SunlitZelkova

ESA announces program to build European commercial resupply service. https://x.com/esaspaceflight/status/1736766316118224948?s=46&t=Jd73T2beq0JLNtwTy1uR5A https://www.esa.int/Science_Exploration/Human_and_Robotic_Exploration/Competition_developing_Europe_s_space_cargo_return_service Cargo launch and return. First flight intended for 2028 to ISS. ESA wants the program to be able to “barter” for flights to commercial space stations instead of having to pay money. The capability is said to possibly present an opportunity to eventually build a crewed spacecraft, or return cargo from Gateway. It says “this is part of ESA’s renewed journey to LEO and beyond to Moon and Mars”. Timeline seems a little optimistic, to say the least. Although I guess Dragon 1 flew in what, 3 years from beginning of development? What companies can realistically partake in this? And to what extent is this going to be “commercial”? The meat of my questions are: how is this going to become profitable or sustainable and not end up like the ATV (cancelled after five flights), when these manufacturers participating don’t have alternative sources of income like SpaceX did?* *I’m assuming Airbus’ airliner, defense, and space divisions are separate and can’t have cash swapped between them all willy nilly.

Would something like KORD help SH? So if an engine in the innermost ring fails, the engine on the opposite side of the ring can be shut down to avoid uneven thrust, and the rocket can keep flying? KORD was the engine control computer on the N1 responsible for automatically shutting down engines in the event of failure, in case you don’t know.

TBH Falcon 1's test flights were the N1's test flights... And as I write this I remember Falcon 1 was successful on its fourth flight, not the fifth, so the comparison I was thinking of doesn't work as well. But given enough time, I think any launch vehicle can become reliable and useful. If you look at Proton's flight record you would wonder why it wasn't cancelled like the N1. Musk is really lucky to have so many believers though. If not, Starship, if having continued flight test failures long enough, could have fallen victim to internal power politics in the same N1 was (N1 got cancelled more for the reason that Valentin Glushko wanted to erase Korolev and Mishin's legacy and take over the space program, rather than purely for technical reasons, not simply because the Soviets lost the Moon as is often believed). I think Starship also benefits heavily from not having much of a competitor. If BO had actually been able to deliver on their original HLS proposal instead of asking for more and more government money when there was none, and Starship continued to have flight failures, the NT HLS launching on proven flight vehicles might look like a better option than the exploding Starship as far as getting back to the Moon fast goes. Oh, and as I write this I realize that's another bad, bad possibility- that even if Starship has one successful flight eventually, it becomes like early Proton and repeatedly has spectacular failures despite also having successes. That could lead to fewer launch opportunities and bad PR. I'd hate to see Starship have all this potential to lower costs of launching stuff to space, but get relegated to only 3-4 launches per year instead of replacing F9 and launching at the same rate. Although that brings up the question of whether it even makes sense to try and replace F9 at all. But I don't think the ability to cheaply produce satellites, due to not having to use fancy purpose built electronics and what not, is a topic brought up enough. I hope telecom companies and the military are thinking about this, even if it is just "Plan B" and theoretical work. But then again, would off the shelf components and low grade stuff make sense when you need dependable comms or recon assets? To what extent are satellites highly engineered because they need to be made small for LVs, and to what extent are they highly engineered in order to survive the rigors of space?

It would be a lot of effort though. Most of the engineers who worked on it were probably at different organizations by then, most of the documentation sealed away in the Pentagon.

@Vanamonde @Gargamel Today gave me good appreciation for the mods. As much as I try to calm myself and avoid replying to off topic posts, sometimes I can't help but do so. I would have if a thread in the S&S section hadn't been locked. Thanks for all your hard work!

Dynosaur was cancelled in 1963.

I think AI has the potential to end the world but not in the way pop culture thinks it would. There won't be Skynet nuking cities, there will be AI generated content being designed by AI driven algorithms, flooding the internet. No one will know what is real anymore. Society will become a free for all when it comes to ideas and morals, with no one being able to tell who is good and who is bad even more so than how it is now. I could go into more detail but it'd start looking like politics.

My Kerbals drive down to the Boardwalk Cafe, which is located near the Cove Launch Site. There they take their S-IVB stage shaped mugs and enjoy Peppermint Mocha Krappuccinos while reminiscing over the feats they accomplished in the early days of the space program. After that they take a walk on the beach and enjoy the yearly Christmas resupply launch to the KLB lunar base.

The German designers would have loved Sprocket.

I collect Lego Star Wars but mainly with the intention of creating dioramas in the future, so the holiday themed stuff doesn’t interest me as much. That said, I loved Lego Advent Calendars as a kid so I’ve been thinking of doing them again. I’d probably do City though instead of Star Wars.

This is kind of like saying “I don’t care about laws, I care about how they affect me.” That means you care about laws.

