Nibb31

The whole point of a grid fin is that it has to be thick, otherwise it's not a fin.

This is a recent plot of the European model. Although it's still just a model, this one has proven to be the most reliable. According to this, KSC is getting winds between 80 and 95 knots (150 to 170 km/h or 90 to 110 mph). This is still rather "optimistic", as the strongest winds goes straight through the Everglades, rather than through Miami. The Keys will get a beating though. Stay safe folks.

Read the thread.

It depends on the role of the fighter. Cold war interceptors were designed to intercept enemy bombers with primitive AAMs, therefore speed and altitude were important. Nowadays, air superiority is achieved by over the horizon weapon systems. The aircraft is primarily a weapon-carrying platform that is part of an integrated system composed of AWACS, EW, and surface-based stations.

The buildings aren't built to withstand rocket impacts. The VAB and older buildings are built to resist winds of 120 mph (200 km/h). Newer buildings (SpaceX HIF) are supposed to resist 150 mph (240 km/h). Irma exceeded 200 mph (320 km/h) in the islands that were hit, with some gusts reaching 220 mph (360 km/h). They are expecting gusts between 130 and 160 mph if it reaches KSC. Hopefully they can launch on friday, but if it's a scrub they will have to roll back to the HIF and hope for the best. If they do launch and get the booster to RTLS, they might not have time to move it back to safety. They also need time to evacuate the personel. People have their homes and families to take care of, which is usually a higher priority.

Karl Marx was German, lived most of his life in London, and never set foot in Russia. Not sure what he had to do with the size of the Soviet Union.

You understand completely wrong. The decision the abandon propulsive landings comes from SpaceX, not NASA, and the reason is the cost of certifying those landings. If SpaceX is unable to certify that propulsive landing is safe, then why would NASA risk its cargo ? That cargo is going to be scientific samples and results. Research is the main purpose of the ISS, so that cargo is extremely precious. "Faster reuse" is not a factor here, because there will hardly be a fast rotation anyway. Soyuz isn't reused at all, so why would it be any better ? The landing mode doesn't make a vehicle better or worse than another. Either it meets requirements or it doesn't.

Correct. Although for Apollo 5, the LM was seriously cut-down and unmanned.

Why not just just make your first stage 10% bigger instead? It's no big deal if you can reuse it, but even for an expendable, the extra cost is minimal compared to developing and operating a one-off specialized aircraft and dealing with the complexity of launching a rocket horizontally. Musk has criticized air launch several times (and rightly so). He's not suddenly going to embrace it. It's easier to just build your factory near the launch site. Transport by barge or truck is fine.

Even though he wasn't a scientist, I think that Webb was wise enough to accept scientific research as what it is.

I suppose it means that it can reach 100km peak altitude. Hard to believe. It would need RCS for attitude control and probably some sort of auxiliary rocket (add-on boosters?).

SSDs typically fail completely and suddenly, at which point you lose all your data. HDDs sometimes fail progressively, causing errors, but giving you time to save most of your data.

He's also a politician without any scientific or engineering background, and is even a climate change denier. I really can't understand how you can efficiently run a science and engineering administration when you "don't believe" in science and don't know how it works.

There's a bit of a difference between smuggling stamps and landing on the Moon when you're not supposed to. There was no rush at this point. The USA knew where the Soviet Union was with the N-1. Remember that NASA was traumatized by the Apollo 1 disaster and the whole Apollo mission profile was extremely dangerous. The LM was the most critical part of the mission and had only flown in space once, so they needed to be sure that it would work. Apollo 10 actually simulated a landing abort.

SSD <> SD card. SSD is useful for OS and apps, not so much for bulk storage. Maybe that will change soon, but for the moment, HDDs still offer a better price/capacity ratio.

I don't really get what's hilarious about it, but well. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Payload_fairing#Mission_failures_caused_by_payload_fairings Turns out I was wrong. Most fairing failures have occured after 1999. I was mostly thinking of the "Angry Alligator" incident on Gemini 9.

It was quite common in the early days of spaceflight, but you're right that it's a rare occurrence nowadays.

This is usual problem of a solution looking for a problem. In fact, the "how would we do it" would be highly dependent on the "why are we doing it". The purpose defines the means, or in engineering terms, you don't define the requirements after creating a design. Trying to figure out how to do something before understanding why you want to do it is a common thought process among space cadets, but it is backwards and pointless. And here I was thinking that this forum was about science, not fantasy.

Well, the main reason that we don't send robots to Scott Amunden base is because it's cheaper to send people than to develop specific robots for each experiment. This isn't true for Mars.

Not only. They also do geology, survey the ice layer, magnetic field studies, astronomy, etc... basically all fields of earth observation physics. The only point of manned missions is to learn how to do manned missions. Any other field can be studied by remote experimentation for much cheaper than sending human operators.

So leave out the alpinists, the life support, the inflatable hab, and the propellant for return to Earth, and replace all that mass with experiments and automated science equipment. And a really good transmitter. Even better, make it an autonomous crawler robot, with legs. All the orbiters sent to Mars also serve as communications relays as a secondary mission. So, not useless at all. Olympus Mons is a volcanic formation. Your main scientific focus would be on the lava flows and rock composition. There might be some glacier activity, but that would be seasonal. If you want to study river beds where there have been permanent water flows, you are better off visiting the ancient river beds in plains.

Most Mars missions plan to land on low ground, because the atmosphere is denser, which is optimal for the use of parachutes and aerobraking. Landing on Olympus Mons is the opposite, meaning that you need to replace your parachutes with a deceleration, which requires more propellant, and therefore a heavier rocket. A long and perillous EVA like the one you propose would be hard. Moutain hiking is dangerous. Mars is dangerous. Hiking on Mars is doubly dangerous. Hiking with an EVA suit and life support system, containing several days of supplies, will be extremely cumbersome and risky. If the supplies run out, they die. If they get a crack in their helmet or a rip in the suit, they die. If they get lost, they die. If they break a leg, they die. I also don't think there is any advantage of sending alpinists, since the environment is very different from any Earth mountain. So, I'm sorry, but it is too perilous for an early mission. Maybe later, when there is an established base on Mars, with redundant rovers and maybe air support, it might be feasible, but as an early mission staged from Earth, it is too risky and suboptimal. Your mission profile actually makes things more difficult, more expensive, and more dangerous, rather than easier, cheaper, or safer. There is no advantage. Also, inflatable propellant tanks ? Using a spent tank as a heat shield ? You can't be serious.

Why ?

Why do you want joints? It's not a EVA suit. It's strictly for IVA to survive a depressurization event. Nothing more, nothing less.

Why do you think it is?