Kerbin Dallas Multipass

If you want a desktop computer: Order the parts and build it yourself.

@Firov Design evolution over time is one thing, hotfixing forseeable problems each time there is a worst case incident is something different

@Firov Yea, but the pre Challenger design was not some prototype but meant to be the final "product". The safety improvements after the disaster were on top of that existing design, and some of the abort modes can be called adventurous to say the least. Any major sputtering in one of the SRBs would have always killed the crew (SRBs have a 1% failure rate according to Wikipedia), same with any explosion on the launchpad.

I wouldn't nitpick too much about the o-rings. Nasa made a wrong decision that day which is very tragic. What can be considered reckless however is the fact that a loss of more than one SSMEs during the first 350 seconds and major malfunction of either SRB would have meant loss of crew. This was known and accepted as part of the design. Arrogance?

@Themohawkninja @Nibb31 Dragon1 was talking about the Energia II concept which was planned to be fully reusable. In both (I and II) designs the Buran shuttle was just an optional configuration, the system could be used as a heavy lifter for any payload.

If you regard the potential military threat the shuttle posed, it was an idea so brilliant that the soviets went through the effort of designing and launching their own clone. For civilian spaceflight purposes the shuttle is just ill-designed IMHO. Not because of any particular flaws but because the entire concept is just too "luxurious" and resource-inefficient. I would say NASA can be criticized for using SRBs, yet not even thinking about a launch escape system. I also wonder why there was no mandatory procedure to inspect the airframe before initiating reentry (every hang glider pilot does a "walkaround" before takeoff). So yea, safety-wise: What were they thinking?

An alternate universe where no alternate universes exist

Perhaps you find it somewhere in here http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jc_T93Yj2BY

@WestAir Where the sun IS is not regarded as "information". That the sun has STOPPED its motion is regarded as "information". Is that correct? If so I still dont get it.

Interesting, but I dont really get it. They seem to differenciate between static gravity fields (gravitoelectric) which appear to have instantaneous effects, and gravitational waves (gravitomagnetic) which transmit pertubations of gravity at speed of light. All this reference frame stuff is really giving me a headache, lol. When a black hole gains mass, the (spherical) event horizon gets bigger, doesn't it? So eventually everything that has already fallen into it will be inside the event horizon, not frozen in time near its surface. So i guess this catch all won't really work?

You can see clearly that the bowl of petunias burns up in a quick flash while the sperm whale has time for a monologue. It's the only explanation

Hm thanks for your answers Gravity is often explained as a property of spacetime. Spacetime just IS warped around a body, there is no need for propagating waves. Is that correct, too? My follow up question would be: How can a black hole "transmit" gravity if nothing can escape the black hole? How can a black hole "tell" spacetime that it's spinning? No Information can travel faster than c, and nothing traveling at c ever gets out of the black hole? @K^2 Apologies for using godmode;)

I am utterly confused. I read that the universe expanding at a speed higher than c. Because it's the actual spacetime continuum expanding which makes nothing travel faster than light. I also read about gravitational waves being limited to c as top speed. Is gravity "imprinted" in the space time continuum (so, is the effect instant) or is it gravitational radiation (which takes time to travel)? Am I mixing things up here? Let's say I was the flying spaghetti monster and I select the sun and click "delete". Would the earth continue orbiting a non existent body for 8 minutes and then fly straight?

You might find this an interesting and entertaining read http://what-if.xkcd.com/20/

It's actually 12 billlion times the volume of the sun. But I used Wikipedia as a source (they are probably lying) and an open source calculator (everyone can change the code!). And can you belive it? They also insist that it's called VY Canis Majoris! Fools!

I like spaceflight, I don't think we need manned spaceflight, but it's pretty awesome. What I do not like is the idea that we just have to "move west" to find new fruitful lands where we can settle, and that this new "west" is space. We have run out of "west" long ago, this metaphor from cowboy movies does not work anymore - If spaceflight has showed us anything it's that our home is a fragile blue marble. You mentioned the problems: We are overpopulating our planet and each individual is posing more stress on the environment as we all gain standard of living (which is more awesome than manned spaceflight!) I belive that simple things like birth control and education (both for every citizen of planet earth) are the way to tackle problems, not colonizing hostile, irradiated, infertile places.

Reporting in from Germany Here the recent cold conditions in north america were blown out of proportion and even reliable news sources reported windchill temps as actual temperatures. They just reported the centigrade values without ever mentioning that it's "subjective" temperature. I think we are in a deep crisis of mainstream media right now. They want emotions, faces, pictures, 30 seconds or less. Journalists see numbers as exclamation marks, let alone basics of physics. I don't complain about the windchill factor as a way of describing climate conditions, it's just being abused to terrorize us with record temperatures to grab our attention.

T minus 10 minutes

The word "*****" is taken from the Latin word for "tail." Some derive that from Indo-European *pesnis, and the Greek word Àέο = "*****" from Indo-European *pesos. Prior to the adoption of the Latin word in English the ***** was referred to as a "yard". I googled this for a tail joke. I feel quite inadequate now. Yard. WTF.

A planet like this cant form I'd say. With planet I mean a planet sized object. -Planets form because matter (basically gravel, dust, gas) settles down around a center of gravity. -But let's say we already have a sturdy planet and want to make it spin. To make it spin that fast we need a huge impact. A huge impact would create heat and melt or break the stuff the planet is made of. Stuff would just fly off. No more planet. -Even if you take a theoretical frozen bowling ball the size of a planet, I would guess that - at that scale - it would stretch out like rotating pizza dough and just fly apart. Just my 2cts. Maybe someone has better imagination and knowledge

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Graveyard_orbit They put old satellites there so they dont interfere or crash into the active ones.

-- NASA on Google+

Kryten is right. Launch delayed, probable launch tomorrow 1.10 pm EST http://www.orbital.com/NewsInfo/MissionUpdates/Orb-1/MissionUpdate/index.shtml

Theyre using a solid upper stage. What crazyness...

EDIT: I'm trolling. No need to answer this seriously. K^2 If there was a headline "SATURN LAUNCH TURNS DAY INTO NIGHT (in 1,2 billion years)" would you say yay or nay?