DDE

Yes, but wouldn't that apply to all isomer tech? Nope, data says a whole lot cleaner, because the reaction is a whole lot faster and has a large fusion fraction in it (up to 98% if we use Soviet mining bombs from the Taiga test).

Exactly. It's good enough for four-five of them. But it does show how, in the scramble to both develop an Apollo Mk 2, and to expand commercial spaceflight, NASA ends up stuck between the two. If Orion is just a return vehicle for larger missions, then they could have probably avoided bluntly replicating Apollo but with microcomputers.

You don't need a spacesuit to survive a decompression event. A breathing mask is adequate for a brief exposure, and being incapacitated as a result is an acceptable outcome. They'll probably die. No need to clean the suit then.

It's KSP we're talking about, and this is the off-topic sub-forum. It's got nothing on the even more geeky threads. The theory is that it was a combination of a massive homogenous landmass near the equator turning into one giant desert, and a boost to greenhouse effect due to a spike in volcanic activity associated with a lot of landmass crashing into each other.

* sigh * Let's get to crazy pics, shall we? Energiya-Vulkan. 180 t to parking orbit. SLS's big Rushn aunt. Also, the grossly underused TKS, which never flew manned. Having a sizeable habitable compartment under the return vehicle is interesting; I wonder what a slightly beefier version could be with modular propulsion busses.

Could someone get Kilgrave in here? This world needs a Doctor.

Yeah, but then you get people suffering from the nocebo effect and hence getting pain from wind turbines or Wi-Fi... so long as they think they're nearby. What kind of a-hole would sell property on top of what should be an exclusion zone?

This in general would be a fight between eggshells armed with sledgehammers, on a totally flat battlefield with extremely high visibility. Therefore, it would be shockingly fast. Individual combatants would have a very small role to play. The USS Ponce and its LaWS would like to burn away this overly broad statement. Please hold still for ten seconds...

An important factor is that most of these modules have TKS or Salyut heritage, so they are quite capable of autonomous flight and docking. Which is why the Russian Segment is simply expected to secede from the ISS if the 'mericans cut the funding. The Russians also seem to be planning a new station in a high-inclination orbit - more fit for looking down on Russia.

And the latter is getting blasted for not having a Soyuz-style orbital module on top! The former... the former was a very special, Blue Gemini-esque case. Three words: hatch through heatshield.

* cough cough * The Soviets still wasted a lot of time carting this around: Like the, uh, laser cannon. Actually, it was initially supposed to be just a concrete slab, but it rapidly turned into an assembly of experimental and off-the-shelf systems.

What bugs me is how isn't Tony yet radioactive? I've had to dig into plausible fusion reactions, and unless you go for the stupidly ambitious deuterium-boron fusion, you get a lot of neutrons, which requires either a moderator system the size of a fission reactor, or makes Tony himself glow in the dark. Of course, he already does.

I suggest you stop mucking about and go for a nuclear pulse rocket. 9160s tech, quite ecologically clean, makes Greenpeacers scream themselves to death. Wait, hasn't X-ray-stimulated emission of energy by isomers been disproven as pseudoscience?

Well, I didn't say it was a good idea. And that is not a good idea either. I have major concerns over hygiene.

Well, ultimately, for the Soviets the manned lunar capability never materialized. Keep in mind that lunar capability generally means a ginormous rocket; the Lunar Orbit Rendezvous of the other style, with the lander pre-placed, has not yet been attempted. The US succeeded in producing Saturn V. The Soviets banked on the N-1, probably unnecessarily abandoning the UR-700; it didn't fly too well. Eventually they delivered Energiya, which is, honestly, SLS's forgotten mommy; from what was on the drawing boards in the early 80s, it's clear that they wanted to play around with it, but the country fell apart before the second Buran flight, and hence third Energiya launch. So the second Buran ended up looking like this: And there was zero hope for any Moon flights. Given how slowly the Angara project is progressing, it's ludicrous to expect Russia to get to the Moon in the next three decades. The Chinese? Well, they've bought these "pieces of scrap metal" after the roof collapsed on the first Buran: So we might yet see a rebadged Energiya.

Don't confuse IVA survival suits of the ACES/Sokol type with the suits that are worn during planned EVAs. NASA spent much of their time using dual-purpose suits (with extra kit for EVA), but with the Shuttle it's given up, and the plan for a retro dual-purpose suit for Constellation went bust. Yeah, but then the cockpit survived the explosion, so... Nope, those aren't fighter-style G-suits. Speaking about that... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:B-58_Escape_Capsule.jpg

Yeah, but what if we're talking exotic biochemistries and life much deeper in the atmosphere. My bet's on Uranus and Neptune and something probably as exotic as nitrogen-based chemistry.

Oh, who's willing to bet that once Orion is complete, NASA won't be allowed to launch or land people in it and will instead rely on SpaceX to ferry its crew separately? I'm not kidding you, its one of the Augustine Commission's proposals.

Why bother going down a gravity well when you have Saturn's rings?

There are at least two mods that produce such an engine, PorkJet's Atomic Age and Nertea's Kerbal Atomics. Isp is inherently lowered because the oxidizer is heavier than the tiny H2 molecule. To boost efficiency of a hydrogen-based engine without raising core temperature, you should go from H2 to H. Good luck containing that.

Somebody appears to have investigated a combination of fluorine, lithium and hydrogen as a working tripropellant with a record-setting Isp of 542 sec. Just to keep it on rockets. And yes, the Soviets actually had a functioning upper-stage ammonia-fluorine engine.

