Nibb31

This really. Plus, any "exclusive news" out of Aviation Week shouldn't really be taken seriously.

If you plan to become a fighter pilot, you might want to look for another job. The F-22 and F-35 will probably be the last manned fighters in the USAF. It simply makes no sense, in most cases, to risk a pilot getting killed or captured. Plus, a us meat sacks have the huge disadvantage of being limited to the number of Gs we can cope with. A drone that could withstand 15 Gs would have a pretty big advantage in a dogfight. However, they will probably still need chopper pilots for a while...

As a weapons platform it doesn't make sense. Military action is usually a last resort that occurs after months of diplomatic escalation. You have plenty of time to send a carrier naval group or to deploy Predator drones from a friendly air base, which can then strike in a matter of hours when the order is given.

Homeopathy works by using the placebo effect, which is clinically proven and widely used all over the world. The problem is that once you know that it's just a placebo, then it no longer works. That's why it's called homeopathy and not placebo. The real scandal is the "pharmaceutical" companies who make millions by selling homeopathic preparations that are just sugar.

Even at hypsersonic speed, as long as you are travelling in a fluid, the best way to manoeuver is by using control surfaces. It turns out that grid fins are pretty good control surfaces when you are going really fast, which is why they are used on lots of missiles and russian rockets: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grid_fin

Wet workshop is another one of those hypothetical concepts that people read about and then run with it as if it was proven and practical. It is neither. To refit a fuel tank into a viable hab module would require a lot of engineering, extra hardware, and intensive work on orbit. There is the fume problem, but also the issue of where you put all the stuff that you are going to move into the tank, and how you put it in. There isn't much point in having a large living space with nothing inside it. Most tanks are not empty, they have anti-slosh baffles inside to prevent fluid from sloshing and disbalancing the vehicle. You would need to remove the baffles and convert them into furniture or structural panels inside the hab module. You need to seal off the propellant pump intakes and add some sort of airlock or hatch as well as a docking module, which requires a structural redesign of the tank. You need to add wiring, fluid pipes, lights, air recirculation, life support, lockers, padding, furniture, tools, equipment, supplies... That's tons of stuff that has to be stowed away inside the capsule or in some sort of locker inside the tank, which would take up a lot of propellant volume and reduce payload. That's a lot of work to do on orbit, and a lot that can go wrong. There is also so much redesign work that it is easier to simply design and build a purpose-built hab module. Wet workshop is simply a bad idea, which is why it was scrapped decades ago.

I'm adding part modules to the AIES pack parts to use them as sensors and to get them into the tech tree and I've noticed that the sensorType value seems to be binary. Is it safe to assume that sensorType = 3 will scan both altimetry and advanced altimetry data ? Is there even any point in collecting both? Will a sensorType = 63 combine all sensor types in a single part?

More likely they don't want the bad PR.

If a moon shot would cost 185 dollars today, that would be a bargain! That's cheaper than an Ariane 5 or an Atlas V.

Listen, we've already gone through this discussion dozens of times, including in this thread. There really is no point in repeating the same arguments over and over again. Just read the 30 pages again. We have never experimented closed-loop life support on Earth, let alone in space. We have never experimented in-situ resource utilization. We have never experimented long-term biological effects of cosmic radiation or partial gravity. We have never experimented long-term psychological effects of deep-space missions. We have never experimented landing large payloads on another planet. We have (partial) knowledge of those fields, as well as theories and hypothetical designs, but we are far from having answers to all of the engineering and biological problems. To get those answers will takes decades of iterative experiments on Earth and in Space as well as a lot of money. The day will come when we will have the technology, but it is still too early. Having the technology means having operational implementations of that technology. It also means having the money to build those implementations. If you have neither the experience, the design, or the money, then you simply don't have the technology. All you have are theoretical ideas.

Erm... It's not like nobody knew this already. Mars One has stated pretty much from the start that they intended to use SpaceX hardware. The fact that Dragon and Falcon exist doesn't make the project any more feasible.

