Scotius

If you have enough grip on the laws of physics to create antigravity and warp engines, you can easily build superior control system for your spaceships. And it can be equally exotic as main drive.

And then suddenly...

Scram procedures are a thing exactly for this reason: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scram One would think that advanced civilization using this technology for hundreds of years, would develop similar safeties for their expensive and complicated starships.

Are you forgetting about infamous warp core ejections in Star Trek? It's an equivalent of modern ship violently catapulting its engines into the ocean, every time something invariably breaks in the engine room. That requires modular construction for sure LOL

Another flawless flight It's routine at this point, which is awesome.

Low visibility, they say. Make life easier for astronomers, they say. And here we are, with the perspective of tens of thousands of nearly invisible satellites above our heads - some of which will be spy birds. How many? And which ones? Wouldn't you love to know?

But eventually you have to light that candle. And be prepared for a fireball and a lot of mess on the stand. Because rocket science is in fact hard. Does ULA have anything they can sacrifice in the name of testing, or the flight article will be the test article at the same time? That is asking for trouble. SpaceX is at their eighth prototype and they are churning out more, fully expecting more losses along the way. ULA seems to be putting all their eggs in one, very expensive basket.

Crazy weather is the price for having a launch site as far south as almost possible. And it's still storm season, so it could be worse

Basically you just described humanity through the ages Always, always there were fake news - from a fisherman gloating about the size of a fish he caught to village gossip to a chronicler embellishing the deeds of a king. I think we will manage

Airgel-like substance could be used to minimize heat transfer. It could be enough for a couple of hours long activity outside of the lander. But eventually it would need active cooling. It's funny how we can deal with extreme cold better than with heat.

Like this, only much... much heavier. And no windows

Oh come on! Those dastardly moles!

Stream starts. Music is on.

Well said. My sister is terrified of spiders. I catch them in my hand, carry outside and release in the backyard. On the other hand, I'm afraid of heights, and watch in mute terror as my sister is fearlessly hanging drapes, balancing precariously on a wobbly ladder. Unless someone comes with a method of projecting simultaneously images of a spider and a ladder, one of us will be able to tell something wrong is happening to the other one.

It is. But that doesn't mean all brains work alike. Not even identical twins think and behave in the same way. This is evolution at work - individuals of one species behave in a wide variety of ways and have different reactions to stimuli. Which means such "weapon" would have limited effectiveness and would be wildly inconsistent.

Happens to all of us Though only with Duna\Mars in my case. I never looked at Ceres and thought "Dres" for example.

Tanker version of Cargo Dragon would be nice to have Only fuel, for all station keeping needs of ISS for a year or so. Then land it, pump more fuel in and send up again. I bet it would be more economical than Progress. Though it would probably require modifications to Zvezda module.

Solar panels and nuclear reactors by day, nuclear reactors by night. That's the only solution with our current technological level. Toying with more... exotic forms of power generation and storage will come much later down the road.

Boeing astronauts: Sweating intensifies. SpaceX: Parachutes keep failing, huh? Maybe powered landings with SuperDracos wasn't so bad idea after all?

That's a lot of propellant crammed into a tank I'm very, very curious about what dV figures for fully operational Starship will look. How much performance can be squeezed out with couple of years of practice and modifications?

Well - in case life began independently on all three planets (+ Europa, Enceladus and whatnot) it should really help the biology to finally partially figure out the process of abiogenesis. Three (or more) data points are better than one.

It's not total heap of scrap Things are going in the right direction it seems.

Pretty much this ^ It looks exciting on paper. But would you want to operate such network of tethers in KSP, let alone real life - with all its Murphy's Laws, human factor and entropy working together to sabotage your efforts?

Maybe something similar to the most aerodynamic satellite we ever launched? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gravity_Field_and_Steady-State_Ocean_Circulation_Explorer It managed to stay at low, low altitude of 250 kilometers for four years. One above Venus could skim the upper layers of atmosphere for maybe a year or two, gathering samples in the hope of picking up some spores (if any would be present).

"Sample return mission"? Isn't that a big no-no if we suspect there might be life present onsite?