Nibb31

That would make no sense. The X-37 launches on top of an Atlas V. Using it to launch satellites would make it the most expensive and overengineered payload fairing in the world. Basically, you'd be using an Atlas V to launch a micro-satellite just so that you can get the fairing back. - - - Updated - - - I didn't think I would need to elaborate. Let me rephrase: Why would you want to use a lifting body on a planet with barely any atmosphere. Lifting bodies are already marginal on Earth, and Mars' atmospheric pressure is 1% of Earth's. It wouldn't glide, it would fall like a brick.

Why would you want to use a lifting body on Mars ?

Everybody knew from the start that it would be orange, but some stupid manager somewhere insisted that PR renders should show it with white print to differentiate it from Ares V and to associate it with Saturn V nostalgia.

You being pretty sure isn't good enough. The problem is that we can't yet be 100% sure, and if we contaminate a landing site, we also contaminate any samples, so we can't be sure whether any bacteria we find is indigenous or something that we brought along.

It had to be painted to avoid corrosion, so you might as well paint it the same color as the rest.

Space organizations haven't had a problem with crashing stuff in deserts, steppes, or various bodies of water. They also haven't had any problem with leaving chutes and aeroshells on Mars or crasher stages on the Moon. At this stage, as long as everything is sterilized, there shouldn't be any concern for science. As soon as we start landing humans on Mars, of course, the sterilization concern goes out the window.

MOL was from 1963 to 1969. VentureStar was a paper study by Lockheed Martin for NASA and X-33 was clearly NASA. X-37 was NASA, transferred to the USAF to become X-37B. If an X-37C is a Boeing paper study with no funding.

Beware of the greener pastures on the other side of the fence. Pay levels and the cost of living are structured completely differently in the US compared to Europe. For example, qualified jobs are better paid in the US, but you have to pay for a lot of stuff that is free or subsidized in Europe. When looking at a European paycheck, depending on the country, 20 to 30% is usually substracted for taxes, social security, healthcare, retirement funds, etc... so there is a pretty big difference between gross and net salary. And you have to look at the whole cost of living thing: Most products are more expensive in Europe than in the US and housing varies wildly depending on where you live. Immigration laws in Europe are tough. Check with your local embassies and consulates to get an idea. There are differences between EU countries, but you can start with the consulates that are close to you to get a basic idea of what's possible and what isn't: https://embassy-finder.com/in_portland-oregon_usa On the other hand, studying in a foreign country as an exchange student is a great experience and will by highly valued when you apply for your first job, even if you decide to go back to the US.

The nuclear power industry produces 20000 tons of radioactive waste every year. That would be over 1000 Falcon Heavy launches every year. It's much cheaper to simply bury the stuff.

Stratolaunch is a subsonic air launch. It's very different from a hypersonic high-altitude first stage in pretty much every way. One is a carrier plane, the other is a spacecraft.

Actually, they did. And Skype too.

Nuclear plants require massive quantities of water for cooling. How do you cool a nuclear reactor in space? Also, nuclear power is as clean as it gets in term of emissions. How would it be cleaner in space?

Who said it had to be disposable? The only purpose of having an SSTO is to make reusability easier, SSTO has no other merit. However, there is nothing that says that you can't have reusable multi-stage launcher. The margins are tight on Skylon, and although it does seem to work on paper. In real-life, pretty much every aerospace engineering project ends up slightly overweight or slightly underperforming, or slightly more expensive than predicted... Compromises have to be made, and because of the paper-thin margins on Skylon, any compromise in weight, performance, or cost, means that it's not going to orbit. Aiming for SSTO just for the sake of SSTO is stupid. If they designed it as a reusable suborbital hypersonic first stage, it might make more sense.

Both. It's also extremely inefficient. If you can design an SSTO that can launch a 1-ton payload to orbit, you could also make a multi-stage version that could launch a 10-ton payload.

On the Saturn V, the SLA (Saturn LM Adapter, the shroud around the LEM) supported the entire weight of the CSM throughout launch. The CSM was attached to the top of the SLA panels (with pyro bolts). The LM was attached to the base of the SLA. The early versions were hinged, so that the panels would stay attached to the S-IVB. However, during Apollo 7, they became concerned that the panels might become an obstacle for the docking and extraction of the LM, so they switched to spring loaded detachable panels. After the panels were jettisonned and the CSM was detached, the CSM docked with the LM and another set of pyros separated the LM from the base of the SLA. Other than pyro bolts, Apollo also used guillotines. These were basically heavy pyro-powered blades that would cut through the wires and sever the wiring and plumbing between modules. There were guillotines between the LM and the S-IVB, between the CM and the SM, and between the LM ascent and descent module. Without the guillotines, the separation would fail, causing a catastrophic failure.

Even thrust in Star Trek is wrong. It's based on Magic. It might as well be Lord of the Rings in space. Why is this in the Science Labs ?

The lunar poles are the most interesting place on the Moon, and are mostly unexplored. If there is ever a Moon base, it's likely to be at Shackleton Crater. It offers permanently shadowed areas that are likely to have solid ice and permanently exposed areas, which are perfect for solar power.

You can't really conclude anything. All we know is that some scientists have detected a bizarre phenomenon around a star and that this entire thread is jumping the shark of some idiot click-bait journalist.

I think that both Allen and Branson have a lot in common. Unlike Musk, they are business people, not geeks. They hire people who are experts, but they are not experts themselves, and the people they hired were probably more influenced by the fat pay checks that by the laws of physics when they gave their advice. In the end, they both definitely underestimated the harsh difficulty of spaceflight, and wildy overestimated the benefits of air launch. Anyone in the industry knows that it's a dead end and that the drawbacks outweigh any benefits by an order of magnitude. After 5 years of development, Stratolaunch still doesn't have a rocket, nor does it have a partnership deal to obtain one. I say it's dead in the water. The carrier plane might fly a couple of times, but then it'll end up in a hangar like Hughes' Spruce Goose.

If you assume that the whole point of human life is to go interstellar, then you're in for a big disappointment. It's not going to happen during our lifetimes, so we might as well just get on with our own lives, sit back, enjoy, and wait for the end.

The OnePlus One is still a solid beast. I've had it for over a year now, and its performance is still great. It has all the bells and whistles except wireless charging and a fingerprint reader, which are not high on my priority list. It can be easily rooted and flashed, so you have a large choice of custom ROMs that you can get on xda-developers.com (I've been using SlimLP as a daily driver since I've had the phone). The only drawback is the lack of choice in custom cases. There are a couple of nice ones, but the well-known flagships have a much wider variety.

Whatever it was, 1451 years ago...

Agreed, but the budgets allocated to space in general are symbolic compared to other nations.

The whole point of a national space program is to fund and subsidize a domestic space industry. The main purpose of that is to create highly qualified jobs and to stimulate the economy. National space agencies don't typically buy from other countries, because that goes against the whole point of having a space agency. Skylon is British, so its only chance to get government funding is if the UK government all of a sudden acquires an interest in space. Historically, that's unlikely at this point. The UK is part of ESA, but ESA splits its own funding proportionally to the countries that fund ESA. Therefore, it can only increase funding of a British program if the British government allocates more funds to ESA (which is also very unlikely). The only other option would be to spread Skylon development over several ESA member states by getting Alenia-Thales and Airbus DS involved in the project, but it doesn't seem that REL or any of the potential partners are interested in that either.

Not really. 12 flights per year isn't enough to justify a 7 billion dollar reusable launcher program.