Nibb31

You are mixing up "space agency", "space industry", and "space program". The UK doesn't really have much of a space program. Their space agency is UKSA (France has CNES, Germany has DLR, etc...) which cooperates with ESA. The UKSA hasn't done much yet. The UK has a large private space industry though, including BAe, Airbus, and whole bunch of others. And I agree with Idobox. I don't like the nationalistic overtones from a member that participates in ESA, where it's all about cooperation. If the UKSA wants to eventually go it alone and withdraw from ESA, they will never have enough of a budget to do anything interesting, and everyone loses. If they are genuinely interested in becoming a leading member of ESA, then they need to increase their participation to the levels of France and Germany, and everyone wins.

SpaceX has zero customers other than NASA for Dragon V2. If NASA doesn't buy it, then the only rationale to build it is to make it Elon's super-expensive private space-yacht. However, in the hypothesis that SpaceX gets the boot, then the article makes sense because NASA will continue to support SpaceX through the Commercial Cargo contract.

The pictures from MRO are in natural lighting, they just happen to be taken at a different time of day from the old Viking pictures. It's the ones that you posted that have been "adjusted" with photoshop by some guy on a kook web site. Why would you trust him rather than the hundreds of scientists that work at NASA, JPL, and various international universities and astronomy organizations. If those pictures were tampered to hide stuff, don't you think that some serious research organisation from Russia, China, or Iran would blow the whistle and come up with some evidence?

I think either SpaceX or Dream Chaser are getting the axe. Boeing has a solid proposal, and although it's minimalistic, it meets all NASA 's requirements. It is the less imaginative, but that also makes it the safest in terms of program management. They also have a lot more jobs at stake, which is what NASA is really about. So Boeing stays. SpaceX already has the Commercial Cargo contract, so as far as funding innovative new companies, NASA has done its job with them. They don't need to give them another contract and they might want to prefer to spread their money over other businesses. SpaceX can survive on the cargo runs alone. As for Dream Chaser, it has some severe flaws in its abort modes. Ok, there is a LAS, but it isn't a glider and it needs somewhere to land. The Shuttle abort modes, risky as they were do not apply because this vehicle is different. Chances are that they would have to ditch in the Pacific after a successful escape burn. It isn't at all clear whether an abort would be survivable all through the flight profile. Unless all these abort modes are proven, it doesn't meet NASA requirements and is the most likely proposal to get cut.

My first proper shooting was in photography class at school in the 90's. We were handed old film Fujica SLRs and we processed the B&W film manually in the school's darkroom. The whole experience involved all the senses, including the smell and the sound of that old equipment. Then I used my first pay to buy myself a Canon EOS 500 (the cheapest film SLR on the market) and I got a couple of lenses later on. It stayed in a cupboard for several years when film went out of fashion and I bought a (decent for the time) point and shoot digital camera (DSLRs were too expensive). Now, I have an EOS 600D and I still use the old lenses from the 90's.

The economical viability of Stratolaunch is quite debatable. Building a one-off aircraft with its specialized support infrastructure is not cheap. Neither is building the support infrastructure for the rocket itself. That plane is going to spend most of its time sitting around waiting for a launch, so maintenance cost is going to be high. A plane sitting in a hangar is a plane losing money. They are going to need frequent flights in order to keep the plane busy and the demand for those frequent flights simply aren't there. It is still going to carry a conventional expendable rocket, which is going to need its own ground infrastructure, including LOX and LH2 storage and payload processing facility. Also, designing a rocket that is built to support both lateral loads (hanging underneath a plane) as well as longitudinal loads, is going to require reinforcements and extra weight. It seems to have wings too. All of those things cut into the payload fraction. The only real advantage of Stratolaunch is flexibility, being able to launch regardless of the weather and from a wider variety of locations.

It will be faster, higher, and further downrange than an F9R stage. That makes reentry trickier and the flyback burn even more expensive.

The CCDev vehicles can all carry 6 to 7 crewmembers, but in practice, they won't be ferrying more than 4 people up and down. The extra seats will be either for cargo or maybe tourists.

