Kryten

You're assuming alien organisms would be more similar to us than we are to the vast majority of the organisms on our own planet-unless you've met someone who's ever come down with T4 bacteriophage or tobacco mosaic virus. That's not exactly a very tenable assumption.

Yes, easily.

Why would they? There's no national prestige to be gained from buying services, and there's very little science suitable to be done in a crewed capsule.

Only Japan have anywhere they'd want astronauts to actually go to (their ISS module), and they currently receive flights from the US government for contributions to the ISS.

Just because something might be old doesn't mean it's been bettered. 70s or not, the SSME is the US state-of-the-art.

Yes, Russia. RKK Energiya is a private company (albeit 38% owned by the government), at least for now.

Don't worry, the people that wrote it didn't understand it any better than you do.

Look back in the thread, I'm not going to bother explaining this twice. Hint; surface is exposed to sunlight, inside is not.

I'm not relying on 'consensus'; I know enough about physics to recognise that 'electric universe theory' is about as scientific as homeopathy or flood geology. We've already had people in this thread have to come up with worldwide conspiracies to explain issues with it.

Excellent reading comprehension there. That's comet Tempel 1, and it's being hit with a 300kg impactor going about 10km/s. If you think we need to rewrite basic physics and cosmology to explain why that might make a big flash, I can't help you.

He formerly had mod powers, I don't think normal users could ever do that.

They've done a contract for completion of the design documentation and construction of a ground-test prototype, both of which are to be finished before November 2015, as well as another contract for development of the Angara A5P/Amur LV for it. There's a tender running to produce a heavier rocket (roughly equivalent to Block 1A SLS) for the actual missions, but that hasn't even settled on a design and doesn't have an associated date for first flight except 'before 2030'. Plans for anything else (e.g. the flights of PTK-NP posted above) are not contracted and are purely notional.

Yes, they exist. Rosetta doesn't have one, Philae doesn't have one, and comet 67/P Churyumov-Gerasimenko most certainly doesn't have one. The latter is the body you're claiming to be highly charged.

You guys realise they weren't just spamming :hailprobe:, right? When this thread was originally posted, that produced an actual emoticon, the one Destroyer posted above (cribbed from the Orbiter forum).

When a better model of the radiation is applied, the effect goes away; we don't need a control for that, any more than we need a control to show the discrepancies in the precession of Mercury are explained by GR.

2010 is a sequel to 2001 the film, not 2001 the book; where the two differ, he went with the film version of events. This should all be in the preface, it was in my version.

I'm starting to think you don't know what any of these words mean. You claim the comet is very highly negatively charged. There is no mechanism for Philae and/or Rosetta to have achieved the same level of charge. Uncharged object+massively charged object, negatively or positive=Zap. A 'static charge suppressor' would make this situation worse, not better.

'Pioneer anomaly' is due to asymmetric radiation of heat, the rest has nothing to do with this. Philae doesn't have lightning suppressors or lightning discharge antennae last time I checked, there should have been a massive, damaging discharge if your model was right. There wasn't.

That would explain why Philae was immediately destroyed by massive electrical discharge upon touching down.

PTK NP is to fly on Angara A5P. This video has no connection to reality other than the name and the rough external shape.

I like how it's apparently the size of Soyuz' orbital module. They must have very short cosmonauts lined up.

That's to a much lower inclination than the ISS, and an instated altitude; it doesn't mean they can actually put 13 tons to ISS. Particularly as Orion would be unable to actually intercept the station with no SM.

So far all we know they need is a station taxi. Shenzhou ought to work fine for that for the foreseeable future.

This is almost as stupid as the electric universe stuff. ESA is the space agency of europe, which is helpfully marked on the map. NASA is the space agency of the united states of america, which is where north america is labelled on this map. Note the seperating ocean.

True, but the more of these kind of modifications you get, the worse the engine will perform as an actual engine and the less payload you'll be able to carry. You're effectively making it equivalent to a much cheaper expendable engine than it would otherwise be performance-wise, which isn't good for the economic viability of the system.