In a fantasy world sure, but realistically there were three options for the post-Apollo low earth orbit space program (these were literally the options the government looked at in the end)- 1. Use Saturn IBs and Apollo CSMs 2. Use Big Gemini 3. Build a Space Shuttle In this thread here, I looked at the costs involved and the outcome is clear- A Big G launch was about a 1/4 of the cost of a Space Shuttle launch, and only 2 million dollars more than a Saturn IB but could carry double or triple the crew. Especially considering Big G could have been partially reusable with the capsule gliding under a para wing to land on land, it would have been near the same cost if not cheaper than throwing away a CSM everytime.

Nice. Moses Lake is not that far north. When I lived in the Seattle area, my middle school satellite club (really weather balloon club) stopped there for a potty break and stretching the legs after having recovered the balloons a few tens of miles to the east. Very cool to have rocket development going on so close to home. Southern California and, of course, Texas and Florida feel so distant from Oregon.

Same for me!

I got accepted to a university in Japan.

Xinhua reports the launch was successful. No photos or time provided. EDIT- Launch of the spaceplane.

Yes, but there is no guarantee it will be worse either. People opposed to my stance are acting like “we don’t know if life will be less advanced than now” means “life will not be more advanced than now”.

https://x.com/planet4589/status/1734272637226856878?s=46&t=Jd73T2beq0JLNtwTy1uR5A A little interesting tidbit- a GBI interceptor test conducted two days ago was against an IRBM class target dropped from a C-17. This was probably intended to test the ability to detect and intercept air launched ballistic missiles, given China has now put them into limited service.

Underneath the propaganda, there were a lot of people working hard to get to space, just like in America. I believe there are today too, and that beneath the Rogozin hoopla and nationalist chest thumping, there are space enthusiasts just like you and I trying to navigate their dysfunctional government to do stuff in space, not unlike how it took years of redesigns and political negotiation for the US to build its own space station, all the while while their Soviet counterparts would doing groundbreaking long duration flights on Salyut and Mir. I would not want to have a monument to NASA, Apollo, and Shuttle workers ridiculed. I don’t think it is right to do so with other countries’ space programs. I’ll leave you with this. EDIT- I’m actually going to delete the tweet because it might be considered politics. But the gist of it is that a British submarine captain met his Soviet counterpart at the end of the Cold War, and was surprised to learn he wasn’t a caricature of a brainwashed Marxist stooge, but a regular sailor like he was.

https://ru.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/QN-506 Type 59 (T-54) chassis, basically BMP Terminator Chinese style.

The K-Pg extinction event happened in a matter of hours, not decades (as far as the spread of its climatic effects go). We exist because of it. Yes, there are no more dinosaurs or big insects, but there are space stations and MRIs. Maybe the next species will solve the problems of conflict and societal malaise. Again, I’m just playing devil’s advocate here and saying life will go on, just not in the form it takes now.

Okay, I see. Thanks.

Global warming is also incredibly good for life as a whole. It would allow greater evolution if the environment was trashed and species were moved out of their comfort zone and forced to survive or die. I say this as a counter to people who think global warming threatens “life” as a whole. It certainly threatens species that exist now, but life will go on even with worst case scenario ecological collapse.

This is where philosophy comes in I like Philip K. Dick’s assertion that you can never really get out of the “maze” on your own. If we were to discover we were in a simulation and then we were suddenly “let out” by whoever made it, we would probably just be stuck in another simulation (or layer of the same simulation). Does it matter what is real? Can we know what is real? What makes something real? These questions have been pondered for decades. I like the suggestion that reality is not a fact or physical characteristic of something, but rather its psychological importance and emotional characteristics. A compassionate android nurse is a real human being in comparison to an evil murderer. A mechanical toy dog is a real animate thing for a group of lonely elderly people compared to the plasticky, made-for-mass-consumption “reality TV” they might have used for entertainment before. So in that sense, if you really enjoy life and can appreciate the things in it (and have things to appreciate in it), this world is “real” for you. But if you have lost everyone you love and been kicked to the curb by society? This world becomes more meaningless, more unreal, and the notion of a better one- whether it be the world outside the simulation or the notion of the afterlife in paradise- becomes more important, more real. For some people it’s in between. As for whether it even matters whether we are in one or not? It depends on what you think about what the “true” reality might look like. If you are a regular ole guy who thinks it is the same as exists now, it might not matter. But for some, simulation theory and its older cousin, the religious notion that existence is cursed or imperfect from its original pure state, is a way of escaping whatever tragedies have occurred in their life, or the misery that exists in the world. For them it matters because the idea there is a true reality out there is somewhat akin to the concept of the afterlife- a promise of a better world than this one.

https://x.com/cnspaceflight/status/1734617114445529565?s=46&t=Jd73T2beq0JLNtwTy1uR5A Just as X-37B prepares to launch again, China’s spaceplane will be launching too! That December 14 is China time, so these will be launching on the same day. It will be interesting to see who returns to Earth first and after how long.