sojourner

Yes. when the aliens created us, they programmed this desire in. To make us better servants.

Wait, that's news to me. When did this change?

You guys would like the Crosstime Engineer book series. A chemical engineer get accidentally dropped into 12th century Poland and proceeds to turn it into the most advanced nation on earth.

There's already a thread here discussing this: http://forum.kerbalspaceprogram.com/threads/136296-NASA-s-permanent-Mars-colony-plan

I think I remember reading at some point (a long time ago) that Orion was going to be 5.5 meters in diameter and was reduced to 5.01.

In 15 years we'll have much faster computers and slightly better rockets. Mars will still cost a fortune.

236 is a pretty specific number for a rocket that doesn't even have a full up engine to test yet. Without knowing what that engine is going to actually produce thrust -wise, it's hard to estimate the payload capability of the completed rocket. Unless they are being very conservative and hope to increase that number as real data comes in to fill in the blanks.

You say this like it's been canceled. Which it hasn't.

This forum is quickly becoming "Darmok and Angellestat at Tenagar". Where's Picard when we need him?

Another powerpoint presentation, nothing more.

I think his point is "I can make assumptions based on incomplete information and not listen when people try to educate me to my mistakes".

And he's still stuck on the launcher while everyone else is talking about the BEO mission.

D/V is a better measure than fuel, even in KSP. And no, KSP is not the real world, I never said it was. But it does give an excellent idea of the math involved. Something AngelLestat seems to have problems with.

Have you ever even played Kerbal Space Program? How can you play the game and not learn how important it is to drop dead weight for BEO missions? As an exercise, why don't you try building a mission to Duna and experiment with taking a capsule with LES engines and one without. See how much more D/V it takes you. Then try, just try, to imagine how much that would translate into additional costs in the real world. Oh, and here's a clue: if multiple people are telling you you're wrong, guess what? You're probably wrong.

Guys, just give it up. He just doesn't understand how things work. He's too busy asking "why don't we just do this?" without thinking about "why can't it be done?".

Sorry, but you've been drinking the Kool-Aid and have no idea what the experts in the field think of strong AI. Kurzwiel is not an expert. He's in it to sell books. Get a clue, if the people in a field tell you something can't be done, most likely they are not the "stupid" ones. There is no evidence that can prove that exponential advancement will continue and mounting evidence that it won't. There is a point of diminishing returns with all technology. The rocket engine is a perfect example. For the first 20 to 30 year thrust and ISP was improved greatly. These days a new engine that has 2-5 more ISP than existing engines is considered a break through. Remember when Mhz was the big measure of CPU speed back in the 90's? That quietly went away as the clock speed of CPU's plateaued and suddenly it was multi-core CPU's that were the big thing. As that peters out the industry will find another method to measure improvement by. But don't confuse that for exponential growth. NASA is not "stupid". NASA is a victim of having to garner good will with congress to get funds. The way they achieve that is to spread projects to as many Congressional districts as necessary to win votes. This drives up the cost of their projects immensely, but it's the price of doing business. No votes, no Buck Rogers. Calling anyone "stupid" who doesn't do things the way you think they should be done is doing you no favors. Read more. Comment less. Or as the saying goes, better to be silent and possibly thought of the fool than to open your mouth and remove any doubt.

AngelLestat, I recommend you research more. Most of your posts tend to be full of less than accurate information and poor logic coming from a lack of understanding of how things work in the real world. A big red flag here is you being taken in by the "Singularity" nonsense. You might as well believe in the Rapture.

Last I read Orion no longer had a toilet. When did it get added back in?

SpaceX has already given up on recovery of the second stage on F9/F9H.

The minimum? One.

Why would you need a new type of velcro? Velcro works perfectly fine for the intended use. It won't wear out like this hypothetical "sticky stuff" you want.

Pssst! the "sticky stuff" in 2001 was velcro.

Oooo, I've got an idea! What if we spin the grip shoes?

Except you never did provide evidence that it wasn't Dragon or any actual evidence that Dragon was "eviscerated". Which would be impossible to do since we now know for certain that it wasn't. Your entire argument was "look at that explosion! nothing could survive that!" Despite visual evidence that something had indeed survived.

Say it ain't so!:D