Kryten

Does it actually feel like a big update?

Yep, that's completely wrong. Constellation was basically Apollo II, to be followed my a crewed Mars landing.

And the material for this is supposed to come from where, exactly? Just because something is alive doesn't mean it can break conservation of mass.

It's the Greek acronym for 'Hellenic ministry of culture'.

Mid-december at the earliest.

And 55 days, with the current schedule. That's some kind of press conference. EDIT: Nvm, I was looking at an outdated source. It's probably not even going to launch this year.

http://forum.kerbalspaceprogram.com/threads/87898-The-UAE-wants-to-go-to-Mars-by-2021

The energy released from the impact. Pretty much zero. Anything Ceres-sized or larger (other than Ceres, which isn't going anywhere) is in the kuiper belt; extremely far out. It's very unlikely for one to lose enough energy to enter the inner solar system, and extremely unlikely for one to hit earth if it does. It sounds about right, rock doesn't exactly cool rapidly. One the size of Ceres? It might become habitable, after a while, but there'll be nothing left to do the inhabiting.

The game's peaked anyway. There's no way there's enough life left in it to recoup that much money.

What poll?

Orion was ultimately selected through the CEV program, which was competed. That tender was effectively symbolic; Energiya is the only contractor with experience with crewed spacecraft, and they already had designs. Apollo worked. Putting new technology into something doesn't inherently make it better; just look at how badly the SS2 program's been screwed over by their 'innovative' hybrid engines. I'm sorry, this sentence doesn't even make sense. It doesn't want to. This isn't relevant to anything. Bigelow's habs aren't a plausible contender for this kind of mission, because you need more than just space. Any hab would have to be, of necessity, mostly filled with supplies and equipment before setting off; that doesn't work well with inflatables.

Try reading parameciumkid's posts; he's saying there's a trend of lowered CO[sub[2 over billions of years (there is, but only because of the evolution of multicellular life and the setting up of the long-term carbon cycle, it's been pretty stable since then), and that adding more will 'save the planet' from us running out in another few billion years.

So am I. The entire human exploration program is focused on BLEO, and F9H is no good for it. That kerolox engine and tankage may be cheap, but it ruins C3 values. See anybody else with plausible capability to make an HLV? SX Only has Kerolox and F9 tooling, they'd have to build something equivalent to Michoud from scratch, move into development of larger engines and real high-energy upper-stages, et.c. et.c. Producing all of this redundant capability just to produce a semblance of competition would be insane. Yes, hence NASA hiring a private company to produce this one. Repeat after me; NASA does not have, and has never had, any production capabilities. There's one set of infrastructure available to produce a rocket of this size, and this design is the most practical to produce with it. Again, replicating that for a different rocket would drive costs through the roof. NASA is not going to build a lunar base, and you can bet private industry will be instrumental in ARM. Paper projects are always faster and cheaper than real ones. Paper falcon 9 was fully half the price of the rocket we have now, to pick an example.

LEO payload is useless except for advertising; with KH-11 being retired, there are now no LEO payloads being produced that would require DIVH, nevermind falcon heavy. Initial SLS plans are ARM, which won't require anything more than Orion, and later flights are far enough ahead to not require funding.

It's barely an improvement in actually putting stuff into space. The GTO figure is barely higher, and payloads to e.g. TLI (i.e. the kind of orbits SLS is built for) are likely inferior. Hitting the same kind of levels as traditional machine tooling isn't going to happen without very radical changes to the tech; the complexity is just too high. The central booster likely not reusable on falcon heavy missions, and plenty of customers require the expendable version of F9 for their payloads. It's not intended to make exploration 'affordable'; it already is affordable. It's intended to facilitate further exploration than is possible with existing launchers, within the budget assigned, and that's it And Delta IVH was ready well before it. Why would it make the slightest bit of difference?

As a fellow VM customer, I think we can say we have a pretty good idea of what it's like to be in an internet 'slow lane'.

3D printing isn't a viable process for economic mass-production of anything, and falcon heavy doesn't have remotely the capability of SLS. It's barely an improvement over DIVH.

That's a nice copyrighted image of Skyon you've got in your banner there.

It is private enterprises; specifically LM for the capsule and Boeing for SLS. NASA has no production capability.

Why would anybody other than the government fund such a large rocket? There's no commercial market.

In billions of years the earth is going to cook. You can scoop off the whole damn atmosphere and it won't change that one iota.

You'll want to ask somebody who actually knows what they're doing. I recommend getting in touch with ELaNa and finding the actual requirements they have ASAP.

There will be specialised plastics available, but 3D printing won't help you. Don't put it near anything that might be effected by outgassing, (e.g. cameras), keep it out of sunlight, keep in pressurised environment if at all possible.

They aren't trained to use or maintain the USOS equipment; that's why there's always at least one russian or USOS crewmember during changeover.

Rogozin said it, but Rogozin has a habit of-to use a local colloquialism-talking out of his arse.