magnemoe

Good chance for that. Its obviously classified but if radar stuff you want an large antenna.

Buran has one benefit, you can use it as an heavy lift rocket, downside is that you loose the engines, but think that is worth it. Shuttle had one main feature who would be impossible to extremely hard to do today. Service missions to stuff like Hubble space telescope and building the IIS. So if you replace the Shuttle with Buran and treat it as an special reusable payload I think you are better of.

Yes, its probably wider than the Schwerer Gustav "railway gun" it required an double track. Same with the N1 transporter. Wonder a bit why they did not use double track but probably so specialized anyway, not normal railway track but some sort of geared railway. Also why an turntable rather than locks at the end, looks like the barges are transported sitting on the deck but gates or locks until should be lighter and cheaper, you don't mind if it leaks a bit.

its an camera angle thing.

Launch orbits is an question of launchpad not the rocket. Yes its cramped on launch and return, good enough in space as you can use the orbital module. Non reusable is true for any rocket except falcon 9 at this point. Now the Soyuz rocket is very old and probably not that efficient compared to more modern rockets. And like the Shenzhou better as its an upgraded Soyuz, larger orbital module. How is the return module 6 m^3 compared to 3.5 m^3 with Soyuz? and only 700 kg more for the stack who is nice. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shenzhou_(spacecraft)#/media/File:Spaceships.svg One weakness with the Soyuz is the low internal volume in the return module, here cargo dragon helped a lot. Without dragon, I assume you could use an 2 crew or unmanned Soyuz for return samples.

Social insects also have weird genetic, all the workers are children of the queen I think is more important than lifespan. Now if they kill off the males where do they get new ones? If the queen birthed them you are just inbreeding? Else I agree with you, having an majority male population is even more stupid. Majority female makes sense if designed it for rapid growth. Majority male, don't see any benefit. But majority male is popular in fiction for some reason? Then you have the naked mole rats who is mammals but behaves like social insects. Hard to see how to get intelligence out of it compared to an pack of smart social animals. But if you want the social insect society here you have it. Note that the queen does not control the pack, even less so than an leader of an stone age human tribe because we can discuss and plan. Will it be less rigid if intelligent or will it not work?

This, you thought you found the problem and you fix it, but you fixed some other bug, happens all the time in software development. However we tend to be able to catch the error before they blow up the second time That you fixed was an real bug, but not the critical one.

Analogue computers are pretty cool, most was however mechanical and / or electric. Very fast for electrical / electronic ones and you can get continuous adjustments. The Iowa class battleships used their analogue computers up until deactivated. They had digital fire control computers but they was not more accurate back in the 80's, but they was cheaper. Analog computers was single task, they needed another computer for shore bombardment since you here usually got target from spotters. For something more generic you could reconfigure them, but accuracy will fall off if you chain them up so say two modules give input to next one who then feeds more down the line. Not so much an issue for an fire control computers as its mostly aggregate lots of inputs. Not so much for machine learning but some has looked that that approach. Saw one back in the 80's and it had been used in the 80's it was some problem who was not practical to do on 80's computers but the analogue had no issues.

Here I agree, SS is nice for landing heavy stuff on the moon, but overbuild for simple landings but can we get an better lander faster? As in its very overbuild for an exploration mission, even with the drill rig and the two cars, second is for recovery

Who is an fair question, Saturn is up to over 100 moons now and it will be many more once we get multiple probes in orbits, stuff down to meter size. So it need to be an cutoff size or all the particles in the ring is an moon

Reminds me of my 4070 ti event. Installing the card killed my power supply and motherboard. MB was less than 2 years old and PSU of an known brand and had more than enough power. Motherboard was inside warranty bit below 3 years. So got new parts and motherboard was same brand as previous one I was able to boot on it once I managed to find the correct bios settings.

First is pretty obvious, its very rare than some has 3 or more arms, much rarer than getting born without arms. More relevant, you can loose arms but get more. That is useful arms.

