DDE

I replay the Salyut 7 docking scene way too often, too.

Don't forget that the original script said the people were there for processing power, not electricity.

I was actually wondering about environments where it may be useful. And it's not only Dagobah. It can't, however, be ported to a screw design. Yes, I know one guy tried.

So are walkers. Sweden has the solution, though.

They chose the wrong contractor.

@KerikBalm The two only tiny niches are elevated DEW platforms - thus presuming DEWs are worth such contrivances - and the few types of terrain where legs are the superior if not only means of locomotion. On the issue of the latter, I know of more prospective methods of locomotion than legs.

These gauges are not Kerbal enough. All of these are Unterzüge. You all need some 3000 mm.

"That's what the Russians are telling you". As said, I'm operating under the conditions of a hypothetical smear campaign against Musk, targeted at laymen.

I think I even know the Zubrin article you’re borrowing it from. You see, only the bottom three datapoints are relevant when discussing NASA. And maybe now Kelly, who would be barely above the “shielded” estimate, while “shielded” also requires research. It’s a little bit hard to stave off a hysteria about a “Mars suicide mission” by citing Russian data these days...

Exposure being reduced in half, the magnetic field removing part of the issue... and NASA missions still being comparatively short.

Well, as our old boy Vladimir Lenin said,

What a predictable non-response. Don’t worry, I think these issues can be used to bury Musk and SpaceX if they actually get around to manned BFR flights.

Somehow I don’t think a large chunk of NASA wrings hands over these two exact problems for no good reason.

What alarms me is that SpaceX has removed every stepping stone between a parachute-landing Earth orbit capsule, and a gargantuan interplanetary rocketship. And whenever the issues specific to interplanetary flight comes up, SpaceX flat-out wings it, be it zero-g or radiation.

The launchpad computer and the rocket computer did not get along. Again.

Careful, now you might tell me the Soviet Union had its own chlorine pentafluoride program in addition to Energomash RD-301... Oh, someone on Novosti Kosmonavtiki is at it already! http://novosti-kosmonavtiki.ru/forum/forum13/topic10362/?PAGEN_1=2 They were going to put a pentafluoride-ammonia-hydrazine motor onto the first stage of an upgraded R-29 SLBM... the nutters... Interestingly, they didn't get a higher ISP with it (per Glushko himself), so they canned the whole thing. At which point the forum descended into finishing their bootleg translation of Ignition!

Jeez, I've tried to load a bunch of giant quotes from Sutton and Clarke into the header, and instead the page just gobbled up the whole edit. But getting back into Clarke has been quite... disillusioning. Turns out aluminum really resists NTO combustion, and only works well with fluorine-based oxidizers.

@YNM Not to mention, Makeyev take pride in leaving zero empty space in their rockets, to the point of obsession. Those things around the third stage engine of this Lainer are the nukes. Yes, they're upside down. Yes, the tanks of lower stages are wrapped around upper stage engines. And yes, the third stage engine is jettisoned following the initial burn.

I'm not even talking about gelling. Apparently, something about AK-27I or Tonka caused Kh-22 AShMs to need fueling and unfueling all the time, to the absolute dread of ground crews. Did you miss the "Soviet" bit? Bulava's solid motors have caused a lot of controversy, and it's not designed by the primary SLBM developer - Makeyev (in return, Makeyev dabbles into ground-based missiles with Sarmat). A solid SLBM has had to be shoved down the throat of both the Navy and designers - heck, Makeyev gave us some of the only mixed solid first stage/liquid upper stage SLBMs out there, that's how much they liked their UDMH-NTO.

Having greater payload diameter offers enormous economies of scale, especially when it comes to tanks and habitats. Imagine if the ISS used Skylab-diameter modules.

Let's not confuse the 'Muricans here. For example... I started off thinking about tactical missiles, and kerbiloid's links only further steered me towards high-performance military missilery - it concerned Soviet Aluminol UDMH-Al fuels for even more compact SLBMs. Performance is paramount, ease of fueling is not - so long as, unlike some Soviet missiles, you don't need to fuel and unfuel all the time, which is an anomaly.

Hideously reduced performance (monoprop, is it even hypergolic with storeable oxidizers?), and what's the freezing temperature of this unspecified propellant? That's why tactical rockets use IRFNA and not pure NTO.

Silly Elon, didn't you know they're allowed to hide behind obstacles when camping with speedguns? Didn't you expect one of them to take cover behind the biggest object out there - the Moon? Were you even thinking when exceeding the trans-Martian speed limit?

A key selling point of gelled fuels, especially gelled hypergols, they don't spill, and thus behave similar to solid fuels that have displaced them while retaining their throttleability, refire capacity and superior performance. They also don't slosh, and need less ullage, which is why someone decided to bubble ClF3 through liquid F2 to produce a deep space propulsion stage (according to Clarke, ClF5 didn't produce a gel, for some reason).

@kerbiloid, well, that covers one half of the equation. But I’m not hearing anything about gelled acid.