Kryten

I would have suggested 'Vulcan' but ULA recently nabbed that. Zeus or Neptune would do instead, but unfortunately it'll probably stay SLS.

Atlas V, specifically the 422 variant (2 boosters, double-engined Centaur). Some Orion flights to the ISS were planned back when it was still part of the constellation program, as a backup in case the CCDEV vehicles weren't ready in time. That was cancelled because Orion would've been far more expensive, and it being ready before a CCDEV vehicle was looking very implausible.

Orion is a specialised deep-space vehicle, it's not meant to do any 'small-scale missions'. That's the job of the CCDEV vehicles, CST-100 and Dragon 2.

This doesn't follow. The whole point of having a separate RP-1 specification is that normal fuel blends have plenty of components that will polymerise or pyrolise in the harsh environment of the cooling channels in a regenerative nozzle-most aromatics, any sulphur content, anything unsaturated, et.c. None of these would produce major issues for most IC engines, particularly low-powered ones. The exact proportion of the components in RP-1 might not be exact, but it's almost pure alkanes.

Despite what you may have seen on certain sites, SpaceX is a launch provider, not some hybrid of NASA and Jesus. They have zero motive to land anything on Europa without being paid, and they don't remotely have the resources to do so independently is they decided they did.

There's another unfinished one (2.01 Baikal) on display on display at Ramonskoye airport, and 2.02 is sat somewhere in the factory in a partially dismantled state.

Official statement on investigation reuslt from Roscosmos; http://www.federalspace.ru/21513/ as far as I can tell, it's saying the issue was ultimately caused by unforseen resonance (pogo?) in the interface between Progress and the 3rd stage.

Also, the long length of the cruise phase and severe conditions at Pluto meant moving parts were deliberately kept to a minimum. For example, the colour portion of the main camera (Ralph) uses filters that are physically attached to portions of the CCD, rather than the standard system of a filter wheel at the aperture.

Left training for personal reasons, and the 'backup' tourist was only actually willing to pay for the training. They're considering substituting in another paid tourist, cement magnate Filaret Galchev. but that'd leave him with much less than the normal training schedule. Which leads us to another reason this kind of thing hasn't been all that popular among the über-rich; cosmonaut training takes a lot of time, and time is money. The course is a full year, and they're required to speak both Russian and English fluently by the end of it.

Proton is under continual improvement; the current model isn't just 'Proton-M', it's 'Proton-M with improved energy-mass characteristics (Phase IV)'. Much of the 'improved characteristics' are due to structural lightening, and it's plausible that changes in the mounting structure to allow that contributed to the failure, by changing the environment of terms of vibration.

That's actually an entire business; seven people have already done it, one of them twice. It just hasn't been happening recently due to post-shuttle scheduling changes eliminating the opportunities for short trips; Brightman's flight was only to be possible due to the one-off 'year in space' mission.

It's hardly deniable that corruption in Russia is larger scale and more widespread than in many other countries. Roskosmos alone has recently found $1.8 billion worth of losses through 'financial violations'; when was the last time something of that scale happened in the US?

SLS has no provision for installation of a fifth core engine, J-2X is no longer under development, and NASA has no intention to plumb the pad for liquid boosters (hence the cancellation of the advanced booster competition). Whatever you got this from, it's extremely outdated.

Do you have anything that's not eyewitness accounts or blurry photos? That's what I meant.

The Loch Ness monster is known to not exist: full sonar sweeps have been done of the lake, multiple times, there's nothing in there. Regardless of that, there are plenty of blurry photos and eyewitness accounts, with more coming out every year. So here's something to start with; produce evidence more substantive than that for Nessie.

Four Aerojet Rocketdye RS-25s. The first flights will use surplus RS-25Ds (AKA SSMEs), and later flights a cheaper, simplified version called RS-25E. Further on the current steel-cased SRBs are also planned to be replaced; by a composite-cased design, known informally as 'dark knight'. Initially it's planned to use an Interim Cryogenic Upper Stage; a modified Delta IV upper stage, using the RL-10B engine (also from AR). Later flights will use the larger Exploration Upper Stage, using four RL-10Cs. Current official schedule is 'no later than November 2018', working date is July 2018.

You can't process data to produce RGB images with standard RGB filters, which any planetary science instrument will not have because they're not scientifically useful. You can produce an approximation from scientific filters that are close, but we've already seen you complain when they do that.

That reasoning doesn't work-all views start out as 'non-mainstream', regardless of veracity.

I know you kids these days are out of touch with nature, so this might shock you, but there are actually organisms that are not humans.

Materials that are radar absorbent and shapes that reduce direct return, but there's no such thing as a 100% effective radar absorbent material.

You can pick up TV signals with a ham radio with sufficient frequency range, and we're monitoring the entire spectrum. You've ignored the rest of my statement as well-any physical object will produce some radar signal, why don't we see it? Why are there no unexplained sonic booms?

Radar returns of vehicles with much altitudes and speeds than we're capable of, large uncatalogued objects appearing in orbit, clearly structured radio signals from elsewhere in the solar system... anything like that. As it stands we genuinely have better evidence for the Yeti than for extraterrestrial visitors.

Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence; not a few blurry pictures and eyewitness accounts.

You did. The planetary protection standards for landers and orbital spacecraft are different, that's simply all there is to it.

One of the competitors has been dropped from CRS-5; while there's no official word of which one, the rumours are very much centering on Jupiter.