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Gentlemen, we have sterile dress uniforms but what about the day-to-day?
Hopefully it wont just be black and grey digicam like how the navy created "please lose me at sea the second I fall overboard" pat.
This isn't even remotely in the top hundred coolest things ever
Things cooler than this
-floppy disks
-rubiks cubes
-dirt bikes
-Freddy freaker
-baby back ribs
-those guys who have a parachute with a fan strapped to their back and fly around
-the fly starring Jeff goldblum
-those lemurs with the huge eyes and the one super long finger
-the love of our lord and savior Jesus Christ and the fact he died to redeem us though we be undeserving
-cradling your newborn child
-Dracula flow 6 the jazz orchestration
-bananas
-Jupiter, bringer of Jollity by Gustav Holst
-the Parthenon
-team fortress 2
-getting high by controlling your breathing patterns
-smoking a cigarette post-coitus
Meh. The uniforms are pretty much what they are because the branch has no history. Pretty much all the space force shit is handled by contractors anyway. It's kind of a pointless branch.
I mean if we want to be really pedantic, contractors really do most of the military stuff because they are the ones that build everything. And the branch does have a lot of history, albeit within other branches. The Spaceforce is just the streamlining of operations. The operations done by the space force really goes back to the 50s, it is just under one roof now.
But hey, a carrier strike group is mostly handled by contractors who build the carriers, supply them, build the planes, ensure they have missiles and then you have the military personnel just send the carrier out to sea, for the crew to get into the plane, take it off, and launch the stand off munitions against an enemy.
But to argue such a point would be rather silly, wouldn't you think?
Black is the ideal color of any space-based military branch due to space being black and their operations being intended to be unseen. Also, the branch hasn't been able to build up yet because we're just now able to launch rockets for pennies on the dollar due to reuse.
This is dumb, the Space Force was created out of operations that were previously split between different branches. It had everything in place previously for it to rapidly build up. And no, American space flight operations aren't increasing because rockets are cheaper [they are still expensive mind you] but rather because small sats are becoming more popular now. This is something that was less the case in the past where more complicated satellites were something preferred.
So let us look at probably the best case study there is for this type of phenomena. Military space satellites!
Naturally, the first spy satellites were all dependent on film. This being for the fairly obvious reason that they had to primarily rely on film instead of digital cameras. Film can get a lot of detail, 35mm has an equivalent resolution of close to 4k, and with good lenses you can get great pictures. This brings us onto the Corona program. The Corona Program saw very, very frequent launches of spy satellites because of their limited film storage, and how you needed to recover the film from the satellite [a risky operation, wasn't guaranteed to succeed as it was done by aerial capture over water.
It was partly because of the Corona program that the Space Shuttle became of interest for the military. If you are able to launch satellites frequently, then that means having to pay for a lot of launches. The Space Shuttle could make them cheaper. Especially with the prospect of having the Space Shuttles recover the Corona satellites in orbit instead of having them be captured by plane. What happened?
Digital cameras, you did not need to continuously launch replacement satellites and have to work with film. The satellites got exceptionally better with the KH-11s. For those unaware of the KH-11s, they and their derivatives are still in use today. Case in point:
And if you want to look at some of the mirrors and hardware associated with the KH-11s, well one launched recently. You might of heard of it. It's called the Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope. Part of the reason why the Space Shuttle bay was as big as they were was to carry those satellites.
The reason why there are so many more launches now is because of the miniaturizing of technology and small sats being deemed desirable for a while now. The move to cubesats for instance has been going on for a while. It is just that with higher launch cadence small satellite communication networks in LEO are being deemed more desirable, when historically it likely would have been a network of Geostationary satellites like the older Iridium ones.
A billion posts about some garbage AI representation of a potential uniform that's almost certainly not gonna happen, and nothing for the Isar launch. Shameful really. https://youtube.com/watch?v=P2rckOBGzRY
To be fair, the thunderdome and this thread has mostly been turned into an extension of the Trump adjacent rim job. Such things are an expectation, and is really visible over how they fawn over Starship going suborbital.
