JoeSchmuckatelli

That is what I am trying to imagine. Unless they tie up to one another - and one has a tower to lift SS onto the booster. I see them as recovery platforms, no sweat. Launching is nice b/c less oversight & paperwork - but logistical nightmare from what I can see

With expensive cargo? Or does expensive cargo get cabled up from the tossing seas into the bay? Also, do they land SS next to the booster or on the booster? So many questions I can see this working as a landing platform - but launching with cargo is starting to seem a fraught enterprise

Man - you just don't get it, yet, do you. You probably think this is a Boeng. It is not. It is a Quantas (grin)

Can't be... It is blue

Are those expected to go and return from Port every launch / recovery?

Landing in a hurricane may prove problematic

When they decide to don't and tell us what they want us to think - we'll know it's all over

The Future is NOW

Geez, that's better than the Infantry's 10% for hearing loss due to the big booms! Now - how do we get that onto a Recruiting Poster?

It's not often you see excreta receptacles in the design!

XD

Their patch could be some guy unapologetically man-spreading.

My impression is that the environmentalists actually got smarter about what is going on (or wrong, in their opinion) with the world. Before, they were filled with fear-based emotionalism that conflated nuclear power with nuclear war, and any discussion of nuclear power was tainted by the weapon fears - driven in large part by Cold-War saber rattling. Yet as environmentalists got more educated, looking at particulate emissions, microplastic waste, waterway and coastal contamination from industry, cities and farms, etc... they came to a conclusion that realistically the world needs energy, and that most non-polluting sources are insufficient (wind/solar) or almost fully tapped (hydro). Nuclear has a pretty damn good safety rating, and the 'disasters' (Three-Mile Island, Chernobyl, Fukushima) did not result in Lizard-People or Mutant Ants devastating the countryside. Thus, to provide a rational way to meet the world's energy needs and reduce damage to the global environment, nuclear looks less scary than continuing down the Coal and Gas route.

STOP IT! STOP STOP STOP STOP STOPIT!!!!

Well - regardless of the official name, if there ever is a specialized Moon Force... everyone will call them "Looneys"

SX is already landing rockets on a barge. So probably not much. One problem is all the other stuff the Navy uses up top - catapults, etc. That stuff is harder to protect. Thing is, whenever you add a new 'capability' to an existing, purpose-built craft... given that these are engineered with an already long laundry list of requirements - how do you protect the existing capabilities and needs? Frankly - this is a 2035 problem.

To my mind, the major problem is how the 'force' will be deployed. Which it won't. When I think of something that we call a military 'force', I foresee people actually deploying. If you remember my snark from the SpaceForce thread, It's like calling a guy in Oklahoma who controls a drone over Afghanistan 'a combat vet.' Its not only absurd, and a logical fallacy, its kind of insulting to those people who actually risk life and limb. So what, in reality, will Space Force do? Basically they do electronic warfare and monitor satellites and missiles. These are, admittedly, military roles... but are the people doing it really a Force? Will they need to physically be present in a combat zone to accomplish their work? Will any one of them need to have boots on the ground or their tailbones in the airspace? The Air Force - where most people never have to ever see combatants or live in the filthy conditions ground troops see - is still a 'Force' because it's actual warfighters do go into the combat zone to work. Army, Navy, Air Force, Marines and Coast Guard all actually have to acknowledge the potential, and reality of risking life and limb to accomplish their missions. Space Farce? Not so much. So - yeah, naming is hard. I would not snark at "US Space Command" as a sub-DOD entity distinct from the other uniformed services. Believe it or not, "Corps" would work just fine (a 'corps' is: "a branch of a military organization assigned to a particular kind of work"). US Space Corps (like the Medical Corps, or US Army Corps of Engineers) is a logical name for a specialized branch doing specialized work.

Actually - I doubt that P2P ever was a consideration at all. The fleet anti missile system requirement is driven by the emerging capabilities and aggressive behavior of China and the proliferation of weapons to places like Iran. Frankly we need not only more ships like this, but also point defense systems on every ship. The threat is both real and forcing a reevaluation of tactics and capabilities

So, the US is really good at logistics. Even when we goon something up (which I was on the raw end of in Iraq) - recovery from the mistakes and lack is rapid.* Military need gets fed. While I've written that, at present the P2P lift capability is largely superfluous at the moment... It might become a critical asset once things are kinetic in a protracted peer /near peer conflict. Should an adversary have the ability to interdict and destroy a significant percentage of the commercial surface traffic of the Pacific or Atlantic and force military traffic to use less direct routes - the ability to drop required supplies could be critical. Oh - and a point about 'landing on a flattop' - the USMC had to retrofit its fleet due to F-35 exhaust. As it stands, the USN is not likely to be very excited to have rocket exhaust bathe it's deck. But a ship that combines some fleet missile defense capability with a landing platform and fuel generation would be cool. None exist - but it would be cool. *(By that I mean, weeks not days, btw, accompanied by a lot of heartache and anger)

"Both Vega-1 and Vega-2 balloons operated for more than 46 hours from injection to the final transmission.[1" - Cool! "the carbon dioxide atmosphere is laced with sulphuric acid, along with smaller concentrations of hydrochloric and hydrofluoric acid." - Urp!

Watching a simultaneous launch would be massively cool. I'm sure there's been such.... I've never seen it however

Inside the Chinese lab poised to study world's most dangerous pathogens | Nature A SARS-like cluster of circulating bat coronaviruses shows potential for human emergence | Nature Medicine - posted because the bat-human crossover potential was known in 2015, and being studied in CN. Bat origin of human coronaviruses | Virology Journal | Full Text (biomedcentral.com) Discovery of a rich gene pool of bat SARS-related coronaviruses provides new insights into the origin of SARS coronavirus (nih.gov) These kinds of pre- 2018 articles put forth support both for a natural cross-over, as well as acknowledge the potential for a lab-leak. I find it highly unlikely that COVID-19 was a crafted/weaponized strain. Again, following the 'when you hear hooves, think horses - not zebras' philosophy... accidents happen. To suspect nefariousness when mere incompetence is most likely? Not the wisest course. Lest we forget: these kinds of accidents are not exclusive to paranoid hermit kingdoms who resent foreign intrusion and have no free press Newly disclosed CDC biolab failures 'like a screenplay for a disaster movie' (usatoday.com)

OhMyDearGawd... not a good look for them. EDIT: For what it's worth... if I ever see a SpaceFarce guy put his unit badge on his right shoulder (following Army traditions), I may just have to... exhibit self control and extreme scorn.

Okay - yeah, but remember that not too long ago some scientist made a credible claim for having detected organics in the Venusian clouds. That could have played a part (even if her work has been subsequently criticized).

Loosely related question: does the capability exist to launch a dirigible or even simple weather balloon during atmospheric entry into Venus that could 'hang out' in the clouds above where the pressure and temperature is so great it destroys our ground probes? i.e. give us an extended mission? I'm thinking along the lines of something that, once the 'chutes are fully expanded deploys from the rest of the lander and stays airborne.