Kryten

You've misinterpreted that statement quite badly, but that's to be expected given it's been taken out of it's original context. Here's the first version of it here; Which I pretty much just paraphrased from this post; which was incidentally made by this fellow. Given his experience in the area, it's pretty reasonable to assume he knows what he's talking about.

The NK-33 is only cheap because they're surplus. The Russians have already developed a lightened RD-1XX derivative (RD-193) capable of replacing it when the stocks run dry.

There are two main issues with that argument. The first is of course that it's completely wrong (microsoft tablet PCs available since 2001, first android tablet [archos 5] available the year before the ipad came out), but the second is that it's frankly moronic. Think for a second; what do you think is better, the computer you're using now or ENIAC? Which is more 'original'?

I can do all of those on my 80-odd-quid kindle fire. You are aware tablets don't exist in some kind of dichotomy of $400 apple monstrosity or £50 no-name chinese android tablet, right? Your advice might have been useful in 2010, but the world has moved on.

If you're mostly after internet browsing, the kindle fire (which I presume is what you mean) is perfectly acceptable, especially for the price that it's offered for, and it probably doesn't need to be said that it works well for reading. In terms of writing, you'd probably face issues; there are a very limited number of document editing or note-taking apps (and basically all other categories of app), and none of them appear to be any good. EDIT: If that doesn't sound like the thing for you, I'd look into a relatively cheap android tablet like the Nexus 7, the ipad is simply massively overpowered for the stuff you want to do. Other tablets in the sort of very cheap price range of the kindle fire aren't worth bothering with, it's only at the price it is because amazon subsidise it heavily.

Taken. tenchars

They started the integration tests on the flight model in late 2012, and they were finished in June last year (both here near the bottom), so that can't be right. Are you sure what you saw wasn't something about instrument assembly?

Depends on the kind of asteroid, and how long it's been sitting on earth. C-types contain plenty of organic compounds and volatiles that would be either destroyed or contaminated pretty much immediately, and they're the main type scientists want to target. Of course, Hayabusa 2 and NASA's own OSIRIS-REx are both set to return C-type samples before this boondoggle even gets off the the ground...

Already done. Minor planet (133250) Rubik.

Setting up an industrial base on mars sufficient to produce spacecraft is going to be cheaper than just sending fuel to the same distance? Seriously?

How obviously?

Usually, yes. There are two control centres full of people meant to do that kind of thing.

Why would anything new need to be certificated? It'd have to use the Russian docking ports to transfer fuel anyway, why not just use the standard rendezvous and docking hardware in the same way as the ATV?

Why? ATV, Progress and Soyuz all currently dock automatically, with crew intervention only a contingency.

He's probably thinking of LADEE, which was launched by a converted ICBM. Of course, in that case the conversion involved adding two completely new stages.

Why would you need to put bulk consumables in polar orbit?

The Soyuz is only still flying because all of the attempts to replace it have failed or been very badly delayed. The soviets/russians clearly didn't/don't believe that it is/was good enough, or we wouldn't have had the Zarya/TKS/LKS/Spiral/Buran/Kliper/CCTS/PPTS/Probablyabouttenothersthataren'tdeclassifiedyet programs.

If we're still talking something big enough to have a breathable atmosphere, at that distance it'd be one of the brightest objects in the entire sky.

You sure? tenchars

Philae is just a small part of the mission, not the main payload. It needs Rosetta to serve as a communications relay, and Rosetta will keep observing long after Philae is predicted to cease functioning.

The processes for producing Pu-238 and Pu-239 are significantly different; a program to produce Pu-238 won't produce Pu-239 and vice-versa. Pu-239 is chemically separated from spent fuel rods, then it has to centrifuged to remove Pu-240. Pu-238 is produced from Np-237, which is also chemically separated from spent fuel rods (using a different process), which is then fabricated into targets and exposed to neutron bombardment, followed by yet another chemical separation process.

What are you proposing they're using it for, in that case? It's not like you can make bombs out of the stuff. You do realise Pu-238 and Pu-239 aren't the same, right?

That's D-T inertial confinement fusion, with a lot of optimistic assumptions. It doesn't have anything to do with orion.

I have, I've looked at the actual published reports on Orion from the 50s and 60s, none of which give anything remotely close to that figure.

Pu-238 isn't something you dig up, it's produced starting from standard spent fuel rods. It's only scarce because it's expensive to produce, and because both the Russians and Americans stopped producing after the end of the cold war. The Americans have since restarted production, and the Chinese have almost certainly started producing it as well.