Stuff like Artemis 2 was turned into a rally around the flag moment even though the mission was actually a mission devised under the Obama administration [it was just with the Trumpian name change to Artemis instead of the overly plain and beige Exploration Mission] but was simplified as to remove the Asteroid Redirect parts of the mission as it was on the first things Trump's first administration canned with their Artemis rebrand - even though the Asteroid Redirect functions were only relevant to EM-2 and would not have hindered future lunar missions. It was essentially the cost of the probe which then part of it is was to be used for the power and propulsion element on the Gateway, and is now being used for Mars or something... Like imagine how cool it would have been if Orion demonstrated its rendezvous and docking capability around the Moon with a lunar space walk. Hell, it would have been a better demonstration and proving of Orion than the profile of Artemis 2.
Thanks Trump, trying desperately to cut the actual cool stuff that NASA does. Nancy Grace Roman was something he tried desperately to cancel and yet it never came through. Didn't stop other programs getting the axe like Mars Sample Return. Now China get to say they brought back the first samples from Mars, another planet. Keep on winning...
The current administration has really screwed over Artemis with how they have effectively castrated SLS going into the future. But don't worry, they are basically planning to can it despite Issacman's statements, effectively lies, about "wanting to get cadence up to lower costs" when there are only eight total POTENTIAL launches, whilst they are going to move onto using a Centaur upper stage after A4 [unless further balast tanks are used for SpaceX flights]. BOLE was cancelled which means no more SRBs after Artemis 8 [but that hasn't been given funding yet]. Artemis is also ham strung with Centaur but hey, apparently Starship can perform the transfer burn. Starship is yet to be proven and will have many more years of development. There is a reason why SpaceX said they'd use a normal Starship with a docking port for this and it seems that Cosntellation has returned. Blue Origin's proposal is a mess without SLS. Sure, things with Orion-SLS weren't great before hand. But now? Jeez
Maybe a New Glenn 9x4 can perform the role of a SLS stack - that would surely get Eric Berger off. You know, the rocket that is also still in development.
It's all, to put it simply, a disaster.
Oh, and to get back to both Gateway and Mars Sample Return. Trump has really messed up America's reliability as a partner for long term multi-agency programs with ESA and other prospective agencies. One of ESA's seats for Artemis is being used up on Artemis 3, ESA was apart of Mars Sample Return and they also had hardware apart of Gateway being built [which they still intend to complete and use in some form]. And yes, other countries were involved in Gateway but seeing how willing America is to shaft other powers, despite their international endeavours relying so reliably on others - Trump's and Israel's recent fuckery with the UK sure is going to go well when 15% of the F-35 is produced in Britbongistan and they decide enough is enough. Oh and the parts are actually quite hard to replace. The ejections seats, parts of the electronic suite and fuselage are British. There's also the Life Support system but does that matter right? It would be quite hard to have a fighter jet without any of those elements.
Can't wait to be called mati, dumb or autistic for this.
Why the fuck are they making the space force uniform look like some fascist shit? That's totally unlike the field of space travel. Space travel was invented by freedom loving democrats with absolutely no help from anything that could even remotely be linked to fascism.
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Gentlemen, we have sterile dress uniforms but what about the day-to-day?
Hopefully it wont just be black and grey digicam like how the navy created "please lose me at sea the second I fall overboard" pat.
There is functionally nothing separating you from a 35 year old wine lady in 2016 saying that the democrats are Dumbledore's army
You are both tooth sucking wastes of space who live in lala land playing with dollies
I mean if we want to be really pedantic, contractors really do most of the military stuff because they are the ones that build everything. And the branch does have a lot of history, albeit within other branches. The Spaceforce is just the streamlining of operations. The operations done by the space force really goes back to the 50s, it is just under one roof now.
Its a fair criticism, but I think its unfair in saying its a Trump specific phenomenon. NASA budgets and plans by necessity operate on years long and even generational time scales (like the Voyager mission). Which means they are constantly getting reworked, shitcanned, coopted or turned into dog and pony shows depending on the needs of the moment, based on who is in charge at any given point. Elected officials in America have a time horizon of 2 years maximum, while 2 years isn't enough time for NASA to send a probe to Jupiter, never mind plan for it ahead of time.
