SunlitZelkova

Being worried over a test or a first date is not in the same class as climate change or any other global issue. As I said earlier, I am not necessarily saying that "doomsayers" are correct more often than those who believe everything "will work out", but the latter aren't necessarily correct more often either. I don't think we can apply some blanket logic to all global issues. Each has its own unique situation. Are current supply chain issues going to lead to economic collapse? No, I think we can say it will all work out. But if the variety of data across a number of fields is telling us we have a pretty bad situation on our hands if we don't figure out some way to end our use of fossil fuels? Upon looking around at how little action is being made to do so, and reading reports saying the action being touted as "major" isn't enough, I think it is acceptable to say we are heading towards a bad outcome. There are plenty of instances where one can say "it will all work out" and be correct. I don't think that can be said about climate change. Saying that would be like being in a stalling, hijacked airliner and saying "it will all work out". Are there pilots aboard who know how to make a recovery and get the plane flying again? Yes. But if the terrorists won't let them in the cockpit and the ground is getting closer and closer, even if there is still a possibility that they might be allowed in at the last moment and save the plane, there is absolutely nothing wrong with saying "we might be screwed". I would like to you remind that I am not saying we are destined to fail or "factually doomed", with no hope of salvation. I am simply saying there are no indications that everything "will", or is even likely to, work out fine.

Yes but people who say “everything is fine” or “everything is alright” don’t have a good track record either I’m not saying we “are” doomed, but it isn’t “all good” either.

Fun fact: As part of the MX missile program (later named Peacekeeper), a number of basing options were considered, including, but not limited to- 1. Building 4,600 hardened shelters over 14,200 square kilometers (probably around Utah) and having 4,400 decoy TELs and 200 actual TELs swapping between them via a purpose built road. This would have cost 37 billion dollars in 1979 and actually got approved by President Carter, only to be canceled by Reagan. I do wonder how the Soviets would have responded to this though... 2. Building missile siloes in hard rock (like granite). 3. Building small submarines for ICBMs, which would basically duplicate the Trident SLBM program. 4. Basing the ICBMs on ships disguised as merchants. IIRC the Soviets considered doing the same thing with the R-39 of the Pr. 941 class SSBNs (NATO reporting name: Typhoon). 3. Rail basing, in which launcher cars painted like reefer cars would carry missiles. They would remain on base and deploy to the main rail network in times of crisis. This was the mode that actually got approved and was only canceled when the Cold War ended. 4. Building 900 meter deep launch shafts in a mountain and a cavernous base connecting them below. TELs are based there, and then drive up to a shaft to launch their missiles. Either 10 separate bases with 20 missiles each would be built, or a single base with 100 shafts and all 200 missiles. 6. Putting two missiles on a derivative of a wide body airliner. The planes takeoff when an attack is detected and then launch their missiles in flight. 5. A seaplane carrying four missiles. It would sit at a random location in the ocean when on alert/patrol and take off to launch its missiles. It would have had a take off weight of 907 tons and a 114 meter wingspan. 6. Uncrewed, 117 ton hovercraft with a single missile on it. 600 of these would patrol over 233,000 square kilometers. 7. Building 4,600 pools and swapping 200 real canisters with missiles and 4,400 decoy canisters around between them. Each pool would be roughly 90 meters long, 30 meters wide, and 12 meters deep, and hold roughly 29,500,000 liters of water (ten Olympic swimming pools). Each pool would be spaced one mile apart, and roughly 8,000 kilometers of new roads would be required. The canisters could erect themselves and fire without crew assistance. 8. 200 uncrewed canisters released into the ocean. They would drift, and then on command would right themselves and fire their missiles. 9. 200 uncrewed canisters tethered to the ocean floor. They would pop up to the surface and then launch their missiles on command. Source is this blog, which is sourced from the original basing study document, the link to which no longer works- https://baloogancampaign.com/2017/01/09/icbm-basing-modes-can-hide-icbms-today/ I did find this, however the full original study does not appear to be anywhere anymore- https://ota.fas.org/reports/8116.pdf

Artemis I will be carrying two mannequins to enable a look at the radiation the crew will receive during the flight. What happens if it is really bad? Will everybody who flies on SLS Blk 1 just be "done" after that final mission? Would it be possible to do this modularly? Otherwise, New Armstrong will be needed sooner than anticipated. Of course no one else would really be able to do anything either if it can't be done modularly because there are no other launch vehicles large enough.

