Nibb31

Where were you the last 5 years ?

Typical GTO comsats cost between $250 - 500 million. The Orbcomm birds are much cheaper and smaller and not really representative of the global comsat market at this point.

The main reason S-N didn't get off the ground, beyond nuclear scare, was that it wasn't needed and the huge infrastructure cost. Imaging reconfiguring the Cape for a nuclear workflow, including outfitting the VAB, reworking handling and safety procedures, training personnel, building storage facilities, etc... The cost/benefit ratio was not in the favor of S-N, especially as at the same time, the Apollo Applications Program was being gutted and everybody knew that the days of the Saturn V infrastructure were reaching an end.

ESA's main purpose is to subsidize R&D in member states in order to provide jobs and develop technological competitivity. ESA member states, unfortunately, are not really interested in manned spaceflight, simply because it is less cost-effective. Each member state injects the amount of money that it considers appropriate, and the exact proportion of ESA's budget is reinjected in contracts and research grants back into each member state. For example, the British often complain about not getting much money from ESA, but that's because the UK government doesn't inject much money into ESA. This is a shame, because the UK has a long history of innovation and exploration, and their aerospace industry has lots of potential. ESA could do a lot more if all member states granted the same proportion of money to ESA as France and Germany, but good luck in convincing each country to increase spending.

Seriously? After all the explaining that we've done? When the first stage separates from the upper stage, it is 300km from the space center's parking lot, which happens to be above the ocean, travelling at Mach 6 above the atmosphere. To get back to the parking lot requires a boostback burn to get the rocket travelling in the opposite direction, back to the launch site. This requires a surplus in propellant, which the Falcon 9 doesn't have for GTO missions. It has enough fuel to decelerate and land, but not to boost back to the launch site. As for the extra propellant for landing, parachutes are actually heavier. Parachutes could not land you precisely enough to aim for the space center's parking lot, especially if you are descending slow enough to not damage the rocket. Parachutes (especially large custom-built ones) are expensive to make, to check, and to pack. And most importantly, parachutes will not slow you down to 0m/s and 0m altitude. They will land your fragile rocket at a constant velocity, around 20m/s, which is going to break it unless you add even more weight for airbags, retro-rockets or super strong legs, all of which are more complex and heavier than the small amount of extra propellant needed for a soft landing.

The ASDS are named after spaceships from The Culture series of SF novels. In the books, the ships are massive AI entities with a weird sense of humor that name themselves after their own personality. Some of them are hilarious: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_spacecraft_in_the_Culture_series

The military are mostly interested in polar orbits, which is what Vandenberg is pretty much exclusively used for.

Because the protective cover is shaped for going up, whereas the Orion capsule is shaped for going down. Orion's conical shape has nothing to with being aerodynamic on its way up. It's to provide more life during reentry.

Apollo had a fairing, and so does Orion. It's not a big deal.

We will only know when we send a lander there with the proper experiments.

The whole point of a controlled deorbit is to choose where and when it reenters. They will crash it into the Pacific or Indian Ocean.

The VAB and the MLPs can no longer take the Saturn V. The launch pads have been modified too. The launch tower has been dismantled. None of the infrastructure exists any more. It's dead Jim. It only flew once.

It's a subsidy if the company sells the same services, that the government paid to develop, to other customers at a lower price.

I believe there have been plenty of occasions where astronauts have puked. About 20% of them experience "space-sickness" on their first orbital flights, so it's a pretty common condition. I think it's even mentioned in the Apollo 13 movie. However, it is not publicized because individual astronaut health is considered confidential. They usually have undisclosed communication channels to discuss health issues with medical teams so any talk about sickness or medical conditions doesn't leak out into the public channels.

What you don't get is that NASA never competes. Government agencies are not there to compete or to be efficient. NASA is a public service. One of its mandates is to study aeronautics and space and to pass in order to improve technologies that the private sector can use. Whenever possible, it publishes its findings so that the public, and in particular the US aerospace industry, can benefit from that knowledge. So yes, SpaceX has access to much of NASA's documentation. So does Boeing, Lockmart and any other company that requests access to NASA's knowledge base. It's part of NASA's mandate to cooperate with the industry. Competition isn't part of NASA's mindset.

