Scotius

There is a saying: "Lack of news means good news". But i am not sure it's applicable here...

Why does nuclear powered craft need solar panels? Also, shadow shield seems to be missing. Are constructors not worried about fast particles spewing in the direction of the rest of the ship? Hopefully it's just an early model bashed together by couple of interns

Hear hear!!! I will drink to that - a nice glass of cold Pepsi

Probably just a bunch of material science samples DARPA doesn't want anyone else to know about for the next couple decades.

RELEASE THE KRAKEN HOPPER!!!

And we got rid of pulsed jets and switched to normal engines as soon as they became viable.

It probably looked like this:

Because pulsed propulsion in general is bad? And we use it only when we have no better alternatives. Look at V-1 vs. normal jet engine. Would you weld an anvil to the back of your car, and propel it forward by repeatedly slamming a wrecking ball into the anvil? I'm sure acceleration would be incredible...

"Better deal"? Did... did Arianespace cut launch prices down? Say it ain't so!!! Things are a'changing in the stale market of space launches - that's for sure.

Oh wow. ULA... invest in better onboard cameras please. That stage separation looked awful

Hey, this guy has some experience with the stuff you just described. Fits to a tee

Seriously? You want to scientifically analyze the substance that does anything writer requires? Excercise in futility, if i ever seen one...

Moar Science from the Moon. Go India

My jaw hit the floor when i noticed the trailer recommendation. And then i realised it's not a joke or fan made. And then music kicked in... now i will dream about building and flying rockets again

Play this song. It goes straight into any Slav's soul. We don't have to understand words to feel the sadness and overwhelming weariness of those poor peasants. It automatically makes us misty eyed

Aw, dangit! Now i have to do... this:

"If you successfuly launch Starship before 2022, you will get first dibs on Mars real estate in our first colony. Deal of the century, you guys!"

LOL So true! It boggles the mind that modern warship, bristling with radars, sonars, IR detectors etc. can so completely miss the presence of another ship. Equally big, or even much larger - on the open sea, in decent weather condition. Looks like all the advancements in technology do not matter much when eye and brain controlling them is fast asleep

Maybe "Of Course I Still Love YOU" is scheduled for maintenance? I wonder: How much Falcon Heavy could get into space if both boosters would go for barge landing instead of RTLS, with core expendable? Maybe SpaceX is hoping for a big, fat payload in the near future?

Could this "pulse laser" be used on ISS to destroy or repel dangerous pieces of debris? Or even deorbit bigger pieces? Probably power requirements are quite high, but station could trickle-charge this hypothetical capacitor over the course of couple of days.

Yes, those are all big, important heavy hitters. But those modern capital ships are also horrendously expensive - thus few in numbers. And every such ship automatically becomes prime target for enemy strike. Which means every Admiralty responsible gets very, very paranoid cautious when one of their golden toys needs to go anywhere near a conflict zone. And the end result is: and Destroyers, frigates, minesweepers and submarines do all the hard work, while flattops serve as mobile parade stands

That's 'regular' enough for ya? Courtesy of Juno probe.

Battlestars look cool in the cinema. But this sort of carrier-battleship would be very problematic to build, and even harder to use effectively in combat. There were attempts to build such things for bluewater Navies: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ise-class_battleship https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HSwMS_Gotland_(1933) But they remained only interesting footnotes as dead end in warships development. Why? Well. You want your battleship well armed with big guns. And well protected against enemy big guns (Otherwise https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HMS_Hood). With high survivability, allowing it to get up close and personal with the enemy (for WW II time period it would mean up to 30 000 meters - usually less). Which means armor. Thick slabs of high quality, dense material protecting vital parts of the ship (engines, power plant, main guns, ammo magazines). Heavy stuff. For a carrier, you would want a ship able to carry a lot of planes, with spacious hangars and magazines for servicing and rearming your planes for the full duration of mission\battle being fought at distances of couple of hundreds of kilometers. Which require big hull - which would be difficult to protect with armor without eating into useable inner space too much. And this inner space is filled with highly combustible aircraft fuel and explosive ordnance for the planes. This tends to happen to unlucky carriers: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Midway That's two opposable goals you would have to merge in one ship. Also, consider this: After even victorious battle, battleship (unless it was ridiculously, Hollywood-esque lucky) will need shipyard time, if not outright drydocking. Being hit by a fast flying, armor piercing several hundred kilograms of explosive projectile leads to much damage. Meanwhile, victorious carrier most likely won't get hit even once, and will need only to resupply spent fuel, ordnance and replace lost planes and crews. There are other important factors of course, but end result - extinction of battleships and domination of carriers (or rather carrier battle groups) will probably carry into space warfare as we can imagine it now.

During planetogenesis pre-Jupiter was basically the Kraken He rampaged across young Solar system, devouring unlucky planetesimals and throwing lucky ones into wildly perturbed orbits. Good thing nowadays Jupiter is dangerous mostly to comets and odd asteroid every so often.

But doesn't it simplify the construction? Normally you have wings attached to the hull. Lifting body craft is the hull... and the wing... at the same time. No attachment points, airframe can be made as one element (more or less). Besides, it's not like Dream Chaser will have to do any extreme maneuvering in the atmosphere - it just needs to be stable in flight and be a decent glider.