Nibb31

They absolutely do. If they are offering a service in a country, they need to abide by the rules of that country. This applies to any corporation that does business on the internet. If Amazon and Google do business in Argentina, for example, they need to abide by the laws and regulations of Argentina. The same is true for any operator. What matters is where the people are. You'll find that those red areas cover probably 90% of human activity in the country, which is why operators do not invest in the 10% that's left. Sure, it's great that the 10% of people in those areas get the option of fast internet, but it remains a niche service for a small market volume. We don't know what sort of service these constellations will be offering (many speculate that they will be providing backbone/backhaul service, not end-user service), nor the price, or the availability of terminals, but it is unlikely than the existing network operators just decide to sit back and be slaughtered. They will fight back by offering higher capacity and/or lower prices in order to remain competitive and to preserve their market share. This means lower margins for everyone and that the space operators might have to settle on lower revenue than they expected.

NASA doesn't really want another LEO station after the ISS. The plan is for a Deep Space Habitat, which can be used as a staging post for BEO missions or as hab for long duration exploration. And there is no leftover ISS hardware. You might be able to salvage Node 4, but the CAM is in disrepair, rotting under a tarp in Japanese parking lot. As for the ICM the only reason to use it would be because you have it. It would serve no real purpose.

All of this assumes that existing network operators won't put up a fight. Telecoms are an extremely competitive business and they move fast. Wireless operators are constantly investing in new technology. They aren't going to sit around and wait to become extinct. If space internet every becomes a thing, they will compete by offering higher bandwidth or lowering prices. 5G is due next year, and there will be talks about 6G by the time these constellations start operations. In France, you can get unlimited phone and 4G for under 10 euros per month. It is unlikely that constellation operators will be competitive in terms of bandwidth and cost, simply because they have a longer lead time. So they can only aim their service at a niche However, the niche of customers who only have access to satellite internet AND have the money to pay for it, is dwindling. Even Africa has 3G pretty much everywhere where people need it nowadays. In the end, I think that the profits are not big enough to revolutionize the industry, and certainly not to pay for Martian colonies of that's what you're thinking...

I just clicked Reply, and again, the editor auto-filled with some old post from several days ago. If that's not "broken", then I don't know what is. Mandatory key combos are a big no-no for any accessibility testing. Besides the obfuscation and unpredictability, they are simply not accessible to users on mobile devices, keyboardless devices (consoles), or physically impaired users. Right-click menus are typically associated with the browser, not the web site that's running inside it. It's a limitation that simply doesn't need to exist. Most software UI guidelines require that any keyboard shortcuts must be accessible by some other means. The obvious way to design it would be to add a visual indicator like a menu button or a quote toolbar. There was absolutely no reason for a software developer to invent a whole new paradigm of forum user interfaces just because he wasn't arsed to add a freaking button. And the old forum worked in a perfectly predictable manner on mobile devices. It would have worked even better if it used Tapatalk like pretty much every other forum these days, but that's another story...

The only move the launcher when they go from the factory to the launch site. They don't move rockets from one launch site to another. SpaceX can launch from Vandenberg AFB, Cape Canaveral LC40, Kennedy LC39A and soon from their own launch site in Boca Chica. Vandenberg is for military polar launches. LC40 is for eastward launches. LC39A is for Falcon Heavy. Boca Chica is to have their own independent launch site. Having multiple options also allows them to increase their flight rate.

I'm really itching to answer the above post, but I really can't without breaking the forum rules about politics and religion. So I'll reluctantly leave it there.

ISS has plenty of flags all over it. But none of the partners goes "in your face" about taking all the credit because they contributed more than the others. If it's an international effort, then the only diplomatically acceptable thing to do is to plant a banner representing all the countries that participated, similar to the ISS logo that I posted above. Otherwise, it would be interpreted as demeaning their participation. Do you think that a US astronaut stepping out of his European-built lander with a Russian space suit and a Chinese life-support system should plant a US flag with the Japanese and a Canadian astronauts standing behind him, and none of the participating countries should feel insulted? If nationalism is the only drive for going to Mars, then their is no point if asking other countries to participate, therefore the question of which flag you plant is moot. If you're not willing the share the glory, then don't ask others to share the effort.

...which pretty much illustrates the idea that flags are a remnant of our old tribal customs. If anything, it symbolises the idea of "Us vs Them", trying to propagate the idea that "we" as a group are better or more worthy than other humans from some other group for the sole reason that we belong to this group. Separating humans into arbitrarian groups based on artificial concepts such as flags and borders or religion, has always been a tool for those in power to enforce that power over populations. But... but... BK is so much tastier that McD's ! It at least allows a tribune and a framework for diplomatic relations. It's not perfect, but I really don't think the World would be a better place without it. "<X> are superior to <Y> because they are <X>! Rah, rah, long live <X>!" (replace <X> and <Y> with the über and unter nationalies/religions/political parties of your choice) is baseless propaganda, nothing more. Nationalism and patriotism were the main causes of WWI and were also used as a propaganda tool for WWII. in its soil was stronger in Europe than in America, which is why many Europeans are reluctant to wave flags and thump their chests about how great their country is. It's not necessarily because they don't feel pride, but nowadays, in many European countries, patriotism and nationalism are often associated with right-wing extremism. The trauma caused by two world wars and the suspicion that we have regarding blind patriotism is something that many of our American friends don't necessarily understand about European culture. I don't see how the cult of a leader is any better or worse than love of the nation or any other subjective ideology. All of them allow atrocities when they are taken to extremes and all of them are detestable when they are an excuse to claim that those who don't share the same beliefs are lesser human beings. <Disclaimer for the mods: This is not intended as a political rant, just as a cultural clarification. Please don't lock the thread>.

