Nibb31

We don't clean anything on the ISS. Clothes are disposable. This includes EMU undergarments. Donning an EVA doesn't answer any existing contingency mode, at least on the ISS. If you have a depressurization event, you are supposed to evacuate to the module closest to a return vehicle and seal off the modume. Most depressurization contingency modes leave enough time to evacuate safely, unless of course you are facing some sort of catastrophic explosion or break-up, but then an EVA suit isn't going to help you.

That idea was carried around in the Constellation days, when Orion was getting too heavy for Ares I. They considered flying Orion empty, without a LAS, and sending crew up separately. It was a stupid idea, but the whole Constellation plan was deeply flawed from the start. This is no longer a concern with SLS. It's pretty much the opposite. SLS is oversized for just sending an Orion.

I also doubt that a skin suit can offer adequate MMOD protection.

SpaceX benefits from 60 years of NASA research and development.

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That looks more like a mockup than a real rocket.

The Moon is what Orion/SLS were designed for and pretty much the only place they can reasonably go. The next administration is going to either have to deal with those facts or cancel them both. There's still a lot of stuff to be done on Moon.

We've been doing hatches through heatshields for 30 years now. It's proven technology.

That thing is barely smaller than the entire Vostok capsule. It also did kill a couple of pilots.

Which were abandoned respectively 19 and 15 years ago. Thanks for making my point.

They don't have any current SSTO concepts either. SSTO is a dead-end. I don't even understand why you're bringing it up. You sound utterly confused.

Powerpoint rockets are always better than real rockets. MCT isn't even powerpoint at this stage. NASA doesn't have any SSTO plans. Who cares about SSTO anyway ?

There is no F5 rocket and SpaceX doesn't want to maintain several production lines. They are stuck with the F9, so the extra weight on Dragon is not a problem. The powered landing is to make reuse easier. With the payload budget that F9 offers them, that they would rather have easier reusability than increased payload to LEO.

There is no competition between SpaceX and NASA. NASA is a government-funded science and research agency that subsidizes development by purchasing products and services from the aerospace industry, including Boeing, Lockheed-Martin, SpaceX, and many others. SpaceX is a launch provider that fulfills contracts for customers, including NASA, USAF, and private satellite operators.

Fidelity is an investment fund. Their job is to invest in stuff they believe will make money. Not sure what's head-scratching about that.

Your country's foreign policy (including appointment of ambassadors and the US stance at the UN and other international institutions) is decided by the folks that you elected. The delegation that represents your country at the UN answers 100% to your administration. Anything that the US delegation says or votes for at the UN comes directly from the President and the Foreign Secretary. The same is true for NASA, the military, or pretty much any other government activity. You don't get to vote on anything they do, you don't get to vote on the people who are appointed to run those government agencies, and you don't get to vote directly on laws and regulations, because that's how representative democracy works. So if anything needs to be reformed, it's probably representative democracy itself, not just the UN. Has it? A while ago, Musk was claiming that he would only IPO SpaceX once his Mars ambitions are accomplished. If he does IPO SpaceX, then he'll lose control over his dream. When an actual board of directors starts running the company, they will they will lose all interest in sending Musk to die on Mars.

The Dragon's tanks and engines are inside the Dragon capsule, not the trunk. If the tanks were jettisoned with the trunk, where would the propellant for landing come from? It only empties the bottles in the last seconds of flight. What has the parachute got to do with the trunk and second stage? The trunk is needed for abort, power supply, cooling, and to transport unpressurized cargo. Dragon can't fly in space without the trunk. The second stage is needed to reach orbit. The parachutes are needed for abort mode landing and for redundancy if the SDs fail. Probably. But that's true for every spacecraft returning from orbit. The tanks are outside of the pressure vessel. Chutes have to be repacked and replaced each time, with new pyrotechnics, covers, etc... They are not cheap, and not fast turnaround. The engines are reused.

PAO ? Soyuz abort is different because the whole stack architecture is different. However, yes, Soyuz carries its fairing with grid fins for stabilization during an abort, which is similar, but it leaves the service module behind. It carries a backup parachute for abort and as a backup if the SuperDracos fail on descent. Because parachutes are hard to reuse.

More like the DC-3.

The trunk has fins. Those fins are required to stabilize Dragon during the abort burn, like a shuttlecock. The trunk is jettisoned as soon as the burn is complete and the Dragon lands on parachutes. That is launch abort mode. No. The trunk only carries solar panels and radiator panels, no fuel. A service module is typically a propulsion stage. You can call it a service module if you want, but it's really just a fairing for unpressurized cargo and a support structure for the solar panels and radiators. The Dragon capsule carries enough dV for either abort or landing, not both.

Do you know something that we don't? SpaceX's finances are private and pretty confidential. We don't know if they are generating revenue or how much. As I've said before, the starry-eyed cult following is getting old too. I don't think it's pessimistic to believe that SpaceX lives and thrives in the same political and economical reality as the rest of the universe. Musk clearly has a reality distortion field when he talks about transforming into cyborgs, colonizing Mars, terraforming it with nukes, or sending people there in 2024. Pointing that out hardly counts as pessimism. Maybe when people stop using religious terminology, like "miracles" when referring to R&D programs.

It's called representative democracy. You can say the same for pretty much every executive decree or legislative act in most democratic countries. You elect your representatives to act on your behalf. You don't get a say in every decision they make in whatever institutions they sit in. All you can do is vote to replace them when the time comes. You don't like the decisions that are made at the UN? Then vote to change the folks who represent your country at the UN.

We really don't have any clue one way or the other. We simply don't have enough samples to conclude either way.

Nah, he's probably a pretty ok human being. He just has a bit of a reality distortion field around him. What does annoy me are the fanboys who drink up every drop of kool aid that he distills. An interesting point is this though: if he want's to live on Mars, AND he believes that in a couple of years we will have VR simulations that are indistinguishable from reality, then the easiest way for him to die on Mars is to do it in VR. At least it will be much easier to bend the rules of physics to get everything working. That's only because the plot of the movie would have been a bit dull if there was no way to get viewers to see what the reality of the Matrix was. The ability to disconnect from the simulation is irrelevant when someone is talking about the theoretical model. The whole idea of simulated reality is fun to ponder, but it's just as irrelevant as afterlife or multiverse theories. There is no way to prove or disprove them, and it really doesn't matter because there is no way of ever perceiving or controlling anything outside of our reality. We have a set of rules to work with, so let's work with them.

The UN is pretty much controlled by the Security Council members, namely the US, the UK, France, China and Russia. Nothing that comes out of the UN isn't approved by a large majority of these countries. If you have a beef with the UN, then take it up with its member states. The UN is just a tool.