The first phone with a touch screen was the IBM Simon in 1993. I remember drooling over the Nokia 9000 communicator in the 90's, which was a Symbian-based mini computer phone. In those days, we had phones, we had PDAs, and we had MP3 players. Everybody knew that it was just a matter of time before those devices merged. Nobody had to "invent" the smartphone, because the idea was already there. In 1999, the Ericsson R380 was the first phone to be called a "smartphone" combining a phone and a PDA. The Nokia 7710 was launched in 2004 with a color touch screen. The LG Prada was the first phone with a capacitive touch screen, launched in 2006. The iPhone was launched in 2007 with a design very similar to the Prada.

I've never had any problems reinstalling Windows without wiping a partition, and all my data is backed up on my NAS anyway. I hate having multiple partitions. It's just a waste of space. You typically end up with an OS partition that is half empty and that you don't use.

An EVA isn't just "put on a suit and go outside". It takes days of technical preparation, writing and learning the procedures, preparing the equipment. Then it takes several hours to don and check the suit as well as prebreathing. This is why EVAs are typically 5 to 7 hours long, to maximise the actual activity outside, but also because it's damn dangerous and you have to check every move. And yes, it's exhausting too. Nobody said that being an astronaut was easy The record for the longest EVA is 8 hours 56 minutes, held by Susan Helms in 2007.

I don't think that SpaceX has stated anywhere that the Falcon Heavy will use reusable boosters. Technically, I see no reason why they couldn't return the side boosters. The central core will have to be expendable though and the payload will be reduced. Economically, the FH is supposed to maximise payload, which means that it's more about performance than reusability. If the payload doesn't maximise the FH's capacity, then it will probably make more sense to launch it on a smaller and therefore cheaper rocket. The whole point is moot though, because nobody has any 50t payloads to launch.

I don't see why not. It's probably more a matter of comfort.

I can't believe you actually brought up a $5 app for that. But it's still not the same as a USB flash drive, because it uses wifi. That's no different than having your files on dropbox or mounting your device as a network drive over Wifi, which is trivial on Android too. The files you transfer can still only be seen in that app. It doesn't allow you to copy over MP3 files to play them in the music app of your choice, or word files to edit them in Office, or whatever particular file type you might need for whatever particular app you might use. Unlike proprietary Apple cables, micro USB cables are ubiquitous and cheap and compatible with everything. Most people have at least one or two at home to charge their phones, tablets, cameras, wireless mice or whatever... They are much less hassle than having to connect to a friend's wifi or a customer's corporate network and they also allow you to play your files on grandma's dumb TV or DVD player.

There were plans to use the old XB-70 Valkyrie for that before it was cancelled. But even launching from Mach 3 doesn't give you a huge benefit compared to just making a slightly bigger first stage or adding SRBs, and it would only be useful for very small payloads. The CIA planned to use SR-71s to launch MD-21 recon drones over China, but the plan was cancelled when they found out the hard way that there were serious difficulties in launching from Mach 3. There was also the Soviet Spiral project from the 70's, cancelled to make way for Buran. Virgin intends to recoup some of the cost of their carrier plane with their LauncherOne project, but the economical viability of launching 200kg payloads is doubtful.

Note that everyone who flies on Soyuz has their own personal thermoformed seat cushion adapted to their morphology. So when they rotate the Soyuz, the crew needs to transfer their cushion to the spacecraft they will be travelling down in.

Basically what you are proposing is an orbital version of SpaceShipTwo. In real-life, this doesn't scale up well. Remember that getting to orbit is about speed, not altitude. A White Knight type of aircraft is subsonic, topping at 900km/h, which is minimal compared to the 27000km/h that you need to reach orbit. You save a few hundred km/s of delta-V thanks to the lower drag at altitude, but your spaceplane is still going to need to perform 90% of the acceleration to orbital speed. Therefore, it's still going to need to be 90% as big and heavy as a conventional Falcon 9, Delta IV, etc... However, because your spaceplane has the added weight of a TPS, wings, landing gear, and all the hydraulic stuff that goes with it, it's going to be much heavier than a conventional Falcon 9, Delta IV, etc... You're going to need a carrier aircraft that is big enough to carry this fully fueled spaceplane. It will be an order of magnitude larger than the largest aircraft ever built. It will be super expensive to design, build, and operate. It will need a dedicated airport with a reinforced runway and rocket fuel facilities and the biggest hangar in the world where it will spend most of its time between launches. And then, there are all sorts of failure modes associated with air-launch... All in all, your carrier aircraft is just a reusable super-expensive low-performance first stage booster. You have increased cost, increased complexity, increased risk. In the end, you would get more extra delta-V by strapping a couple of cheap SRBs on to an SSTO spaceplane.

