StrandedonEarth

In summation, may the fleas of a thousand camels infest their armpits!

And hooked to a solar panel and a phased array antenna

Yes, but expect NASA's schedule to slip a few years, and then to have a proper presence there instead of more flags and footprints means setting goals in Elon time.

I thnk part of the reason for the sudden rush to the moon is that the Chinese have expressed interest in landing taikonauts on the Moon. A little competition sparks wonders.... And yeah, I don't see how the US could have hoped to pull it off in that timeline without BO already being three years into the development of BM, as well as Starship proceeding rapidly, albeit unproven.

Okay, so you don't need a second stage engine. For that savings, you need to bring the equivalent of an entire first stage to orbit, which is a LOT of mass. The rocket equation exacts a stiff penalty for accelerating all of that extra mass an extra few km/s, bringing your useful payload down by an order of magnitude or so. As an aside, NASA contracted private contractors to supply rockets on a cost-plus basis. There was no incentive for those contractors to develop, or help develop, re-usable vehicles, as it was much more profitable to build new rockets for each launch. Even Shuttle required a huge new tank each launch, and refurbishing the SRB's cost nearly as much as making new ones. And the army required to turn the Orbiters around for the next launch kept the pork flowing.

By invoking Geography and Topology as the sciences they are, this thread is probably the best fit for these facts, which are probably little-known outside of the Fraser Valley. I just finished reading Before We Lost the Lake by Chad Reimer, and here are some factoids from that history: At the northern end of the Sumas Prairie which straddled Washington state and southwest BC, there was once a shallow lake in roughly the center of the Fraser Valley. Sumas Lake varied from a low-water state of 9,000 acres and a maximum depth of just nine feet, to an average of 16,000 acres and roughly twenty feet deep during the spring freshets. The highest recorded flood in 1894 covered an area of 30,000 acres, reaching a depth of thirty-one feet. There were sandy beaches and lush wetlands surrounding it, and it was home to five species of salmon, as well as trout and huge sturgeon. The surrounding wetlands supported billions of waterfowl as they migrated along the Pacific Flyway, along with uncountable insects and dense clouds of voracious mosquitoes. Prior to the arrivals of the Whites, the area supported nearly 25,000 Indians (I will use that term here for the indigenous peoples, as that is how they were refereed to in those days and that is the term used in the book) from several bands. That number was decimated to less than 2,500 by the smallpox plagues which accompanied the White settlers. Aside from explorers and surveyors, the area was first settled by Whites starting in the 1850's, as a supply stop on the way to the Fraser/Cariboo gold rush areas. Over the next seventy years, the lake became a popular recreational spot for swimming, boating, sailing, and hunting. Since the 1870's, there were various proposals for dyking the Sumas Prairie, if not draining Sumas Lake, to reduce the impact of the yearly flooding (including mosquitoes, which caused a drop in dairy production by the tormented cattle!). The early plans never came to pass, due to incompetence, lack of capital, and the refusal of the provincial governments to get involved in the financing of the projects. Finally, a plan of dykes, diversions, dams, canals, and pumps was proposed that satisfied the White landowners (the federal government was derelict in protecting the interests of the Indians, or even giving them a voice in the matter), and with engineering that was determined to be both sound and feasible. Construction on the Sumas Lake Reclamation Project lasted from 1920 to 1924, when the lake was officially declared "drained," despite seepage under the dykes and from the high water table in the area. The goal was to "reclaim" tens of thousands of acres of farmland, which was somewhat successful in that the weeds had to be battled back and nutrient deficiencies (nitrogen and potash) in the soil needed to be remedied. It was more successful in mostly eliminating the plague of mosquitoes which followed each wet season. However, it also eliminated the main source of sustenance and income available to the Indians, by destroying the home of the salmon, sturgeon, and waterfowl they relied upon, as well as the mammals that lived (otter, mink, beaver, deer) or came to feed there (wolves, bears, cougars). The loss of a prime stopover point on the Pacific Flyway had a profoundly negative effect on migratory waterfowl (which had already been decimated by White hunters), as similar wetlands up and down the western part of the continent were also developed. It also eliminated a natural spillway which helped mitigate the yearly flooding further down the Fraser River. The project was budgeted at roughly $1.5 million, but came in at nearly $3 million, mostly due to underestimating the sheer volume of earth to be moved. Decades after completion, the cost was pegged at $9 million, with the difference attributed to the compounded interest on the financing the project required (The sale of the lands reclaimed did not garner as much revenue as expected due to falling land prices during the Great Depression). This compounded interest could have been avoided had the provincial government financed the project at the start as they should have as a public works project, instead of spinning it as a business project to reclaim land for sale. Eventually the cost was quietly added to the provincial books. The town of Yarrow Proper sits on the former lakebed, and the whole of the Fraser and Sumas Valleys are highly productive farmland, at the cost of a highly productive wetland ecosystem, which at the time was simply thought of as a wasted land. The true value of that now-gone ecosystem was not recognized until modern times. Before and After: Edit: tl;dr: 100 years ago there was a shallow floodplain lake between Abbotsford and Chilliwack, where Yarrow now sits, that I knew next to nothing about until recently!

