DDE

I do find the focus on radar fascinating, although I suspect it's a product of sensor limitations. Telling that the object isn't tumbling (is stabilized) and doesn't have major antennae sounds like the totality of what radar observations would yield.

It's back as a launcher for HGV surrogates https://www.thedrive.com/the-war-zone/43450/stratolaunch-to-build-aerial-target-for-u-s-hypersonic-defense-testing

"And here we see a recently evolved branch of the venerable Toyota that has evolved for life in the higher latitudes. While lacking the size of its predecessor species, certain similarities are plainly visible. For one thing, if all else fails, it's capable of moving under recoil power."

When an SF author's daydreaming crosses paths with @MatterBeam

Considering it's an equal opportunity dystopia, what exactly do they intend to change? Other than falling victim to the Galbrush Paradox and diluting the horror of the setting, of course (especially considering, based on its historical predecessors, what kind of treatment the Thought Police would reserve for women).

Because of the unique combination of capabilities the US has, it's difficult to determine. I don't think there's much worry about ASAT per se; most of the concerns center around the viability of the Russian nuclear arsenal as a deterrent. US delivery systems possess remarkable accuracy, and in the early 2010s it undertook the "superfuse" program to radically enhance the accuracy of all of their submarine missiles; this kind of accuracy is completely pointless in retaliatory attacks that target cities and bomber rearmament sites, but is vital for destroying missile silos and command facilities. An uncharitable reading is that the US have built, and are continuing to enhance, an arsenal optimized for a disarming nuclear strike. An SDI 3.0 to mop up any surviving missiles (under the guise of negating the threat from a "rogue state") meshes 'nicely' with that. Note, however, that the article continues to fret over space-to-ground capabilities as well. I suspect this also has to do with attacks on the nuclear arsenal, but this time without the political hazard of crossing one's own nuclear threshold.

Fresh off the presses.

This sounds dangerously like a perpetual motion engine. Are you sure you don't want a VASIMR or something more mundane?

A caveat is that they (or, more specifically, MPDs) have still been used with batteries. Granted the Kren family of experiments only succeeded in producing a plasma cloak, not actually getting the spacecraft somewhere else.

The term "skyhook" seems weird and diluted. I've seen it applied to downright space elevators.

The concept of a submarine aircraft carrier is never going to die, is it?

And Smith. Literally unwatchable at this point. And on the bigger screen everyone seems so damned old. Disney already stashed 3D scans of all the leads, pretty sure a decade from now they'll be making CGI-enabled remakes without having to pay an arm and a leg to the big names. And another decade later, they'll have a lucrative niche on the android market. Thing is, we're looking at an "unexpected" sequel that has to recontextualize the originals in order to work. This usually goes really, really bad. Wonder Woman 1 wasn't good, Wonder Woman 2 went absolutely nuts with implications that are unmentionable on this forum, and the original teaser is odd. Remeber how I mentioned A particularly negative interpretation is that SW suffers from nepotism where big names are hired whether or not they fit in or understand the subject matter (so the two spinoff movies had massive reshoots, Episode 9 got massacred in editing...). The barrage of series definitely helps facilitate that. Granted, the topic is a drama cow and the Web is awash with leaks and rumors, spawning a veritable subindustry which I'm admittedly rather caught in.

ZvezdaTV chose to describe MiG-31's stratospheric flights beyond the Armstrong Line as "flights into near space". I guess the hype kinda snowballed from there.

I might sound like a broken record, but the sequels and reboots are a sign of the broader malaise of seeming greater risk-aversion... while at the same time increasingly making dubious crew and cast choices (in extreme cases, this can mean radical reshoots due to change of leadership), and often rushing development to squirt out an incomplete product (often it's the CGI where you notice that). I just don't understand Hollywood these days.

The new Matrix is ringing all of the bad sequel/remake alarm bells. It's been too long, and you've long since brought the franchise to an end. Let go, Luke.

Oh, look who's in New Delhi. Thought ol' baldy flew off to Sochi and left us plebs to shovel snow. An agreement on space is Item 1 on the list: http://kremlin.ru/supplement/5746 Found the Russian draft from a year ago. Nothing concrete. It's a technology transfer and launch services framework. https://docs.cntd.ru/document/565964982

And where would oxidizer go, then? Arcjets are a thing, but what are you going to power them with? Nothing short of a rocket engine, probably, in which case you're better off jettisoning a bulky heat-to-electricity-to-heat conversion system and using the rocket engine directly.

Not mentioned. But that would be one heck of a sight to see, especially since IIRC India is also onboard with Artemis.

Because you can't arbitrarily move it from the center of the combustion chamber (where the temperature isn't materials-limited). Regenerative cooling and film cooling already do their best to "harvest waste heat" at the perimeter of the chamber. I mean, the chamber temperature is already reduced from what it could possibly be by running the engine fuel-rich, which seems to be what you're asking to do.

Vague word of talls between Russia and India on a "Moon station" (base?) https://www.kommersant.ru/doc/5115125

Don't think it has - the various nuclear-electric tugs are the hot stuff right now. That said, the short surface stay is the result of taking a whole lot of time to decelerate into low orbit. These long times have led to the concept of "podsadka", delivering the crew to a rendezvous with the main craft already in a near-escape orbit. Similarly there's an advantage to dropping the crew off in an ERV and then decelerating the interplanetary ship over a long period of time.