Britpoint

I was so tense all the way until 2nd stage ignition. So many scrubbed launch attempts makes it so much more scary.

I just have the one rule: "Everybody comes home alive". I have no qualms about sending them on missions lasting years into the great beyond or on space station expeditions, but they always come home eventually. Anybody stranded must be rescued. All my rockets have an abort sequence or some sort; my favourite way of doing it is to have the Service Module engine fire and decouple everything below that. It's a good way to escape from bottom-up explosions on the launch pad or boosters coming loose and going haywire. Failure is still a lot of fun of course! Sometimes things go wrong on the ascent or you stage the wrong thing and it takes some creative piloting to get them down safely. And there are always going to be a few heart in mouth moments where everything just goes up in a huge fireball and you just have to hope the tough old capsule survives the inferno.

I feel like if I read this thread backwards I'll eventually get to T-0 XD

Bear in mind by the time whatever isn't completely incinerated during re-entry reaches the ground, it'll be travelling at a tiny fraction of that orbital velocity. Even if a surviving fragment bumped you square on the noggin it's pretty unlikely you'd have anything much worse than a headache.

I saw this and it reminded me of this discussion. This isn't going to win any Olympic medals but... it's a safe bet transhumanists will never have to do the washing up again!

I can't wait until this flight. I've been keeping a really close eye on the Grasshopper and the notion of the first steps of a reusable stage being tested out on a real flight excites me to no end. I hope the problems they have delaying the launch aren't too serious.

Round 1: USSR. Round 2: USA. Current leader: USA. I see "The Space Race" as a bunch of little races. So I'm voting for the USA because as of this moment - Russia can take us into orbit, the USA could take us to the moon. OK, they'd have to ring up a few companies to build a new Saturn V and Apollo capsule, but they would be perfectly capable of rolling a moon mission off the production line. They also have a car-sized robot wandering around the surface of Mars and are the closest to having crewed deep-space capability again, as well as a promising commercial spaceflight industry. Russia, on the other hand, has Soyuz and that's pretty much the lot. So for me asking "Who won the Space Race?" is a bit like asking "Who won the Olympic 100m?" Well, in 1896 it was Thomas Burke, but every year there's someone new. At the end of the day it's all arbitrary milestones, so I think it is most sensible to view it as an ongoing thing. Otherwise I think you could make a strong case for Germany having won the space race in 1944 for putting the first V2s above the Karman line.

Well once they put the Oculus Rift on it becomes, for all intents and purposes, holographic as you can move yourself around it in 3D space. At that point it's less like an image on a screen and more like putty in your hands.

Sub-orbital quite possibly, if the market sustains a company like Virgin Galactic long enough for those costs to come down, but orbital no way. Elon Musk hopes that SpaceX can get the cost of an orbital flight down to around $500 per pound. Well, I weigh 180lbs, so that's $90,000 for a trip in pretty much the best case scenario. While that's a hell of a lot better than it is at the moment it's still the price of a sports car rather than an airline ticket. Bear in mind that cost would be with a fully and rapidly reusable spacecraft, so I don't see prices getting much lower than that without something out of science-fiction stepping into the mix.

Surely the market for the hypothetical Falcon Super Heavy already exists in the form of the guy who would fund it: Elon Musk wants to go to Mars. He wants humanity to colonise Mars, and has already said that SpaceX exists to pursue that goal. I don't think he means to do this by propping up NASA as they build and fly the SLS; he wants to do it as cheaply, reliably and often as possible and he will want his company at the cutting edge of that - he's already working on plans for the MTV (Mars Transit Vehicle) and his current launch vehicles just wont cut the mustard when it comes to lifting that. Now I don't see the FSH being a Kerbal-like Asparagus staging system; it'll probably just be a taller, more powerful Heavy. But I certainly expect it will happen, presuming there are no disasters that cripple SpaceX along the way.

I think it would be interesting to examine past innovations and see the kind of effects they had on the societies in which they were introduced. For example: the car - did that create more social injustice (it's not a rhetorical question, I genuinely don't know the answer here)? Because on the one hand I can see that the few rich people who could afford a car in the early days would have more opportunities for rapid travel and thus business, but at the same time the creation of the automotive industry created a huge amount of jobs across all classes. But then it probably made the horse and cart business more or less obsolete, so what was the net result? I imagine similar scenarios happening with augmentations. If they aren't widespread then there's no issue - they are a curiosity, nothing more. If they're common but only the pursuit of the rich, then the industry that builds up around them will also create more work and, hopefully, have a positive economic impact.

