SunlitZelkova

Doh in regards to needing fission weapon technology to build a hydrogen bomb in the first place. Thanks for the answers guys! ---------------------------- Supposedly part of the reason Hayabusa got funding was to demonstrate that Japan could build an RV if it wanted to.

A couple of questions in regards to a story I am writing to use as background for things in two games (KSP and a post-WWII milsim)- 1. In nuclear weapons development, does one need to go "atomic bomb first, then hydrogen bomb" or can you jump straight to hydrogen bomb? Specifically within the context of Japan's nuclear industry. 2. How long would it take to convert an orbital launch vehicle into an ICBM (namely the M-V rocket), assuming national survival level urgency (ZiS-30 tank destroyer urgency)? Specifically, time to first test flight. 3. If mission control can't "keep the lights on" (that is, NASA is bankrupt and the Texas electrical grid has completely ceased to operate) could astronauts "fly back" on their own (with little to no aid from mission control)? Namely from a Mars or Moon base.

The Aelita Project (1969). Let apple trees grow on Mars!

It might be available. I'm not sure what "space forums" referred to, assuming it meant only the Chinese equivalents of NASASpaceFlight and so on, there is still Weibo. Also, thanks to the parafoils attached to the boosters, they don't explode and spew hypergolics to the extent they make the air orange, they do this- By the way, this is not from Shenzhou 12, it is from a Long March 3B that launched a weathersat awhile back.

Starship is supposed to build a city on Mars. That is not "taking" it. There would still be tons of territory for other countries to use. I'd like to clarify what I meant by "taking" was "occupying the surface". It is hardly an occupation if you only have a small town sized lunar base. I still don't think the far-future extreme scenario is reasonable even for a paranoid general. It is just too outlandish.

I don't disagree with some of your points, but I would like to comment that even with Starship "taking" the Moon in the long term scenario you proposed also feels unfeasible to me. It is just too big. For a Russia-NATO conflict scenario I would agree, but with China and the US I am more skeptical of eachother's willingness to de-escalate and "keep calm". The highest likelihood scenario for war between the two isn't just simple sphere of influence conflicts- it is the equivalent of Texas trying to secede and having a foreign power support it on the one hand, and tantamount to the loss of one's dominant position in a highly important region of the world on the other. EDIT- To be clear, when I said "full on apocalypse" I didn't mean going from small shoot out on the border to full scale nuclear exchange within 4 hours, I meant the full on apocalypse that comes after maybe a week or two of conventional combat, and only after a major redline for one side is pushed (which I think the other side does not have the wisdom to not push). This is my personal opinion however.

The idea of claiming the Moon in the manner you suggest is quite silly. Even with Starship there is no way you could "capture" the Moon. If you take one position the potential adversary can just land 1000 km away. I think this thread is supposed to be about potential uses of Starship in a "real" war. Not some Vietnam in space. Full on apocalypse, tactical nukes all around, just mere hours away from full scale MAD. In the latter situation, it doesn't matter if you have rapid reuse Starship to "capture" the Moon- mission control, the factories, the launch sites, and the landing pads will all be destroyed by a nuclear blast. Thus, while the suggestion of use of Starship as a surface-to-surface missile and combat transport made sense as part of this thread, I don't see how "taking the Moon" makes sense or is relevant. I only make this comment as if you are going to bring in "real world stuff" outside of the technical capabilities of Starship and some realistic space warfare scenarios- by real stuff I mean sanctions, economy and what not- you need to bring in the "other real world stuff"- the terrestrial forces and the military action on Earth. And if you bring that in it will probably just end in nuclear war. Which is why taking the Moon doesn't make sense.

I don’t think all of this discussion of “taking” the Moon makes sense. It doesn’t matter so long as SpaceX and NASA mission control centers are going to be destroyed in a nuclear strike anyways. Which is probably what will happen if the Moon is “lost”, or is bound to happen if people are fighting a war on the Moon anyways. Within the context of discussing this “theory”, it is possible there is infighting among their CIA masters. Just because the Japanese Army and Navy both had allegiance to the Emperor did not mean there couldn’t be vicious competition between the two. I would imagine the same is possible for the different sections of the CIA responsible for controlling each of the two companies (SpaceX and BO).

It seems to be unknown, but it is possible that some key person related to each of the forums happened to have ties with someone who has been arrested on charges of corruption and thus the forums got deleted. They seem to be being very thorough in this round of the anti-corruption campaign, an actress was arrested for connections to a party official in Hangzhou and they decided to erase every single one of her movies from streaming service providers- regardless of whether there was anything “ideologically unacceptable” in the films or not.

So if Musk is Korolev’s reincarnation (a “tube designer”, IIRC someone else did the Merlin and I am assuming it is the same for Raptor, and his thing seems to be more management rather than design in any case) who is Rogozin?

I know what ERA stands for in this case, but it is very funny to imagine them installing Kontakt-5 explosive reactive armor on Nauka.

Outbound Flight, as a tribute to the attempted intergalactic colonization mission in Star Wars.

I was assuming the war has started for other reasons. Then SpaceX gets attacked, whereas if it does not pursue a Starship combat variant, it might be left alone. Starship isn't useful as an ICBM though because it is liquid fueled. Now the Titan II managed to do 24 hour alerts but regardless of whether Starship can be redesigned to do that, building a silo for Starship would be prohibitively expensive.

