Kryten

No, it's just unnecessary. The falcon heavy launches that have been ordered so far are 4-5 ton sats to GTO, FH is already severely overpowered for that. It isn't even set up to do dual launches, so there's not much chance of it using more capability anytime soon. - - - Updated - - - If you go after the people that are actually at fault, it ain't Stalinist.

And Falcon I development money came from DARPA.

If you find yourself getting that a lot with him, remember the forum has an ignore function.

I'm sorry, but if you want to blame the lack of a mars mission/a moonbase/insert other sf fantasy here exclusive on anti-nuke sentiment, then you're at best completely unaware of the costs involved involved and how budgetary decisions get made in the space program, and at worst a conspiracy theorist. It's the exact same impulse that leads to somebody to blame the 'ignorant anti-nuclear public' for everything as for somebody to blame the reptilians for all the world's ill; it makes a complicated situation into a simple one, and makes you into somebody's who Seen The Truth and is above the Sheeple. It's ....ing tiring.

What, you want another reason why people wouldn't bother to develop something they don't need in the first place? By the way, your initial point is incorrect; NASA had an active effort to launch a nuclear reactor as part of the JIMO mission in the mid-2000s. They only stopped it because somebody pointed out expecting $20 billion for a planetary mission was insane, not because of the scary nuklears.

Nobody's had a mission that's needed a nuclear reactor for decades, though. The Russians only used them because of the huge power requirements of first-gen radar satellites, nowadays you can fit the same capability in a solar-powered bird of a couple hundred kg.

Saying we should switch to Spacex because of delays is frankly hilarious. When is falcon heavy supposed to fly, again?

Those are roll thrusters.

You're missing that Xeno is not a member of the launch team, who were the only people to have immediate notice of a scrub. The information spreading to minor technicians to the Chinese-speaking internet to the English-speaking internet took a while.

If that's fine with you, can we just make a robot and programme it so it considers itself you and notices nothing otherwise? Same result for a lot less effort.

it was 24 hours.

It's near pure beta, so harder than contain than alpha sources like Pu-238. It should be kept in mind that this makes it harder to handle at all stages of purification and production, which has adverse affects on the cost.

It was used in some theoretical designs in the late 80s-90s SSTO craze, but AFAIK it's never been used in an actual engine, even on a test stand.

Pu-238 production restart was ordered years ago, DoE are producing test batches right now. Full production should be up in 2021.

Generalise any harder and you'll start complaining he reuses his cutlery. A launch campaign for an LV takes a good bit more effort than starting up a vehicle that's already in space, and a moon landing involves much less structural then launch from earth and boostback, so reuse should be easier. We've been consistently some in-space structures for decades after all, including pretty powerful reboost engines.

The decay heat of Americium-241 is 114w/kg. Therefore, it loses to modern solar arrays even if the generator attached to it is 100% efficient and of negligible mass.

They aren't. Angara 3 has not been ordered in any quantity, the payloads that used to go on Zenit have mostly switched to Soyuz.

JPL is supposed to take cached samples via a small pickup rover, with the caching rover being built now. It's going to be a slow process, but provide a much side variety of samples with better understood context than the random nearby lumps of soil this seems to be going for. If researchers just wanted lumps of Martian material selected randomly and with no context, they'd be fine with Martian meteorites.

Zenit doesn't need replacing with anything, from the Russian perspective. They've had a policy of moving to Russian launchers for a long time now, the only recent government orders for it are for science missions.

Angara-5V can do lunar free-return, and two Angara-5V launches can get lunar orbit. Anything beyond that would be very difficult.

CST-100 doesn't have the structural margins built in for the forces associated with BEO reentry, skip or otherwise.

Modern launch and entry suits don't have independent pressurisation or life support, they're just hooked up to the capsule system; that saves lot of space.

Standard for launch and entry, as at those points you've a small but significant chance of not being in a pressurised capsule anymore.

He has a history of twisting whatever he can get to get more attention on Pluto. Most notably, he tried to get congress force NASA to produce a second copy of NH after the internal selection process rejected it.

That's Stern for you. He does some good work, but he's very heavy with the spin.