DDE

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.

It succeeded in murdering Roscosmos's previous chief. Say it with me: asymmetric dimethylhydrazine nitrogen tetroxide extremely toxic extremely cancerogenic. Russian launchers may be rugged designs, but right now they are suffering greatly from crappy management and crappy workmanship, to the point that it's becoming a major commercial liability. Those payloads are insured, ya know?

Well, SSTOs are not a dead end. If NASA's willing to design a closed-cycle nuclear turbojet/scramjet/afterburning thermal rocket/power-generating reactor, they might get some nice results. But then no-one even lets them make the really cool stuff. No, I'm afraid the OP's actually actually comparing SpaceX's interplanetary probe program (0 launches) with NASA's. In the launcher business, ULA has a considerable chance to get trashed, and even Roscosmos's cheap and toxic Protons are feeling the pressure. But then SpaceX is unlikely to take over the whole market. Also, Protons kinda deserve it.

Well, to be honest, the US pretty much has had that title since the mid-60s, thanks to Gemini, the cancellation of Soviet Tsiolkovsky and Saturn probes, and, oh, that little fact that the Soviets put two tortoises on a lunar fly-by while 'merica put some boots on the regolith.

And that's what's alarming. The consensus is that extraterrestrial colonization is not an economically viable project. Which is the kind of project you'd expect to be right up an statist's alley. Elon Musk is eventually going to run out of money. NASA can nag the executive branch into just borrowing more.

Yeah, but the MCT is just a plan, with no metal behind it. They'll spend half a decade just developing the engines. There's a massive chasm between the concepts and an actual spacecraft. Imagine if everything that was in design stage in the 60s made it to the launch pad. Sorry, but I can't value someone's plans.

...also playing KSP.

Yes, but it's as if the OP thinks - judging by how the poll question is formulated - that the Red Dragon project equals NASA's more than five decades of actual work.

Yeah, but it remains to be seen if someone with a façade of an idealistic billionaire can do better than that. While "meandering around doing nothing" NASA has managed to explore much of the Solar System. Sure, planting flags and collecting moon rocks by hand is cool, but the cost-benefit ratio is way too unfavourable for manned missions.

A) I find your excess of trust in Musk disturbing. He has a lot of incentive to be less than perfectly honest while maintaining a façade of being perfectly honest. B) If it's being checked out, than it's not a certainty that it will fly. If it will be reusable as the Space Shuttle Orbiter (20-30% of ship replaced between each flight), it will be a failure. C) Because they haven' achieved reusability, they have not yet dropped the cost per kg to orbit. D) NASA's doing just fine, thank you. They're about to put Juno into Jupiter orbit, they're fixing Discovery Mission 12 (InSight), busy picking Mission 13, pushing ahead with two Flagship missions, and have at least three craft in Mars orbit alone. SpaceX have gone further than any commercial program ever, but it's nothing compared to state-backed ones when it comes to exploration: You're falling to the hype.