monophonic

I think the beef is this: "Space Rider will return to Earth with the payloads stowed in its cargo bay" Ergo the customer gets her/his payload back so it is reuseable too. Your X-37B analogy is a perfect match; this does exactly the same thing except the service is sold commercially. Probably a much smaller payload bay though?

Not to mention the process requires fine powdery stuff staying put with a very precisely smooth level surface. Good luck getting that to work in microgravity. Especially of you want it in the near future and without billions of development costs. Did he get a lady and a cougar with the truck?

Always two there are.

Me too, way too high to even see the fireworks. And no waffle house in the entire country either.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trolley_pole In short: a grooved shoe or wheel that rides the overhead line.

I thought that size had to do with what they can fit inside the current factory. Not anything with what can be carried around on the roads.

Amazing, well yeah... the standard method to conduct radon measurements here where I live is with small boxes that contain some kind of sensitive (to alpha radiation I believe) material. They are kept in the space being measured for two months before shipping them off to a laboratory that measures the actual results. Of course the boxes come in an airtight package to prevent accidental exposure before placing them. It is a slow but cheap and reliable method. Best method to radon-proof homes is by having a well ventilated crawl space underneath an airtight floor. Basements and other underground spaces must be airtight and well ventilated too. The idea is to prevent the gas from seeping into the house from the ground and stop it from pooling in the lowest spaces.

"Almost" the same rails... just two parallel pairs of them!

[snip] As for the topic, I think he(?) was a very good arrogant idiot. His main motivation seems to have been to show off to his kin that he knew better what humankind was capable of and thus he was superior to them. Of course he could have easily found a better "4D thinker" from our time or even before than what Picard demonstrated at the end of TNG. Thus I think he must have singled out Picard as one of our weakest individuals so if he could prove Picard as worthy, he would prove essentially all of humankind as worthy. But he was really a donkey about it all towards Picard. Maybe it was part of the test?

Could one make use of the eight SuperDracos on the D2? Pack extra fuel in the trunk and run some extra fuel lines? They are the LES after all, so they cannot be removed despite NASA wanting parachute splashdowns instead of powered landings.

No. We are going to skip right past to the next better thing, and people are going to have them put on all voluntarily. Think having your brain connected directly to the Internet, and vice versa. Elon Musk's Neuralink is working hard to make the neural lace from sir Iain M. Banks' Culture series a reality. The ultimate smart phone, which Banks himself portrayed as the ultimate torture device, it was the crown jewel in GCU Grey Area's collection of those. There won't be even any need to attain physical presence with the torturee, just log/break in to his/her brain and start up whatever horror script you feel like bestowing on the hapless victim...

I doubt they do magnetic navigation at all. Inertial or INS+GPS most likely. I just thought someone may have made a declination correction where unwarranted, and that could be how wrong numbers got into the computers. Pure unadulterated speculation so far of course, there will be an investigation and a report in due time.

Interesting detail. According to http://www.magnetic-declination.com/ magnetic declination at the launch site is -18° 14' which is very close but opposite to the error in launch azimuth. I would hazard a guess that range safety might be wary of blowing up an otherwise nominally functioning rocket so close to but still inside the edge of the permitted zone. There would be a definite risk of possibly toxic debris falling into the safe zone. The boosters and core splash zones were way outside the indicated areas though. It cannot be an easy job being a range safety officer.

Contact with ICEYE-1 was also established soon after launch. Reports say.

There was some talk about the first launch window possibly aiming really close to the orbit of a previously launched government satellite. Any idea if there were such "coincidences" this time around yet?

Varies by nation. Generally a considerable time has to pass before the ownership and responsibility (for e.g. environmental damage from leaking fuel or oil) expires. Typically the wreck then becomes the property of the state rather than free-for-all. International waters are of course something of an unclear position. That is why the wreck of the Estonia was covered with gravel, for example. They wanted to prevent looters from disturbing what is in effect a burial ground.

I haven't seen the last jedi! Although I do instantly recognize Mon Calamari esthetics even if it hits me in the head, from behind, with full broadside. And I am sensitive enough in hollywood economics force to know said esthetics would feature in said motion picture. Nothing actually spoilt for me then. The tears were just because I haven't seen the movie.

9th in 2015, behind such superpowers as Brazil and Italy, according to one of the many lists here: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/World_economy I don't think Russia alone, without the other soviet republics, has ever been in the top 3.

You evil sadist tortureminded devil! You kraken! This bit felt so sad it almost physically hurt me. I hope you're pleased now! Personal sensitivities aside some top class wordcraft there, again. Well written!

Actually I think it would make perfect sense. Since the titanium fins are reusable, they benefit from reduced stress with increased service life. But the aluminum fins are toast even after the less stressful re-entry, so no point in pampering them.

And why the very hot place did they not figure that stuff out before flight?! Doesn't seem very competent now does it?

Obligatory Cody's Lab video:

By a breeding program of course. Whether that should be considered directed evolution or crude bioengineering is altogether another discussion. Picking the starting species should be a lot of fun too. I guess it should already have developed a controlled ability to squirt something that could be selected for propulsion. "I always dreamed of conquering the starts. But I never expected to do it with ships that are, technically, skunks."

This actually does sound like a plausible root cause. Still wicked, though. https://arstechnica.com/science/2017/11/this-weeks-failed-russian-rocket-had-a-pretty-bad-programming-error/ Gorram thing now won't load the preview when posting from browser! In short: Programmed for Baikonur, launched from Vostochny.

What happens is ... umm ... well, you better check it out for yourself. (The table of contents is rather long by now, the first H launches are at the bottom of the first post.)