Shpaget

Relevant to the outclassing/obsolescence talk is the short story Superiority by Clarke. I recommend you guys read it.

How is that contract any different than "Achieve orbit around ...?" Once in orbit, you can do as many as you like, without any further input of effort.

Why? If your craft can make one orbit it can make as many as you like.

If that were truly the case there would be no fighting at all.

Yeah, the Russia / Turkey / Syria incident was partly what motivated me to start this topic. In this particular case, the Russians rescued one of the downed pilots, however, one of the rescue helicopters was shot at, at which point one of its crew was killed and the helicopter itself disabled. It had to land and now the rest of the helicopter crew was stranded requiring rescue. So, Russian losses went from one dead, one stranded and one jet destroyed to two dead, two stranded (surviving helicopter crew, jet pilot was rescued by another helicopter), one jet and one helicopter destroyed.

What of risk of more allies being captured?

The hypothetical situation is that a member of your military unit has been captured by the enemy. Relatively reliable intel says he is still alive and there is a decent probability of rescue, but it is likely that doing so will endanger more of your allies. It is your decision to either send the rescue party that will likely suffer some loss of life and certainly cause death on the enemy side, or you could cut losses and leave your captured ally to his fate - questioning, torture and death. What do you do? Why?

I like that book and generally speaking I don't like film adaptations. They always seem to omit too much.

Try Shift + Enter. It makes it look like this. What do you mean last quote tag system? There is a "+" and "Quote" at the bottom of each post. The "Quote" quotes only that one post, "+" selects and remembers the post for multiple quotes. After pressing it you can click the "+" on additional posts to include them too in you reply.

Any landing you can walk away from is a good landing. It just so happens that, occasionally, my crew has to walk half the circumference of the planet (or a bit more if they start in the wrong direction).

Well, that depends on how soon after the first contact you need to explain it. If you already are best buddies and you ran out of more interesting topics to talk about over your pan galactic gargle blaster, then it's a lot easier than if your most basic communications depends on a good, accurate and understandable description of second.

There are different types of unmanned. One is just a remote controlled plane where the pilot on the ground has full control and flies just as if he was in the cockpit. Then there is a hybrid where the pilot guides the aircraft but actual control is done by the onboard compute r (think of your GPS in a car that tells you to turn left on the next intersection, but you need to actually turn the wheel; only here roles of computer and human are reversed). This is even done on modern RC toys. I've had a chance to work with DJI Phantom. That thing does all the flying itself, you only tell it where to go and it takes care of how to get there, what motors to spin up or down, how to tilt or roll and even stabilizes the camera for you. And then there is the completely autonomous drone that will fly roughly according to a predetermined flight path and, if allowed to, engage non-friendly targets. Of course there is a sliding scale on this where each aspect can be automated or manual, depending on the scenario and mission profile. The point is that a pilot that is safely sitting in a bunker can take his time to properly examine the potential target without the need to dedicate a portion of his mental capacity to keep the plane from slamming in the ground, since the plane itself will take care of that. As mentioned earlier, it also removes the fear of death and the probably a portion of the itchiness in the trigger finger.

This is not something that is launched on a daily basis. It's for emergencies, occasions that happen once in a decade or even less frequently. You still need to store the rocket and whatever fuels it. There is very little difference in storing this small rocket and storing a bigger one. All the personnel, equipment and security you need for the big one, you also need for the small one.

Seriously, who cares about the cost? If it's a spy sat that needs to be in orbit in 12 hours, the cost is the last thing that someone will worry about. With the budget of more than 600 billion, what is a few million to launch a sat? This is useful only if there is no alternative to launch immediately. However, I fail to see why would there be such a rush. If they can have a variety of payloads waiting in some storage for a hypothetical situation where there is a need for a speedy launch, they can just as well have couple of solid rockets mothballed with only their upper stages empty and in need for preparation for the launch, something that can be done just as fast as this airplane assisted thing.

The Bayer process, which is currently the industry standard for aluminium production, was invented decades before aircraft started to be made out of it. But it doesn't matter. A material that has seen a significant drop in the price will always find a new market. It happened with aluminium and with iron before that. It even happened with tulips.

Once the unmanned fighters become a reality, such maneuverability might prove to be very valuable. A plane itself can pull much higher Gs than the pilot can withstand, so if you remove the pilot, new limits can be reached.

Why not just use common sense? If you really feel the need to put tags at all, pick one or two that first come to your mind. Don't try to overthink it. If it's not intuitive, it's useless.

Of course. But consider the fact that every new economical source of any material drives prices down. What new application we find for those materials depends partly on how much the prices are driven down. A similar thing has happened in the past. A little over 150 years ago aluminium was more expensive than gold and its uses were very limited by the cost and availability. Now, when aluminium costs less than peanuts, you can see it used everywhere.

