78stonewobble

Oh you are right, I thought it was referencing the poorest 2 billion, not the 2 billion in between. Still there are potential problems. The satellites will be small and thus require more of the ground equipment. These people are poor. These people might only speak one local language and so forth, but yes... if it can help them. I'm all for it, but I still have a hard time thinking you can make giant profits of these people.

Njyah, I think the poorest 1-2 billion people in the world might have other problems than just a lack of internet access.

I'll believe it, being profitable, when I see it.

I might have gone for pure entertainment value over... uhm... skills, workethics, intelligence or ... any positive attribute...

It's interesting how much of this is ... seemingly... mass "psychosis" (yeah ok, a harsh word). Bubbles wouldn't be as disruptive if more people had a healthy scepticism approach (if it sounds too good to be true, it usually is), were carefull not to over invest and possibly better prioritization in their lives.

I allways thought "spitfire" was an oddly fitting name for rockets, but probably too english and too many other connotations for nasa usage... Allthough... come to think of it... Isn't Jeremy Clarkson out of the job? New nasa administrator possibly?

While true, it is a heavy lift capability, that enables "exciting" manned missions once again. The missions might become more concrete, when they don't have to reinvent that heavy lift capability again or a 3rd time. If the political will (and thus economical will) never ever materialises for "exciting" manned missions again, well it doesn't matter. It was money pumped into the american aeronautics industry, not exactly a new concept, and even the falcon heavy and spacex, will be nothing more than satellite launchers, at most.

What's stupid about the SLS/Orion? o.O

Oh, yeah forgot about those... -..- ... No I hadn't... Hmm... Intruiging concept... But I just refuse to get buried in fetal position! I've spent enough time in that one, first months .... then saturdays and sundays on bathroom floors.

Cardassians? o.O

Government funds and demand is as limited as "we", say they are. In principle... In reality it's gonna take a helluva lot of convincing to 7 billion people that space exploration is the numero uno priority, like a big asteroid hurtling towards those 7 billion people, til then there's other things also needing money.

And if that one fails?

Well, I suppose a return vehicle with wings, still makes some kind of sense for bring back capability of something expensive and/or large and/or heavy? For you know, "outsized" cargo return capability. The shuttle could bring around 14 tonnes back?

Possibly some massive government investing in projects that require such launch rates or government "enabling" projects like space manufacturing/mining via a scheduled service to space.

I think the concept of only returning the most expensive parts intriguing and I wish them luck with it. To me it does make sense, without having run the numbers that is, since returning things also "cost" and returning more will cost more.

True, if life is very rare, ready to settle planets will be exceedingly rare. Tho offcourse even planets with indigenous life, might not be instantly ready for settling either. One could imagine tho, plenty of "pristine planets", where the basic prerequisites and ingredients for life (as we know it) are there, but where life just haven't evolved yet (or just been wiped out again). Which could presumably be terraformed relatively quickly by just adding either simple existing earth organisms and/or for the task created artificial or genemodified lifeforms. PS: Thick line under "relatively" offcourse ... What I mean is: Imagine earth with approximately the same ratios of elements including water, primordial atmosphere and so on... Where life is all that is missing to make it, over x time, habitable for human and earth life. You are right tho, that the barrier could be colonizing even a few stars, rather than developing to intelligence itself.

Yeah. My own personal guess / answer is this: Life is somewhat rare and hard to have evolve. Possibly a 1.000 to 10.000 places in the milkyway. Intelligent life is quite rare. Possibly 10-100 places in the milkyway. Interstellar travel is possible, but prohibitively costly in terms of ressources and energy. Most intelligent races, sofar apparently, will only colonize a few planets as "backups" and at that level are able to keep population growth under wraps. There are no technological singularity, meaning progress cannot continue indefinately. Eg. processing power can only attain x density, beyond which hard physical laws prevent further advancements. ... Though I would prefer warp/hyperdrives to be possible... I find scifi dreams too awesome to let go.

All of the options and more... o.O Which presumably explains supply and demant pretty well.

Nice little videos, with good and funny references. However, they seem to neglect that we can only barely detect the existance of some planets close to us, much less gather meaningfull information about the enviroments on these planets and offcourse that ie. our radiowave transmission impact on the milky way is miniscule. In a sense we haven't sampled the milkyway and much less the universe for the existense of life or even intelligent life. We have only really sampled, to some degree, the solarsystem.

Death trap, is a pretty harsh word... I think most astronauts / kosmonauts accept quite a bit of risk, as part of the job. The problem here being that it was easily forseeable problems or known problems, that got ignored. Which offcourse happens other places in life too...

Hmm, well I'm a smoker, so perhaps some kind of special pollution oriented facility is preferable from an enviromental perspective, but in principle I'd just want to fertilize the rhubarbs in the family garden, just like the old family dog did. Them things are tasty.... and I like the idea of giving back. PS: Uhm, organ donation for whatever works. I won't be needing them (I actually think that should just be law, for everyone). Donating to science? Well, it's the preferred alternative til the garden / rhubarb thing becomes legal.

Can't really blame NASA for the tight budgets and decisions in policy shift. That blame rests squarely on politicians. Can blame NASA for certain executions of plans, policy and too optimistic planning. Ie. apollo 1, challenger, hubble main mirror problem, columbia, James Webb telescope price and so on... PS: Offcourse accidents will happen and mistakes will be made, but to varying degrees some things are preventable and possibly should have been prevented.

@that first part. Agreed... There might be a falcon heavy, but it certainly won't be launching without payloads.

So that is what? 8 tons for 2 MW? 3,2 tons for 800 kW? Vs. eg. circa 500 kg. for 100 kW with the SAFE-400. You also have to consider degradation of the solarpanels over time. If we wanted to reuse a transfervehicle over time.

You could argue that, but because you can also discuss objective fact in addition to subjective matters in such a place. I think it's nice to keep a clear distinction between when a person is presenting objective fact and when it is a matter of subjectivity and too often an oppinion is uttered as a universal fact, when it's not.