Sure and those gimmicks completely hide Apple's problems catching up with the World. Are those the two features that make the iPhone a better device for everybody? 64-bit is useless on iPhones because they are only adressing 1GB of RAM. It's marketing fluff aimed at ignorant Apple fanboys. It will only make sense when phones start addressing 4GB and more. Some high-end Android devices use 3GB, but more than that isn't really needed at this point. Oh, and guess who makes the A7 chip... I gave you a list of some innovations that have been in other smartphones, like Moto X's always listening mode that doesn't drain the battery or Samsung's eye-sensor stuff. And I don't know why you are fixating on Samsung. There are plenty of other Android devices. It's enough to make the difference between a dead phone and working phone in most accidental circumstances. How many $600 iPhones have died from swimming pool or toilet (!) accidents? How is no waterproofing better than partial waterproofing ? Again, not everybody needs it, but for some people, water protection is another one of those must-have feature that disqualifies the iPhone. Because it's all about what suits each person best. At this point, you're just trolling. If the iPhone 6 comes out with IP67 waterproofing, you'll be screaming that Apple invented it and that it's the best thing since sliced bread.

That is your problem, not mine. You don't like them, but there is still a market for them. 90% of smartphone users only use it for calls, texts, a little bit of social networking and the occasional Youtube cat video. A $30 Android device is a better phone for those people than a $600 iPhone. Again, that is your problem. I personally don't give a damn about the name of the OS. Not all Android phones are plastic. Stylish like this: I guess if you're into dayglow pink and baby colors, it's super stylish. The wall of icons lacks functionality though. No layout customization, no widgets, no dynamic content... you have to go into each app to get the actual content. In Android, you can have everything available at a glance with homescreen widgets on different screens. Have a look at this site to get an idea of the sort of user interface you can make for yourself on an Android device: http://mycolorscreen.com/ I find some of those homescreens gorgeous. Android is a better system for someone who likes to tinker with their phone. Oh, and someone already told you that there are plenty of premium metal and glass designs. The HTC One for example. I personally don't give a damn, because all my devices live inside a flip-case as soon as I get them. Sony and Nokia have much better cameras. There is even a Galaxy Camera. Those are better devices for people who's priority is photography. You do know that Samsung makes most of the parts that go inside an iPhone, don't you? Also, when was the last time Apple actually invented something, rather than picked up on an existing technology, repackaged it, and hyped it up with marketing fluff? And what were the innovations in the latest iPhones ? A slightly taller screen ? A fingerprint sensor ? That's pretty much it... Still no NFC, no 5"+ screens, no SD cards, no power saving mode, no live widgets, no smart notifications, no face recognition, no smart scroll, no wireless charging, no FM radio, no water protection, etc... Some of those features are gimmicks, others are high-priority features for some users. A Galaxy S5 or a Moto X will be a better phone for those people. Maybe for you. Others have no problem with it. Personally, I do have a lot of usability problems with iOS and iTunes though, but I'm not going to claim that Apple is rubbish because I'm not used to using it. Citation needed. Because of course, this list doesn't exist: http://www.cvedetails.com/vulnerability-list/vendor_id-49/product_id-15556/Apple-Iphone-Os.html Every platform is vulnerable. The biggest vulnerability is to believe that you are safe just because you are using an Apple device. What has your ignorance of Android devices got to do with anything? Listen, your arguments are personal opinion. Not facts. I'm glad that you are happy with your iPhone. Other people are happy with their phone. Heck, I even know people who are happy with their Windows Phone. There is no better phone. There is only what works best for you.