Yep, yesterday I wasn't able to get pass the front page, and even getting to load the index.php was a hit-or-miss (more miss than hit).

Hostly, the Space Act and the passing of it only shows the silliness and naivety of parts of the Outer Space Treaty, which has been from the start, and will continue to be for the foreseeable future, completely unenforceable. Furthermore, the "shall be carried out for the benefit and in the interests of all countries" part of OST is just hindering development without reasonable justification. Also, even if one company mines and delivers large quantities of scarce material to the surface of Earth, it is in the interest of all countries, regardless of the fact that this one company makes a profit. Example: platinum is rare and expensive and as such its uses are limited since there just isn't enough of it for, let's say, alloying steel for construction. Introducing large amounts of it to the market would drive progress in new branches of metallurgy.

I don't play Killing floor, but if all the feature accessible to paying players are also accessible to free to play players through reasonably more effort, I am completely supporting that business model. If paying offers unfair advantage, I frown upon it. A good example is World of Tanks where everything accessible to paying members is also accessible to regular non paying players through ingame currency. Premium tanks are a bit more challenging to get without paying, but it's not impossible the game offers various ingame missions to obtain gold needed to purchase such tanks. Also premium tanks are mostly rubbish compared to regular ones of similar design, with their only benefit being better at generating ingame currency.

[quote name='wumpus']Just how many pound draw do you need to fire an arrow at orbital velocity? You aren't going to hit the Earth from ISS with any bow pulled by mortal man (ignoring slow, slow air resistance).[/QUOTE] If it's a physically large bow, it doesn't need to be particularly strong. In a strong bow arrows accelerate at around 4000 m/s^2, so if your bow is big enough to have the arrow accelerate for 2 seconds, you can achieve deorbit. The displacement of the draw would be 8 km, so your mortal man would be able to pull it, but would need to walk a bit. If you lower the mass of the arrow by a factor of 10, because why not, it will accelerate 10 times faster, so your bow can be shorter. But I think you mistake my post to be a reply to OP. It was a reply to a previous post about a canon fired Kerbal. [quote name='meve12']I'd go with 'right'. You'd need an extremely steady hand to hit the ISS on that trajectory even if you got the timing exactly right.[/QUOTE] If you're onboard ISS, or just outside of it, it's not about timing, it's about the direction. You need to change velocity, without changing the speed, change direction and retain speed (and thus orbital period).

And land?

Someone who has made a few mirrors can make a very good one, comparable to good quality commercial ones, certainly better than those found in supermarket telescopes. But even a beginner can make a decent smaller mirror if he follows the tutorials and takes his time. It's a slow process that can't be rushed.

[quote name='gooddog15']First of all, I was talking about that the Falcon 9 overall is meant to be an orbital launch vehicle, not the first stage. Second of all the Falcon 9 first stage like all rocket stages has a guidance system. Not sure what your trying to prove there Third of all, what you're saying is that the payload is a second stage for some reason. Fourth of all, I couldn't find any info NS relating to its speed upon separation. Seems like Jeff really doesn't like to release information. Also, NS is landing on solid ground inland, while Falcon 9 is landing on a constantly moving (but not in crazy amounts) barge with a stronger cross wind. if it stood there for second without falling and blowing up, it sounds like a landing to me. Is there apparently an official criteria for whether somethings landed or not? Last of all, is NS in the desert with skyscrapers? No? These are rockets not helicopters. I'm leaving before a glob of threadlock is applied.[/QUOTE] But the first stage, the stuff we're talking about, is not orbital. There is not conceptual difference between the two. You said F9 was bigger as if that is a hindrance. I say it offers more capacity for equipment needed to land. I say the size is a bonus. Yes. Why wouldn't you consider it as such? The barge is not moving. It's is stabilized and the position is controlled. Seriously, that's decades old tech. Where did you pull out the crosswind from? It did not stand there for a second. The criteria for landing is "if you can walk away from it, it's a landing". The thing exploded. You'd not walk away from that. It's not a landing. You're the one who said that NS landed in "Texas, where everything is big, with it's wide open spaces and all" as if F9 had to navigate through tight spaces. How more open space do you need if an ocean is not open enough for you? [quote name='Albert VDS']There is no reason for the F9 first stage to have a engine which can hover, because you only need so much accuracy. Just look at how accurate they can target a barge in the middle of the ocean. Also it's better to have a bigger landing pad than decreasing payload capacity.[/QUOTE] I'm not the one complaining about the F9's inability to hover and diminishing another ones success because of that.