Kryten

That's MAVEN in parking orbit. Transfer burn is in about twenty minutes.

Around 15 minutes to launch. I know they're saying 't-six miunutes', but there's a ten-minute hold in the middle of that.

They also have more potential attempts until Dec 23rd, but they're 'less favourable'.

According to this article in nature the total cost of the space shuttle program was $196 billion, adjusted for inflation. Divided over 134 flights, that works out as $1.4 billion per mission. The equivalent cost for Saturn V (adding up the items here and adjusting for inflation) is $47 billion; divided by 13 flights, that's $3.6 billion per mission. Space shuttle took ~25 tons payload to LEO, Saturn around 120 tons.

Orbital decay really isn't the kind of thing you can model well with these kind of functions, unless it's averaged over very long periods, because of how much it's affected by (mostly) solar activity.

It's to do with the body they're relative to; Apogee-earth, Apohelion-sun, Apoapsis-generic term, et.c.

And then let's take all of the funding from the world's militaries and use it to buy ponies and sweets.

DARPA aren't building anything, and right now neither is anybody else. DARPA has made a request for proposals, which includes the amount of money they'd be able to award to somebody able to fulfill all of the requirements-~$140 million. Given the requirements include flying 10 times in ten days at speeds of Mach 10, and the only plane to cross Mach 10 at all cost well over $200 million to develop, aerospace companies aren't exactly chomping at the bit.

That's density of the lattice itself, ignoring air inclusions. To actually get that density you'd have to pump out the air, which'd result in the lattice collapsing if done at pretty much any level of positive pressure.

It's not known if the Russians still have -238 production capability. They haven't attempted a mission making use of it since '96.

Sure, if by 'pretty much every niche' you mean 'GEO commsats and medium-heavy launchers', given those are the only things in space that are remotely profitable.

The black hole won't make that much difference-as you say, it'd be pretty much the same except smaller and denser-but the supernova that produces it'd be another story entirely. I'm not sure about messing up the binary system, but the planets would be pretty screwed. Any planets reasonably close (up to maybe ten times the earth-sun distance) to the supernova will simply be destroyed; anything further out will be have their orbits messed up sufficiently for most of them to be outright flung out of the system, and of course will be burnt to cinders in the process.

If a star is converted to a black hole, it doesn't suddenly start 'sucking things in'-it has exactly the same gravity as before. In fact it has less, as it'll have lost mass in the supernova.

The Ares I simply couldn't get an MPCV into orbit, even after some really aggressive weight-reduction programs. That was the whole reason it was cancelled.

The Soviets did have an anti-satellite laser the 'Terra-3' complex, though only one designed to 'dazzle' optical spysats over their territory-I'd imagine what this is describing, after maybe half a dozen exaggerated retelling. Those aren't 'modern' solutions, those are future projects. Anything approaching an operational weapon system works on the good old-fashioned KKV technique-the only recent innovation in the field is China demonstrating that GEO sats are in reach with their 'Kunpeng-7' launch. And with good reason. The Chinese have never put anything on a trans-mars trajectory, as verified by anybody with space-tracking radar (e.g. USTRATCOM). If they did, they'd get a lot more out of having their own probe than blowing up somebody elses. It's not like blowing up interplanetary probes is something that's likely to ever really be militarily useful.

A satellite low enough to be hit by something like S-400 or SM-3 is doomed anyway.

There was one guy who had the misfortune of landing in a Soyuz with dud retrorockets. I don't think he lost consciousness, but he did break most of his teeth.

Is he likely to actually find a launch opportunity to molniya orbit, though? I'm pretty sure most or all satellites put into those orbits were ultimately replaced by GEO sats, and after a quick search I can't find any recent launches to it.

We don't even know if it's physically possible. Nobody has ever produced a material of the strength required except in literally microscopic quantities.

I'm afraid you've made a mistake with the Shenzhou on the Tiangong replicas; the version with solar panels on the OM was retired before Taingong was launched.

ESA satellite that carefully measured variations in it's own orbit to make measurements of the earth's shape. Trouble is, that meant it had to orbit extremely low-low enough it had to use a continually thrusting ion engine to counteract drag. After the fuel ran out (which it did about a week ago) there was no way to control the craft, so it's coming down in a highly unpredictable way.

Yes, he did-that's hydrated minerals, it's not like we're talking about wet sand here. A greenhouse is going to do absolutely nothing.

Cubesat power budgets currently top out at about 8 watts.

But with what kind of power requirements? The power available to cubesats tends to be very low.

To be fair, I think that has a lot more to do with ground-penetrating radar not even existing last time a moon rover was launched.