Shpaget

Make it light blue.

Even if Shuttle was operational, it would not be capable of reaching JWST. Shuttle was barely able to reach ISS which is 400 km up. JWST will be orbiting the Sun-Earth L2 point, which is about a million and a half km higher. Yes, servicability of Hubble was a nice feature, but certanly not a requirement for a space mission. After all, how many other space missions you know of that were servicable?

JWST is not intended to be Hubble 2.0. Hubble is primarily UV and visible light telescope, while JW is infrared, with only marginal visible capability (not full visible spectrum). They are different machines, for different purposes. Also JW has a much larger (around 7 times) primary mirror, providing the ability to collect more light from very faint distant objects.

They have a permission from someone who does not have the authority to give permission. Such permission is not worth the paper it's written on.

Nothing happened to me this week and I'm not taking out anything on any of you. I'm pointing out factual flaws and inadequacy in this project by Moon Express. Everything I said about it I followed by the links and arguments. You should not consider it bitterness, resentment or misery. Yes, people like some things, that does not necessarily mean others should, let alone avoid questioning the validity of statement regarding those things. Yes, I would like to learn more about Moon Express and their endeavor, yet the lack of any technical information prevents me from doing so, which leaves me in the position where I have to question this whole Moon Express thing and whether it is genuine or not. They have received a $1,25 million dollars from Google, and just a year and a half before they have to launch, they still have not shown the public anything. I'm not saying they have to (that's between them and Google), but it would sure answer a lot of questions and address quite a few misgivings I have about them. So, instead of you saying I sound like a miserable geezer, why don't you try to refute the issues I've brought up about Moon Express in my previous post. Explain the lack of photos of the hardware, why are there no published mission parameters, why are they just now hiring so many essential core personnel, etc. As for the approval and OST, USA has no jurisdiction over Moon. Any approval they give is worthless. What does it even mean? That the US government may choose to take the blame if something goes horribly wrong with the mission and the Moon suffers some irreparable damage, breaks apart and falls on Earth? Yeah. I can give you that approval myself, any day you want. What implications does this approval have, other than perhaps it leading to every little backwater country jumping on the approval bandwagon and issuing their own little approvals? We've talked about Outer Space Treaty several times on this forum. It always boils down to it being unenforceable and pointless. It's closer to a guidebook than a law. Please don't leave your trash behind and, pretty please, no guns. It looks like those "no guns allowed" stickers you see on the entrances to banks. Any individual (who can afford it, obviously) can launch a satellite. Any individual can land whatever he wants on the Moon or any other place, because once you leave Earth there is no space police. There is no space court of law. Trespassers will not get shot.

Everything about this smells of bs. The Moon Express boasts to have received some inconsequential approval that they try to present as a crucial part of the mission, or as a final piece of paper before they can launch, something they were waiting for and now plans to launch by late 2017. Except, they have no hardware to show us; they don't even show us a design document or tell us exactly what the mission is. Furthermore, their plan is to use the Electron launch vehicle. Never heard of it? Of course you haven't, it doesn't exist yet. The proposed launch company is a startup that doesn't have a single orbital launch behind them. Going back to Moon Express, you want to hear the best part? Take a look at this. Not only they don't have the hardware, they don't even have the mission figured out; they haven't even hired the staff that's supposed to figure that out. From no mission and no hardware to do it with and no personnel to make it, to the Moon surface in less than 18 months? Moon Express, go home, you're either delusional, or a scam.

Cool, although there could be quite a bit more info on it. And yes, it's definitely Russian site. Domain registrant is from Moscow.

Are we looking at the same picture? There's like 50 countries marked in red (non signatories) and 15-ish marked yellow (signatories, but not ratified, so basically the same as non signatories).

There are plenty.

Or you can just register in and launch from any country that is not signatory to OST, which is garbage anyway.

So, do they have any hardware to show us?

