Tommygun

I can't think of why a government space program needs to copyright anything. It not like a competing space agency is going to copy it and mass produce a lander. I can see keeping certain technologies secret, but not copyrighting it. Just Googled friction stir welding, interesting technique.

In career mode it has it's place as an early primitive satellite. The problem with it is that Squad wants career mode to start with a manned craft instead of a satellite. We need a more realistic tech tree.

So will there be separate engines for each fuel type or do you just tweak the part settings while in the VAB?

Make it larger and more robust so I can mow my lawn with it and I'll buy it.

Just tried it and it seems to work, thanks.

The creator has been off the forums for about two and a half months so possibly. If I read his license correctly, It looks like his license may allow for others to make modifications and redistribute them?

I just put them on the wing tips and go straight up. They're quite good and easily get you to a nice height and speed before running out. I want to make a C-130 next and see if I can get it into the air with this, but I'm busy in career are now. They are also good and cheap boosters for smaller rockets when you need that little bit of a push at the start of a launch. They also seem small enough not to damage the launch pad when they fall back on to it.

I confused about the numbering too.

I found out those small SRBs make for perfect JATO rockets. I'm in career mode and I have plane parts, but not enough science for the landing gear. So I'm shooting my jets straight into the air and landing them by parachute. It's great that the entire outside surface of the SRBs acts as a built in decoupler, so I can place them anywhere without using a expensive separate decoupler.

Apollo Applications Extended Lunar Surface Missions: They had quite a bit planned before future funding started to get cut: http://www.astronautix.com/craft/aesrbase.htm http://www.astronautix.com/craft/apomtaxi.htm

That's what I thought, but I was just wondering if there would be any differences in delta V if you started in an Earth polar orbit first. The timing sure would be a lot harder.

I wonder if it is possible to launch to an Earth polar orbit then transfer directly to a Moon polar orbit?

Because it is harder to rendezvous in a polar orbit coming from the ground?

You might need a second module or more for a rechargeable fuel cell or lithium battery setup. If you find water which would probably be at the poles, you could separate the water into hydrogen and oxygen during the day as fuel to generate electricity at night, but then you could just put your solar panels up onto the polar mountains and get almost continuous light all month long.

Using a solar only base may limit the base's location to a few mountainous areas around the poles though. You have to deal with about 15 days of light/darkness cycle.

I think changing the crew out every two to four weeks would make it more expensive to run. Well, at least if you plan on it being continuously crewed. It might be cheaper in the long run to have enough modules on the surface to keep the crews there for six months at a time.

After the launch there were two announcers talking about future interchangeable parts with the Delta rocket. I'm not sure if I heard them right, but are they talking about an Atlas stage being interchangeable between Atlas and Delta or just the engines?

I forgot about the launch, so I only had 4 minutes to get dressed find my camera and run outside. I'm hoping to get a picture of one of the Dragon capsules the next time they pull one out of the water. They use a local small commercial fishing pier to unload it and I should be able to get close.

My criminally bad photos taken from my house:

Sounds like a solar system wide Kessler syndrome with antimatter.

I think the Tunguska event might be a good starting point to imagine what would happen. It has been estimated to have release around 15 Megatons of energy. It can't be confirmed, but there were a number of unusual deaths that were similar to radiation exposure, electromagnetic pulse like anomalies and reports of compass not working for a time. I think it would be completely vaporized in the air almost instantly and hitting the ground wouldn't really matter. In fact, air bursting weapons do more damage over a larger area. I'm guessing the fusion reaction would be cleaner than what you would see with a fusion bomb. You might even want to look at the Tsar Bomba atomic test that air burst a weapon of up to 58 megatons. Edit: I wonder if making the slugs out of cobalt would make any difference in the fallout?

I've worked in clean rooms and it always bothered me that they always seem to over look the obvious. The face and eyebrows are not fully covered. Skin and eyebrow hairs are flaking off all day and how many times a day does someone unconsciously touch their face and contaminate their gloves. If NASA was really concerned about microbes and viruses contaminating things they would run their clean rooms like level 4 bio labs. I think they mainly want to keep debris out of the machines and the rest is mostly lip service. They probably think it is impossible to fully sterilize a probe and it probably is.

I would think the same motivation that caused congress to create the SLS will also keep it from canceling it.

With only four years, dig really deep bunkers under Antarctica and hope you get lucky.

Well as technology gets more advanced it takes longer to design and test it. The P-51 took 102 days to design and build the first prototype, the F-22 took about 11 years just to make it's first flight.