those gratuitously large spacecraft corridors in sci fi is the camera crew(s) have to fit somewhere. On a much simpler note, film-makers rarely leave California or that one Vancouver forest that’s on every Stargate planet. Do you really expect them to bother going to space?
  14. DDE
    Ask the leader of the nuclear power closest to you for a big red button.
  15. DDE
    Because it’s the SLS space program. Roscosmos, while being a for-profit company, is not competing with anyone; Irtysh is a true spherical horse in an economic vacuum, its history a political gambit upon a political gambit.
  16. DDE
    I’m not seeing technical illiteracy, TBH, not on this occasion. Not much chance there, seeing as it’s probably a simple translation of the dry Energomash press release. Just regular one. In duplicate. RD-171, RT-171, RS-171, who cares!?
  17. DDE
    Zero-G is so 1938. Wires can do a lot. Also, do not underestimate just how unrealistic reality can be. NASA did... without stating a single detail, but I’m sure space industry in general was mentioned alongside orbital solar power.
  18. DDE
    Tourism, certain types of microgravity experiments/manufacturing that are often still marginally available on Earth or can be substituted, real-time unjammable visual intelligence... and given that we’re cheating, space marines with drop pods. The fact that it’s free and privately-owned entirely eliminates the basic prestige factor. Oh, wait, it’s with a-grav. Scratch item 2. So we only have (relatively) pure vacuum.
  19. DDE
    Soyuz on launch table. Blast-off slated for 22:14 MSK this Thursday, with a six-hour rendezvous trajectory.
  20. DDE
    Extremely. You rolled out the usual line of argument that you can build a highway to nowhere, and then suddenly traffic will show up - a line I’ve seen repeated by countless space advocates. Bottom line is, the various “killer apps” for manned commercial space presense just keep flopping - whether space tourism or, as it was in the 90s, zero-G pharmaceuticals. Now, you could argue that it’s due to prhibitive freight costs - but it could also be because of fundamental problems. It may just be that no-one in the actual industry would want such a station. Then probably a fixed solar array on one side, windows on the other.
  21. DDE
    I'm still trying to understand how Steam games are apparently more expensive than hard copies. In Western stores. *laughs in ex-Soviet*
  22. DDE
    Nothing. Welcome to the fun world of synthesizing arbitrary elements.
  23. DDE
    Hey, don’t you know that Energiya-Buran is still an ongoing program?
  24. DDE
    First set of RD-107A/RD-108A test-burned on naphtil, cleared for duty and shipped. https://www.kommersant.ru/doc/3907653 Arsenal and Krasnaya Zvezda simultaneously scrub their webpages describing the US-A nuclear-powered satellites and derivative projects. This gets reported on by RIA, so... extreme incompetence in information control, or a wink and a nod? https://ria.ru/20190311/1551679328.html Ultra-dubious source, ultra-familiar behaviour: Roscosmos panel on reusable LVs declares that existing developments (Buran, BOR, Baikal) must be used while keeping abreast of potential breakthroughs, like a winged, airbreathing nuclear SSTO. Naturally, guess which part of that catches attention of people more accustomed to dodging sniper fire in Syria. http://anna-news.info/roskosmos-mozhet-sozdat-raketoplan-s-yadernym-dvigatelem/
  25. DDE
    Glushko wasn’t keen on Buran.
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