DDE

Hm... this sounds intensely familiar. I have plans for a similar infrastructure once I get back into KSP.

You forgot another up-and-coming contender on the cusp of manned spaceflight. And... well, someone should honour the walking dead, too.

I am immediately suspicious of claims by that lot. They're the same ones who've jumped on the EmDrive hype train with a version that is OVER NINE THOUSAND, erm, a hundred times more efficient.

I am very skeptical about the BFR, it has a higher probability of failure than the SLS, failure being vaguely defined. I think we'll see a flag-and-footprints mission to Mars in about three decades, if NASA stops inventing problems to spend money on. However, I also suspect that in the post-ISS era, a lot of countries will follow Rogozin's advice and give a serious thought whether manned spaceflight itself is worth it. It is also fairly unlikely that the current biggest obstacle to manned, BEO space utilization will be erased - the absolute lack of gain. Which is why I think it's reasonable to assume that 2100 will be all the same, just with lower costs to LEO.

@Ultimate Steve, it's pretty boring, it's a converted IRFNA-fuelled ICBM with a high TWR.

@kerbiloid's choice of mission vehicle is amusing in its unfeasibility, but he's not too far off a certain train of thought. The Augustine Commission recommended Orion/Constellation (by then close to current configuration) to be restricted to spaceflight only, with launch and reentry carried out by Commercial Crew. Yeah... it already had a working RV by then. Which brings us back to the elephant in the room. Orion delenda est.

I guess I'm still too stuck on the "space isn't cold" revelation to think about warming.

That's a really odd move. IRFNA is usually about its lower freezing point...

In related news, launching tomorrow in Russian theatres... $15 million well-spent, I hear.

But why have people inside during this? Not to mention... combination of pressure issues and dV requirements basically make a manned landing a suicide mission.

You and what superheavy booster? And what's the purpose of a manned atmospheric dip mission?

This is different. There's no real sustainable demand for payloads this big, and, as discussed in an earlier thread, there pretty much won't be.

On the contrary, the DSG is optimized for that kind of a change. It can be pitched as a stopover from Mars or a base for Lunar excursions, wherever the political winds blow. Also, note how many of this year's Mars lander projects have been pitched as (overbuilt) Lunar landers.

None. All of the current systems are early-warning. No actual tools.

@tater @Nibb31 This raises the interesting topic of Single Stage From and To Orbit vehicles... which are, however, pure sci-fi.

@ModZero "Like Concorde, but even noisier!"

@Pawelk198604, here's your copy of Ignition!, find the relevant chapter, it has some... explosive things to say about 90% and purer H2O2.

@kerbiloid, Shuttle's and Buran's plumbing in incompatible. The latter had an integrated kerolox thruster network. The former had separate bow and aft hypergol systems, so I'm not sure an internal bay tank is actually easy to implement.

Telkem-1 and Telkem-2 were pilot blasts for Project Taiga, a reversal of the Pechora river with 250 15 kt nuclear blasts that had to be canceled after the initial detonation irked off Sweden and US. 4 nuclear bombs in two blasts in late 1968, 0.24 kt each. True, but then the technical and logistical realities of operating a spaceship also don't favour the libertarian worldview.

That's why I think a small fission reactor goes really well alongside the not-Epstein drive. The Soviets eventually cast their lot in with thermionic power converters, and the Yenisei - which was later bought by the US SDI - featured integrated fuel rod-generator assemblies. High-end powerplants could use something more exotic, like the EU-610 gas-core reactor with MHD converter, but the lack of sunlight means you'd need a workhorse model. And to the later issue, http://www.projectrho.com/public_html/rocket/enginelist.php#id--Electromagnetic_(Plasma)--Pulsed_Plasma_(PPT) So... exactly the way it is today? Like any piece of dangerous hardware, they are subject to government supervision, it's just there aren't many useful applications for them and there's a lot of anti-nuclear hysteria, so they haven't caught on. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NS_Savannah https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Otto_Hahn_(ship) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mutsu_(nuclear_ship) "Dirty bombs" are absolutely worthless, and reactor-grade fuel needs extensive and highly specific equipment to process it into weapons-grade material... besides, I expect commercially-owned nuclear mining charges to be a thing, just of the "wet" variety, without easily portable lithium hydride fusion fuel.

@regex Another COADE player, back when they first released tapered radiators, I did a thing. I think not having any reaction mass in the reactor, and a versatile electric powerplant at your disposal would be two huge plusses for the Far Belters.

In a peer-level conflict? Citation very much needed! Unfortunately, diminishing returns do not bluntly apply here. In fact, even minute improvements in raw performance seem to produce exponential increases in performance... and then you have the whole unmanned killer robots issue, and their extreme advantages justifying another round of fighter development in the extremely near future. The F-22 and the F-35 seem to be aberrant cases, exemplifying shifting requirements, and can't be used as a representative example.

The military nerd would retaliate that your attempts at overwhelming mass-production would put you into an inferior position because of how much their latest toys are superior, either in an all-out fight or at achieving local numerical superiority. Heck, you've got Russian MIC people - because they constantly use their jargon in mainstream publications - claim 2-5-fold increases in aggregate fighting ability from upgrade packages. Say, we take the fifty-year timeframe and jet fighters. The F-4 hadn't flown in 1957. We're talking an absolutely overwhelming, qualitative advantage for whoever sticks to a high tempo of system replacement.

I did. Stubby wings plus sizeble grid fins did it for me, buuuuut...

As is much of other astronautic, space engineering and astromedical research.