Kryten

Most the tooling was destroyed to make way for various shuttle-related manufacturing efforts.

You're talking hundreds of metres a second to make that change, much more than NH was left with. Definitely flagship class, and a very hard one to justify.

The planetary science decadal committee. They determined you're not going to get a useful orbiter at either ice planet for an NF budget.

I know, but the idea was never viable in the first place. It was just a bit of sleight of hand to ease fears of this kind of thing when the deal was first announced.

ULA already have all the plans required for RD-180 production in the US, it was part of the contract agreement; it just couldn't be built economically because it's very labour intensive and US aerospace labour is much more expensive than Russian.

Well it won commercial crew, so... that. Also Boeing are still partnering with Bigelow for transport to his stations, assuming they ever get off the ground.

Again, you're literally the only person I've ever seen say anything like that except for an actual mission with RTGs. Even stuff like the protests over Cassini/MSL got maybe a dozen people each. You're making a mountain out of a molehill. Which gets you a half-crushed rocket stage without some additional damping force.

Because there's been rumours about it having been dropped for months, from people who generally have good sources.

Announcement has been delayed, possibly into next year. Probably linked with the NASA budget still being under negotiation.

The only case I've ever seen of anyone connecting rocket debris with radiation fears is you, right now. And of course even if you manage to land all of your rocket stages perfectly, overland launch still means dropping payload fairings and potentially boosters inland. So you still get stuff like this; (Insert rant about how the owner of that has nothing to complain about because there's no radiation hazard)

You don't have to paranoid to not want rockets dropped over populated areas, and it has nothing to do with radioactivity. Most rocket fuels are pretty nasty.

Because just dumping rockets over land doesn't get you anywhere closer to reusability? It just gives you a bunch of half-crushed rocket stages.

Of course, last time somebody tried to fly a spin-stabilised orbital LV it took four failures and as many years before they could get out to work. Seems the technique doesn't easily scale.

In more ways than one, most likely. It was already unclear leading up to the launch if there would ever be a second. EDIT spaceflightnow just received official confirmation of a failure from USAF.

Vehicle launched, and telemetry showed it tumbling crazily; not clear it actual vehicle issue or just the telemetry. Feed is now blank.

Out of the hold, but with an extra hour on the count, they must've had to reset it. T-53 minutes.

Launch is in about 15 minutes, webcast is here; http://spaceflightnow.com/2015/11/03/ors-4-mission-status-center/ Oh, and something I forgot to mention earlier; when Aerojet test-fired the first stage motor, they found it had burned through the insulation and nearly through the entire casing due to a production flaw; that flaw also exists in the motor on this flight. They decided to press on because it's considered a high risk mission anyway, and they didn't want the ~6 month delay that would result from building a replacement motor. So, long story short, there is a high chance the launch will fail, probably near the end of the first stage burn.

It's Lambda-4S, and yes I meant the launch rail. After a few days of delays, launch is not set for 02:30 UTC, 2 and a half hours from the time of this post. There is a livestream, but unfortunately it's only available on spaceflightnow and isn't embeddable, so here's a link to their coverage.

It's more likely an alternative to scramjets for hypersonic weapons systems.

That was true last time, but for CRS-2 NASA are specifying 4 or 5 launches a year per for that upmass/volume. Presumably that's the volume they find better for the astros and VV scheduling.

It isn't. The requirements for CRS-2 that've been made public include 14-17 tons and 55-70M3/year of downmass (same as the pressurised upmass requirement); we don't have the exact figures for how they want that split return/disposal, but it's going to be mostly disposal. There are also requirements for 1.5-4 tons/year of unpressurised cargo disposal, new for CRS-2. Dragon can't take down nearly as much as it can put up, so it alone can't fulfill the pressurised downmass requirement unless they send up extra capacity.

All those unproven technologies have to come out perfect for it just to reach LEO, same as most SSTO designs. There are other applications for this tech than Skylon, and they're potentially much more practical. BAE has no interest in launch vehicles.

CST-100 has unpressurised cargo as a mission module, next-gen Cygnus could do the same. NASA are trying to reduce the number of cargo flights for easier fitting into ISS manifest, Dragon has the lowest upmass figures of any of the vehicles. If you look at the actual payload carried on most flights, it only just reaches the requirements for CRS-2.

Based on what, exactly?

For most applications it would be easier to just use a rocket booster, probably solid. You don't have to lug all the extra weight around and the overall vehicle is very likely to be disposable anyway.