Pipcard

That's a better explanation. Thank you!

Japan uses solid rocket boosters but they're not making long range ballistic missiles.

I made a slight retcon to the acronym: now it stands for Hatsunia Aerospace Science & Development Agency. I made this change because I felt that the star-shaped A shouldn't just stand for "Aero" Actually, HASDA's logo in 2012/early 2013 looked a lot more like NASDA than JAXA (but it is not canon anymore).

Berthing ports have a larger diameter than docking ports, so larger equipment such as these racks can be taken through. The connections between berthing ports are stronger and more secure than docking ports, and it takes longer for two of them to lock into position. So a robotic arm has to hold it in place. I think that's how it works.

Comparison with the Dream Chaser (not my add-on)

Atmospheric re-entry:

Orbiter-Forum.

Piplup + Pipcard But lately, I've been thinking of changing my internet moniker to "mikusingularity, "which has three meanings: - Miku (my favorite singer and fictional character) meaning "future" - singularity as in "technological singularity" - sing(ing) is what Miku does (Also, back in 2009, I named my newly-created YouTube channel "piplupsingularity" as a shallow parody of a Google April Fool's joke.)

I'd rather play Orbiter than play Real Solar System because they are still Kerbals with Kerbal proportions, while Orbiter has vehicles designed for human proportions. But humans on EVA are only supported by a few add-ons such as UMMU (they are also not animated, a sad limitation). If I wanted to play with Kerbals I'd play in the default Kerbol system.

Didn't you see the video?

Note: the "RCV" initialism and its logo are based on the CV (Character Vocal) singing synthesizer software series by Crypton Future Media.

RCV01 "Hatsune" approaching Negishima Space Center's runway.

I've watched several SpaceX and JAXA launches on a live stream. Never seen an actual orbital launch in real life. I did get to see a high-power rocketry event in Alabama (where I am attending college) in October.

Call it "VenuSoar" (kinda like "Dyna-Soar" but for Venus)

It's not only about physical limitations, it's also about economic issues such as the "there isn't a large enough market for reusable/cheap launchers and vice versa" problem

So we will never become a spacefaring species?

So how come people are doubting the expected "mid-2030s" date set by NASA? And what do you think about the Mars for Less plan? Here is what it would look like (uses a dozen Ariane 5 launches). Fewer launches might be involved if the plan used Falcon Heavies.

I'm expecting early-mid 2030s unless SpaceX becomes successful with their Mars colonization plan (slim chance in my opinion). And I don't believe Mars One will ever work.

There's also more payload to GTO because of the launch site being closer to the equator. By the way, why do people think reusability is the main factor in an economical launch system? There's also other important factors such as flight rate and maintenance costs.

The seems to be like a European H-IIA: two liquid hydrogen/oxygen stages with two or four unsegmented solid rocket boosters.

I've seen a video in which Ferram calculates the lift-drag ratios of a craft in a graph. Isn't that because it's actually calculating the airflow over the geometry of the parts?

Does Ferram calculate lift/drag based on the shape of the mesh?

I actually do have the lift and drag coefficients for LIFLEX (the experimental JAXA aircraft mentioned earlier, but it's only for angles of attack ranging from -10 to 30 degrees). They're from page 11 of this 86-page .pdf. I do not actually know Japanese so I had to do a little digging around. And here's the lift-drag ratio graph (it's from some other .pdf, but I'm not sure which page). (ALFLEX being another experimental Japanese aircraft with delta wings.) Now how would I "solve for an equivalent airfoil"?

I barely know anything about aerodynamics, so does anyone here know about it? I would guess so considering the existence of Ferram Aerospace Research (although I've never used that before). I'm trying to develop an add-on for the Orbiter space flight sim using a development plug-in called "spacecraft3." It has less functionality than an actual compiled C++ module, but it only requires the creation and modification of .cfg files. In these .cfg files, some of the parameters describe the aerodynamics of the vehicle, especially the chord length and wing area of an airfoil. The issue is that I'm developing a lifting body (without any actual wings) based on a JAXA aircraft, and it's not quite clear what the chord and area of the airfoil should be. Note that the length of the fuselage is about 8-9 meters, and the girl (Hatsune Miku) is 1.58 m tall. Does the fuselage count as one big airfoil (that isn't as efficient as a true wing)?

Hype Aversion is why I haven't seen Frozen yet. (warning: TVTropes might be a huge timesink for you.)