Yeah with hindsight we should have kept building bigger and better probes and kept sending people to the moon, instead of focusing on doing manned LEO stuff. Which is valuable, but not as valuable as, say, programs to further explore the moon and asteroid belt, and lay the very first foundations of exploiting their natural resources. Getting infrastructure on (and in orbit around) the moon and in the asteroid belt to be off-Earth launching pads and resource gathering and manufacturing sites is gonna be the biggest kick in the pants for making humanity an interplanetary and eventually interstellar species
Tbf, the only NASA rockets that congress designed was Constellation [left over hardware] and SLS [but not really, as there were studies involved and there were those supporting the DIRECT/Jupiter approach. The whole Senate Launch System tag came later].
The Space Shuttle really was designed by the USAF because NASA simply didn't have money after Apollo and Skylab. This really did impact NASA's probes as well, and it was a wonder that Voyager even came to be in this climate as it was close to cancellation. The original proposal for the mission came to be in the 1964 but it would later be derived from the Mariner probes where to save money each probe would visit two of the planets. And they were really the main missions of the 70s, and satellites to other planets wouldn't really take hold until the middle of the shuttle program.
It was essentially the USAF that mandated the launch vehicles that NASA would use. Following their abandonment of the Shuttle program they'd return to their missiles with Delta, Titan and Atlas.
Hell, the Atlas-v and Delta-IV came to be because of the USAF wanting to modernize their launch capability. NASA really only specialised on satellite production. It's been a long standing myth that they've built their own launch vehicles. They may experiment with stuff, and provide studies and tests but they don't design their rockets. The budget is too small for that and NASA has so much more to do. Hell, the budget being so small is why NASA had to go with SRBs despite wanting liquid fuelled side boosters.
NASA only produced two launch vehicles on their own volition. The Saturns - and even then the Saturn 1 core stage was derived from clustering multiple other rocket core stages together from Jupiter/Redstone.
The Space Shuttle program Von Braun promoted was a lot different to the one that was produced. Which all of this is funny when people like to attack the Soviets for producing Buran as a military weapon when it was military requirements that dictated the Shuttle's design. It was the USAF who made the damn thing so risky.
This retarded war has set back space a good deal, shit sucks man. Undoubtedly ESA has lost money, talent and valuable resources to the war too. The ExoMars/Rosalind Franklin rover is a great example, what a fuckup from both a delay and political standpoint. The Iranian space program has been damaged in the other retardwar too, although obviously that's a lot less important than Roscosmos. Apparently they are going to launch their Pars-2 satellite in the next few months, that's gonna be an interesting one, they'll have to be real sneaky to avoid that getting blown up on the pad or during ascent.
The way things are escalating I wouldn't be surprised if there are plans to start using anti-satellite weapons by at least a few countries in the near future, hopefully soft-kill systems rather than debris cloud generating hard-kill ones, but you never know.
This retarded war has set back space a good deal, shit sucks man. Undoubtedly ESA has lost money, talent and valuable resources to the war too. The ExoMars/Rosalind Franklin rover is a great example, what a fuckup from both a delay and political standpoint. The Iranian space program has been damaged in the other retardwar too, although obviously that's a lot less important than Roscosmos. Apparently they are going to launch their Pars-2 satellite in the next few months, that's gonna be an interesting one, they'll have to be real sneaky to avoid that getting blown up on the pad or during ascent.
The way things are escalating I wouldn't be surprised if there are plans to start using anti-satellite weapons by at least a few countries in the near future, hopefully soft-kill systems rather than debris cloud generating hard-kill ones, but you never know.
Everyone was suitably pissed at the Indians with their hard kill test a few years ago. I think everyone that is not a street shitting pajeet are on the same page that creating debris clouds in low earth orbit is not a good idea.
Lol if you told me a month ago, this fucking thing would have been floating this long still sending data...
One of the things I always appreciated that SpaceX did was keep Starhopper around, just outside of pad I and II.
Obviously you can't keep starship 40 upright, next to the pad complex like Starhopper.
You gotta move both. They need to be at a dedicated site for people to visit and see up close.
I know I'm preaching to the choir here but I cannot reiterate enough, it was just 8 years ago that getting this glorified water tank 20 meters up in the air was a major success.
I've worked in heavy industry for over a two decades. I've never been a part of an industry as a contractor where so much shit is being developed, tested, and implemented.
Like when I do a gas refinery or pipeline assignment, those so boring compared to this shit lol. I feel like a kid again every time I do an aerospace job.
I don't care how old you are. It could just be a single engine test stand. Hearing that shit go off in the distance makes you fucking giggle.
That dildo belongs in a museum! Funnily enough they probably can sail it to within a kilometer of the air and space museum at the port of Alexandria. The only rub will be getting it into the museum itself.
Sadly I think that difficulty means its just gonna be mounted at Starbase somewhere eventually. It really is a national treasure though as an example of this generation of spaceflight, the miracle of its survival and second miracle of surviving being a sailing ship for a month.
The machine god sends his blessing upon this sacred construct.
It didn't fall over or explode, so it's probably intentional. If it isn't intentional it doesn't really matter, since the main goal is not to explode or fall over.
It didn't fall over or explode, so it's probably intentional. If it isn't intentional it doesn't really matter, since the main goal is not to explode or fall over.
Its a copy of the Falcon 9, so it will have some kinks in it, especially if the stolen blueprints were for older model Falcons. The Chinese are rather infamous for recreating American factories and equipment exactly, to include faults that were fixed later by engineers who just fix the issue without bothering to go back and edit the original build plans.
Its a copy of the Falcon 9, so it will have some kinks in it, especially if the stolen blueprints were for older model Falcons. The Chinese are rather infamous for recreating American factories and equipment exactly, to include faults that were fixed later by engineers who just fix the issue without bothering to go back and edit the original build plans.
Which all of this is funny when people like to attack the Soviets for producing Buran as a military weapon when it was military requirements that dictated the Shuttle's design. It was the USAF who made the damn thing so risky.
The Soviets knew that the USAF was putting move onto NASA to make the shuttle, and the fact is that the Shuttle makes a lot of sense if you are planning to militarize space and build a effective way to keep the orbital battlefield supplied. In the heads the Shuttle was meant to be the backbone of the SDI so they needed their own to eventually gain parity and not fall behind.
Anyone who attacks Buran for being militarized shows themselves as being retarded and not understanding history.
No-Go for Katalyst’s Reboost of NASA’s Swift Observatory
Katalyst Space and NASA concluded today that reboosting the Swift Observatory with Katalyst’s LINK spacecraft will not be possible due to attitude control problems. They still plan to conduct some rendezvous and proximity operations, but not to capture Swift to prevent it from reentering later this year.
