Nibb31

Voskhod was a deathtrap which is why it was cancelled.

Any country/agency is "capable" if given the mandate by their political authority and the budget that goes with it. At least some of their unmanned Moon missions seem to be in preparation of a manned program, but it is still far away. Whether they are interested in building a Moon base isn't clear. Doing both a manned LEO program and manned Moon program simultaneously seems a bit ambitious and they seem to be committed to Tiangong for at least the next decade.

It's still nearly 10 years away. A lot can and will change by then.

I wouldn't. Crew and cargo shouldn't mix. Also, anything "multifunctional" is going to be suboptimal. Design specific vehicles for each mission to reduce complexity and weight, or design a common core with mission modules. There aren't that many missions anyway. Wings are so Buck Rogers! The only reason people are fond of spaceplanes is because they look pretty. In reality, they are useless in space, introduce all sorts of complexity, and carry a huge mass penalty. Cut them off and go for VTVL.

It's fun!

SpaceX doesn't publish its plans, so all of the options are pure speculation. As I said, SpaceX is building a second droneship for west coast launches, so they certainly think that they will be useful for regular operations after the test campaign. Since they are upgrading Vandenberg to launch Falcon Heavy, we can reasonably assume that they plan to recover the core boosters by landing them on the droneships in the middle of the ocean. Once the capability is operational, I don't see why they couldn't use it to recover Falcon 9 stages for some launches that can't afford the flyback manoeuver expenditure. 2nd stage recovery isn't realistic or viable at this point. It might happen for whatever comes later, but I doubt we will see a fully recoverable Falcon. Only if you assume that running a business means that you are necessarily corrupt or stupid. Rockets are an expensive and very low margin business. The business has been fine-tuned over the decades to be optimized for the demand levels that exist in the real world. When you are in that kind of market, you only do stuff if it makes sense economically. Just because you have "better" technology doesn't mean that your solution is economically viable. (I use quotes on "better", because the "best" technology is the one that is optimal for a given set of requirements. In business, reusability, wings, fast turnaround, cool PR, or spectacular looks are not part of those requirements. The requirements are mission suitability and economical viability.)

We don't know for sure. Building a barge for 2 or 3 test landings only is a bit of an expense. "Speculation" indicates that it will be repurposed to recover Falcon Heavy center cores or even Falcon 9 stages that can't take the performance hit of flyback manoeuvres. That hypothesis is supported by the fact that SpaceX is building a second barge for east coast launches, which would make no sense if it was just for a test campaign. Sure, on land it's not a problem, and I'm pretty confident that the land landings will be easier to pull off. I was specifically talking about water landings for the cases mentioned above. Weather certainly was a problem last time, and in this case, the launch window was linked to the payload and recovering the booster was a secondary concern. In the future, when customers are getting discounts for recovered boosters and the recovery is an operational requirement, high-sea weather and availability of the barge will become additional launch constraints. In such a context, either the launch would have been postponed for several weeks, or the customer would have to pay the additional cost of disposing the booster. I might sometimes sound a bit pessimistic, but it's probably because I have been sitting here looking at how the World works for a few more years than you, and there isn't really much to be optimistic about. However, one thing that bugs me is armchair engineers who think that they have it all figured out after playing KSP for a few months, when some of the smartest and most talented people on this planet are those working for big aerospace companies and agencies. Many of those armchair engineers love to assume that thousands of engineers and scientists are either all corrupt or simply stupid because they haven't built space elevators, launch loops, or microwave powered spaceplanes. Aerospace companies know about these technologies. They have usually run trade-studies on them, because their business is to make money, and if they crack the holy grail of cheap access to space, they will make more money. They are stong R&D companies. Studying new stuff is their bread and butter. The reason they are not building those things is because their internal studies have shown that they are not viable, for various reasons. What SpaceX is doing is impressive. The engineering behind it is impressive, and the results are spectacular. So why haven't other space agencies pursued recoverable boosters? There have been dozens of studies since the days of Apollo, with all sorts of technical solutions. They are not doing it because real-world engineering is much harder and more expensive than it seems and because with current launch rates, the economics of recovering boosters does not make sense to them. The key to cheap space access is demand, not technology. It's a vicious circle that is driven by economics more than technology. Costs will come down mechanically when there is volume, the actual technology that we will use by then doesn't really matter. It might happen in 20 or 200 or 2000 years, but when a substantial and viable demand appears, we will find a way.

Soyuz has more internal volume than the Apollo CM. - - - Updated - - - "Service module" is a bit of an overstatement. It only needs to carry life support for a few minutes of flight and some fuel for the RCS thrusters at the top. Those tanks in the mockup look like they're just for show. It probably also acts as a crumple zone for the landing, if lands on solid ground with parachutes, it's going to need it.

It is speculation, but recovering the boosters seems to fit with their business plan. There hasn't been an official announcement that I'm aware of. What is worrying is that landing on a barge in the middle of the ocean appears to bring a whole new set of constraints (barge maintenance and availability, oceanic weather, etc...) which added to the launch constraints that are dictated by the payload (pad weather, launch windows, etc...), is going to make commercial offerings a bit awkward. Speculations were that they would offer a discount for FH launches with recoverable boosters, but the recoverable booster option is not only going to have a much reduced payload, but is also going to have extra launch constraints tied to weather conditions at the recovery site and to the availability of the barge. Customers will have to accept a higher risk of scrubs and operational delays, which reduces the value of the reusable offering. Also increasing the possibility of recovery-related delays puts more pressure on SpaceX's already tight launch schedule. In the end, it might not all be worth it from a business perspective.