600 Isp ??

What do you want to update?

So how do you measure that exactly? Is a Texan redneck more valuable than an Iranian scientist? Is a foreign political leader more valuable than a US factory worker? Is a Christian more valuable than a Muslim or a white worth more than a black? Is a Afghani kid less valuable than an American kid? Is a North Korean teacher less valuable than a NYC trader? Do you look at a sick kid's grades before deciding which one get's a kidney transplant? Can you be sure that one of those uneducated foreigners won't give birth to a future Nobel prize winner or that the starving kid in Africa might grow up to invent the Warp drive? Who are you to set a scale of values of human life? A human being is a human being. Whenever you kill one, whether he's an innocent child, a terrorist, or a brain surgeon, not only do you cause the same suffering for the person and for his/her loved ones, but you also destroy any contribution that person might have had to make this World a better place.

To travel from a planet to one of its moons, the easiest way is to burn prograde when the moon rises on the horizon. That's all there is to know.

The SLS will be killed by the lack of money to build any payloads. The only payload it has right now is Orion, which could technically be launched on a Delta IV Heavy. The asteroid mission and the DSH are ways to justify its existence, but they don't have any serious funding yet. They will only start getting funding when the SLS development work ends, which will free some budget for payloads and missions. This means that there will be a gap of at least 4 or 5 years between SLS going operational and any payloads being available. NASA has already stated that it will only be able to afford one mission every year or two. Yet to maintain that capability, they will still need to maintain the Cape facilities, the VAB, the standing army of engineers and technicians to run the sites, integrate payloads, launch and monitor the missions. Basically, the infrastructure will be same as it was for the Shuttle, billions of dollars of fixed cost every year for only a handful of launches. No Congress will be able to justify that cost when they are cutting budgets on more essential government expenses. If we are lucky, we might see it fly once or twice, but I have no doubt that it will be cancelled soon after that.

The Saturn V was a 1960's design, using 1960's components, 1960's materials, 1960's manufacturing techniques, 1960's standards, 1960's electronics, and so on... It would be impossible to rebuild an exact copy of the Saturn V today, simply because many of the materials and manufacturing techniques are no longer available. For example, many parts in those days were forged and welded by hand, which are prohibitively work-intensive and expensive nowadays. Today, you would want to make most parts with CNC milling, which would require each part and component to be redesigned with modern CAM/CAD techniques. A lot of stuff on the old Saturn V was made with materials that are no longer available. Some of them have even been banned because they are toxic, polluting or simply obsolete. Many of those materials have been replaced with more modern composites and alloys, but for each part, you would have to make sure that they meet the same physical and thermal requirements. So again, each part would have to be redesigned. All of the avionics and telemetry equipment is obsolete, so that would need to be replaced. This would includ all the wiring, which would have to be rerouted through the structure. This means that any mechanical part that had wiring or sensors or connectors attached to them would have to be redesigned too. Any software would need to be rewritten for those modern computers and the ground infrastructure would need to be rebuilt and reconverted, including launch towers, the VAB, MCC, propellant depots, etc... Add the fact that a lot of the Saturn V design was rushed and not optimal. It wasn't the best design possible, because it was a crash program designed to put a Man on the Moon before the Russians, not to be part of a durable versatile space infrastructure. Many components were based stuff that already existed or could be quickly adapted or was based on limited knowledge of spaceflight. You would want to improve on the design, and again, that would mean redesigning a lot of it. So basically, if you wanted to build a Saturn V today, you would have to redesign each and every part of it. A modern Saturn V would have a whole lot of different mission requirements, a variety of payloads to be placed in different orbits. It would need to be modular and reconfigurable to support all those missions. In effect, what you would end up with is an equivalent-sized launcher, with modern engines that are currently available, tanks built with tooling and techniques that are available today, modern avionics and telemetry... and in the end it would look a lot like SLS.