Oh, I forgot to mention that giant solar power plants that use single tower to melt salts are not eco friendly. They are actually quite horrible. The insects are attracted to the intense brightness of the focused beams and burned. Same goes for every bird that follows the insects. They burn up in the air. Long trough type solar concentrators can be very easily made to track the Sun, they require only one axis and multiple rows can use same drive and tracking mechanism.

You humidify the air to extract the humidity? Just use the water you were humidifying with. Electrolysis is an expensive and inefficient way to produce oxygen and hydrogen. Electrolysis of ultra pure water is an impossible way to produce them as pure water can't be electrolyzed. Getting CO2 from air is also inefficient. Thunderfoot did the math on the subject some time ago. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dzq9yPE5Cbo So, your first three steps are ridiculous. I can't comment on rest, but you are not going to get anywhere with these steps.

It doesn't create any heat. It just focuses what is already there on a larger area and shoves it in one spot. Total energy is exactly the same.

The darker color of the top left part of the "B" is due to the rudder being deflected and in the shadow. Otherwise, nice info!

Yep, Concorde was left behind. Concorde has (had) 4 seats in a row, same as, for example an A320. However, in A320 the fuselage is just shy of 4 m wide, in Concorde it's 2,6. Concorde may be fast, but still, a transatlantic trip took around 3,5 hours. 3,5 hours last a lot longer when you have somebody siting in your lap. Look at his picture of a Concorde next to an old 747 (not sure what generation).

Oh, one more thing... Has any of you ever been in a Concorde? I was. And I was really unimpressed. That thing is tiny. In a world where airlines advertise "Extra room", they really are left behind.

Are we still talking about the airliner or are we talking about orbital stuff? VTOL airliners are not going to happen unless we magic up a power source of mind boggling energy density. A fusion reactor of a fraction of the size of current best (paper) designs that somehow doesn't irradiate everything on board, or batteries straight out of a Jedi light saber or Star Trek hand held phaser. I also don't see airliners using LOX any time soon. For a vehicle to not use the atmospheric oxygen but carry it onboard sounds asinine. Same goes for not using air as reaction mass. Modern turbofan engines rely on air as reaction mass so much that only about 10% of the air that goes through the engine actually goes through the combustion chamber. The other 90% is just pushed around the engine. And we're not talking about small quantities of air either. Rolls Roys Trent XWB engine, for example displaces around 1400kg of air every second. Airbus A350 has two of them.

Clusters are cheaper. Smaller engine = lower price. Larger production run = lower price. If one engine fails, others can compensate and the mission goes on. However, more engines = more stuff to go wrong. In case of an explosion of a motor, pieces of motor may damage other motors. In the end with the clusters, if you need a bigger rocket, you can just add more engines. No need for costly and time consuming R&D. Just tweak the control software.

That's the funniest SCP I've read! As for the plane itself, VTOL?? BWAHAHAHA Concorde had TWR of about 0,37 (and that is huge in airliner world). The fusion reactor? ITER weights (or will when finished) thousands of tons. Good luck lifting that in a plane.

It would certainly solve the problem of space debris, since the all the EMPs would throw the humanity a few hundred years back and we'd have no use for satellites anyway.

There already are more than 2000 sats in orbit. Debris count is likely a couple of orders of magnitude greater. Another few hundred is peanuts.

ARK: Survival Evolved is currently downloading. $15,39 (45% off), it's still in pre-release.

"...at the very latest when the Sun becomes a red giant. Without us everything humans ever achieved would be gone..." All in all, if this was a Wikipedia article, it would receive a whole lot of [who| and [citation needed] tags. On top of it all, maybe you should try and find out some actual numbers regarding the amount of money that was saved by having, for example GPS available in a certain event, or by having access to an early warning about an incoming hurricane thanks to the weather sats. For example, NOAA estimates that the hurricane Katrina caused more than $100 billion in damages. It would be interesting to know what would be the number if there were no satellites to provide advance warning.

Congratulations! Enjoy the holiday.