I also tend to go with Rogue One as my fave. K-2SO had some wonderful one-liners, and there were other good ones too. IMO it recaptured the humor of the original 1977 Star Wars (no episode number or name required), which would be my next up for favorite.

Wow. Is there a space mirror about 510 LY away out in that direction?

A re-entering stage has nearly full orbital velocity going into the atmosphere. An ascending vehicle does a significant portion of its acceleration above the atmosphere.

The problem with SSTO's is that the payload fraction is minuscule. And requires a high level of thermal protection over a much larger area.

I believe wet workshop is doable if it is designed to be converted. Features like standardized equipment mounting rails, in parallel to double as channels for running cables, tubes, and conduits would go a long way towards being able to convert an emptied tank to habitable space. Alternately, designing a habitable space to handle storing propellants is another potential path. Where there's a will, there's a way. The only way to determine if an idea is truly viable is to try it, a method employed by both Thomas Edison and Elon Musk, among others

Unfortunately liquid hydrogen is bulky, requiring huge tanks. And with the mass involved, the idea of a HTHL spaceplane needing to abort shortly before or after takeoff is likely to result in a huge fireball. And with new tech, such an abort is likely.

Oh good, you found the engine plate. Using that to mount 9 Vectors will lift dang near anything for an equally hefty price

Agreed. I admit to being a SpaceX fan mostly because they broke out of the expendable rut, but I'm also a fan of all these marvelous creations that ride a controlled continuous explosion into space Ah, but you only mentioned SpaceX. Not that there's anything wrong with that, but it's best not to put all of one's eggs in one basket, lest they all get scrambled.

I keep thinking of it as "Breaking Wind"

Well, they also said it can be moved between orbits. So no orbit would be permanent, even L1. Maybe a little self-contradictory. And they will need every rocket they can build, buy, borrow, or beg, no matter who supplies it.

You could consider leaving a fuel depot with a scientist in Mun polar orbit. Land, collect, launch, dock, reset, rinse, refuel, and repeat.

The best way to play is the way that gives you the most enjoyment, which is a rather individual metric. Some people just tool around on the surface with overland trains and submarines, while others reach for the stars (which requires mods...) And others like myself try to land on and return from every body in the stock system, and the craft i use are rather odd-looking sometimes... Welcome to Kerbin!

Nice how they managed to get approximately the same time of lunar day, judging by the crater shadows.

Not a new concept....

*sigh* of course I don't get that channel. I may have to sign up to CraveTV, or use more nefarious methods

The arm was on standby in case it was needed, but the Shuttle (crew) docked itself. From https://www.quora.com/How-do-space-shuttles-dock-themselves-at-the-ISS

I admit that Doris Day's heyday was before my time, so I wasn't familiar with her work. But I have fond memories of the Carol Burnett Show, especially this guy... RIP Tim... These things seem to happen in threes.... dreading who is next

Step Zero: make a cat burrito; I.e. wrap the furry bundle of death in a towel. At least then you only have to deal with teeth fangs Them you can proceed to.... Step One: pry the mouth open and ram the pill or syringe as far back in the throat as you can and clamp its mouth shut. Visegrips are tempting but frowned upon

The only thing worse is when you break something else while trying to fix something. It wasn’t broke, dadgumit, why’d ya try to fix it?