Kryten

Launch delayed due to space weather concerns.

The first ion engine flew in 1970, and the soviets used them operationally for station-keeping since the mid 80's. Heck, even the first deep-space totally ion-propelled mission was over a decade ago.

It's not 'reconditioned NK33 components', it's literally an NK-33 with a gimballing mechanism bolted on. If you look carefully they're even still labelled 'ÃÂÃÅ¡-33'.

Suure. So how exactly are you proposing they got the plans to develop the F-1B from? Astral projection?

There are no new NK33s; every single one in existence was made back in the 70s. The Russians cancelled the program to restart production due to the problems you're saying don't exist, and are going to replace them with engines of a completely different design from a different manufacturer (RD-193).

Yes, one built for weapons research and completely impractical for actual power production. ITER is supposed to do this for more practical designs, but won't become operational before the end of the decade at least, and a prototype for demonstrating actual electricity production isn't expected for at least a decade after that.

The plans were transferred to microfiche to save space; nothing was actually lost.

Even if those modifications could be redone, a 'bigger service module' is not going to cut it; they needed to use Proton to send Soyuz on a flyby trajectory, and a stripped-down one at that. Orbital operations would require something in the Angara-7 class at least.

While the decay at GEO altitude might not mean anything there will re-enter anytime soon, most of the sats actually placed there have to stay in very specific orbital positions-and they do face enough perturbation from various effects that they they need to perform stationkeeping to stay in those positions-in most modern sats, with ion engines.

Yes, as a test. It's going to be able to be run a few seconds at a time using a capacitor bank, hardly practical for an actual propulsion system.

He's referring to SMART-1, which entered lunar orbit, albeit starting from GTO.

Thorium reactors work by producing (fissile) uranium-233 from (non-fissile) thorium by neutron bombardment; U-233 is usable for nuclear weapons, and India (the country with the largest thorium reactor program) and the US have both tested devices that used it.

They use/d completely different, incompatible systems.

But bear in mind this is only if you are able to keep something exactly at the point, which isn't possible in practice. Orbiting around the points is possible, but only orbits around L4 and L5 are stable in the long-term.

Yes, in the context of the question 'how much actual danger [is] the average American in right now?'. I mean, really, this is basic reading comprehension stuff.

None whatsoever. Fukushima has barely increased radiation levels in Japan itself, anything in america is not going to be even distinguishable from background.

High doses of ionising EM radiation (UV and larger frequencies) cause cancer, but anything below that is generally fine. Receiving very high doses of some non-ionising wavelengths can contribute to cancer risk due to indirect thermal effects (healing of burns=rapid cell proliferation=increased cancer risk), but it's not exactly the kind of thing that can happen to somebody without them noticing.

The first orbital launch of 2014 is scheduled to take off tomorrow, an Indian GSLV Mk. II rocket carrying the GSAT-14 GSO comsat. Scheduled launch time is 16:18 Indian Standard Time, translating to 10:48 UCT/GMT, and a webcast should start here and here at 15:52 IST=10:22UCT/GMT. The launch is an important one for India, as they have a number of projects dependent on the GSLV, and it's record up to now is frankly dismal (four complete failures in seven flights-including the last three); it is also hoped that the flight will demonstrate the new indigenous cryogenic (i.e. LOX/LH2) stage, which on it's sole previous flight attempt failed to even ignite.

He might be unlucky enough to have to use a satellite connection; there are quite large (although very sparsely populated) areas in the US where the only real choices are that and dial-up.

Since photons have momentum, you can get thrust simply by shining a light out of the back of your ship.

There's no single isotope ratio that 'matches reality'; they vary in samples from different environments.

You seriously think the price of games has anything to do with the cost of manufacturing the media? Even blu-ray discs cost less than a couple of dollars each.

But energy isn't released. Again, producing antimatter tales more energy than you can possibly get out of the antimatter.

That would be pretty impressive, given no country using the imperial systems supplies Ariane parts or software.

And people wonder why we're losing respect for the elderly.