Mitchz95

Just wondering, why does this have a separate thread? The Recovery/Reusability thread covers all of this already.

So ... who's next on the manifest?

If somebody was badly injured on-orbit, how dangerous would a landing in a Soyuz or a Dragon be? A Dream Chaser might be the preferred option in those circumstances.

If it fell in the water, the salt probably damaged the integrity of the rocket body. So no, it wouldn't be reusable. They might be able to salvage some, debris, though.

Just hit enter after pasting the link, then backspace. I think that's what cues it into recognizing it's a tweet and updates itself accordingly. Kind of like the emoticons.

Beat me by one second.

What if they had electromagnets or something on the barge that can switch on upon landing to slow it down or even just keep the stage upright? No idea if that's actually possible, but it would give them time to stabilize it before it has a chance to tip over.

... There's a movie?

I have! The setting is kind of like The Expanse, if you've ever read/watched it: mankind has colonized the solar system but is locked in a cold war between the UN and China. The UN recruits a bunch of convicts and basically forces them at gunpoint to land on a planet orbiting Proxima Centauri and build a settlement before the Chinese. Things get a bit weird from there. If you like Clarke's books you'll definitely like Proxima. There's also a sequel, Ultima, which I haven't read yet.

"The Three-Body Problem" by Liu Cixin. I can't really describe it without spoiling the story (seriously, don't even read the description on the book jacket/back cover), but if you like hard SF then you'll love it. Lots of interesting concepts and ideas. I also second the recommendation of Stephen Baxter's "Proxima". Excellent deconstruction of that old "settling the frontier" concept.

A lot can happen in 50+ years. If we don't have something capable of recovering Hubble by the end of the century I would be very disappointed in humanity.

I'd rather preserve the Hubble, personally. Boost it into a higher orbit so that we can retrieve it in a few decades and display it at the Smithsonian.

I doubt it could offer anything, to be honest. At least not until interplanetary travel becomes cheaper and/or faster than doing stuff on Earth. The only real reason to colonize Mars is because someone wants to colonize Mars for non-profit reasons. Once it's there, the trading would be between independent Martian settlements.

Apparently they still have 100% chance of favorable conditions. Also:

Clicking on the hatches still works, doesn't it?

I'm honestly surprised (pleasantly, mind you!) that Dream Chaser made the cut. And I didn't expect that there would be three winners!

What's wrong with thinking big? Just because something isn't achievable in the near term doesn't mean we shouldn't bother thinking about how it could be done. But I do agree we need to know more about these places before we can seriously talk about sending people there. Europa would probably be a good place to start because it's closer and has a lot of water, but the high radiation environment is a pretty tough sell. Hopefully we'll have developed some kind of countermeasure by the time a manned mission is within reach.

If I were Elon Musk, I'd hold off on announcing the MCT/BFR until they were regularly re-using Falcon 9 first stages. Without re-usability, the whole thing is impractical.

Lurio again: So the announcement is likely to come tomorrow, but not guaranteed.

I think it's still way to early to make a guess, especially since we don't even know what their plans are for the MCT. And proper re-usable rockets are still a good five years away at the very least. My gut tells me it won't start until the early 2030s.

https://twitter.com/NASASpaceflight/status/687306582250622976

Um, isn't the downtime supposed to have started by now?