Kryten

LauncherOne was looking too expensive compared to new competitors in the class like Electron. They decided they could scale it up about 2* and still have comparable price, but this would be too heavy for WK2.

Antares with the -XL upper stage is already enough, this one was built to go up on one.

That's relative to the first versions of the engine, they weren't literally running above specifications. By that same logic SpaceX are screwed, because they're running their engines at 216% compared to those on the first Falcon 1.

Currently tracking 15th December 2154-0054 local time (2:54-5-54 UTC).

They're looking at 70% chance of a scrub for tomorrow's opportunity, so probably not worth it.

By the time the cracks were found venturestar was already in massive trouble with the engines and with general weight issues. Even if we assume they all go away, it's very unlikely NASA would be able to reach the flight rate necessary to catch up with expendable vehicle prices. We'd have another shuttle, basically...

NASA doesn't own the landing area, the USAF does. You're confusing CCAFS and KSC.

25% higher thrust, although I'm not sure how exactly that's been achieved. Given they always said they expected to get them to that thrust level, it could just be an engine control software change. They've also slightly increased tank size and sub-chilled the propellant for higher density to take full advantage of the higher thrust, and used it as an opportunity to make minor changes to most of the other systems. Any one of those could throw off the guidance software.

Given this'll be the first landing attempt with the uprated Merlin-1Ds, I give it 50-50.

It was to launch GTO sats using Angara-based Cruziero del Sol launchers, as well as smaller ones with Tsyklon 4.

Alcantara is closer to the equator and also not in the middle of nowhere.

Nobody's claiming it's the first reusable rocket, it's the first rocket to land from space.

It's weird to see all the SpaceX fanboys go from 'reusability is going to make space stupidly cheap' to 'reusibility is meaningless if it isn't going fast enough'. Weren't these the people gushing over grasshopper not too long ago? Do they not realise this is going to be the first opportunity to really work out the economics of reuse?

$12 billion isn't a terribly credible valuation anyway, that's a a good bit higher than revenue for the entire launch industry.

AJ26-500 and AJ-1E6 were basically earlier versions of the AR-1 project.

I've seen no indication USAF are 'seriously considering' actually letting them do that.

Launch and range control would be mostly automated; that's a lot of highly paid people eliminated versus a normal launch.

Again, the target for this is $1 million, if it gets anything close to that it'll be Minotaur and SPARK by miles for payloads in that category.

Yes, they're supposed to be able to launch within a few weeks of the order being given. Minotaur doesn't, and SPARK doesn't even work and will probably be cancelled. How are you working for the cost, anyway? It's a 1.5 stage vehicle with a GLOW maybe a ton, versus a 36 ton 4 stage vehicle and a 27 ton 3 stage vehicle, that has to count for quite a lot.

The point is cost and responsiveness. Minotaur is $10million+, SPARK barely any better, and both still need orders months in advance.

F-22 has thrust vectoring in the pitch axis, which is the most useful; only other aircraft with the 2-plane thrust vectoring are the latest version of the MiG-29 family. The jet engines in KSP already have 2-plane thrust vectoring, it's just quite small (1 degree).

http://spacenews.com/darpa-airborne-launcher-effort-falters/ ALASA in it's current form has been cancelled due to explosions in handling tests of the new fuel; it's now considered too unsafe to be attached to a crewed aircraft. DARPA and Boeing are working to apply the technology to ground-launched vehicles.

TDRS isn't even mostly used by NASA; they build it and operate it, but they've admitted a few times that most of the traffic is DoD.

[quote name='wumpus']Come to think of it, did any V2s use air bursts? That presumably involved considerable braking (followed obviously by considerable breaking of both the rocket and parts of London).[/QUOTE] Proximity fuses were all needed for flak at that point in the war. Some later V-2s didn't even have real warheads, just concrete.

You can hardly blame oil for all of his various business' woes; oil prices ought to affect all manufacturers of electric vehicles in similar ways, for example, but Teslas are still rare as hen's teeth outside California. Sales of vehicles like the Nissan Leaf are still booming over here, and they're a pretty common sight, but I've never seen a Tesla of any model.