Doesn't beat the Top Gear space shuttle:

The manipulator arm is a separate download.

Bigger is not necessarily better. Especially when you only have money for one launch every two years and it eats up all the money for developing payloads to put on top of the rocket. One of the problems of NASA is to always focus on "bigger and better rockets" instead of on the actual mission. You could build a moon infrastructure on cheapo expendable rockets for a fraction of the cost of a single SLS launch.

"Always in motion is the Future" - Yoda Didn't you already post something like this a couple of months ago? I find it a bit arrogant to pretend to be able to make predictions beyond 10 or 20 years. Most predictions that were made 20, 30, or 40 years ago were all wrong about space and just about everything else (the Internet wasn't even "a thing" 20 years ago). Politics, technology, and society move way to fast to have any idea about what the priorities of Humanity will be in 2030 or beyond. As for the near future, I'm pretty sure that SLS will be cancelled some time around 2015-2020. And China or Russia aren't going to the Moon any time soon. Any large aerospace project takes more than a decade to design and build, and nobody has any plans (or money) for a Moon landing architecture yet. Japan and India even less... Golden Spike and Deep Space Industries are on the same level as Mars One, Almaz and other VC money sinks. They're not going anywhere.

Or you'd have to replace the tiles with a beefier and probably ablative TPS that would add tons to the mass of the Orbiter and cost a fortune to refurbish.

The Shuttle was a delivery van for routine flights to LEO and back. Apollo or Orion are like Land Rovers, built for exploration and a tough environments. A Land Rover is not the best vehicle for daily deliveries around the corner, and to convert a delivery van into something capable of crossing the desert or jungle is simply not worth it. The foam wasn't space-rated. The thermal conditions, UV and radiation, would make it crumble and fall off, which would create debris and be a hazard for Shuttle operations. There is still no point in hauling a 70-ton Orbiter all the way to lunar orbit, just to land a 10-ton LM on the Moon with a 2-ton payload. If you had a freaking huge rocket that was capable of pushing 100-tons to the Moon, then it would be better to just build a 100-ton lander with its own Moon base than to try to convert a truck into fighter jet. Besides, the Orbiter would burn up on re-entry because the tiles aren't rated for lunar re-entry speeds. And what purpose would a manned flyby serve exactly? The Shuttle was a rocket. Shuttle launches didn't end up any cheaper than Saturn V launches. So yes, NASA could have built something the size of the ISS with 3 Saturn V launches and done crew rotations and cargo runs on Saturn 1B, all while keeping the capability for exploration missions and reducing cost by series production. An updated Apollo CM, with a redesigned SM for LEO missions could have fulfilled most of the roles of the Shuttle, including carrying payloads, station modules, or experiment packages where the LM was stowed. You can rewrite history though. The cost of Apollo hardware was known, and everybody thought that the Shuttle would be cheaper than it was. There were reasons things went the way they went.

I find it silly that you don't have decouplers at the start of the game. It doesn't make sense to parachute your kerbal back down in a pod attached to the SRB and this makes things confusing for newbies. The game should really start with the equivalent of sounding rockets: a basic science package (camera or an altimeter), no radio, a parachute, an SRB and an unmanned pod. The next step would be more like V2 technology: a decoupler, a radio and liquid engines. And manned pods and goo should be introduced on a third level.

Yes, dV is the potential speed difference: - that a rocket stage can impart to your ship - or that you need to reach a given destination - or to complete a given manoeuver. For example, if your current speed is 2300m/s and your orbit needs to reach 2900m/s to raise your orbit high enough for its Apogee to reach the Mun, then you need 600m/s of dV. On your rocket, dV depends on the amount of propellant , the efficiency (Isp) of the engine, and the mass of your vehicle. The more propellant you are carrying, the more potential dV you can impart. The heavier the vehicle, the more energy (propellant) you need to push it. And yes, you can burn until you have no propellant left.