Kryten

[quote name='SomeGuy12']So...nothing in your equation mentions anything about the size of the rocket. Could someone build a small rocket (10 feet high or something?) that could reach orbit?[/QUOTE] Drag losses get proportionally higher the smaller your rocket is.

[quote name='More Boosters']Nothing to do is flat-out wrong, not preferable over a wider range other scientific missions isn't. You said the former and defended the latter.[/QUOTE] [i]They aren't scientific missions[/i], that's why they're in different organisations. ARM isn't happening because the planetary directorate wants a boulder, they're happening because HEOMD is desperately looking for a mission for SLS and Orion. Russia is trying to do lunar landing to have some symbol of them recovering their glory days after the collapse, not because IKI wants moon rocks.

[quote name='More Boosters']"[COLOR=#333333]Requiring humans on a mission has nothing to do with science goals." itself is flat out wrong and I think it's time that you start clarifying your point and making your case. Just opposting makes for one sided discussion.[/COLOR][/QUOTE] It's not 'flat-out wrong', it's accepted fact and the basis of how space programs are structured in most countries. NASA has a human spaceflight directorate that has nothing to do with the planetary sciences or astrophysics directorates, china has a manned space agency that has no connection with the academy of sciences, russian has the manned portion of roscosmos that doesn't fit into their scientific decision making process, et.c. Take a look at the planetary sciences decadal survey or the astrophysics or earth sciences equivalents, and see just how highly they rank wanting a moon base over various uncrewed missions. If you want to argue otherwise, show some proof that actual space science bodies think having humans around is a good idea.

If there are valid reasons, then give them. This kind of mealy-mouthed vagueness is exactly what I'm talking about.

[quote name='More Boosters']Similar reasons to why we send out scientific missions all across the solar system.[/QUOTE] Non sequitor. Requiring humans on a mission has nothing to do with science goals.

[quote name='More Boosters']Really? I see the opposite. "Moon and beyond" is a clear goal,[/QUOTE] To do what? And why?

It's only a problem (leaving aside the problems with the specific shuttle we actually got) if you assume NASA's goal should be 'moon and beyond' stuff. At least 'reduced cost of access to space' is a clear defined goal, it's pretty hard to come up with clear reasons for missions to Mars et.c.

[quote name='magnemoe']The missing part is the actual landing, This is far easier on land than on an small barge as you not only have to kill speed but also land on an very small target, easier if you can be 100 meter off.[/QUOTE] It was a few metres off target at most. How'd you think they got those close up shots of the landing? Sowed the desert with thousands of tracking cameras?

[quote name='RainDreamer']Right, I was thinking of the piece of asteroid they build on as part of the base. That means they can set up mining camps like the gold rush age ![/QUOTE] Not that that's ever likely to happen. Humans are just too expensive to maintain in deep space.

[quote name='Findthepin1']Are people allowed to build bases and claim those under this law?[/QUOTE] [quote name='Outer Space Treaty, Article VIII, in part'] Ownership of objects launched into outer space, including objects landed [b]or constructed[/b] on a celestial body, and of their component parts, is not affected by their presence in outer space or on a celestial body or by their return to the Earth. [/quote] So bases are the property of whoever built them and the responsibility of the state they're registered under. Basically the same as ships at sea.

[quote name='GregroxMun']Wow! Stick another engine on it, extend the stack a bit, and add a second stage and you may very well have yourself a reusable launch vehicle![/QUOTE] Blue do want to extend the same technology to an orbital vehicle, but from what little we've seen of it it seems to be considerably larger than this booster.

I'm referring to plenty of people in this thread, but yes, that includes you.

Elon Musk is a sodding billionaire. I don't care if he's the head of your favourite corporate monolith, he does not need some arsewhipe to yammer on about his achievements whenever somebody else does anything vaguely related to space.

[quote name='DarthVader']Reminder that Spacex has done precision landings from a booster on a suborbital trajectory, 5 times.[/QUOTE] If that's a 'landing' then so's Armadillo's return of Stig B.

[quote name='Robotengineer']They do not intend to do orbital flight AFAIK, just suborbital tourism.[/QUOTE] With this booster, yes. They've had orbital plans for a while, and announced earlier this year they'd bought land for a factory for an orbital vehicle and set up a lease on a vacant pad in CCAFS. There's not much information on the orbital vehicle yet, but we do know they plan boostback first stage recovery. [quote name='hugix']How is falling from 100 km any more difficult than falling from 1 km? [/QUOTE] GNC. Why do you think SpaceX has been so successful at the latter and so unsuccessful at the former? Sure it's 'just falling' if you don't care where you land, but both companies are trying to hit pinpoint targets.

[quote name='Red Iron Crown']Musk's been slagging them on Twitter. Claiming that grasshopper was the first suborbital rocket landed successfully (didn't pass the Karman line afaik) and a successful "water landing" of F9R. Pretty classless IMO, he should congratulate them and get back to work.[/QUOTE] If grasshopper is suborbital then so was DC-X, and BO's Goddard demonstrator. He's acting like one of his clueless fanboys.

[quote name='Van Disaster']Any manned spaceflight does that though; replace the Shuttle with a range of Saturn-derived vehicles - proven tech at the time - and if you must have a spaceplane, have a winged crew capsule something like Hermes was meant to be, and think what might have been. There'd have been need for continuous development in unmanned commercial sat launchers the entire time too.[/QUOTE] The only way you'd get Saturn-derived vehicles after Shuttle is if one of Marshall's pie-in-the-sky warp propulsion studies stumbled upon a time machine.

Certainly there's no reason to assume Kistler or their designs would be any more viable than they turned out to be in our timeline.

Plan was still to retire shuttle by 2020, and there was doubt they could actually last that long. There's a good chance they'd have been gone by now anyway, and nothing all that much different.

Then it'd just escape.

A Japanese (Mitsubishi heavy industries) H-2A rocket is scheduled to launch about six hours from the time of this post, carrying the Telstar 12 Vantage communications sat to a supersynchronous geostationary transfer orbit. This is to be Japan's first launch for a commercial entity, and only the second of H-2A's most powerful configuration, 2040. A live webcast is to be available here; [url]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5hZo7RTSBXY[/url] [video=youtube;5hZo7RTSBXY]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5hZo7RTSBXY[/video]

No, not enough gravity.

[quote name='Motokid600']When is it supposed to launch?[/QUOTE] Late next year. This is a ground test vehicle, not a flight model. [quote name='Findthepin1']What are they going to do with it?[/QUOTE] Dual GTO satellite launches, planetary missions, space station modules, et.c. This one has an engineering model of the Chang'e 5 lunar sample return probe, and that's likely to be on one the first or one of the first launches.

[quote name='RainDreamer']Soon we will see if there will be a replacement for Soyuz.[/QUOTE] There is a Soyuz replacement, PPTS/Rus, but it is intended for lunar missions. Any ISS missions will be test ones, and not long before ISS retirement.

[quote name='wumpus']Don't Soyuz capsules contain a shotgun? "Slug throwers" still tend to be ideal, especially if mass needs to be considered and siberian brown bears tend to be in the landing zones.[/QUOTE] They had specially-built rifle/shotgun combination survival weapons, but they've been retired because the custom ammo passed it's use-by date. They just have some russian standard semi-auto pistol, and most crews choose not to bring it.