Yes, as I said, it's a nice incentive, but it won't be a game changer in that won't stimulate a substantial growth in the launch market. The difference between $60 million and $50 million isn't big enough to create new business models and a huge demand for space launches. I think it's on the long list of stuff that Elon has tweeted about, the fanbois have got their knickers in a twist about, and then has been put on the back burner because it simply isn't such a great idea. SpaceX seems to be concentrating on RTF, Raptor, MCT/BFR these days, which is already quite a lot for a lean company. I don't think the LEO internet constellation was ever as much as a cash cow as some people seemed to think. The telecom industry is highly competitive, with low margins, and rapid evolution. 4G offers more than most people really need these days with a wide coverage, and 5G is on the way. Catering to the folks who don't have access to 4G is becoming more and more of an unprofitable niche. It doesn't necessarily make sense to make a huge investment in a niche technology with a long lead-time when the rest of the telecom world is advancing at a quick pace.

In the aerospace industry, two units a day is mass production. Sure, it's not comparable to the volumes for cars or cell phones, but compared to the production levels of other rocket engines or even jet engines, SpaceX benefits immensely from economies of scale on two main levels: sharing the fixed costs over more units and discounts from procuring larger volumes. Those benefits have been the major factor in allowing SpaceX to cut costs so much. Engine commonality in particular was a genius idea, because it is much cheaper to a have a production line build 10 identical engines for each rocket than to have two production lines for first and upper stage engines. When you start reusing boosters on a large scale, your production volumes decrease significantly, and with that decrease you lose most of those scaling benefits. They will undoubtedly still be profitable, but I don't think that the actual savings when comparing the two models are as clear-cut as many people seem to think.

We still don't know if recovering a stage actually allows economically viable reusability. Reusing and refurbishing the first stage might allow some cost savings compared to building a new one, but there are many more factors involved in the cost of orbital launch. The manufacturing cost of the first stage is actually only a small part of the total cost of launching a rocket, maybe only 30% (optimistically). The rest of the cost is mainly the workforce, planning, infrastructure, logistics, R&D, transport, administrative overhead, etc... And there's transport, integration, launch services, and a lot of stuff that isn't recoverable (upper stage, fairing...). The payroll of the workforce is the biggest part of the launch cost, and reusability doesn't magically reduce the workforce. SpaceX is just about as lean as a launch provider can be and has already slashed prices as much as they could. Even with reusability, they will still need a factory and lots of engineers. Even if you need a few less people on the production lines to build less boosters, you need people to refurbish, prepare, and transport the recovered stage, which wasn't needed before. And this assumes that the first stage is actually free, which it isn't. It's designed to fly maybe 20 times, but not indefinitely. You could assume that by spreading the manufacturing cost over 20 flights reduces the cost per flight by 95% of the above-mentioned 30% figure, but it isn't even that simple. Disposable rockets (especially the Falcon 9) are actually designed to be (relatively) cheap, partly because they are produced in numbers. Manufacturing costs diminish with volume, meaning that as launch volume increases, the unit cost of each booster decreases.If you have 50 launches per year, with a disposable model, you need to mass produce 500 Merlin engines and 50 first stages. With 100% first stage reusability, the same factory has to build only 2.5 first stages and 72.5 engines. The result is that due to lower procurement volumes and higher fixed costs, those reusable stages are going to cost a lot more than the disposable ones. Enough to seriously cut into the reduction induced by reusing the stages in the first place. Instead of saving 95% on the manufacturing cost of the first stage, for the same amount of flights, the real cost reduction might only be 50%. So in the end, what sounded like a 95% (of 30%) reduction of launch cost might only turn out to be a 15% reduction, which has the potential to bring the cost of a Falcon 9 launch from $60 million down to $45 million. It's a nice perk to pass on to your customers, but it's not a game changer. Now, from the customer's point of view, the actual launch is only a small part of the total cost of a typical project. Maybe, again, 20%. The rest is the satellite itself (the biggest part of the budget), the ground stations, the insurance, and the actual operations. This means that in the grand scheme of things, the total saving that a customer can expect when they put a satellite in service is 15% of 20%, which is only 3%. On a $200 million comsat project, that's a whopping $6 million saving on their total expenses. Again, it's a nice saving, but it's not a revolution. Note: The above figures are educated guesses, but I believe the orders of magnitude are pretty close.

