Latcarf

There are a lot of great things happening in SCIENCE today. On top of the list, SpaceShipTwo. '“The first powered flight of Virgin Spaceship Enterprise was without any doubt, our single most important flight test to date,†said Virgin Galactic Founder Sir Richard Branson, who was on the ground in Mojave to witness the occasion. “For the first time, we were able to prove the key components of the system, fully integrated and in flight. Today’s supersonic success opens the way for a rapid expansion of the spaceship’s powered flight envelope, with a very realistic goal of full space flight by the year’s end. We saw history in the making today and I couldn’t be more proud of everyone involved.â€Â' Official Press Release: http://www.virgingalactic.com/news/item/virgin-galactic-breaks-speed-of-sound-in-first-rocket-powered-flight-of-spaceshiptwo/ Amazing Photograph Taken From SS2: http://planetary.s3.amazonaws.com/assets/images/technology/20130429_spaceshiptwo_powered_flight_boom-camera.jpg Lower on the list, a pebble tore through the solar panels on the international space station. http://www.universetoday.com/101837/warning-shot-a-bullet-hole-on-the-iss/ EDIT: I think there was already a post for this but somehow i missed it when i scanned through. Sorry @Exclipse

Irony and coincidence!!! This thread is active and covers a bit of the same topic. The USA-165 or XSS-11[1] (eXperimental Satellite System-11) was listed over there. It seems to be a police dog, of sorts. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/XSS_11

@Canopus Don't be a prick. Note the original post listed an Ion Cannon. Do any of your friends have an ion cannon? The point remains: technology that has no market does not have to be released to the public. I'm not saying that there is literally an intergalactic ship in orbit, only that there could be a secret military spy toaster in orbit and nobody but top officials would know about it. And they would hog all of the space toast. Back on track, Thaniel. I see what you mean-- the outer surface of a payload could potentially be false casing, to be jettisoned when the weapon or defense mechanism is needed. "But as Person012345 says, if someone did that, the consequences could be devastating. That nation would in reality risk having all their orbital assets obliterated by other nations in retaliation, and the transperancy for any launch to orbit could make millitary cargos hard to get away with in the future." A orbital weapon/defense cold war. I'm not one to subscribe to conspiracy, ever, but the prospect of orbital weaponry has definitely crossed my mind a time or two.

Inquiry: Is it possible to photograph a satellite from the ground? If so, that would be one possible method of determining actual payload content. If not, I'm afraid this falls into the category of "Stuff We'll Never Ever Know". If we look at popular science fiction (in this case I'll use Stargate) any country's government has every capability to hide technology from their people. Who's to say that Earth doesn't have a capable intergalactic ship in orbit right now? Am I? No. Are you? Probably not.

The religion thread turned out to be great, don't get me wrong. It's the most well mannered religious conversation I think I've ever seen. But here's a video of rockets exploding.

Straight up, OFWG

Do the Kerbals believe in a higher power?

I read through about half of this thread, and was equally as amazed at the sincerity and respect given by the KSP community. But I'm over it. I am an atheist with a glowing respect for Christianity and all other benevolent religions. I cannot (and you shouldn't either) dismiss any belief that AT ITS CORE teaches self-respect/happiness/honor/simplicity/kindness. You should, however, ignore and dismiss any and every religious radical immediately.

@elonmusk on twitter posted VIDEO SHOT FROM THEIR HEXACOPTER?! That wouldn't be very exciting if it was anyone other than SpaceX. I mean, the grasshopper is basically a hovering rocket-- maybe my imagination is going wild but a SpaceX Hexacopter sounds really cool too.

You were able to land the first and second stages vertically? I'm imagining a "shipyard" at the KSC with platforms to house first stages--- rockets are assembled in the VAB and after they are ejected, the stages autonomously navigate back to the KSC and land in the shipyard. *stares off into space, dreamily*

In the fifth test flight of the Grasshopper (phase 2), SpaceX demonstrated how even in windy conditions the system can compensate and still land on target. Taken from Wikipedia (filling out a table in html takes a lot of time) Phase Test # Date (year-month-day) Highest altitude Duration Remarks 1 1 2012-09-21[5] 6 feet (1.8 m)[5] 3 seconds[5] 1 2 2012-11-01[18] 17.7 feet (5.4 m)[18] 8 seconds[18] 1 3 2012-12-17[19] 131 feet (40 m)[19] 29 seconds[19] First flight to include the cowboy mannequin 1 4 2013-03-07[20] 262.8 feet (80.1 m)[7] 34 seconds[7] 2 5 2013-04-17[21] 820 feet (250 m)[21] 61 seconds[citation needed] Flown during strong winds[22] Articles by the billions: Your friendly neighborhood Google News.

Yeah, that exact thought has gone through my head every time someone on the ISS has made a video with micro-grav water. I'm sure precautions were taken but could you imagine pellets of water or a basketball sized sphere swooshing through all of those wires? I can!

I didn't notice that happening yesterday watching it live. The posted video has the view of the spring loaded stage separation at 4:33 (273s). Really quite beautiful.