StrandedonEarth

Rockets evenly spaced along the cable can help it oscillate to avoid satellites and such. The ascent/descent cars can repair and reinforce the cable as they climb and descend. Many cable concepts start with a single strand which is then layered/laminated by subsequent climbers

“Psyche” - Not trying to be picky, just trying to inform Hopefully the flop flight will be on the weekend when I can watch without slacking off at work So who’s leaning on the FAA? Jeff? Tory? Some un-named political lackey? No, I’m not really serious, but can’t help but wonder...

Use the extra 14t to build a proper service module, with oodles of propellant and consumables, which could be transferred to wherever it's needed. Of course, creating such a beast would take even more money.

If you haven’t already, I recommend reading the Red Mars / Green Mars / Blue Mars trilogy by Kim Stanley Robinson. It includes space elevators. Good read IIRC, construction has to start in GEO, extending up and down simultaneously. Orbital mechanics will want to start it rotating, so that would have to be countered somehow. Electromagnetics would be the elegant way; rockets near the ends would be the brute force way, and would probably require a stiffer cable

Anything less than another static fire would open them up to accusations of “Go Fever,” whether true or not.

Just finished a round of Civ6: GS playing as Simon Bolivar of Colombia, one of the DLC civs. Simon has some nice unique perks giving him some useful advantages, so I felt brave enough to take on Immortal difficulty, the second highest. It turned out I had rewind the game a few times at different eras to finally prevail. The TSN turning point was a knock-down, drag-through-the-trenches war of attrition with England, which for awhile had some superior techs, but I was eventually able to overwhelm Eleanor which required all the raw military production I could muster. After that it was a race to eliminate the other advanced civs to head off diplomatic or space race victories. It took me two re-tries to finally wipe out Genghis one turn before he could claim a diplomatic victory. Teddy was overrun, leaving his exoplanet mission dead in space and his diplomatic hopes in ashes. After that, the quickest path to victory was simply a matter of sending my legions of Giant Death Robots to surgically capture the capitals of the remaining opponents. POWER OVERWHELMING!

Zeus: Why you keep calling me Jésus? I look Puerto Rican to you? John McClane: Guy back there called you Jésus. Zeus: He didn't say Jésus. He said, "Hey, Zeus!" My name is Zeus. John McClane: Zeus? Zeus: Yeah, Zeus! As in, father of Apollo? Mt. Olympus? Don't [mess] with me or I'll shove a lightning bolt up your S? Zeus! You got a problem with that? John McClane: No, I don't have a problem with that.

You're using KAC? "Jump to Ship" can't find the vessel? Very odd. If they were in an extremely low orbit, Orbit-Into-Terrain is a possibility (shakes fist at Gilly). And if something has been in Jool orbit for awhile, those moons can start playing pinball with it...

Battery production:

And while we're waiting for Tp1 to launch and SN9's flop to be scheduled, this drops... Apparently SpaceX wants to drill for natural gas near their BC launch site. You can imagine the Twitter blowback, with the envirogod Musk *gasp* drilling! What happened to "Electrify eveything!?" But of course it makes sense. Starship and SuperHeavy must be fuelled, and that methane has to come from somewhere. May as well source it locally if you can. It also makes me wonder how they get their fuel there in the first place. Do they have a pipeline hookup? Or tanker it in? Regardless, if/when SH/SS gets operational at the cadence Musk hopes for, they will need a LOT of fuel. But then there's this: Which would make a great offset for all that methane burnt. And he'll probably want to use to to synthesize methane for SH/SS anyways.

Lol. Given that Canadian bills are now made of plastic, that wouldn’t work very well here. But that wouldn’t stop our governments from trying. Maybe as a squeegee? Frankly, another test would be a good sign, because it would show that NASA finally learned to listen to their engineers.

I don’t mean to “flex on” or denigrate the other disciplines, although in retrospect I suppose that’s how that joke comes across; sorry about that. And it is an old joke from the late 80s, when such banter was more common and less frowned upon. I’m sure the Arts faculty had plenty of jibes at us geerheads. Fact is, I suspect many or most engineers are artists at heart who are good at math. And for the record, in Canada competition for post-secondary seats is (and was) fierce. High C’s did not cut it. Unfortunately, neither did I, once I made it in. At UBC I was too busy enjoying the social life I never had before to get enough sleep to focus on class.

Nice find, that’s hilarious. No, Worf, not you, put down the arrrghaghagh......

Why would you care to translate idiots? Whoops, misread that the first time, nevermind...

I’ll never get over Macho Grande

Now I’m hungry for watermelon.... And not heavywatermelon

An old joke from when I was an (failing) engineering student: Q. What do you say when you meet an Arts graduate?

Dangit, how did I not notice that author Clive Cussler died almost a year ago? Grrrr. He was one of my favorite authors, going back to Raise The Titanic. Dirk Pitt rocked, too bad the occasional movies didn't. I see his passing was noted on these forums, but not in this thread. Hopefully his son Dirk will continue to carry the torch. RIP. Dangit.

There’s an old thread that is close to this topic, and could stand reviving and possibly updating.... It should give you some info on may people here. Now excuse me while I get back to work retreading semi-trailer tires...

Interesting. A fully fueled jetpack weighs masses as much as a suited kerbal. So a bare kerbal will be able to jump quite a bit higher than a "fully loaded" kerbal. I'll need to remember that when I can't quite reach the ladder.... Hmm, too bad the suits don't have a mass. Maybe the future suit could be a little lighter? And tourists don't even need suits, right?

I think they usually do a single engine burn for most landing burns, when they can. The 1-3-1 landing burn significantly increases the pucker factor, IIRC, pushing the edge of the envelope.

Very alliterative

I assume those pics were taken through filters, or else had some post-processing done, to bring out such gorgeous detail. The “lightning” IMO is the “silver lining” on clouds in the background. In pic 2 I don’t see any GG exhausts, but the Twitter comments opine that the orange flame is the smoke from the hypergolic flame. Highlighted by whatever photomagic was used for the shots.

These pics are simply gorgeous.