And why all my small landers are pancakes. diameter is 2 times larger or more than height to center of mass. one 1.25 meter core with engine, critical systems and capsule, four side tanks who will be staged with landing legs and all the other stuff like go and science junior and the extra power and batteries to run the experiments also extra reaction wheels. Now I assume its launch cost constrains in why they can not use the width of an falcon 9 fairing for the width of lander.

Now laser cannons starts to become an thing. Its benefit is light of speed travel and easy aiming, downside is hitting power. But that is not so important against drones, missiles is a bit harder. So it would be useful against missile swarms. at least as close in weapons.

I say that lasers against tanks is order of magnitude harder than planes and missiles. Not only the power requirement to get trough armor on an moving target but also that lasers is line of sight so the tank can shoot back. Most effective weapons against lasers is probably artillery, if needed make the warhead stealthy, or some sort of stand off glide bomb. An high attitude plane with an good laser is another problem, see no other counter here than an good laser. Its not like you can stealth an anti air missile. You could stealth an interceptor drone but it would not be very fast.

Yes L4 and 5 is stable, L1,2 and 3 is not but it don't require much to stay in them or even orbit around them like web does. But it require some as web life is determined by its fuel. And its was extended by the very precise injection burn.

One downside assuming we are still on ground to air defense. Its no crew unless some idiot try to strafe you. Shells, and missiles will be pretty homed in. so if targeting system fails correctly it will be ballistic trajectory from now and still pretty accurate And that gamma rays is questionable, you can make an xray laser but hard and no mirrors. Note nuke pumped x-ray lasers for local air defense is like close air support by the deathstar.

Its pretty cool that then the moon get behind the earth the moon turns red, this does not show until the moon is totally hidden by earth as the sunlight refracting by earth atmosphere is just an tiny fraction of that normally hitting it so just. Now on the moon the observer don't care if other part of the moon still see the sun.

I say pregnancy would be much shorter as the baby would develop in the egg. Downside is that the egg size is limited by the hole in the hip bone. This is already an major problem for human babies and mothers and the baby has to fit inside the egg. If the egg was not hard it would be easier but it would be an pretty large egg anyway. Redesigning the hip would be pretty required i think

Who is very obvious I say. Also the medium and audience who might not understand why an space station need radiators.

Yes that works for the moon. 3-4 falcon heavies should do it. You then has to meet the lander in moon orbit Mars, 12 expended FH for an bare bone mission is my guess. Manned interplanetary missions has an added downside of being multi year ones.

It has been lots of designs dated back to the 60's Also this tread. But you will need heavy lift rockets and an space station like habitat for the trip to it and back. The mars lander and accent rocket does not need to be reusable but its make having an base much cheaper if you can produce fuel on Mars. As in private, no China plans an very heavy Long March rocket. US found it cheaper to buy the services from companies. As for dragon, it can not take off, SpaceX had an idea of using it as an lander who could hold various payloads like small rovers and even an sample return rocket.

Its an idea to add an outer non rotating layer on an an spin gravity station. Nice for protection as the rotating part don't need to have armor and an nice place for stuff like you don't want to rotate or be under gravity like docking ports. Now I assume the rotating part is inside the cylinder part. https://www.belloflostsouls.net/2024/01/b5-the-last-best-hope-for-peace-the-babylon-5-breakdown.html Found this and it makes sense. It would make sense to have multiple decks below the ground for stuff who don't need to be on the surface, farms would be an main one as they take up lots of space, you have them on the surface as hobby farms and scenery. An separate industrial zone is also an good idea, might want to separate it from the rest as it makes transport between the industrial gravity and no gravity zones easier. That interface will always be tricky.

Agree with you, the three extra feed lines is likely the issue. We know they want to add 3 more vacuum engines and 7 feed lines feels to much but they are more experienced than me who only made an starship in KSP for the special asteroid mission.

i call that hoarding. Might be using the ring as bait. Now looks as many share orbit? I assume this is not to scale, the moons are obviously not to scale but also the orbits. Is only Lapetus in an odd orbit? Know the other large planets has more in weird orbits.