Nibb31

I flew from London to New York with Flight Simulator 2.0 on my Atari ST. Now that's brave !

My own phone is a 3-year old Galaxy Note 1. It seems like a big phone, but once you've tried a big-screen phone, there is no going back. Apple's tiny screens are simply a no-go. The note is still small enough to fit in my jeans pockets and it has a stylus. I don't use the stylus much, but it comes in handy when you want pixel-precision or as a mouse substitute when I'm running Remote Desktop to access my home PC (I really can't see myself using Remote Desktop on an iPhone's 4.5" screen with just a finger). No way will I ever use a small-screen phone again. Smaller phones just look like toys to me. My next phone will be a OnePlus One, if I ever get an invite... I've replaced Samsung's bloatware with a custom SlimKat ROM (based on Android 4.4). It's lean, fast, and updated every week with the latest features from Google as well as some great stuff from the community. I use Nova Launcher with a custom icon set. I have Tasker running, which automates WiFi, Bluetooth and automatically runs various apps depending on where I am and what I'm doing. I've replaced the camera app as well as the generic keyboard with Swype, and the SMS app with EvolveSMS that interfaces with Pushbullet so that I can reply to text messages on my PC. I use Firefox on it, which syncs with my desktop Firefox. I also regularly use my phone as a USB drive to carry files around. And I can use any USB cable to dump music on the device from any PC without messing with iTunes. Yes, I'm a bit of a geek, because I spend a lot of time customizing and tinkering my phone, but that's why Android suits me best. None of that is possible with an iPhone (unless some of the above features have been added very recently). Apple is great if you own a Mac, iTunes, iCloud, and you are happy with having the same iPhone as everybody else and the stock Apple apps are good enough for you. Android is all about choice, flexibility, and customization. Because of the closed ecosystem, there are many things that an Android can do but an iOS device can't. If a feature isn't available on Android, the community will always find a way to tweak it.

Real-life orbit predictions are extremely accurate because they very rarely miss their target. But their calculations can be immensely complex, especially when dealing with interplanetary transfers, slingshots, halo orbits, and such. Now, imagine the guy who had to come up with that trajectory in the 70's when asked how to send a probe to visit Halley's Comet. KSP orbit predictions are 100% accurate, because the simplified predictions use the same simplified formulae as the simplified simulation model. If I create a mathematical model with the formula "1+1=2", then I can use the same formula to predict the result with 100% accuracy. So to answer the OP's post, KSP orbital predictions are more precise than real-life space agency predictions.

The features in the center of the image look more like ridge shadows than tracks to me.

Well, good luck with that. No way will you or any politician ever get public support to cancel the atmospheric nuclear test ban. Ever. When the drawbacks of a technology outweigh the benefits 10 to 1, then it can be considered impractical.

It doesn't matter if it's a scientific dead-end, an economical one, or a political one. It's still a dead-end. It might be fun to consider it in an alternate-universe sci-fi story, but it's impractical and unrealistic in the real-world.

You're confused. The Orion Project never got assigned to a launch vehicle because it was supposed to launch itself. It was a paper study that was scrapped as soon as it became clear that the whole concept was a dead-end. The proposed nuclear Saturn variant was the C5-N which used a NERVA-based upper stage instead of the S-IVB. NERVA was totally unrelated to Orion. NTR technology was more feasible, but the performance gains weren't worth the drawbacks, which is why it was also scrapped.

I have no problem with nuclear propulsion. I have problems with unrealistic proposals. There are two ways of getting something like an Orion spacecraft into space: - Launching an Orion spacecraft: Atmospheric nuclear blasts are a non-starter. - Orbital assembly: Hundreds of conventional launches and decades of work in LEO to build. In addition, nuclear bombs are not cheap and their mass production carries all sorts of proliferation problems. But again, these problems have been discussed to death already. The idea is entertaining in (in a Fallout alternate universe kind of way), but totally unrealistic. I see no point in rehashing the same old arguments again and again.

I find it preferable to necro an old thread to add new content to a discussion where there was lots of very interesting stuff rather than to start over again by asking everyone to repost the exact same arguments every couple of months. If existing content is simply ignored, then it's a waste to contribute anything meaningful in the forum anymore. You might as well just wipe the forum every two months and restart the same discussions all over again. Also, that documentary was mentioned in some of those other threads.

