Nibb31

What are you on about? All NASA research has always been public domain. It's a government agency, so it legally has to be.

We headed to the Moon in the 60's and there is no civilian population on the Moon. There won't be Mars colonies before centuries at least. There are so many more harder problems to solve before we get to that point than how to use the Internet. I think you would likely see the return of asynchronous protocols like email and usenet and use local caching for some of the more popular websites (like Wikipedia, Netflix, news sites, Youtube, etc...). It certainly isn't dealbreaker. Not if I don't want to.

It belongs, by international treaty, to the international partners who built it: NASA, Roskosmos, ESA and JAXA. Each agency could sell its own share (if their local legislation allowed them to, which it probably doesn't), but nobody can sell the entire ISS. There are no "locks", but there's no way you could dock to it without cooperation of the crew and mission control.

It doesn't belong to NASA, so how could they sell it?

That was one of the early plans for Columbus. Columbus was originally intended as an autonomous space station that would be serviced by the Hermes shuttle. When Hermes was dropped, it turned into a free-flyer module for the ISS, and finally became a simple European lab module.

In KSP, why would you bother ? In US launches, flight range safety is ensured by the USAF, even for civilian launches. The Flight Termination Officer is independant from the launch provider or the customer and is in charge of terminating the flight, even for manned missions. The decision to terminate the flight is usually made as soon as the rocket deviates from its planned course with no hope of recovery.

The ISS is a rather dirty and noisy environment. There is a lot of machinery on board, and human presence, which induce vibrations that interfere with microgravity experiments. The ISS is also followed by a cloud of debris, including paint and insulation flakes and molecules of gas from thruster exhaust, which means that the quality of the vacuum is quite poor.

The Dragon V2 shape looks like a sound design, although we can't say it's been proven yet. The engines are side mounted and protected from the air-flow. There are co-sine losses though, which are going to eat into your dV. The whole idea of carrying enough dV to SSTO is implausible anyway. I think a nice evolution would be something that would combine the Falcon 9 upper stage with a Dragon-like design. The first stage would reenter on its own, and this "Super Dragon" would be big enough to carry enough dV to achieve orbit and reenter. Some people are speculating that this is how the MCT will work.

I don't see what problem that would solve. There aren't more payloads for the Block IA than for the IB.

There is no point in this sort of conversation. Given your numbered points there, just use any magical plot device that suits your narrative and give it a cool name.

In your dreams.

You would be stuck on the ground. Upper stage engines are designed for low thrust/high Isp.

Check out this thread. There's nothing magical about gimballing engines.

You wouldn't use an NTR for launch anyway. It would be an upper stage engine.

Just like the US Space Shuttle.

No because GM makes better cars than Coca Cola. BO never said they were better than X. They said they were the first to land (and reuse) a booster that went to space. Which is true. No, A was doing its own PR regardless of B. Just like B does quite a lot of PR itself. BO has been working on various space projects for longer than SpaceX. They are not a meritless outsider trying to steal the limelight. New Shepard is the result of 15 years of R&D. If you really want to compare them to athletes, one has finished the 100m and the other is still running the 800m. Neither one has more merit than the other. Because sending a booster to space, landing it, and launching it again, is quite an accomplishment in its own right. Unless you have actually done it yourself, criticizing it as being easy just because somebody else is trying to do something more spectacular is childish. It is not easy.

No they're not. Only their New Shepard project is aimed at suborbital tourism. They are working on plenty of other projects, including their BE-4 engine that will be powering ULA's Vulcan as well as their own orbital launcher, and an entry for the DARPA XS-1 competition. The entire strategies of both companies are different. It makes no sense to compare their advances, because they are advancing in different directions.

Seriously, this fanboism is getting out of hand. These aren't football teams. These are companies with different products with different requirements and different goals. It's like claiming that Coca Cola is better than General Motors because they were the first to make Sprite. Ultimately, who gives a hoot about who was first to do this or that? The more companies we have doing stuff in space, the better. And to anyone who says that one is "less impressive" that the other, lets see your credentials in rocket building first.

It was abandoned a while ago. They are sticking with SRBs.

SLS doesn't use F-1 engines, and Orion has as much in common with the Apollo CSM as a Boeing 787 has with a DC-3.

You need to follow the news a bit more. NASA will actually have 3 spacecraft: Dragon, CST-100 (which is Boeing, not ULA), and Orion. The CCDev spacecraft are specifically designed as LEO taxis for ISS operations only. Orion is specifically designed as a BEO exploration vehicle and will never go to the ISS. Think minivan and Land Rover. You don't use a minivan for a trek across the Sahara, and it's not economical to use the Land Rover for dropping off the kids at school. Orion and SLS are supported by Congress, because the money is spent in various powerful constituencies. CCDev has less support. Widely popular? The only place I've ever seen people suggesting reviving the Saturn V was from a couple of kids on this forum and it was debunked immediately.

Apollo was a Moon landing project, for which the Apollo CSM/LM spacecraft were built. Orion is a multi-role spacecraft looking for a project. It would make sense if we actually did have an Apollo 2 program, which would actually be an affordable and feasible goal. I'll take achievable Moon projects before pie-in-the-sky Mars expeditions any day. Incidentally, cislunar space is pretty much the only place Orion, in its current form, can actually go. I wouldn't be surprised if the next administration actually comes to its senses and realizes that the purpose of the SLS/Orion infrastructure that it has built is to return to the Moon. We still have plenty of work to do there. Which is pure conjecture. We simply don't know. I disagree. I would rather see us finally achieve something, even limited in scope than to do nothing while we wait for the technology to be ready for a Mars expedition in 30 years. Doing nothing does nothing to advance technology. You need to actually be doing stuff to develop and mature technological solutions. If you do nothing, then the aerospace workforces move on to other areas and you lose your expertise. At worse, Orion is a technology demonstrator that advances the state of the art and develops new solutions. But that's the thing. Mankind is not seriously concerned about space exploration, and even less about colonization. Those causes don't even get a mention in the platforms of any Western politicians. There is no political incentive, no driving force, and therefore no budget.

I'm not assuming anything. You don't base science on "what if"s. If you make a claim such as the one in Sagan's quote, you need evidence. We have zero evidence, at this point, of any other advanced life form in the universe. Therefore, although extraterrestrial life is probable, we have no idea of what it's like or if it has ever needed to expand beyond its natural environment to survive. "What if" they found that interplanetary colonization or interstellar travel simply wasn't practical or necessary? "What if" they found other ways to sustain their civilization without relying on constant expansion ? With no evidence, it is conjecture, just like your own "what if"s. And again, none of this has any bearing on Orion being delayed or over budget.

That's my point. We have only one example of intelligent live. We have zero examples of intelligent life that is spread over multiple planets. So Sagan's claim is meaningless conjecture. The potential of any single event to exterminate 100% of humanity is disputable. We are 8 billion. If only 0.1% survive, it will be a bottleneck event, but we have been through worse. And at any rate, nothing lives forever. The fate of every single species is to evolve into something else or to be replaced by something else, including us. It's no big deal in the grand scheme of the universe.

You would also need both objects to orbit with zero inclination and zero eccentricity. What is the probability of such an orbit occurring ?