Space APS? 1. This is a bad idea. It will just invite attack on SpaceX launch facilities themselves. Better to just accept sats getting destroyed. Also armoring of a satellite does not matter because the impact will likely destabilize the satellite anyways. 2. This won't work. The re-entering Starship will be detected by radars, even mobile ones like the AN/TPY-2 (THAAD), AN/MPQ-63 (Patriot), and presumably the S-400 and S-500, will be able to provide early warning. Again, this will just invite attack on SpaceX launch facilities themselves. And if SpaceX launch facilities get attacked, a Mars City can be kissed good bye. SpaceX development facilities would become key targets too.

Within the story, the Artemis missions aren't building lunar infrastructure or any thing. They just go there, "do science", and go back- the true purpose of the program is mainly propaganda. Boca Chica is destroyed in the war so no Mars cities, but Russia and Europe emerge as the sole developed areas of the world so it will be interesting to see where ESA and Roscosmos go. R-7 development began in 1953 as the R-6 and it took four years to get to the first launch, but afterwards launches occurred at a decent pace (multiple per year, although granted that was uncrewed so the development was impeded by a high need to "make it work"). I am assuming once they get to the first launch, it won't be *too* hard to launch again. SLS Blk 1B might be a different case though.

I am currently writing a timeline for my alternate history where the COVID-19 pandemic never happened, and although the main point is the lead up to a major conflict in 2027 (which I am portraying in another video game, which is the point of this alternate history), I am including space achievements as well. How does this look for Artemis? November 2021- Artemis 1 August 2023- Artemis 2 October 2025- Artemis 3 March 2027- Artemis 4 (with SLS Blk 1B)

https://castic.cyscc.org/35/lectures/lecture1.html Long Lehao, basically modern China's Glushko in terms of position in the space industry (but without the economic trouble and infighting with Chelomei to slow him down), has given a lecture at the 35th National Youth Science and Technology Innovation Competition. Interesting takeaways- 1. The first prototypes of the YF-130, YF-135, and YF-90 engines for the Long March 9 have been fabricated. 2. First crewed lunar landing date has "officially" been decided as 2030 by CNSA. That is, this is the target date they are working with in development. It should be noted a crewed lunar landing has not yet appeared in any approved economic plans.

It was actually the Chiss at the request of Palpatine, because if Outbound Flight (the intergalactic spacecraft) had managed to leave the galaxy, it would have alerted the Yuzhaan Vong and lead them to attack while the galaxy was in a weak state militarily. Checking Wookieepedia, the "higher force" was the celestials (like the family on Mortis). It was theorized by Imperial scientists that they created the disturbances in hyperspace to protect the galaxy from something either entirely foreign or something they had exiled. EDIT- Didn't realize the meaning of your question.

Canon or Legends? In one Legends novel, it was theorized the Force could have been used to clear a path through the disturbances, and although that expedition was destroyed by Palpatine and my have also been impeded by some higher force that I don't recall at the moment (within the novel that is), it might have worked, or might work, following the end of "the wars" whether that be in Canon or Legends.

I don't think so. The mainstream political narrative is that America is under threat of losing its position as number one in the world, but has not yet lost it. The Sputnik Crisis and the reaction was brought about by the perception the US was behind, so I don't think the US will ever see such a series of events again. Also, that tweet is in reference to China's nuclear arsenal. Not their space program, which American observers like to describe as being behind the US. That said, at least in Oregon and Washington there is already a decent campaign to push STEM. And it was already there before "great power competition" became a thing. Not sure about how the rest of the US is doing though.

I think the reports of decreasing bird nests could use third party confirmation, but I don't think the US Fish and Wildlife Service would fabricate problems.

???

When was the model of the Vostok constructed at the VDNKh? In other words- when did the configuration of the R-7 derived rockets become publicly known?

They are probably going to go there anyways. I recall you mentioning that Project Horizon PDFs are gone, I looked at them a long time ago before Artemis and it mentioned a number of military applications for the Moon lol.

As I said- I am not a wildlife conservationist. When I refer to "concerns", I am not talking about some list of grievances I have next to my computer, I am talking about the fact that there is concern from members of the public over potentially extreme impact on different species. I am not necessarily talking about the law, I am talking about what they can do outside of "they are required to". NASA has no legal obligation to take all of the Stewardship actions they do at KSC to mitigate their impact. They do it because they care about the environment. Likewise, I simply suggest the most humane way to deal with the concerns of the public and improve SpaceX's image would be to do their best to mitigate where possible and invite third party persons or groups to do an assessment of SpaceX's impact so we can see what it actually is beyond "there are fewer bird nests so Starbase bad". There is a solution to this conflict beyond steamrolling. The people concerned have presented a number of justified reasons to be concerned. Examples from this article https://www.cbsnews.com/news/spacex-launch-site-boca-chica-texas-60-minutes-plus/ - These are not all random activists by the way. One of the entities concerned is the US Fish and Wildlife Service. Again, this is not about legal requirements. It is about what they should do beyond what they are required to do, if they wish to solve this problem like human beings. I am not arguing against a tunnel, or further expansion of Starbase- even expansion that would increase environmental impact. I am suggesting a way to ease those concerned over the environmental impact to solve the issue humanely, instead of steamrolling. --------------------------------------- I would like to clarify again all of my criticisms are aimed at SpaceX, not SpaceX fans.