Both BO and SpaceX landings are great achievements. The difference is that SpaceX is flying at Mach 6 when it releases its payload. The upper stage is well on its way to orbit and only needs something like 6000m/s of dV to reach orbit. BO is flying at basically zero velocity when it reaches its apogee. If the payload was an upper stage, that upper stage would still need to produce the whole 9000 m/s of orbital speed. And yeah, Musk should be taken away his Twitter license. Most of what he says on there is BS.

Fortunately, that's not how international cooperation works. If it did work that way, there would be no international cooperation. You're not going to ask Japan, Russia, China, or France to chip in and then kick them out when it comes to planting your flag. Why should they contribute to a mission where the USA will reap all the benefits? The whole point of cooperation is to demonstrate friendship and unity, not kicking the rest of Humanity in the gonads. If you're not prepared to share the glory, then don't ask other countries to participate. When ESA launches Ariane, they have flags of all ESA member states on it, regardless of how much each country contributed. You don't put a huge French flag and a tiny UK flag based on funding levels, because that wouldn't be acceptable to the UK and they would probably just pull out. The biggest part of the ISS was contributed by NASA, but that doesn't mean that NASA gets to put huge US flags everywhere. There are plenty of flags from all the countries that have participated. When Orion flies EM-1 and EM-2, there will be ESA member flags all over the Service Module... So if it is an international effort, the only diplomatically acceptable thing to do is put up some sort of plaque, insignia, or banner with the flags of all the countries that participated in the project.

They planned to use it as an upper stage for a variant of the Saturn V. The Nerva engine would be used in the S-N stage, which would replace the good old S-IVB for missions to Mars. However, when you look at the numbers, the trade studies weren't that favorable. The S-N would have had a higher Isp, but the Nerva with LH was much heavier than the J-2 with LOX and LH. It also had lower thrust, was much more expensive, and required the construction of a whole new nuclear logistics infrastructure at KSC with all the specialized handling, safety, and security. In the end, it wasn't worth it. The plans for Mars were scrapped, S-N was cancelled, and Nerva was abandoned.

I doubt it would be perfectly usable after burning up on re-entry. Any bits that survived would splash down into the ocean. Recovering an upper stage is a much harder problem than the first stage: you will need a seriously beefy (and heavy) reusable heat shield, a very deep-throttlable Merlin D-Vac, and a way to light that huge engine bell facing a hypersonic airstream while staying stable. It makes sense to spend a manageable effort to recover 9 engines, but it doesn't make economical sense to spend a huge effort to recover 1 engine.

"Cheaper" is not anything that anybody knows yet, not even SpaceX. Recovering a spent stage is a great achievement. Reusing a spent stage is the next step that SpaceX is only just going to start on. Reusing stages economically is yet another step that will come some time later. We don't know what amount of refurbishing and testing is necessary, how many times a stage can be reused, nor what the break-even point is in terms of flight rate compared to the economies of scale due to mass-production, not if the reduced payload is sustainable on the launch market. So it's too early to speculate on what can or can't be done economically with a reusable Falcon Heavy. We don't even know what sort of payload it put into LEO or GTO depending on the configuration, whether 0, 1, or 3 cores are recovered, and where they land.

Yes, but only one, throttled down, for landing. The boostback burn needs more oomph.

Oh yeah. And we are supposed to guess that how? Are we like supposed to read the mind of the dummy developer who decided that a good user interface is one that hides essential features behind key combos that are never used on web sites or any other forum software? Sorry, that's a broken UI, and I work in software development, so I think I know a thing or two about UI design. Any developer who came up with that sort of user experience needs to be sacked. And anyone at Squad who evaluated IPS 4 and thought it was good forum software needs to be sacked too. What about fixing the" reply-that-brings-up-my-previous-reply-and-doesn't-let-me-quote-the-post-I-actually-wanted-to-reply-to" bug? Or is that another feature that has to be activated by a magic key combo and secret gesture? Can you tell I'm krakened? Good, cuz I am.

It's a first stage. It does what first stages do. If it went all the way to orbit and back, it would be an SSTO, meaning that it would have an abysmal payload fraction. They are required to deorbit it.

So much for "refuel and go". More like" refuel, sand down, repaint, and go".

Give me good old bbcode anyday over a broken implementation of WYSIWIG that just makes our lives more complicated. The quoting system is broken to a degree that makes it unusable. You can't even delete quote blocks and it frequently brings up the wrong quote or a quote that I replied to several posts beforehand. Reply twice in the same thread and it just loses it. It's a damn mess. Just give us bbcode, even if it's as an "advanced" option. It just worked and it was obvious to use. This editor is just unusable and broken.

The quoting system is so badly broken on this forum, I've given up trying to clean up the mess it creates. The mods don't seem to give a kerbal, so I don't see why I should bother.

Yes, in Boca Chica, Texas. That's still 1675 km from their landing site at Cape Canaveral, which is a bit of a stretch for coming straight down. Even for Boca Chica launches, RTLS will still be easier than flying to Florida. Rocket stages typically splashdown 200 to 400 km from their launch site.

No they don't. They intend to find thousands of rich people who will sell everything they've got to become janitors, builders, and maintenance technicians and spend the rest of their lives living in tin cans on air conditioning and recycled urine. That's their stated goal

I don't think you've been following Virgin Galactic very closely. Even a corporation represents a nation.