Kryten

Do you see anything else of comparable size, crew-rated or not? Saturn V was cancelled because there were no missions anyone was willing to fund for a rocket that size, simple as that. There's no point having a 100-ton launcher if the only things that anyone actually wants sent up are ten-ton station ferries and six-ton comsats. That would be true regardless of 'man-rating'.

Titanium Oxide is almost worthless. Titanium metal has some value, but it's because of the expensive refining process.

None of the crew vehicles in development are designed to go anywhere except LEO. None of them even have solar panels. Why do you think 'man-rating' SLS is going to do anything to performance or payload fraction?

Except in this case they can't do it. Fully-fueled Orion is too heavy even for Delta IVH. Your other option is what constellation tried, producing an entirely new LV-but does anyone seriously except crew-rating a launcher that uses components that are already crew-rated to cost less than producing a completely new HLV?

Confirmation of successful insertion into lunar orbit.

Nothing yet, but that time isn't actually official. Some sources are giving times around 9:00 UCT/GMT instead.

If you're trying to watch it, this should give you a rough indication of where to look; It's the exclusion zone for the launch itself, first stage drop zone and fairing drop zone. Ignore the line already there, the path'll be right down the middle.

Some massless particle that makes people disappear. 'Vapourises' doesn't really work, given people being hit by them don't tend to cause surrounding areas to burst into flame or bystanders to get their lungs burned out or anything of that sort.

If you're 'in the thickest atmosphere' and already dropping stuff, you've got more fundamental problems than the kind of staging you're doing.

We now have some quite good footage of staging and fairing separation from the ground.

China has no plans to land anything on the Moon after Chang'e 6. Any talk about crewed landing is by individual companies or engineers, with no government backing.

Not in terms of up to now. The second burn simply raised the apogee, and now the satellite will have to do burns with it's own propulsion system to change the incilination, raise the perigee, and then lower the apogee.

That's Falcon 9 and SES, the satellite on board.

If something turns up again, it's not cured. Apollo 13 had pogo that was just as severe as that of Apollo 6. Seriously, what would you rather trust; a technical report commissioned by NASA itself on this exact problem, or a small part of book on the entire program written for the general public? It's not even got anything to do with the 'head of NASA', so I don't know what you're rambling on about there.

The engine shutdown on Apollo 13 was caused by pogo. The oscillations destroyed the engine.

There's 'not perfect', and then there's vibration severe enough to destroy vital parts of the vehicle. If that's how you define cured, your doctor must be making an absolute killing off of you.

This is the third topic about this exact comic, as a quick search for 'up-goer' would've told you. It probably doesn't belong here in any case.

Well let's just put it this way; after forty years without a single lunar landing by anyone, India, Russia, South Korea, ESA (since cancelled),and Japan have all suddenly decided it's something they should be doing. A Russia/India joint mission was put together directly to compete with this one (planned for landing in 2013 or late 2012), but that went out the window after the Phobos-grunt incident.

Kiwi, think. Look at all the reports of radioactive fish and air filters and whatever else. For all the number of people apparently poking around with geiger counters, can you see any actual indication of radiation levels? Of course not, because it's 100% BS. If they actually reported the amounts of radiation they'd recorded, people would be able to calculate actual dosages and levels of risk, and they'd get far less ad revenue from paranoid radiophobes.

Sure. Tenchars

5 days, and then a bunch of surveying from orbit leading to landing around the 14th.

Legs are unfolded and the panels are deployed.

Jupiter's moons have been studied by the Galileo orbiter (1995-2003), and a couple of probes passing through the system en route to other areas (Cassini in 2000 and New Horizons in 2007). Saturn's moon's have only been studied by the Cassini orbiter (and associated Huygens lander), as mentioned above. An ESA probe (JUICE) is planned to do further studies of Jupiter's moons, but isn't planned to arrive there until 2030. There are no missions to Saturn currently planned by anyone as far as I'm aware.

There's no Chinese plan for crewed landings, the manned space program is focused on space stations for the forseeable future.

Burn completed. MOM now on it's way.