Kryten

The only other ring moon we've got good pictures of, Atlas, also looks like that.

http://spacenews.com/ils-plans-larger-proton-payload-fairing-defers-work-on-smaller-proton-variant/ Work on Proton light has been deferred, and Proton medium is now a simpler version using stock Proton first and second stages; they only have to redesign the interstage and shift the control unit to the second stage.

With a 5m fairing, it's not going to hold all that many sats. And they're hardly cubesats, they're 100kg+

The gram was provisionally defined years before the prototypes were built. When they got round to it, they decided it would be very difficult to measure and maintain a 1 gram weight to the required level of precision, so they made it a kilogram.

Which is the same current NET as the WGS-9 launch. If WGS-9 doesn't move, that date's not going to happen.

By a big margin. Previous record is ten, jointly held by R7 derivatives (five main and five vernier engines) and CZ-5 (ten main engines).

Actually the 45 and 13 ton figures are for booster recovery, so it handily beats FH. Expendable LEO payload should be in the region of 70 tons.

It's not streamed. I've just been following along via twitter.

Bezos' talk is happening now, details are coming out. NG capability is 45 tons to LEO and 13 to GTO.

Bezos is set to speak at the Satellite conference tomorrow, and is apparently to announce a lot of extra details, including confirming some specific customers. Seems some of it is coming out early.

'You know that job you talked about getting for weeks and then abruptly stopped mentioning? Did you get it?'

http://spacenews.com/fcc-gets-five-new-applications-for-non-geostationary-satellite-constellations/ SpaceX have filed for a second-gen version of their sat constellation, working in V-band. Would add another 7,518 sats.

Refueling in space with cryogens hasn't been done; only with N2O4, UDMH, and ethanol. It's going to be doable, and several groups are working on it, but it's not going to be easy to develop.

Boeing owns several Soyuz seats because they were part of an agreement over the debt from sea launch. It has nothing to do with Starliner.

Problem is there are two competing definitions. There's that definition and there's the definition of astronaut as a job; very few people would tell you that the people in NASA's astronaut corps aren't astronauts, but most of them haven't been to space.

We've got sats for the high altitude role now.

There's currently no such thing as FAA crew-rating, only NASA standards. The FAA are only currently allowed to make regulations for the safety of uninvolved persons, not vehicle passengers.

Two bits of news; -OneWeb are seriously considering adding another ~2,000 sats to the plan (representing about sixty more Soyuz launches) -OneWeb and established GSO operator Intelsat have agreed to a merger, though there are several conditions that could cause it to fall through. If it does happen, OneWeb plans can be expected to be considerably accelerated.

If SLS is cancelled then the money is just gone, at least from NASA's POV. You can count on that.

Orion ACES is also heavily modified, because it's intended to act as an EVA suit (I think with the addition of another layer, like the apollo suits). It also doesn't have quite as much volume restriction due to Orion's size.

NASA does not appear to be involved with this, so it's unlikely to be the suit. Also it's an 'announcement'; for suits it would be a 'reveal', or something similar. The only existing NASA suits were built for shuttle; they're too bulky for smaller capsule interiors, and they have a lot of capabilities that the capsules don't need (like acting as a survival suit for bailout over water). The Boeing suit is a heavily simplified version of the shuttle suit; only the SpaceX suit is new.

It'd be very difficult to assemble a lunar expedition with current HLVs. China and Russia have considered multiple launch options with small 35-50 ton class SHLVs (Angara-5V and CZ-5DY) but both have decided to go for full-scale 100+ ton SHLVs.

VSS Unity had another glide flight today.

It's not tall enough. The plan is to use a hammerhead crane on top of the FSS, bringing it to something like the config during early shuttle.