Except, you know, if your entire country might be inundated... The response to climate change would look very different if it was the entire mainland United States that was at threat of being submerged instead of some "far off" and "tiny" island nations. But the latter is a bit like saying "all the world leaders need to do is sit down, discuss their concerns, and come to a joint solution". Sounds easy on paper, pretty unlikely in reality. See below about technology. This all sounds nice, but reminds me of how the USSR "had" vast natural and decent labor resources at their hands to solve the meandering economic problems of the late 1950s and early 1960s. Yet just because the physically required materials were there doesn't mean they ended up being used. Lack of effort to change and interest in preserving the status quo led to stagnation, and before anyone knew it the country literally and figuratively fell apart, because no one could get together to try and solve anything, in combination with many wanting to deliberately either let it wither away or actively tear it down for their own benefit (in some cases positive, in some cases malevolent). So "we have the technology" or "the technology is there" is not a good indicator of how a problem will turn out.

It was actually a sort of half-joke. If I was a human or intelligent Earth inhabitant 50 billion years from now, I wouldn't care that much about the Moon's or Earth's rotational period. But on the other hand if we bring Late Holocene homo sapiens behavioral matters into the question (like "over work" and "disliking work") then a philosophical response is what immediately comes to mind, rather than engineering. I decided to dress it up in a manner similar to some parenting debates though. After all, the Moon is only in a bad position if we think the Moon is in a bad position.

How to save the Moon? Change your perception of what constitutes salvation. Let the Moon be the Moon. It deserves to go out (further) in to the universe and try new things. Same goes for members of the genus homo, if it can survive for that long.

https://daisetsuzan.blogspot.com/2019/06/gone-in-35-seconds-spatial.html This is my guess as to what happened.

My world/story/fictional history/alternate history where the current global health crisis never occurred has it like this. Artemis III crew has Victor Glover becoming the "next man" and Anne McClain becoming the "first woman". The latter is just bias of me being raised in the Pacific Northwest. My story has Artemis I and II happening on time, but Artemis III is delayed to 2025 because both Starship HLS and the National Team HLS get funded and both have their own development delays. Also as a result of this, those two mentioned above are the only ones that land during Artemis III, because the latter HLS is used.

I think the crux of the issue is that there is a tendency for just people in general to be crazy. Hence the calls for a certain multinational military organization to intervene in a certain conflict involving a certain nuclear power.

Fun fact: Long before the hype over Poseidon/Status-6, the Soviet Union considered building big torpedoes for attacking coastal cities with nuclear weapons. The Project 627 class (NATO reporting name: November) would have carried a 1500mm torpedo (roughly 3x the size of a standard torpedo) with a 3.54 ton warhead. Despite the strategic mission being dropped, this design went on to become the USSR's first nuclear powered submarine.

The same thing occurred in reverse (albeit in secret) during the Vietnam War. It isn't really that out of place. It is like if the Cuban Missile Crisis was the Florida Missile Crisis.

I wonder if this will ever become a real thing (SLS on 39B and Starship at 39A simultaneously).

I don’t think it is entirely similar because the radiation level is still very low. Rather than peeing in the pool, it’s more like force feeding processed food daily instead of organic. Still bad though. Even if it is safe though, I don’t support the dumping decision. Tohoku’s, if not wider Japan’s fishing industry is in for a tough time… and they didn’t get a say in the matter. There are various mechanisms in place to prevent this. Before declaring a threat of nuclear conflict, we need to get into a conflict in the first place. I haven’t a scenario where that can happen right now, and the current situation certainly isn’t one. On the other hand, if feces impacts the cooling device over a certain island off the coast of mainland China… I am not hopeful about the outcome.

