DDE

Yeah, but just like the NSWR,

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.