sevenperforce

Seems like a no-brainer.

Added Delta II and swapped the DIVM+5,2 out for the last remaining 4,2:

Just looked at the "future Delta family" launches page and realized that the 4,2 configuration will launch one last time. Dammit.

That's what I said when I first heard about it. I mean, sure, you want every possible egress available...but there are just really no failure modes which give you enough time to jump on a zipline.

You don't need the zipline or whatever other egress nonsense if you have nothing explosive until your LES is armed.

Right. The first poster mixed historic and current LVs; now I'm doing some more specified posters of current and near-future LVs.

I don't understand why propellant loading while the astronauts are on the pad is more dangerous than propellant loading before the astronauts on the pad. If there is an RUD while the propellant is being loaded, Dragon 2 can abort. Seems much safer than climbing into a capsule with all the fuel sitting there ready to go boom. The capsule can't abort during ingress.

New catcher net looks badass. Really old news.

ULA LV WIP:

Updated ULA launch vehicle poster: (added booster info and made the Atlas V 500 series fairings more conical)

^^ Posts like this are why I made this thread and why I love this site.

There are no operational Titans, right? Thanks! I used some existing graphics but essentially traced over them using MS Paint. It works pretty well. Thanks for the flag on Centaur V; I'll fix that. Think I should do Vulcan+Centaur V without SRBs and Vulcan+ACES with?

Build a little town full of Kerbals and houses to get blown up....

Good grief.

Delta IV's heyday is fading fast.

Work in progress:

Question: Does anyone know if ULA still offers the 4-meter-fairing for Delta IV Medium+? And do they still fly Delta IV Medium without any SRBs?

Vostok had an ejection seat and chutes; the capsule itself had no chutes and so Garagin had to bail out and chute down. Voskhod, which followed the orbital launch of Gherman Titov on another Vostok, was the two-man capsule. The capsule had chutes, but the ejection seats were removed to make space and Voskhod had no provision for launch escape in the event of an RUD on the pad or in the first few minutes of flight. It was nearly as bad as the Shuttle. IIRC, Voskhod and the STS are the only vehicles to ever fly crew without a launch escape system. Does anyone know if ULA still offers the 4-meter-fairing for Delta IV Medium+? And do they still fly Delta IV Medium without any SRBs?

Voskhod simply had no abort whatsoever.

Eh, they woulda been fine. N1 was no Voskhod.

I happened to include the Black Arrow in the poster of rockets I put together for my 4yo's birthday, and I was struck by how very small it was. Roughly the same payload as Falcon 1 but barely over half as tall. Kerosene + peroxide has fantastic impulse density even if its Isp sucks. I'd love to see an aerospike smallsat LV using keroxide on the first stage, a peroxide monoprop circularization stage, and a couple of SRBs to help it get off the ground. Like ARCA but realistic. A composite frame would probably give it a good enough drag coefficient to survive re-entry (especially if it was an aeroplug nozzle) and chute down, since aeroplugs are much sturdier than conventional bells. Inflatable bladders could be used to make it pressure-fed with peroxide preburner tapoff.

Or just grab a random selection of 50 deniers, stuff them into the less dangerous end of the BFS, and drop them off at Tranquility Base. "We'll reopen the access doors when you admit this is all real."

Your optimism is refreshing but, I fear, misplaced. Moon landing deniers would just say that the camera cubesat footage is faked. Em-drive proponents would insist that some minute detail of the test was improper and THAT'S why it didn't work.

That being said, if you want to build something like a proper Saturn V replica, then for TWR and isp purposes you should absolutely swap Skiffs for Wolfhounds. The Wolfhound is utterly overpowered.

The number of crew represents man-rated capacity. If I was going to add the man-rated Falcon 9 I would display it with the Dragon 2 on top. The resolution on the finished poster isn't quite as nice as I would have liked.