Nibb31

They are not going to be spinning the BFS, so yeah, more like Skylab but with a 50% larger diameter.

Any tips on getting a decent semi-automatic landing with the BFS ? With MechJeb or something ?

If ESA was funded by the EU instead of individual countries, then the list of participating countries would be completely different. Norway, Switzerland and Canada for example are ESA members but not in the EU and not all members of the EU contribute to ESA.

I guess the ISS qualifies for that (or some sort of ISS-2). So I'd answer LEO.

But SpaceShipTwo doesn't go that fast. It only reaches Mach 2 (maybe Mach 3), which puts it in Concorde heating territory. We already have coating materials that can resist high Mach loads.

The shuttlecock design still seems like a lot of unnecessary complexity and introduces plenty of single point failures. I'm pretty sure a blunt body design and a fine layer of PICA-X would have been more than enough.

Another thread ? Before selecting the location, you need to ask what the purpose of your settlement is, and how you're going to fund it. The location question depends on those answers.

That article is outdated, and APAS is not IDS. The US section of the ISS was equipped with Russian APAS-89 ports, because the Shuttle docking systems were originally designed for the Mir/Shuttle program (and salvaged from Buran). The Russian section of the ISS uses the old probe and drogue system that goes back to Salyut. Shenzhou uses a system that is based on APAS-89, but it might have its own quirks that makes it incompatible with the original APAS. Today, the APAS-89 ports on the ISS are in the process of being permanently fitted with IDS adapters for CST-100 and Dragon, which rules out using APAS any more: IDA-2 was installed in 2016 and IDA-3 is going up in november (IDA-1 was destroyed in CRS-7). So unless Shenzhou converts to IDS before november, it can no longer dock at the ISS. If it was to happen, there would have to be a long certification process to ensure that it complies with all ISS rules and systems: docking system compatibility of course, but also thruster impingement, residual pollution, structural stress, radio interference, etc... The whole process could take several years.

Sure, which is the same for NASA, JAXA, CNSA, Roskosmos, and pretty much every space agency out there. Are you suggesting that we get rid of government space agencies ?

You don't see Boeing or Airbus operating airlines. And actually, ArianeGroup (ex-Airbus Safran Launchers) and Arianespace are both private companies (like SpaceX, Boeing, Lockheed, and ULA)

How many ways are there to propulsively land a booster ? What make sense for one company doesn't always make sense for another. Airbus, ESA, and ULA aren't exactly idiots either and they have done the math on their side. At the moment Ariane 6 was proposed, their analysis was that the market would not be enough to support reusability the extra cost of reusability. This made sense at the time, because Ariane 5/6 with its SRB-based architecture would require a completely different architecture and design, including new engines, to be made reusable. With the current demand for launches, and the existing industrial infrastructure, the return on investment is not obvious. Glass cups are cheaper in the long run, but there is still a market for disposable paper cups.

My understanding is that the engine already exists in their parts bin.

Callisto ("Cooperative Action Leading to Launcher Innovation in Stage Toss-back Operations" I love those silly acronyms !) is a subscale technology demonstrator that is planned for a first flight in 2020. It's basically a smaller Grasshopper. I'm not sure what engine it uses, but it isn't Prometheus (which is LOX+CH4) because it won't be ready. I think Callisto uses a japanese hydrolox engine supplied by JAXA.

I think you're confusing CNES, Arianespace, Arianegroup, Airbus Launchers, and ESA. Also Ariane 5 and Ariane 6. Adeline was a wacky proposal that was rejected. You see this all the time in the industry. Ariane 5 is scheduled to be retired in a couple of years. Arianespace's strategy was to counter SpaceX with Ariane 6, which is basically a "low-cost Ariane 5": Replacement for both Ariane 5 and Soyuz Synergy with Vega (same boosters) Better flexibility Half the cost The Ariane 6 project was started when SpaceX hadn't even landed a booster. At the time, it mades sense to be cautious about SpaceX. Today, SpaceX still hasn't proven that reusability will be profitable in the long run and that the market will support high launch rates. So Ariane 6 today is probably going to be an interim launcher, to keep Arianespace relevant while they develop the next generation launcher, which is likely to be based on a combination of the Ariane 6 infrastructure, the Prometheus engine, and the Callisto reusable launcher project.

The truth is, we have no idea. As long as there are no actual experiments with variable speeds and wheel diameters and G levels, we will never know if the idea is feasible or not. And it is technically difficult to develop a seal joint that can maintain pressure and the mechanical characteristics, which means that developing a test bed where we can do this testing is challenging (which means expensive). You'd be better off spinning the whole ship that having a gravity wheel as shown in sci-fi.