I love this stuff. Consider me a trans-humanist in waiting. Technology is what has allowed mankind to thrive on this planet and it is the continual advancement of technology that will allow us to endure far into the future. I'd be pretty happy to replace my arms and legs with bionic versions - after a suitably lengthy period of development and trials to demonstrate safety of course - and as long as I maintained the sensation of touch I wouldn't look back. We've already seen some of the debates that can arise from such technology occur in real life already - Oscar Pistorius competing against able bodied athletes was rather controversial. OK, he never threatened to win the gold or anything, but if his replacement legs can allow him to compete now, then they'll probably allow him to win in five years. So obviously for sport there's the issue of fairness. Then you have the potential of a new class system arising as demonstrated in DX:HR, but as Awaras says above I don't see it being so different from any other technology. It will be important for government to get involved early on and make sure the research, development and distribution of these 'augmentations' is properly regulated.

OP, I think you said it all! Your four favourites are mine as well, but I think at the very top of the pack has to be Spider. Not only a really interesting look at the building of the LM, but also full of emotion and really well told. Most of the time when we think of Apollo we think of the landings - 11 and beyond, but each mission was very important for various people. For the Grumman guys it was Apollo 9, an orbital test run that most of us barely think about today. But that episode of From the Earth to the Moon gave it a whole new perspective for me!

I imagine it just makes it easier to perform maintenance either on or underneath the RCS unit itself.

I can't wait to see what happens with this. I imagine we'll hear more concrete plans once Dragon is taking astronauts to the ISS. I like how he's never shy about sharing his vision and planning long term. I have no doubt he has a team in the corner of SpaceX who spend their entire working week coming up with new ideas for the MTC, running computer simulations, feeding him cost estimates. All so he can work it into his long term strategy. I'm not saying I have complete confidence that everything Musk says will happen and will go according to plan, but I will say: if anyone can do it, I think he probably can. Apparently we'll be hearing more about his proposed 'Hyperloop' system this month. I am excited for that news as well.

I wonder what will come first: development of a suitable radiation shield to protect astronauts from the increased cancer risk, or a cure for cancer to make such a thing obsolete? Hopefully the latter, maybe NASA should invest some of their research $$$ in that direction

Yeah I know that now. I was talking about what my thinking was like around the time SS2 was just getting started. I know how it works these days. (Thanks KSP!)

I have a lot of love for Virgin Galactic and SS2. It's funny, I can measure my knowledge of space exploration using this project as a timeline. Before SS2 I was always kinda interested in space, knew a fair bit about what the Apollo missions accomplished and kept up with the ISS. But then SS2 put the idea of commercial space travel in my head, the idea that I could become an astronaut? That really kickstarted everything. Just a few years ago when the project was in it's early stages I used to look forward to the day when it would make its first orbital flight, because "Hey! If they can go suborbital than all you need is a bit more fuel to reach the kind of height you need for orbit!" I would say, foolishly. I used to see SpaceX as Virgin's rival and hoped they'd lose because the design of SS2 with it's carrier ship, shuttlecock tail, no need for tons of heat shielding seemed so much more... elegant than an old fashioned firework on a stick. That's about the time I started learning what an orbit actually was and why it would be impossible for SS2 to ever achieve, and by extension why they were not even slightly competing with SpaceX (who I now like a lot). But I probably would have never learned that if not for Virgin Galactic. I'd probably have never bought KSP. These days I'm actually pretty well versed in the ways of space exploration and orbital mechanics. I mean, I'm no physicist or engineer of course, but as layman go I'm up there. Could answer Mastermind style questions on the topic. So it doesn't matter to me if Virgin Galactic isn't the next giant leap in Space Exploration. They bring a taste of it to the common(ish) person. They inspired me to learn, and maybe they can bring a few new tricks to conventional air travel. Considering all that stuff, it gave me a lot of joy to see that engine light, and can't wait to see commercial operations begin.