They're not being very lucky with this barge-landing thing. It's turning out to be much harder than anticipated. Once they get the approvals, landing on solid ground is going to be a walk in the park compared to this.

I don't particularly trust Iranian PR when it comes to fiberglass models. They have a long tradition of presenting obviously bogus mockups as next generation stealth aircraft.

Yeah, but again... Let's see a subscale demonstrator that can fly subsonic before dreaming of hypersonic SSTO spaceplanes and extrapolating costs for which you have absolutely no idea.

On a stock phone, they are useless.

Croatia is a beautiful country. Just wanted to say it However, I really don't understand why a Swiss company would want to launch from Croatia instead of... well... Switzerland. Launching East over the Lake Geneva and the Alps would be much better, and the latitude is pretty much the same as Croatia. Neither are really good places to launch, but since they want to air-launch from an Airbus, location isn't really important.

I'm not sure what use it would be once you have powered it down and dumped the atmosphere. It won't be visitable. Most of the equipment inside will by permanently destroyed by the vacuum and temperature. Gravity gradient is a pretty weak force for station-keeping, so pretty much anything could mess it up, including a leak from a pressurized fluid line or an MMOD strike. Except for melting it down for scrap metal in 100 years, I really don't see what the point would be. And I'm pretty sure that it takes more dV to boost it into a 15Mx15M orbit than deorbit over the pacific.

There is no way to "mothball" the station. The effort to keep it flying unmanned in a higher orbit is pretty much the same as operating it right now. You would need active station-keeping from a mission control center and regular repair flights. At a minimum, the station will need to maintain power, cooling, and internal pressure. If you abandon it, eventually parts will fail: the solar panels have a limited lifetime, seals and fluids degrade, tanks will vent, insulation and coating will flake, CMGs will fail. Without power, it will lose attitude control and without propellant, MMOD avoidance manoeuvers will be impossible. Any leaks or mechanical failures will cause it to tumble, making future docking efforts difficult or even impossible. Combined with fatigue, gravity gradients and possible MMOD strikes, some parts might just break off. After a few decades, it will just be a dead shell floating in a cloud of debris and a hazard to future missions.

You wanna bet? We won't know about that until the first experimental fusion power plant is built , the actual requirements and safety regulations have been determined, and the political support has been acquired. Public support will only happen when there will be ample acceptance that the technology is safe, which might take years. The design needs those years to mature from a lab model into a viable industrial plant design. And then it will still be a major construction project, just like a bridge, a dam, a motorway, an airport, a major shopping center, or indeed a natural gas powerplant. Those things typically take many years of planification and engineering, with safety, economical and environmental impact studies conducted by various bodies, followed by approval and appeal procedures involving various levels of government bodies, commissions and local associations. Fusion plants will not be cropping up all over the countryside a few months after a lab figures out a way to generate electricity with them.

The LM had the same PGNCS as the CM. All they needed to do was to program the AGC before jettisonning the LM and then send an execute signal from the CM. It still seems like a lot of effort for not much return. The Apollo 10 ascent stage wasn't fully fueled anyway, so it didn't provide a very accurate endurance test of the ascent engine. Maybe they just wanted to get it out of the way to be sure that it wouldn't interfere with future missions.

My point. 16 years, plus preliminary studies and design of the plant. 20 years is pretty much at the lower end of the ballpark. If somebody achieved fusion today in an experimental lab, it would take at least 20 years before the first full-scale fusion power plant would go operational. I agree, but people have been failing at both large and small fusion projects for decades. I was replying to a comment saying that we would have fusion power plants by 2025, which simply isn't possible with current planning regulations for large construction projects like this.

On home or work PCs, biometrics are usually enough to keep the kids or casual co-workers out of your PC. I wouldn't use them for credit card info or for websites other than in a dual identification method combined with a password or pin code. Maybe in the future, we will get fingerprint sensor keyboards, which would check both the password and the biometric data. There are some interesting new methods that are coming up too, like the "pattern" password on Windows 8 (you swipe or click gestures on the lock screen picture), or rythm-tap passwords. They seem to offer a decent level of security while being faster than typing passwords.

Given that it takes more than 20 years to plan, design, and build a nuclear plant with proven technology, I don't see how that would be possible.

Fusion power has been 10 years away for at least 40 years.

A400M Atlas Originally, the NATO denomination was to be "Grizzly", which IMO fitted it much better than the unimaginative "Atlas".

There is no such thing as a massless EM drive. NASA was planning to experiment a VASMIR drive though, but the project has been delayed by lack of funding The ISS is not designed for the radiation environment of higher orbits. It's for LEO only, below the Van Allen belts. Also, moving it higher makes it harder to reach, which means a reduction in cargo and crew payload capability.

I don't think they did it on purpose. It was probably a freak effect of the irregular masscons that make lunar orbits unstable. Note that the early S-IVBs until Apollo 12 were abandoned on a flyby trajectory that also got them into heliocentric orbits. From Apollo 13 onwards, they purposely crashed them into the moon for sismic experiments. The Apollo 12 S-IVB actually returned into Earth orbit in 2002 and was ejected again a year later.