Gravity. Air resistance. These forces are exactly the same that prevent the plane from moving without the threadmill. If the propellers are turning and the plane is stationary, then the propellers aren't providing enough force to move the plane, which is exactly the same situation as if you took the threadmill out of the equation.

Train is a no go. You have to put it on a truck or ship it from Port of LA to Salina Cruz and put it on a truck there. Or use the Panama Canal. Airbus is building a new Beluga XL fleet that can carry sections that are over 8 m wide and 40 m long. Maybe SpaceX can strike a deal with them.

The route I described is 200 km long and goes through populated areas, including some town centers, where they installed removable lamp posts and road signs and reworked some of the roundabouts so that the convoys can go straight through. It mostly uses secondary roads in order to avoid overpasses (railway crossings are fine) and so that it doesn't shut down highway traffic. In other areas it uses specially-built gravel paths that were cheap to build (and double as cycling paths 99% of the time). You only need the one lane, the width of a truck's wheelbase and to trim the vegetation around it. The trucks travel at around 30 km/h. Most of mainland US is much less populated than the South West of France, and distances between obstacles are much larger, so the cost would probably be much cheaper per mile than the Airbus route. Actually, it might be easier to build such a route across Mexico: Coatzacoalcos - Salina Cruz is "only" 350 km, mostly low population, and the terrain doesn't look too bad. Such a route would be useful for a lot of oversized cargo where the only option is to take the Panama Canal. In fact, I wouldn't be surprised if Mexican transport authorities already have such a route set up for this exact purpose.

Oversize transport is a thing. There are several special routes all over Europe and the USA, which have specially-made removable road equipment, oversize rest areas, road closure barriers, deviation plans, etc... One such route near where I live is used for transporting A380 sections between Bordeaux (where they arrive by boat) to Toulouse (where the aircraft are assembled). These convoys usually travel at night, once or twice a month, following a public calendar to notify other road users that sections of the road will be closed. Most of the route uses existing roads that have been converted for oversize convoys. In some areas where it was not practical to convert an existing road, they built gravel roadways for the sole purpose of the Airbus convoys.

Sure, the LES was also a boilerplate, not sure if the EFT-1 even had RCS, but the avionics that controlled the flight were an interim version. The parachute system has been extensively tested by drop tests. As I said, any testing is good, but not much of EFT-1 flight data was useful for validating the final Orion design.

I wouldn't go that far. You always learn something. In this case, they learned (among other things) that the honeycomb designed was overkill, fragile, expensive, and heavy. However, it also means that the current design will have only EM-1 to prove itself before carrying astronauts. They'd better not find any issues with the new design. Not really. The EFT-1 Orion was pretty much a boilerplate capsule on an interim launcher, with interim avionics, no ECLSS, and no SM. It really only tested reentry and splashdown. Since then, they have redesigned the heatshield, the parachutes, and the landing bags (which failed BTW). There were definitely lessons learned, which is what testing is all about, but not much of the validation data can be transferred over to the EM-1 Orion. "Pod" is KSP lingo. The space industry uses the term capsule.

http://spacenews.com/lockheed-martin-pressing-to-simplify-orion-heat-shield/ The one used on EFT-1 was a single piece honeycomb injected design, like the Apollo heatshield. The new one is made of tiles that are glued on. Basically, it's an entirely different structure, which means that the flight data from EFT-1 is no longer applicable.

The "cage" thing used on the Shuttle was called a payload cradle. Their purpose was to add payload-specific attachment points for various SpaceLab configurations, pallets, satellites, and all sorts of cargo. You still need to integrate the payload with the cradle, then the cradle with the launch vehicle. Payload integration covers a lots of things: physical mating, fueling the payload (usually hydrazine), connecting fluid and power and data umbilicals to the launch vehicle, checking for leaks, testing the interfaces, final testing of the payload, etc... Sure, you can cut corners, but there are reasons for it to be a long process and the engineers who design these procedures aren't idiots. So is cutting They are already under huge pressure to streamline operations as much as possible. Cutting hydrazine fueling procedures, leakage checks, or preflight tests would be a recipe for disaster.

It's not a pod, it's a capsule. It's free-fly slingshot trajectory around the Moon, like Apollo 8. Also, it has redundant propulsion systems, which makes it safer than Apollo: 1 primary AJ10 engine (recycled Shuttle OMS) 8 Auxiliary thrusters for backup RCS thrusters for backup of the backup I would have been more comfortable with a LEO flight for easy abort in case of any issues with the other systems, but at the cost of the system and with a flight rate of 1 every 2 years, an extra test flight only pushes back the program even further. Wasn't the heat shield completely redesigned after EFT-1 ?

The Shuttle took several days to mate/demate. Not really rapid turnaround. Payload integration is not like loading a truck. There are reasons why it typically takes weeks rather than hours.