It is very surreal to see it on the pad, considering I first saw a rendering/CG art of it 11 years ago, and the rollout itself was supposed to happen half a decade ago. So much has happened since then (both personally and in the wider world), SLS feels out of place. Kind of like how the Spruce Goose didn’t fly until the war it was required to transport supplies for ended. Starship, which probably could have been developed to carry Orion alongside its standard capabilities at the same pace, is already here after all. It is a nice rocket and I think it is cool, but until it actually flies (that is, does something) it is a bit hard to get excited about more tests. The photos are a nice addition though. Also, I have a question. How is EUS doing? If it takes too long, but Orion has to stay and Congress is too dumb to create a Commercial Heavy Crew Program, is it possible that the “Interim Cryogenic Propulsion Stage” could become the “Inertial Cryogenic Upper Stage”? In the same way the Shuttle’s Interim Upper Stage became the Inertial Upper Stage when Shuttle-Centaur was canceled.

Yes but the 1990s is not the 2020s in terms of the security environment. This is where “military space station” becomes an attractive selling point. This is a very similar parallel to how Vostok only got approved by the military because it was supposed to eventually become a crewed reconnaissance satellite of sorts. This never happened because Khrushchev finally got hooked on space spectacular mania and pushed for more pure propaganda flights. Shortly before being deposed he started up the lunar program, which the next leadership just stuck with. By then, space was a huge matter of PR prestige so the government and military had to stick with it. But even then adding in military utility was a huge bonus when trying to get something approved. It will be really interesting to see how 4K footage of astronauts on the Moon and Starship in flight will affect the decisions of other space programs around the world. It’s easy to talk about returning to the Moon, but I imagine it will have quite the emotional effect on even the most troubled of people. But back on the topic of Roscosmos, the unfortunate side of such persuasive tactics is it has its limitations. So even if ROSS flies with military modules, Yenisei, the LVPK, and Orel have a very hard road ahead of them

It will be interesting to see what happens. It should be noted that the USSR built Mir and Buran and Energia and a whole bunch of new ICBMs simultaneously while being under pretty bad economic conditions. Delays are a foregone conclusion, but I think to say never is a bit premature.

It could indeed work. China is making their own version called Tengyun. It is only intended for cargo transport though, although bigger versions with the same concept of operations (hypersonic carrier aircraft and piggy back spaceplane) are expected to be developed in the future.

I meant part size. Sorry for the confusion. I.e. 2km diameter payload fairing.

How big will ships get? Is there any indication of dimensions in the trailers and stuff we have seen so far? I also wonder if certain parts will be restricted to the orbital VAB or if we will have the option of building our interstellar craft the “hard” way. In real life, while Orions were first proposed to launch from the ground, there were also proposals to assemble them in orbit using Saturn Vs. I am hoping they are not restricted at all, just as plane parts can be used in the SPH and VAB in KSP1. The same goes for BAE, it would be fun to try to manually deliver large colony modules to the surface of different celestial bodies.

In theory, it could carry a solid fuel upper stage with some probe(s) attached to it. It could also carry a liquid fuel upper stage, but this would require new fueling equipment to be developed and would suffer from boil off. SpaceX plans for a fuel depot but it will be used over and over again instead of expending it. The fuel depot might be able to carry some fuel into orbit on launch, but to be fully fueled it would likely require a Starship tanker flight(s).

Very impressive. Judging from the wiki excerpts about Duna flight (and what I have encountered of its terrain so far in exploring it), this seems like one of the hardest things to do in the game.

How does SpaceX plan to deal with payload integration? Rapid reuse will not mean much if it still takes a month to mate the launch vehicle and spacecraft.

By "on the ground" do you mean manufacturing of the module? Or building a space station analog on the ground? I wanna say more like three-ish for the 60s. DOS-1 and DOS-2 were cheating a little because they used the shell of Almaz and the guts of 7K-OK. Skylab was built between 1971 and 1972, but it suffered damage during launch, so for a proper station it should be more like three years. But Almaz took seven years (1966 to 1973). Even without Salyut interrupting it, it couldn't have flown in 1970, so that is at least four years.

The nuclear winter thing doesn't come from ground bursts against siloes and bunkers. It primarily comes from the fires that burn in cities afterwards. That said, there is a decent amount of evidence pointing against it- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuclear_winter#Kuwait_wells_in_the_first_Gulf_War