SgtSomeone

There was no one big moment for me, but I did have a couple light bulbs go off above my head along the way. -when I really understood orbit and stopped the 'straight up and circularize' style of launch trajectory -When it clicked that the CoL goes behind the CoM and higher CoM=more stable (the opposite of a building in the ground) -the first time landing on the mün -the first time docking two crafts where I used translation and didn't just point them at each other... -finally when it clicked that higher orbit =slower, even though you fire the engine to get there. And interplanetary maneuvers then made sense.

I was really hoping you would suggest servicing Hubble by flying and docking ISS to it... Still seems more realistic.

So NASA recently announced a mission to investigate Jupiter's Trojans, which made me wonder: do stars have L1 and L2 points? And thus potentially also Trojans, which scaled up could be entire Trojan systems? And if theoretically possible, what would be the challenges to discovering those Trojans?

"I... I don't want to die" That was really interesting and not at all what I expected. I expected some confusion and clumsiness almost like when I've been awake for 36 hours, but despite looking reasonably conscious, he really had no idea what was going on. The chart he displayed said you'd have roughly 30 seconds of usable oxygen at 35k feet. I can last longer than that when I hold my breath, wonder if that's only if you're breathing?

Not quite sure how it relates to the hardware you referenced, but if you're interested in some of the lowest level stuff, turns out Minecraft's Redstone circuits are actually pretty good for basic logic exercises. You can start with a basic binary calculator, and there are some people who've built the registers, CPUs, and RAM to model basic computers!

If you search Google Scholar, there seem to be a number of papers that mention Apollo's inspiration effects in the STEM fields. You might be able to just cite it as common knowledge. Closest I found was what appears to be a class paper, and the most official on I found was this paper about the Ares program. If you're justifying space program spending, you'll definitely need a link to NASA's official publications about the spinoff technologies from space program spending.

Just woke up and caught up on the thread. The hole is definitely smaller this time

I don't know the calculations off the top of my head, but additional information that you'll need is the altitude that you're launching it at and the outside temperature, as these can affect the air density. I've heard taking off in a Cessna at -40 feels like a fighter jet because of how dense the air is.

Better source: NASA itself. http://www.nasa.gov/feature/mission-manager-update-kepler-spacecraft-in-emergency-mode "75 million miles away" What orbit is it in? At one of the lagrange points? Here's hoping it pulls itself out!

If you're interested in what will happen... the behavior is similar to what happens in minecraft's Far Lands; weird things. The numbers eventually get so huge that they start losing precision and your ship will bounce and jump around and probably break apart. In very old versions of the game, you could also trigger it by going too fast (your speed would lose precision) http://wiki.kerbalspaceprogram.com/wiki/Deep_Space_Kraken

(numbers added by me) 1) A number of people mentioned waste, but I'm not sure it's a valid reason. I get that you can't just toss waste into space, but surely it doesn't need a full pressurized/armored vessel. You could haul up multiple inflatable garbage-bag-like modules with small deorbit motors in a single shipment. 2) What determines a vehicle's 'shelf life'? I know the Soyuz have them, but I thought that was more about re-entry capability expiring rather than becoming unspaceworthy. 3) It wouldn't seem that hard to add. We know they can habitated because astronauts are in there while they unload cargo. It shouldn't be that much more stress to add the additional air re-circulation fans and tie in the HVAC system? 4) Doesn't the station always need extra space? I could see why launching new modules wouldn't be worth it, but these are already there! I guess it mostly comes down to this, though I wonder if the common berthing mechanism will bring those costs down, or if there would be a way to make them cheap enough to do this.

Is there a significant difference between the docking ports for resupply ships, and the ports holding the modules together? (i.e Columbus and Destiny)

I've tried my hand at building a few stations in KSP and each time after using up the stored fuel (usually orbital tugs), I'll send up a fuel resupply ship to refuel. But every time after I transfer the fuel from the resupply ship to the station, I realize that if I left the resupply ship there I'll have added to the total fuel storage capability. Bonus points if my resupply ship has two docking ports and then I can chain them. Obviously I'm not suggesting I'm smarter than NASA (relevant XKCD!), but after spending all that money manufacturing and hurling that Progress or Cygnus into orbit (not including Dragon because they need it's return-to-earth payload ability), why not treat them as new station modules that happen to bring food/water as well? You could double station capacity with a year's worth or resupply vessels. Trash disposal doesn't require a pressurized and armored ship; you could just load a plastic bag with a firecracker (or real-life equivalent of a Seperatron) to de-orbit. Additional power shouldn't be a problem; they all bring their own Solar panels already. Or do I have this wrong and there have been stations made up of successive visiting vessels?

I think SpaceX's MCT vision should be viewed like Tesla's vision to get transportation off of fossil fuels. When you look at them without context, it doesn't necessarily seem like a business would be interested. You can imagine the same 'corporate meeting' playing out during Tesla's initial phase: "How much will it cost [to get human transport off of fossil fuels]?" "A lot". "Will it be dangerous?" "less than spaceflight, but LiPo's explode, so probably". "ROI, considering the billions in capital car companies need?" Probz not a lot to start with". I get that going to Mars is orders of magnitude harder than transitioning transportation to clean energy, but Musk seems to see profit as a means to an end, or a convenient side effect of achieving his real goals. In each case there's an ultimate reason ("clean energy" and "backup of human race"), and each case he takes small steps that do make business sense that put his company closer to the ultimate goal (i.e make a Tesla Roadster proof of concept, land the contract for the ISS). My point is not that Mr Tyson is wrong, just that he's looking at this the wrong way. Is there a business case for this? Probably not. Is this bats**t crazy? Probably. But each step Musk has his company take, and each business case for an expansion his company undergoes is done for a reason in addition to profit. MCT is just the goal that guides every business decision and sub step that SpaceX takes, and I think that there's a good chance that those small steps will actually add up to something.

Whenever I grab a probe core, the first thing I do is disable the internal battery as a failsafe. Though reading the 1.1 forums, it looks like even the battery re-enables become locked out now if the ship is out of power.