Barzon

Will be starting a degree in Astronautics & Space Engineering this September

except ESM was significantly redesigned and shares more heritage with Lockheed's SM design than it does ATV

http://www.nasa.gov/press-release/nasa-expands-options-for-spacewalking-moonwalking-suits-services

woah! congrats on the release! it looks great!

- First vertical firing of a BE-4 - First dual BE-4 firing - First firing of a BE-4 on something other than a test stand

It's the adhesive. Also, I'm pretty sure this is the tape used: https://www.nitto.com/us/en/others/products/file/datasheet/PDS_NA_Glass_Cloth_Tape_P-213LW_012020_EN.pdf http:// https://www.boeingdistribution.com/product/PRESSURE+SENSITIVE+ADHESIVE+TAPE/P-213LW-WHITE-2IN-36YD/P-213LW-WHITE-2IN-36YD

by first submission are you meaning ILV? Because we know what the ILV PV looked like, and it did not look like that. And the mockup in the tweet was located at KSC, not JSC

Thats... not the latest study. There were studies on reference architectures released as recently as last year. Here's an overview of the NTP architecture study that the MTAS Team released last year, and a final report from '21 on the 4th iteration of the GRC's Compass team's CHEMNEP architecture that they've been studying for a fair while now. https://ntrs.nasa.gov/api/citations/20220006985/downloads/Edwards.Gerrish.Houts.PresbyMTASpanelSlides.pptx.pdf https://ntrs.nasa.gov/api/citations/20210017131/downloads/TM-20210017131_errata.pdf

It's probably a safe assumption. If not, well, all we can do is wait for more information.

If it helps, you can probably get a rough estimate for the dimensions of the habitat from this tweet, if it hasn't been posted already.

would you argue A1 would have achieved the same goals if Orion was sent to LEO instead of DRO? The most recently released studies allow construction of a vehicle with a 1 or 2 per year flight rate. Anyways ML-2 hardware is arriving at KSC soon:

Most of the architectures NASA are studying rn involve a checkout in NRHO of the MTV habitat, with MTV assembly in orbits ranging from MEOs to LDHEOs, which is advantageous as it means you can test it in a deep space environment with or without crew before sending it to Mars, using Gateway as a safe-haven, and taking over station keeping for that module when needed. If you want I can post the some of the recent studies they've published.

You also get constant communications, and it's a pretty decent departure point for Mars & beyond, iirc there are trajectories that can send a spacecraft from NRHO to Mars with double or even single digits of Δv.