Wait, didn't the formation of the Pangea cause The Great Dying (tm) of the Perm-Triassian? By the golden age of the larger sauropods it had already fractured, hasn't it?

That's beyond the theoretical maximum capability of the stock nuke. Whatever it is, it's gonna have to be staged.

Yeah, but combined they prove doubly nasty. Plus it seems that even working as intended the ecological impact of that thing is horrific. But then, it's unclear when the next generation of Russian launchers comes into active play: Angara (a few test flights), Zenit (production has not yet been duplicated) and Soyuz-5/Fenix (not yet on the drawing board). And the old Soviet tech is absolutely at its limits, which is why minor and major mishaps keep happening. Mentioning Orion in the context of a Mars flight is, admittedly, ridiculous. NASA does that all the time, of course. Right now Orion is being lofted on a Delta IV. In practice, it won't - NASA proclaimed they've given up on human-rating Delta IV and Atlas V (*cough* Boeing Starlifter *cough*). The smallest launcher it's designed to be used with - upon the demise of Ares I - is the SLS, which can do nothing less than deliver an Apollo-style stack to the Moon. If Orion is going to Mars, it's going as a part of a completely different, much larger, and not yet even prototyped ship - and I see no reason to take the descent vehicle to Mars and back anyway.

Chapter 7: Black Sun The Surge Week began. With tested boosters and the SAT staff finally having learnt how to operate a drill, they had several related satellite launches to do. Skipping the A4 for a moment, A5 Deacon was rolled onto the pad, and departed in the dead of night. Unlike other launches, it pitched north, and accelerated into low orbit. The satellite’s solar arrays and whip antenna unfurled as it drifted above the frigid arctic wastelands. As it escaped KSC’s LOS, the new-fangled Satellite Group Control woke up the TARDIS passing above their heads, and improvised a high latitude relay to the Deacon. Above the ice cap, the Terrier upper stage borrowed from old Moho launches, half-empty to maintain commonality with A4 stacks, inserted it into planned orbit before separating. The large antenna grid on top of the bulky power management system unfolded, and began sending radio waves towards the surface. Jeb and Gene watched the transmitted data turn into a blocky altimetry map of Kerbin’s tundra. The resolution was about half a kilometre. “Not exactly useful,” Gene sighed. “It’s good enough for Eve,” Jeb assured him. ---------- Pad reconditioning was in full swing, meaning Jeb was confined to his office for the rest of the day. Val peered in through the door. “Flight, we’ve got a problem,” she said. The daylight coming through the door behind her was weak and a deep orange, but that couldn’t have been it. “There’s a crowd outside, they want us to drop what we’re doing.” Jeb just stared back. “They think we’re to blame for the eclipse, and they want to sacrifice you to the Kraken!” she laughed. “Eclipses happen weekly everywhere under 20° latitude,” Jeb sighed, his pained expression amusing Val even further. “And since when exactly are the loonies concerned with facts?” she asked. Jeb pushed the desk clutter away from himself, and then gave his head a good bang on the hard surface. Without pulling his head up, he took the phone off the hook. “Gus, what’s the status on the Odin? Still casting the fuel? What about Beacon-Alpha? Good, skip a few checks, roll it out.” The Beacon blasted off the pad as usual; the Terrier just got to burn a lot longer, lobbing its payload into an orbit that was 2.5 Kerbin diameters away from its surface. Upon reaching the target orbit and disposing of the upper stage, the Beacon’s side antennae unfolded. Its directional radio transmitters could sense lightning in Eve’s atmosphere, and communicate with probes as far away as Dres. The bulk of the loonies fled upon seeing the rocket depart, probably convinced that Jeb cold control eclipses. Odin finally completed launch preparations the next night. A tiny craft less than 200 kg in mass, it used a design Bill quickly slapped together from a Vector’s retrorocket, mounted atop two sequential solid motors. Odin’s job was quite peculiar. It was developed largely to assist Gene Kerman’s astrodynamics team, with its gravioli detector and on-board telescope assisting them in plotting transfers and predicting optimal launch windows. The grind continued onward. Beacon-Bravo and Beacon-Charlie were first sent into the 250 km parking echelon, completing an orbit before receiving the data for a Hohmann transfer that would put them into the 1500 km orbit, precisely 3637 km apart. ---------- “Alright, tracking station dishes warmed up, orienting to target – Beacon-Bravo,” Linus, the newly appointed head of SGC, narrated. Jeb watched thoughtfully. Being outside of radio range, on the wrong side of Kerbin, had been a bizarre experience. The home was so close, yet doom was one retrorocket failure away. “Uplink achieved. Beacon-Alpha… online. Beacon-Charlie… online. Deacon… online. Odin… online. TARDIS… online. We have control.” Near-Kerbin space, except for the wrong sides of the two moons, now had constant radio coverage. No more radio silence. ---------- Jeb entered the Astronaut Training Centre’s main auditorium. Sitting before him was about a hundred candidates selected for the Hermes program flight crews. The rather dim eyes were hardly promising. “Alright, does anyone know the Kerbinovsky rocket equation?” he finally asked. No hands came up. “Does anyone know what an orbit is?” he asked, his heart sinking. Still no hands. “OK… can everyone point in the general direction of space?” A third of the class pointed upwards. Two-thirds pointed directly at him. The rest was pointing downwards. Jeb sighed. This was gonna be interesting.