Scotius

I feel your pain CatastrophicFailure - i do. But like i always say: Better delay than fireball. Explosion on the launchpad or during the start would hurt FH program more than ten scrubbed test fires or actual launches. Let people at SpaceX do their thing in peace.

Well, everything was so top secret, we weren't even allowed to see stage separation. And yet government freely announced mission's failure due to total loss of the craft? Fishy. Very fishy.

"There is nothing "simple" about the Falcon Heavy. In fact, it's much more complex than if it was a single rocket 3 times bigger." Thus, ITV. And BFR in the future. And New Glenn.

And, aside from ridiculous power requirements, such submarine would be literally blind and deaf while moving. And it would broadcast its position, speed and course to EVERYONE. Very, very LOUDLY. That's not a thing submarines are built for

Pretty Kerbal, too Two to four winged, detachable boosters on the sides. I wonder what onboard flight cotrol would make out of this

Three Falcons lifting off at the same time. I can't even begin to imagine such epic roar! And then double sonic boom of re-entering boosters. Man, that will be a LOT of decibels And many, many pants will be moved. Followers of EJ_SA and DasValdez on Twitch should recognise this reference.

"Nuclear reactors for beyond Mars? We'll get back to you on that". Hopefully i will still be alive by that time 42 years and counting - time is inevitably running short for me.

Then they should work on MagnetoPlasmaDynamic thrusters, or other high thrust (for electrics) engines, instead of ion toys good only for probes. And scientific missions that from the get-go postulate transfer periods counted in several years.

Looks nice on paper. Too bad there will be no one brave and rich enough to try building and testing this engine. NASA - the only institution with money and know-how to attempt it prefers to sink good chunk of its budget into the white elephant called SLS.

It has been done before. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spacelab And yet still there was MIR, and ISS after that. A big, dedicated station does have many advantages over a mobile module. That's why we build stations in Antarctica with permanent buildings, instead of just dropping a couple of adapted cargo containers and calling it a day.

Well, configuration-wise currently closest to Falcon Heavy is Delta IV Heavy. And it never failed, so... Let's hope for the best.

Farewell. O7

A lot lower than current state i guess. There wasn't much time for rain and waves to weather down enough rocks and dissolve salts. Still, swimming it that primordial mixture would be a very, very bad idea

Interesting. But even if purple archaea were dominant lifeforms at some point, it still wouldn't make Earth purple. First of all, 99.99999% of them would be limited to hydrosphere - seas and oceans could've had a bit of of purple tint, but lands would still be lifeless mass of browns and grays. Besides, even today all the abundant chrolophyll - using microorganisms do not turn Earth's waters green. Well, except when algae blooms are happening. Back then, i wouldn't be surprised if our planet looked yellow-brownish from space - her atmosphere was essentially a thick layer of smog after all

Oh yeah? I'll take your donut... pretzel... thingy and raise you... this:

And of course there is a classic Brian Aldiss's "Greenhouse". In which highly evolved plants looking like gargantuan spiders travel from Earth to the Moon and back on strands of webs hundreds of thousands of kilometers long. Now that's an incredible mental image

When we'll get to send a probe to that planet, i predict a mulchstorm of bad jokes, awful puns and lewd comments flooding the rocketry part of the Internet And Reddit... *shudders*

No! Oh, come on. Delta IV Heavy is awesome. It's power personified . At least let's wait until the first successful flight of Falcon Heavy to proclaim it as the new Vice-King of Rockets. King of course being Saturn V.

Well, i wouldn't be surprised f the result of this long, tedious process would be a clear image of a featureless... big black blob

Est modus in rebus . Airbrakes deployable into the airstream behind the stage. They would turn entire contraption into a giant dart

I keep thinking about fairing recovery method. With a ship armed with a big net. Could it possibly be used to recover second stage of Falcon? It would require some sort of heat shield on the front, and a drogue parachute on the end. Stage would re-enter, slow down in atmosphere protected by heat shield, then chute would pop and slow it even more - to a velocity allowing net to grab it without being shredded to bits. No need for landing legs, fuel reserve and other things cutting into dV or payload capability of the stage. What do you guys think - is it even remotely possible?

I wanted to like your story, but it actually saddened me It clearly shows how big and profound (and nasty) impact Cold War and recent shenanigans of a certain hermit country had and still does have on our minds. Your reaction to this phenomenon wasn't "Oh, hey! What a view. Is it a rocket launch? Cool." It was "Oh God, is it a missile?!? And warhead???" Things improved on our blue planet, but not nearly enough to be back to... well - normal. As far as it goes for humanity

What a PR stunt for both SpaceX and Tesla Also, nice shout-out to The Boring Company... which is terrible apparently

It means that Solar System is currently traversing an empty area of space called Local Bubble (it's about 300 light years across). But even in this empty (compared to statistical average for Milky Way) area there are regions with higher density - like clouds of dust and gas. Those "clouds" are just a bit denser than the rest of the Bubble - and our system is currently inside one of those clouds.

Which will have to change when SpaceX decides it is time to finally go beyond Earth's orbit. But this is what ITS is\will be for .