Yay. Always like to hear about fusion news. It's funny, I remember a couple of years ago people saying to me "If it ever happens it won't be in our lifetime". Then last year it was fifty to seventy years. Now it's twenty. I'm half-suspecting a commercial reactor to be unveiled Mid-August. It took us 66 years to go from powered flight to a moon landing. Now a far more advanced scientific civilization needs to make the leap from "Being able to produce Fusion power" to "being able to produce sustainable fusion power". I think we'll manage it. Frankly from a progression of knowledge standpoint I reckon we could have it done in a year - the remaining decades are taken up by construction workers putting all the metal in place.

Most orbital combat stuff you see falls victim to the "Space as an ocean" way of thinking. You know, big battleships move like aircraft carriers or submarines, fighters fly like aeroplanes. All this stuff simply could not happen in reality because objects in space do not behave like they are in water or in air - they are of course in neither of these. Pretty much the only thing that is vaguely believable is the flips that the Vipers in Battlestar Galactica do, where they roll their ship around to fight enemies from all angles while maintaining their trajectory. This could happen, but all the rest of the time where they move around like Spitfires couldn't. Because there is no friction in space, things... can't turn very well. It would certainly take, as you suggest, huge amounts of fuel and energy to "turn around" to start flying back towards the enemy who is chasing you. This doesn't mean you would fall back to Earth if you tried it though, because speed is relative. If I reduce my speed on the motorway from 70mph to 60, the guy behind still doing 70 will overtake but I won't come to a standstill. The interesting thing about doing that sort of thing in space though is that by doing a retro-burn you actually end up lowering your orbit which means you will speed up. In other words, if you are in an orbital dogfight and you want to put some distance between you and your pursuer, point your nose at him and light the engines! The distance between you will reduce at first as you lower your speed, but the further along your new orbit trajectory you get, the more you will pull away. Ballistic weapons are pretty much a no go in space for two reasons. Firstly, targets are very, very very small and very difficult to hit. The ranges you'll be fighting from will also be much larger than they are in atmosphere. Secondly, firing guns will alter your trajectory as the projectile and hot gasses being expelled from the barrel would work much like a rocket engine. Finally, anything you shoot stays in orbit and poses a threat to you and your allies as much as it does your enemies. Long story short, I don't think "space combat" is likely to happen for a very, very long time if ever. It's just too much hassle. If there IS any kind of space fighting, I imagine it'll be fought exclusively with nukes because that's the only way you're likely to cover an area large enough to hit anything.

To be fair, this is not what he said. He said "Religious texts", and there was plenty of religion before Christianity. I don't buy that his claim is accurate but there have been plenty of civilisations over the years where religious law was the law. Again, not what was said. OK, he said religious people feared divine punishment, but he also acknowledged that atheists aren't inherently evil, and they are that way because they fear mortal punishment such as prison. Once more, I don't agree with the argument, but let's not misrepresent it. It is easy to see why people might assume that fear of punishment is the only reason we might behave in a moral manner, because there is that fear of punishment lingering over us. It's all very well saying "I would be good and moral if there was no law to force me," but it is hard to know for certain without living in a lawless society.

I don't think this is true though. There are an awful lot of immoral things I could do without punishment but don't because they are immoral and I have principles. Similarly, there are things that I could be punished for that I do do because I feel that X or Y law is unjust. I would concede that religion and law are both good ways of "enforcing" compassionate behaviour, but I certainly wouldn't claim that religion is the genesis of it. Humans were risking their lives to provide food for their children long before they started believing in gods.

Haha, saw the 7 pages and thought "Wow, this must be an old thread." Nope! Posted today! This thread always gets so much commentary... ^^ Anyway, um... no. I am atheist and pretty anti-theist as well, in that I think religion as an institution is a bad thing. Nothing against individuals that call themselves "Christians" but I do have something against "Christianity," for example. I was raised a kind of lay Christian and acknowledged myself as an atheist in my mid-teens, but I think my mind had already rejected the premise long before that. Even in my younger days I put "God" and "Praying" in the same part of my mind as Santa Claus and the Tooth Fairy - a fun thing to believe in that you know deep down isn't real. P.S. The post count is deceptive I only just got my account back after the server issues. I promise I'm not a troll just signing up to hate on religion!