Kryten

To be fair, is the LHC restart really big news? It's not like they've actually found anything yet.

Bear in mind all of those are microsats-somewhere in the 100-500kg range. It'll get you a year or two of sustained demand to build the constellation, but after that you're about back where you started-at least with a vehicle like Falcon 9R. Replacing or upgrading sats in such a constellation could provide sustained demand for a small RLV, and that's where I see such technology gaining a foothold if it ever does.

I can get three chocolate bars roughly that size for £1.20, which comes out to about 60 cents US.

Did you see the Antares pad (LP-0A)?

Nobody naturally thinks of anything in terms of the length of a human foot except actual human feet, which ironically aren't measured in feet. In practice it's just a name. How are fluid ounces any more natural than ml? Do you even know where the word 'ounce' comes from, never mind think about it when using measures?

Leaving aside the fact that there are no inherently metric or imperial amounts to live your life in, There is no canonical set of imperial units. The people you are accusing of still thinking in 'imperial' almost all live in countries where US customary units were never used, and in most areas there was no firm agreement on what any measures actually meant until the 19th century.

I'm not the one SCREAMING in ALL-CAPS about it. You'll find plenty of people still using traditional systems, but in terms of nations the only ones to not use SI units officially are Liberia, the US, and Mynamar.

All African nations except de-facto former US colony Liberia use metric units.

You don't. You have a speed that is a constant, the speed of light in a vacuum. You don't, you measure it.

You don't need distance and speed, you use speed and time to get distance.

This doesn't make any sense-it's the distance light travels in a second, you don't need an 'old value' to get that.

Check the dates, guys.

Looks much worse than last time. Then there were some large rips, now it's effectively gone.

It's not. If you actually watch that, the 'lantern batteries' are merely the source for the carbon electrodes, that thing is on 240V mains power.

As a British person, I must note to my regret that this is probably true, just in the opposite form from what you clearly meant.

Presumably this is based on a modded minecraft server or something. I mean, he also claims that some 'large batteries' are enough to melt various metals in kilogram quantities, and comes out with some other stuff that's just sciency-sounding gibberish.

But it's a made-up word, you see. Not like the real words, which were of course all delivered from on high unto the adulating masses by G-d the saviour.

Is this a joke? Arianespace is currently the indisputable leader on the international launch market, regardless of whether or not their renders for early concepts are up to your standards.

The value of an item is what somebody is willing to pay for it, simple as that. Rarity and utility factor into that somewhat, but demand can come from completely abstract (and potentially bs) factors like 'intrinsic value' or 'collectibility'. I've done some work in the antique toys business, and I've encountered plenty of items that are in good condition, have good build quality, are quite rare and are literally worthless because nobody collects them. If we get stuff like that in an auction lot, it either goes to a charity shop or is left at a car boot sale with a sign saying 'take me'.

Why would anyone? Without something like Energiya to carry them, they're useless. They don't carry parts of the propulsion system like STS did, they're just payloads.

They're looking over their options for replacing the LV; I doubt they'll find one, at least a practical one. But even if that does happen, it'll have served it's purpose admirably; it got 'Stratolaunch: a Paul Allen project' in the news for years. They don't call it 'Egolauncher' for nothing.

http://www.seattletimes.com/business/boeing-aerospace/space-wa2/ Stratolaunch are no longer working with SNC or OrbitalATK, as the rocket wasn't 'hitting the economic sweet spot'. They're still building the plane, but it currently has no LV or payload.

That's 1.02 and a structural test article. 2.01 is also externally complete and acts as a perennial airshow exhibit.

It's not really that hard if you look closely, and 'hermits' generally isn't all that accurate anyway-just consider that we're talking about this test four months in advance. The stage test stand is in the open air at Sohae, and satellite images show there's no scorching and the equipment nearby hasn't been moved in months.

While there are works going on at Sohae to adapt it for much larger rockets, it's doubtful that this work will be done in time for the October test, and there haven't been any clear signs of significantly larger stages being ground tested. We might see a small tank stretch like the Unha-2 --> Unha 3 transition, but chances are it'll be roughly the same rocket. It's even possible it'd be another Unha-3.