Kryten

They aren't all that close. That image assumes circular orbits and equal distances between planets, it's not a good model for basically anything.

https://twitter.com/johnkeypm/status/616392297161334785 Launch site visit by NZ PM (and Christchurch native) John Key.

EUS is far larger than ACES; 8.4m maximum diameter versus about 5m. Soyuz is the ISS lifeboat, and in current planning the commercial crew vehicles will serve just fine as their own lifeboats as well. The previous lifeboat programmes like X-38 were only necessary due to crew transport with the shuttle.

Here's a better article, that one is a bit crap.

Payload given is 100kg to a 500km SSO, as SSO is where almost all commercial demand in this size class is. Being close to the equator would be a detriment, not an asset.

Not possible to add to New Frontiers potential missions list before the next decadal survey (2023). Could be proposed for discovery, but it would be difficult to produce one with that cost cap, and harder to produce one that could outcompete missions to easier targets.

Needs a 'not yet' option. Remember LDSD? We still don't know how to get payloads of this size on Mars.

ULA manifest is full anyway, this doesn't help them.

ULA stole the entire rocket to reverse engineer it, what we saw 'launched' was just a mass of weather balloons covered in duct tape.

This is pretty clearly slander.

Tory Bruno personally did it with his laser eyes.

We'd also have noticed the YAL-1 being pulled out of storage and orbiting near the launchpad, given it's the only thing with that kind of capability yet built.

MVac [Merlin Vacuum engine] chill

Again, the rocket didn't explode, it was merely torn to bits by aerodynamic forces.

Those are simply ruptures of the various tanks, with some flames due to mixing; mostly it's just LOX. Notice your 'huge fireball' at 0:18 doesn't visibly effect the first stage in any way.

What is even supposed to destroy it? There's no real explosion.

Have you any experience with rockets that isn't in KSP, Tiberion? You're assuming the Dragon would stay attached when we know the second stage lost structural integrity, and assuming an explosion big enough to take out an empty tube of thin Al-Li alloy is certainly strong enough to destroy a reentry capsule.

There doesn't appear to have been an actual explosion as such, just the tanks being torn apart by aerodynamic forces.

If you mean the Antares failure, they narrowed it down to a turbopump issue. They couldn't get more precise than that, but they're replacing the entire engine model they use so they don't really need to.

Time is money. With large GEO comsats, time is an awful lot of money.

Problem is there aren't really any 'other rockets' available. Arianespace schedule is jammed for the next few years, ULA schedule is full of US gov launches, Proton's backlog is piling up previous failures... only choice left in this size class is Mitsubishi, and it's doubful they can add many flights to their manifest at short notice.

Failure of the relief valve would hardly be 'counter-intuitive' for a failure of this type.

Because it damaged the pad and they're having to entirely re-engine their rocket.

It doesn't really make a lot of difference, does it? The most important bit of cargo was in the trunk, and even the ones that have been recovered entirely nominally have seen no reuse.

Companies were still booking Protons after the 2013 failure, Zenits after the 2007 failure, and Ariane 5s after VVA517, all of them 'broadcast to thousands of people over the internet'. Very few rockets have 0% failure rates, and satellite operators are used to dealing with that. The biggest issue in that front are going to be issues with the manifest, given SpaceX were already having trouble with their backlog.