SunlitZelkova

NERVA was not expected to be ready until the late 70s. In 1973 the experimental ground stuff was just finishing up. Pioneer 10 was launched in 1972 and remained in communication until 2003. Lavochkin (I think) has made a proposal for a Venus sample return that would not require going to such lengths. This is not that far fetched for 1972 if someone really wanted to do it. The Soviets launched balloons to Venus with more or less identical technological levels in 1985, and hypothesized about floating cities in 1971.

It appears September 19th is just the earliest possible date, not the one they will necessarily do. It all comes down to how long it takes to get the work done on the leak I think, and of course what happens with the FTS/roll back to VAB. In other words, we don’t know The whole thing just reeks of the type of incompetence that blew up the first N1 though, IMO.

Assuming the gist of your argument is that “goals create progress”, this simply isn’t true (all the time). Germany had a goal of conquering Europe and it set their science back for a variety of reasons. The USSR had a goal of improving agricultural yields and it literally ended up believing in a person who said cells could be created from egg yolk. To keep this on topic, I don’t think we need Artemis (and thus not SLS) to drive technological development. I’m skeptical it will provide anything particularly new apart from modernized and more reliable versions of concepts and proposals from the 70s. Even Mars won’t give off a lot. If we are still no where near fusion on Earth I don’t see how being on the Moon or Mars is going to make it happen faster. It’s not like the Earthlings are slacking off or not trying. Colony-level developments are science fiction, I would except the Moon and Mars surface facilities of this century to be souped up versions of known solutions derived from ISS research.

“Planet” is merely a name of a thing, not a descriptor. “Planet” was applied to stars that had motion as opposed to the (at the time) seemingly motionless other (in actuality, real) stars. Once it was realized they were solid or gaseous bodies orbiting stars, they simply realized the true nature of them, with no need to rename them because the term wasn’t an actual descriptor in the first place. Or do you suggest we need to rename stars because we didn’t realize they were Suns (and vice versa, so rename the Sun too) until the 1800s? They can’t be “celestial bodies” by the way, because celestial refers to being in the sky or in the heavens (which they aren’t, they are in space) while body refers to the main portion of a thing, and thus does not make sense as a name of an entire… space thing. Except those can’t be space things either! Space refers to a room and thing refers to a meeting/assembly/council or the topic of discussion at said assembly. But it doesn’t have to be that way because we can speak normally instead of abusing etymology to create weird gotcha moments.

The family of horseshoe crabs (Limulidae) has survived that long, the actual extant species, of which there are four, date from the Upper/Late Cretaceous, so 100-66 Mya. We also don’t know the exact status for some of the horseshoe crabs. One species is endangered, another vulnerable, and there isn’t enough data on the two others to know. That said, I think saying humans need to go back to the Moon to survive is silly. It’s like sitting in a burning apartment complex and saying people can survive if they move to (literally start living in) the parking lot. Better to put out the fire and rebuild the apartments than brave the weather, criminals, and other health dangers of the parking lot. In any case, though, SLS is hardly the vehicle to use for such a grandiose endeavor. And humans will certainly return to the Moon one way or another without it.

Aware this isn’t for me but I thought I would pop in and answer too. I imagine they would suffer the same fate “smart people” (intellectuals?) often do in times of hardship or chaos when they try to make things better. Be ignored, suppressed, imprisoned, or killed by the much more instinctual mob of masses. IIRC the tale of such people in such times is virtually always remembered in a tragic manner in history. So it would make sense the same would occur in a Lord of the Flies scenario.

There is no market if the costs are so high no one can afford it. I don’t think this is correct. If a craft is launched from say, Baikonur, and crosses the South Pole to reach Alaska, it then needs to reach orbital speed, as the FOBS did when targeting American early warning radars from the rear where they could not see. Baikonur to Alaska is roughly 32,000 kilometers across the South Pole. Even to reach the more southerly Beale AFB in California it would still be roughly 27,000 kilometers. But in contrast, Los Angeles to Tokyo is only 9,000 kilometers, Los Angeles to Beijing is 10,000 kilometers, and Los Angeles to Sydney is 12,000 kilometers. Minot, North Dakota to Moscow, Moscow Oblast is roughly 8,000 kilometers, Minot to Orenburg is roughly 9,000 kilometers. ICBMs launching from Minot would utilize a suborbital flight profile, therefore orbital speeds should not be required for these sorts of distances. In fact utilizing orbital velocities would put more stress on the vehicle during reentry, requiring more maintenance and thus increasing an already astronomical ticket price.

