intelliCom

Hence why they had to make it ceramic. Though, I have a suspicion that ice would exist on the poles.

December? Isn't Vulcan-Centaur launching then?

One thing that's vital but keeps being missed is a permanent Phobos or Deimos settlement; it would be ideal to operate machines on the martian surface with only a few seconds of delay instead of several minutes, not to mention coordinating a manned Mars landing.

Except for Kamala just doing public relations work. With a name like Space Launch System she'll forget about it in a few months after the first launch; won't launch again until 2023/4 anyway.

At the very least, being able to perform research at the depths of the sea floor would be pretty interesting; studying the ocean floors of other planets provides decent potential for research, and it's never really been done before, so...

Scrubbed. Well, that was an interesting wet dress rehearsal No. 6, everyone!

I appreciate their optimism, but they better be doing it because they actually have a good idea instead of it just being a great big cope over a second failed launch attempt.

You know, I've just realised something; SLS is the absolute antithesis to Sea Dragon. Sea Dragon would have had: Partial reusability (First stage with chutes and airbags) Simplistic launch infrastructure ("Ocean 'n go" system) Low RnD cost (Big dumb booster) Huge payload capacity Lower cost per payload mass On top of all of this, NASA took a funding hit due to Congress wanting to fund the Vietnam war (which they lost lmao) SLS needs to: Be completely expended (despite reusing refurbishable shuttle parts) Have completely reworked launch infrastructure (despite reusing shuttle parts) Heavily overpriced RnD (despite reusing space shuttle parts) Less payload capacity than Saturn V (despite being the "most powerful rocket ever built", and a "modern-day Saturn V") Only launches once a year (despite being a "modern-day Saturn V") On top of all of this, this was going to be built three goddamn times. The third of which is notable for having a lot of political meddling.

Look, to be fair, some launch vehicles have taken more attempts, two space shuttles needed six attempts. STS-73 first attempted 25 September 1995, and finally launched 20 October 1995, a month after; average of about one launch attempt a week. Chances are that with how much contractor shilling they put SLS with, they're gonna be at this for a while unless it launches Sept. 5... or launches a month from now... or two months from now... Relying on the Moon for launch attempts is a big issue here; they should just use SLS to launch a huge payload into LEO instead of the ICPS as a first-time SLS launch test; why not Skylab II or something? Maybe world's first artificial gravity centrifuge. Break new ground. Apollo IV didn't go to the moon on its first launching; why should SLS? Probably because it's so overpriced that they need to get the big stuff out of the way

Well, this wet dress rehearsal sure is going sour, isn't it? Good thing we caught these problems before the real launch attempt, huh?

A better idea than that is just cancel SLS entirely and actually make a new launch vehicle instead of forcing themselves to use old tech in an overpriced way. If they're going to spend that much, at least spend that much on something new. Or just don't spend that much to begin with.

Seems like a bit of a desperate move, to be honest. Don't they have a better idea?

The troubleshooting failed; engineers are trying to find another way to seal the leak.

Question: What if the leak isn't there? Will they go back to filling it at a normal rate again?

Agreed; with the 60% go on weather, and all the leaks that seem to be happening, this one's probably gonna be a scrub too. Still going to stay up late for it, got nothing important tomorrow, and in the small chance that it does launch, I still want to see it live. Also, unrelated, what's the context behind your post signature? The message by lajoswinkler?

Ah, sorry. I hope you can understand how I got them confused. I have a feeling that the pole's net gravity would actually be weaker than a fully stable body, as a decent amount of mass is coming from the sides instead of directly beneath the person standing on the surface. Here's another theorhetical; a moon lies in a very close orbit to the oblate body. What does this do to it? If the oblate spheroid is destroyed, surely the planet's spin rate can be reduced enough to avoid total destruction? Maybe something like Methone?

https://space.stackexchange.com/questions/37188/how-often-were-space-shuttle-launches-scrubbed Also, thought this would be interesting; we get an average of 1.9 scrubs for the space shuttle; let's round to 2. A launch vehicle with such a great legacy practically needed two attempts; the worst getting to 6 attempts. SLS, being as complex as it is, and expensive enough to only be capable of launching once a year, will likely have more scrubs per launch.

Did they fix Engine 3's bleeding issue? I didn't see anything happen.

Despite it being just a dream/nightmare, I hope you're alright. As I've said earlier in this thread, I hope that SLS's potential (likely) failure results in Congress finally getting their act together and try to make something competently. Otherwise private space industry will gain a very significant lead on the government's, and god knows what kind of state NASA will be in then. At least, what state NASA's launch vehicle division will be in. My optimistic side wants to say that they'll revive Venturestar, but with them using SpaceX and ULA as launch contractors, there won't be any need to do such a thing.

Roche Limit. I suppose if 'spinning faster' is defined as 'the surface moves around the planet's center of gravity faster than the planet moves around its star', then the whole planet would just turn into an asteroid belt from the centripetal force being so high. I have an interesting thing I've always thought about; what if a planet's rotation is barely under the roche limit? How would it feel to stand on such a world? How would it operate? Visually, it would definitely be much more of an oblate spheroid compared to other planets, and likely wouldn't exist for longer than a few years, but what would it be like anyway?

Define "spin faster". 'RPM' and 'orbital speed' aren't exactly compatible. If you're talking about the 'orbital speed' of a planet being the RPM around the parent star, landing on such a planet is easy, we do it all the time; Earth, Mars, Venus, they all spin with higher RPM than their orbit's RPM. Of course, we don't normally define orbital velocity as RPM, but we don't measure a planet's spin in km/s or km/h either. How did you think this was supposed to work?

I think you're referring to the high-strength shock absorber, the black zig-zag drum bit. Really does look like rubber, doesn't it? The artists did a good job with that. Let's hope it compresses like one properly in-game.

I'm sorry, I don't think I understand what you're saying. If this is a joke, it's a really strange one.

Saturn-V scale parts in KSP were still close to the end of the tech tree; you'd have landed on the Mun way before reaching such a point. But that's fair enough, I've been corrected. Orion was in fact considered for launches on Saturn Vs. Still, the boost-to-orbit part needed three launches; so launching it all at once without using Orion as a second stage would've needed something like Nova or Sea Dragon. Then again, it's not like you have to put it up in one launch. At least my demand argument held up, lol.

Ion engines were utilised in space before NERVA (Kiwi in 1959, ) even had a chance to be. See SERT-1 (1964). Space nuclear reactors, on the other hand, were being operated around the same time as ion engines. See SNAP-10A (1965). @sevenperforce and I were discussing Orion's implementation into KSP/KSP2, and where it would be on the tech tree. I still believe that regardless of the test ban treaty's interference, Orion would have been developed after NERVA due to one simple reason; you just didn't have the launch vehicles necessary to haul such a massive engine into orbit. Nova or Sea Dragon would've done it, but those were considered at the same time as NERVA was being developed, so Orion wouldn't have been before NERVA in active use. Sure, it saw earlier research, but its implementation as a usable technology needs infrastructure to support its use, as well as demand. We may see resources being hauled to Earth in the future utilising a high-efficiency, high-thrust engine like Orion, but for now it's just slim pickings under Congress' leash. Assuming KSP 2 even follows the tech-tree format, I can imagine both stemming from a shared 'Fission Technologies' tech node (nuclear reactors, RTGs, etc.), then Orion needs the latest research into structural and thermal technologies; research more advanced than NERVA. When I said "Orion comes after NERVA", I meant in when the player should be able to use the engine; not that NERVA directly connects to Orion on the tech tree. If it seemed like that, I'm sorry for the confusion.