Where do you live? My mom bought a basic Samsung LCD TV last week for €350, which happened to include Smart TV functionality. I don't call that expensive. A Chromecast costs $35, and at least here in Europe, most ISPs provide you for free with a TV box that is DLNA compatible and can stream content from any Android phone or DLNA (NAS or computer). You can also stream to an Xbox, a PlayStation, or any of those cheapo DLNA dongles or set-top boxes... On the other hand, Apple TV is redundant, overpriced and only works with proprietary devices and software. It's a better device for you, because your priorities are a simpler software selection process at the expense of paying a premium. That's fine. You go with Apple because you perceive it as easy and safe, you are happy with the environment that Apple provides and you can't be bothered to search for better software or better hardware out there. This is a totally personal preference and does not make iDevices intrinsically better. You have found what works best for you, and that's cool. Other folks will have other priorities, such as customization, value for money, choice, compatibility, flexibility, and the myriad of features that Apple simply does not offer. Those are also personal preferences that do not make the devices of their choice intrinsically better than Apple. They are better for them, and that's cool too. Fragmentation is not nearly as big a problem as you seem to make it, especially since Android 4.0 which was launched in 2011. To claim otherwise only shows that you have never really used Android. You will also have similar compatibility problems if you try to run an old iPhone 3G today. If you are comparing flagship Android phones that are in the same price range as the iPhone, then they can run pretty much anything. And if you are paranoid about updates and fragmentation, then just get a Nexus 5 or a Google Edition device, or flash whatever custom ROM you want. You see, Android devices are about choice. You can choose the one that suits you, with the features that suit you, rather than be stuck with what Apple decides is best for everyone. And that competition in the Android world spawns innovation, which benefits everyone, including Apple users.

They are science fiction, so you are free to use them to do whatever magic you need in your plot.

FTFY. You can do all that with Android too. And Samsung devices can do it without any extra hardware at all if you have a Smart TV. But you can't just copy files onto your Apple device over a standard USB cable or mount it as a network drive over Wifi. The lack of a file system is the biggest limitation of iOS, and closes the door to so many useful application. That, the tiny screen, the lack of SD card, and the unreplaceable battery makes an iDevices a non-starter for me... ...but to each his own of course.

There would be no point in flying the Buran (or the US Space Shuttle) again. NASA spent 30 years finding things for the Space Shuttle to do rather than looking at what's useful and using the most appropriate vehicle for the task. They are making the same mistake with SLS, being focused on the vehicle rather than on the mission. Frequent launches are useful for cargo, but launching cargo doesn't need a super-heavy launcher and spaceplane. And manned spaceflight can be done for far cheaper without a spaceplane (see CST-100, Soyuz, Dragon...). There really isn't anything worthwhile that the Shuttle can do that can't be done cheaper with conventional launchers. The only reason Buran ever existed was because the Americans had a Shuttle. The Russians knew that the Shuttle didn't make sense economically, but they figured that if America was spending so much money on it, then it must have had some hidden military purpose. So they cancelled their own Spiral program and diverted funding to Buran. If the Americans hadn't built the Shuttle, then Spiral would probably have been operational way before Buran.

Maybe you can replace the keyboard or the SMS app, but jailbreaking won't give it a properly-sized screen or add a stylus or a proper file system. What's hilarious is to hear Apple fanboys claim that nobody needs a screen bigger than 4" on a phone and that 5" is too big, yet when they launch the iPhone 6 they'll be queuing up in front of their Apple Stores to get the bigger screen. And there is no such thing as Tasker on the iPhone. No Firefox either. No way to copy MP3s without infecting your PC with iTunes or to plug it into a TV's USB port to watch movies. No you don't. The Play Store only displays the apps that are compatible with your device. Comparing phones is part of the fun of buying one, but getting a $600 flagship Android phone is just as hassle-free as getting a $600 iPhone. Specs are only a problem when you start looking at the cheap devices. Apple doesn't do cheap devices.

To be fair, you can't compare $100 Android entry-level phone to a $600 iPhone or Android flagship. And this is probably why some people can get a false impression of Android. If you have an iPhone 4S or 5 and your only experience of Android is playing with a friend's Galaxy Ace, then of course it looks like crap. But you're right, in the end, there is no such thing as a $100 iOS smartphone, and it's stupid to buy a $600 iPhone for 90% of smartphone users who'll only use it to post on Facebook and play Candy Crush.