This makes no sense. For all average routes, only a suborbital flight path is required for point-to-point flights. I doubt point-to-point would be profitable for the foreseeable future. It requires a very high level of reliability, and lowering cost so average people fly on it. SpaceX is cheap within the context of launch costs, but it isn’t airliner ticket cheap, and it won’t become so for a very long time, if ever. At this moment in time P2P passenger transport may very well end up like the Concorde, and that’s only after you pass the hurdle of getting approval to fly spacecraft over population centers to land at a spaceport. The number of flights that would be required for this level of reliability to be achieved would be so high that SpaceX would likely already be making enough money from those launches in the first place and not need P2P from a financial point of view.

Does the continual extension of the destack date for the SRBs pose a credible risk to the flight? Even if the original destack date was merely cautionary instead of the true design limit, surely at some point the boosters are going to become a major hazard.

What is the longest length of a time for a vehicle (ship, car, tank, plane, spacecraft) to spend from development approval to first flight? Space Shuttle was approved in 1972 and flew in 1981. SLS was approved in 2010 and hasn’t flown.

The name really is indeed nonsensical. The Space Shuttle was called the Space Transportation System because it inherited the name of the real “system” it was supposed to be part of (consisting of not only the Shuttle but also conventional and nuclear space tugs, lunar landers, and heavy lift rockets) which was cancelled. “STS” as we got it has the excuse of merely being the sole component of an otherwise inoperable system, and of course the Space Shuttle has its own cool name (Space Shuttle). “Space Launch System” is problematic. Is it supposed to be a derivative of Space Transportation System? That doesn’t make sense, because STS itself was *launching* stuff into space. Is it a new system for “launching” instead of “transport”? What makes it a system? It can’t be the sole existing part of a wider proposed menagerie of spacecraft like the Space Shuttle was, because no such menagerie was ever proposed. The rocket itself can’t be a “system”, I mean yes, it is a system in the dictionary definition sense of the word, but Atlas V has an identical layout (liquid core and SRBs) and no one calls it a “system” (as a name). I kind of wonder if giving it a proper name was too intimidating. “Saturn” rockets are an expensive no no but “Space *insert thing* System” is manageable and mentally easier to give mountains of money too. A mundane name also draws public attention away from any problems it might have with development. Interestingly, the USAF once proposed something called the Space Launching System, also abbreviated SLS. It actually was a system, with different combinations of stages and boosters available to meet different mission needs. http://www.astronautix.com/s/sls.html 11-7-1967 was the deadline for a crewed 7K-L1 lunar flyby at one point.

How viable was this? Wikipedia portrays it as more of a general suggestion against Constellation rather than a serious proposal, the DIRECT team apparently even disbanded after the development of SLS was announced (of course prior to the form it would take was known though) and “declared success”.

Because it is a test of Orion too, and Orion in LEO doesn’t make sense since Commercial Crew became a thing. I somehow did not expect venting of the problems of SLS to arise as a result of the delays Sea Dragon was never realistic because nobody needed it. NASA did not lose funding because of Vietnam, but because no one in the US government really cared about space beyond maintaining a token presence there after Apollo. War or no war NASA was doomed once Apollo landed a man on the Moon. SLS is directly related to politics. Even the Space Shuttle itself was largely approved because of the jobs it would create in California, and while after the Columbia disaster a completely “clean sheet” call for proposals was issued for a post-Shuttle vehicle, in all likelihood a desire to keep those Shuttle jobs alive is what has driven all Shuttle derived launch vehicles which replaced that concept a mere year after it was revealed. I think the real travesty was not utilizing the Saturn IB and CSMs + smaller modular space stations to do a space station program along the lines of what happened with Soyuz in the USSR. It would have cost just as much as the Shuttle and actually done stuff, while being “incapable” enough to give a clean slate when people got around to wanting to go further again, instead of chaining the government and industry to the hugely expensive and messy Shuttle industrial complex. But the ultimate tragedy was that the delay in Artemis 1 as a result of all of those problems means I will never get to eat a Krispy Kreme Artemis doughnut!!! (I bet they would put in on sale again for the next attempt and it is gone)

I had a dream last night where I was standing underneath the tower at LC-39B, and SLS exploded not because of a problem with engine 3, but instead because the boosters did not light simultaneously. I still got away with just some deep lacerations on my right knee, which were later treated in a painful manner. If it were to fail, I somehow have the strong feeling public opposition to the rocket could be enough to get it cancelled. The problem is is that unlike during Apollo 1, where NASA was being problematic unbeknownst to Congress and then as the purse-holder they then cracked down on the contractor issues, Congress is creating the contractor issues. Reading what I just wrote I can’t see how SLS is ever going to end.

It could be similar to how ships don’t ram each other in real life despite that being a valid tactic. The lack of a use of hyperdrive weapons could arguably always have been a problem with the series.

There would be no need to launch it from Antarctica because the most serious studies had it either being lofted into the upper atmosphere by boosters or assembling it in space first. These are Saturn Vs. Orion after NERVA makes sense to me. Even without the test treaties, the government and science community saw no use for such a massive payload capability. Assuming KSP is something of a loose fantasy world along the lines of going forward to Mars after the Moon and so on IRL, the tech tree should be based on the premise that NERVA would pop up first for Mars and then later as the goal shifts to the outer planets, Orion development begins.