The reason it takes time is because they get a fixed amount every year to spend on development instead of a one-time development budget. Of course, this is much more expensive in the long run, but as I've already explained, the purpose of NASA isn't to complete projects efficiently. It's job is to spend a steady flow of R&D money to maintain a workforce of highly specialized workers and contractors.

Sure, like pretty much every industry (SpaceX's non-aerospace certified helium tank struts for example...). The point is that when using standardized parts, you want to use those that are available today, not reopen production lines and recertify suppliers for stuff that was made obsolete 40 years ago.

That's a very specific example that might apply to a handful of components. Maybe the technology for medium voltage motorstarters hasn't changed much since the seventies. But it certainly doesn't work for most of the mechanical engineering. Hand building rocket engines with thousands of parts and tankage structures like they did in the 60's would be totally uneconomical.

Of course they still have drawings of the Saturn V. It's an urban legend that they were thrown away or lost. But the idea of resurrecting a 50 year old design is idiotic at best. There is nothing that you could do with 1960's drawings these days, because there isn't a single supplier or aerospace-grade machine shop that takes paper drawings any more. You would need to convert each and every drawing to a modern CAD/CAM file. But it's not just a matter of converting each piece from 2D to 3D. You would actually need to redesign them from scratch because most of those parts would be produced differently today. Manufacturing techniques have evolved. Tools are different. CNC machining has replaced forging and casting. Welding techniques are different. Materials are different. Coating techniques are different. New adhesives have been introduced. QA processes have evolved. Some chemicals have been banned. And of course, you couldn't supply most of the electronic parts even if you wanted to. To rebuild the Saturn V with the 1960's blueprints would require a massive redesign of pretty much every single part, including supplier sourcing, testing and recertification. You would need to build a supply chain, a whole industry, based on obsolete technology. Remember however, that the Saturn rockets were kludges, slapped together with parts that were available. They were good enough to get a man on the Moon in a couple of years, but they were far from being an optimal design. So even if you did duplicate the Saturn V, you would still en up with the same suboptimal design, which would be designed to meet the requirements of a cold-war Moon race, not a sustainable launch architecture. So if you want to replicate the capabilities of a 1960's Saturn V, is is much cheaper to design something with similar capabilities, using techniques, tooling, suppliers, and parts that are available today, with mission requirements of today. Which is pretty much what NASA is doing. Yes.

It also had hatches for the ET umbilicals and attachment points that closed after the ET was jettisoned.

You are totally missing the point of NASA: It maintains and develops technology that keeps the country on the edge. It employs valuable skilled workers that would go elsewhere if they weren't at NASA. If you shutdown NASA: You put thousands of skilled workers out of a job who will either have to emigrate to other countries or resort to flipping burgers. Either way, you lose the technological knowledge while other countries catch up. Eventually, if you fall behind technologically, you fall behind economically. Unemployed government workers don't hire nannies, buy houses, or pay taxes. Every government job creates more jobs. NASA employees go to restaurants, buy cars, houses, go to doctors and dentists, employ plumbers, gardeners, etc... Every dollar you spend on government employees and contractors is demultiplied in the economy. Money spent on government pork is *never* wasted. It always trickles down into the economy, generating more jobs, and returns to the government through taxes paid by all those people. Although on the outside it might seem more efficient to outsource, cutting spending and reducing the number of employees is nearly always detrimental to the economy in the end. In the end, the actual projects that come out of NASA, Shuttle, Constellation, SLS, are a nice bonus, but they are not the reason NASA exists.

That's where it was.

Yes, The capsule from Gemini 2 was modified into a Gemini B, with a hatch in the heatshield, for the MOL program. It's the only Gemini capsule to have flown with a USAF insignia instead of NASA and the only Gemini capsule to have ever flown twice (both times unmanned), and the first spacecraft to be reused.

Besides, there can never be "partnership" between NASA and SpaceX simply because NASA is legally obligated to follow strict procurement regulations. There would have to be a fair procurement competition between private corporations to bid for a NASA Mars contract, which means that SpaceX would have to compete against Boeing, Lockmart, and probably others who are perfectly capable of developing hardware per NASA requirements.

I guess they clean it up with a towel and some disinfectant... best not think about it