Why a new thread ? There are already dozens of threads on the subject.

We don't know. There haven't been any studies on the development of human children in micro-gravity.

Note that most of those mass city bombings would today be considered war crimes. http://www.onlinemilitaryeducation.org/posts/10-most-devastating-bombing-campaigns-of-wwii

Sure, but notwithstanding that a launch loop is still impossible to build and highly impractical itself, there would only be one 8000km-long launch loop on Earth's equator, making it pointless for point to point travel.

This seems to be a disturbing trend emerging at NASA these days.

Windows 8 keeps a lot of stuff in the cloud if your account is associated with a Microsoft account. Also, to know if you can upgrade to Windows 8.1 from 8: http://lmgtfy.com/?q=windows+8.1+compatibility

With only 12 units built, it was a commercial failure decades before the Air France crash. The only reason AF and BA kept flying them was national pride. Anyway, looking at the way the OP's post was written, it looked more like a spam than a proper engagement in a discussion thread.

Suborbital is useless for point to point transport. It takes much less energy, and is therefore cheaper and easier, to just go supersonic or hypersonic in the atmosphere, and we all know how that turned out for Concorde. Virgin Galactic flights are designed for zero-g joyrides that land at the launch site, not for transportation. It takes hours just for the Eve mothership to reach the SS2 drop altitude, which negates any transit time gains from the Suborbital part of the mission, and the SS2 is designed to go high, not fast.

You can be busy doing something and slowly drift away. Of course, you will always reach a wall after a while, and it's not a life-threatening situation, but it can be an inconvenience. It happened occasionally enough on Skylab for NASA to decide that any future space habitats should have a requirement that astronauts are always in reach of a wall. You won't see any large open spaces in a space station habitat any time soon.

If they launch a "Skylab 2.0" based on the diameter of the SLS, it will be partioned into small rooms anyway. During Skylab, they found that it wasn't practical to have large open areas, because you can easily float into the middle and get stuck with nothing to catch on to! ISS modules are sized so that there is always a handrail in reach or a wall to push yourself off of.

Satellites don't use "attitude or tidal lock". They simply spin at the same rate as they travel around the Earth so that they perform one full rotation per orbit. Once it's set up, this only requires minor corrections from time to time which is part of the routine station-keeping. They are designed to carry enough fuel to maintain station-keeping for their lifetime. When propellant is nearly depleted, they use what's left to boost themselves to a graveyard orbit before being decommissioned.

Did you miss the point where the hardware was at the end of its useful life ? And of course, it isn't designed for interplanetary travel or for the thrust effort of an interplanetary burn. It would be like attaching wings to a submarine to make it fly.

A telescope (or any other satellite or spacecraft) is made of more than just solar panels and structure. How do you 3D-print mirrors, optics, gaskets, valves, filters, seals, insulation, fluids, computers, sensors... ? Even if you could print some of those things, you would still need to assemble and test everything, which would be prohibitive on orbit. And you need to send up the material of course.

Alright, so how do you define "best" ?

I don't think they did anything wrong. The nitrogen probably leaked out over the years and lost pressure.

Roads are usually made of concrete or asphalt, which is basically a mix of gravel and tar. The tar used for roads is basically a low-value waste from oil refining and other stuff mixed in (used tires...). In other words, this stuff is cheap and easy to lay. You just heat it up and pour it. It also tends to be slightly flexible so it can withstand temperature variations, granulous enough to evacuate water, and sticky enough to provide good adherence. You can also vary the granularity and the quality of the asphalt surface depending on the climate and the usage of the road. If you were to replace roads with solar power units, you would have to find other ways of recycling or processing the waste that is used to make asphalt. I'd rather see tires ground and melted to be reused as a road surface rather than incinerated. I really don't see how you could make roads any cheaper or any better by building them with standardized glass, electronic components, connectors and solar cells. You would still need to lay these tiles on a prepared surface (typically stones, gravel, and sand) so you are still going to need the massive roadwork machinery that macadam roads use.