The most detailed proposals were for Mars or Saturn but some were made for other stars. I don’t think the lack of battleship experienced shipbuilders is a problem. We have been building cargo ships the size of battleships (some bigger than battleships) for decades.

I will be on the beach at that time but on the wrong coast

It’s all relative. Placed into the right circumstances, the average person can probably make the most gruesome predators pale in comparison. Only with immense moral discipline can one successfully fight against this and this is lacking IMO. In addition it has only been through immense violence that the current very “cushy” world we live in today has come about. If a billion* died in the process of making the world peaceful, is the world really peaceful? If X tribe conquered every land on Earth and exterminated the other tribes, but upon completion of that endeavor brought “peace” to society, I would certainly not suddenly classify X tribe as “peaceful”. It is, of course, important to note that this is more of a philosophical question and one that has nothing to do with anthropology or anything. Reading his above spiel kerbiloid make an interesting argument but the lack of sources makes it impossible to take seriously. *Arbitrary hypothetical example number, not a real figure

NASA is not a company. It is a government agency. SLS is built for them by other companies- Boeing does the core stage, Northrop Grumman/Thiokol do the boosters, ULA does the upper stage. Even in a nightmare scenario if Artemis I was pushed into 2023, I don’t think we would see SLS die for awhile. Even if Starship works this year, it is only as a cargo launch vehicle. While just launching the crew aboard Dragon and then having Starship HLS take them all the way might be a feasible option, that would be too much of an embarrassing admission for Congress to make (that SLS was never necessary). Perhaps one day if Crew Starship is flying regularly and has been proven to be safe, SLS could be retired without a loss of face, but right now I don’t think it can so it will remain part of the Artemis architecture. ULA could support Artemis, I think they were technically part of the Blue Origin HLS bid by launching a component of their lander on Vulcan. The payload capability SLS has is really only necessary for Orion. Orion itself isn’t really necessary, in fact I dare say (and would be interested to see an assessment if anyone has the time) that a completely standard F9 based lunar architecture utilizing modified Dragons, a series of space tugs and a big propellant depot altogether would be cheaper than the entire SLS program alone. In any case though, because Orion isn’t necessary, SLS-level payloads aren’t necessary, so many rocket companies still have a chance to support Artemis with smaller rockets.

I wonder what will happen to the Krispy Kreme Artemis doughnut. Go on sale again on the next attempt, continue selling all week, or call the enterprise off?

I disagree. They killed three astronauts because of a lack of contractor oversight. Artemis is better than Apollo. So far 0 people have died. Apollo can not say the same.

“The Sky People came and taught them farming and irrigation”- Dr. Henry Jones Jr., 1957 /s just to be clear It is possible this has nothing to do with either a hunter gatherer or agricultural life style, but rather the tendency to rebel or wish for “freedom” in humans. What you describe sounds ridiculously similar to how, for example, someone raised in X country sees nothing special about it and finds Y country comparatively attractive, while the person in Y country, despite having everything they need to live a decent life, feels Y country is lacking and wants to drop everything to leave for X country, despite the immense challenge of doing so compared to the simplicity of remaining in Y country. An example that mainly comes to mind is many foreigners wanting to come to Japan despite the much more complex* and strict culture than America, and vice versa with Japanese going to America. But I’m sure there are examples for every type of “boo”, if you are aware of that Internet slang. So it might not be that the hunter gatherer life style is actually less difficult, but that the Europeans simply wanted something different no matter what it was. *I do not mean complex as to imply that America is “simple” and thus “backwards”, while Japan is “advanced”. Furthermore, it is a relative thing. There are certain things in Japan that make America look like a prison and there certain things vice versa. But to be a normal person respected in society there is a lot more one needs to pay attention to than compared to the US, IMO.

OMOTENASHI and Equuleus are ready to go on SLS. https://www3.nhk.or.jp/nhkworld/en/news/20220826_24/ OMOTENASHI will be Japan’s first lunar lander, utilizing a retrorocket and air bags to achieve a semi-hard landing at 20-30 m/s. Equuleus features a unique propulsion system utilizing water as propellant. It will test flight maneuvers throughout the Earth-Moon system (apparently in support of future Gateway ops) and study the plasmasphere.

So out of curiosity, what is the logic behind the geography of starting up your own space company? Southern California makes sense, as do Texas and Florida, due to their climate. Having lived three years of my life in Washington and now living just some tens of miles south of the border with it, this doesn’t seem like the place to start a rocket company, unless you are already here for other reasons (Boeing because Boeing and BO because Amazon, that is, Bezos. I can’t think of any other active space companies here).