Hell, depending on the timing, the launch window for an optimal Mars intercept could take years too based on how Earth and Mars move around the sun.
Finally its just simply beaurocratic. The Air Force wasnt the only branch finding itself doing space shit. The Army and the Navy were too. Neither were willing to give up their space shit to the Air Force. Making a dedicated space warfare branch made the transfers more palatable from an inter service dick waving perspective.
Also, if you were a President who feels the intelligence agencies are too powerful and not accountable enough, a good way to address that would be to bring some of the black National Reconnaissance Office budget (~20% of overall defense spending) into the light. Space Force makes the NRO a real branch of the military, rather than let it hide in the shadows like it has since the 70s.
Also, if you were a President who feels the intelligence agencies are too powerful and not accountable enough, a good way to address that would be to bring some of the black National Reconnaissance Office budget (~20% of overall defense spending) into the light. Space Force makes the NRO a real branch of the military, rather than let it hide in the shadows like it has since the 70s.
Not just the NRO either. CIA, DIA and NSA also have a bunch of space shit that is kicking around unearmarked slush funds.
It really is important to understand just how much money and how many military/government assets are set towards space domain national security. Part of the resistance towards standing up Space Force as an independent uniformed branch is that is puts all these little private black budget fiefs at risk.
**
Incidentally, I did watch the Steve Carell "Space Force" TV show. Its actually very interesting. The first episode presents the entire idea as a joke, but towards the end the writers themselves got "stars in their eyes" about the potential of this new military branch such that they ended up back handedly defending it in the finale.
Which it was why it was never renewed. The people who showed up for LOl at orange man didnt get it, and the marketing for the show ensured the people interested in this new thing on its merits never showed up at all.
Interesting that it's the first ever Propane/LOX rocket to reach orbit, seems like a decent combo for smaller rockets given the high density, but I'm no propellant engineer.
i'm not a propellant engineer either but i'm a kerbal expert which is better
i assume it's just a cost advantage in their launch context. engine performance doesn't seem like anything special as far as we know (i don't think the specs are public yet) but fuel density means potentially cheaper construction and performance savings in dry mass at each stage. but they really stress the environmental impact so i'm guessing it might mostly have to do with european carbon credits or something, since less carbon per unit thrust means less co2 in the exhaust
-floppy disks
-rubiks cubes
-dirt bikes
-Freddy freaker
-baby back ribs
-those guys who have a parachute with a fan strapped to their back and fly around
-the fly starring Jeff goldblum
-those lemurs with the huge eyes and the one super long finger
-the love of our lord and savior Jesus Christ and the fact he died to redeem us though we be undeserving
-cradling your newborn child
-Dracula flow 6 the jazz orchestration
-bananas
-Jupiter, bringer of Jollity by Gustav Holst
-the Parthenon
-team fortress 2
-getting high by controlling your breathing patterns
-smoking a cigarette post-coitus
Higher specific impulse than kerosene, but similar density if the propane is cooled to LOX temps. Isar Aerospace claims their propellant has the highest density-specific impulse of all carbon-based fuels. Methane has a higher specific impulse still, but it's less dense than either kerosene and propane. Both methane and propane can be stored in proximity with the LOX, because methane needs to be that cold to be liquid anyway and propane, despite its vastly higher boiling point, has a lower melting point than methane, so it doesn't freeze. For comparison storing lox at liquid hydrogen temps would freeze it solid.
So yeah, preferable choice for small rockets. Nothing wrong with kerosene, just different trade-offs. Propane and even more so methane burn a lot cleaner, which didn't matter back in the day where rockets weren't built to be reusable. Now it does and many reusable launchers from this decade use methalox.
Which it was why it was never renewed. The people who showed up for LOl at orange man didnt get it, and the marketing for the show ensured the people interested in this new thing on its merits never showed up at all.
It did get a second season but netflix stopped paying attention for a split second and the writers made the Chinese the villains (with a pretty accurate depiction of shiny exterior rotten interior) so that shit got buried fast with zero marketing.
It did get a second season but netflix stopped paying attention for a split second and the writers made the Chinese the villains (with a pretty accurate depiction of shiny exterior rotten interior) so that shit got buried fast with zero marketing.
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