Kryten

This is the developer that made duke nukem forever and aliens: colonial marines; so I wouldn't really get your hopes up. EDIT: if you haven't heard of those, A:CM was a game so execrable they're genuinely being sued over it, and DNF was equally terrible.

Two points; A) Google now already does these things, as do proprietary version from basically every phone manufacturer. I have never seen anybody use any of these things in public, despite the vast majority of phones supporting some version of it. Why? Because it makes you look like a tit, that's why. Something that requires no shame to use is pretty pointless.

Then where's your precious lunar return? if this was correct, it'd be a dead cert. How would a lunar base help with that in any way, shape or form? The most FUNDED concepts have the bigger chances. There are plenty of discovery and new frontiers class missions that are far more plausible than ARM, but don't havea snowballs chance due to issues with funding and/or RTG availability. No bucks, no buck rogers. Is it really? Did you forget what happened to the last two HLV programs from these people?

I'm not exactly up with the pseudo-singularity fanboy definition, sorry. I use the definition that uses actual concepts, where we became a spacefaring species in 1961. The 40th assembly of the Committee on Space Research; so Saturday. Energiya and Krunichev might like to put around powerpoints of crewed landing and bases, but the HLV program is only funded to the vehicle design phase. NASA takes mission concepts from the scientific community, congress, and the president; not corporations. Boeing is hardly going to be able to override Obama. My point was simply that NASA will study anything regardless of plausability or intention to actually do it, so studies don't mean very much.

There's also day-night cycles to take into consideration, especially as Philae is solar-powered; that's what the colour-coding is. Yellow=has cycle, red=permanent illumination, blue=permanent shadow.

CSTC=China science and technology corporation. As they're the only major contractor, their projects tend to become things that CNSA pick up down the line, such as the CZ-5 family (which spent about three years as an unfunded private proposal). If they aren't working on it, CNSA isn't even thinking about it. No funded independent human spaceflight program, never mind lunar program. The whole thing would be completely at odds with their aims and culture anyway, as noted by Sky_walker. FTFY. Again, no funding beyond Luna-27/Luna-Resurs. NASA isn't, so it's irrelevant. Boeing are about as likely to start an independent moonbase as they are to declare independence from the US. A study is a study; as I'm sure I've already said, NASA has studies for crewed trips to Jupiter. According to you, the way into a 'spacefaring future' is a moon base. NASA isn't making a moon base, so they aren't helping. Oh, I'm sorry, logic again; I'll try and keep it in hand. Same as above, except replace 'NASA' with 'anybody else with the slightest chance'.

By looking at sources that aren't outdated wikipedia pages. Russian plans aren't funded past Luna-27, Indian plans are 'we would like to' with no funding beyond the basic crew vehicle, NASA hasn't been looking into it since the cancellation of constellation, CSTC isn't funding it... who does that leave? North Korea? No it isn't. Sorry to disappoint, but 'making us a spacefaring species' isn't even a real goal; it's basically the engineering fanboy equivalent of 'achieve singularity' for computer science fanboys.

Show me one actual current lunar base plan. Not a 'we would like to', a funded project.

I'm sorry, but this is nonsense. Nobody is planning a lunar base; any return would be footprints and flags, just with more footprints and bigger flags. Any talk of a lunar base is just that; talk. Frankly any talk of a crewed landing is not much more at this point. This is also complete nonsense. Space programs are instruments for national gain, either through direct economic programs, technological and scientific programs, or prestige projects. Not one of them has an objective remotely similar to what you just said.

We don't know everything, but we know enough that a similar mission isn't going to produce significantly higher science returns than some far, far cheaper automated missions. Yes, they might only produce a few grams each; what does it matter? Modern analytic techniques hardly require fist-sized rocks.

Doing the same thing again is not progress or exploration, try using a bloody dictionary. Oh, wait, that was using logic. Sorry, I promise it won't happen again.

SLS isn't supposed to carry CM and LM together because it's simply not supposed to carry an LM at all. Unless the samples from Apollo magically vanish, there's no reason to do a similar mission.

Delta IV usually uses solids to augment it's first stage, and Shuttle and Ariane V have/had mandatory large solid boosters.

Five flights is their agreed contribution to the program, in exchange for ESA astronaut flights and Columbus. Why would they send up any more? They wouldn't get anything out of it.

I'm not sure that'd even be possible. It's not exactly a very regular shape, and orbits are going to reflect that.

That would work, if there was nothing in these crafts except fissile material. By that logic, Apollo would have cost $0.

If that looks like a credible source to you, there is no hope.

The Apollo program that was cancelled because of it's cost? The most expensive space project ever by a huge margin?

That wouldn't be an issue; because nobody would ever amass the funding required to build one in the first place.

These are images from an ESA comet-studying spacecraft called Rosetta, launched in 2004. It's now on the final approach to it's target comet, the snappily-named 67P Churyumov-Gerasimenko. It's only moving at a few tens of m/s and is only a few hundred km out; it's going to end up in it's planned mapping orbit within a few days. It's equipped with a small lander called Philae, which it is planned to dump on the comet in october-november after thoroughly mapping it. Both. This is an image of the coma from a few days ago; note the nucleus is horribly overexposed, and it's covered with cosmic ray flashes due to the long exposure time. Even with that, it's only visible to maybe 50km out at either side, compared to tens of thousands for something like Halley.

The power budget for a cubesat is in the tens of watts, max. Of course, if we're suggesting incredibly dubious products of science-by-press-release, we could just dig up a cold fusion reactor and eliminate all power concerns.

'The Chinese' aren't doing anything, this is all CAST. It's private-venture stuff, or at least as close to private-venture as you can get with a government-owned company; it has no funding from actual government departments, and, more importantly, none of them requested this work. It doesn't represent Chinese plans any more than ULA's powerpoints of super-heavy Delta derivatives represent American plans.

You remember incorrectly. Falcon 9 was mostly funded by various NASA contracts, particularly COTS.

Approximately 6.1km/s, of which the last 1.4km/s is the orbital insertion burn and could be reduced through aerobraking.

They're trying again now; http://www.ulalaunch.com/webcast.aspx And yeah, this should really be in the science labs.