The thread for space cadets!

Commodore said:
Of course that idea has a whole laundry list of problems that would come with it, not least of which would be dealing with the weakening of bones and muscles that occurs in those that spend long periods of time in space. Soldiers being deployed from orbit aren't going to be much use when they can barely stand once they get on the ground. You also can't rotate out the soldiers too often, otherwise the whole thing just becomes prohibitively expensive.
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But if you rotated them really quickly, they'd create their own gravity and then they could crush
the enemies of the USA with their super-strong bones.
 
The new head of the Russian space agency is saying the Proton rocket will be phased out in favor of Angara even though they are developing and marketing a new Proton variant. He also says there will be job cuts but didn't lay out a comprehensive plan about how this transition will happen. He also makes it seem as if the Russians are abandoning work on the 5 (!!) ISS modules in varying states of completion in Moscow. They will never be launched now, it seems. Though somehow he wants the Russian segment of the ISS to become more independent in function so that it can be separated - but they definitely needed at least some of those 5 modules for that to happen.

I am confused.

http://spacenews.com/new-roscosmos-chief-prioritizes-ending-protons-reign/
 
Someone made a haha funny
36003193_1023861434456878_2380448953377226752_n.jpg
 
ha , Ramirez is a qualified Alien dude , out there twice with Ellen Ripley .
 
highlander8.png

He dresses as an alien in any case.
 
This is what happens when your country decides to build an inland launch pad and doesn't give a rat's butt about their own citizens:

Watch the whole thing, they show this happening over multiple launches.
 
hobbsyoyo said:
This is what happens when your country decides to build an inland launch pad and doesn't give a rat's butt about their own citizens:

Watch the whole thing, they show this happening over multiple launches.
Click to expand...

This is pretty insane
Kind of excited for the Republicans to do this in the United States though
 
Lexicus said:
This is pretty insane
Kind of excited for the Republicans to do this in the United States though
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Camden, Georgia wants to put in a spaceport that would overfly populated islands. To be fair though, there aren't many people on the islands but there is no talk of either paying them to move or even pulling out eminent domain to remove them. Apparently they will just play dice with people's lives. (And I'm not saying I'm in favor of eminent domain - just pointing out they aren't taking this problem seriously)

There are a few other efforts to put in launch facilities inland in the US but AFAIK none of them are for orbital rockets, just suborbital tourism and research flights over unpopulated areas.


OH and bonus info about those Chinese rockets -

Not only do they dump them on villages, those rockets use pretty toxic fuels. The orange smoke clouds that rise from the wrecks are giant clouds of straight poison that will also destroy the environment and manmade structures through corrosion (on top of poisoning everything living).
 
My first thought was, it would be even crazier if they use the same fuel as in Protons. How it's called in English, dimethylhydrazine?
 
red_elk said:
My first thought was, it would be even crazier if they use the same fuel as in Protons. How it's called in English, dimethylhydrazine?
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I *think* the Russians use unsymmetrical dimethyl hydrazine (UDMH) but it's all basically the same stuff. The orange clouds are nitrogen tetroxide (NTO), which is the oxidizer for these hypergolic fuel combinations. UDMH, MMH and Hydrazine are all formulations of the same fuel and they are either burned with NTO or nitric acid blends. Proton (and a few of the lesser-used Russian launch vehicles) and basically all of the Chinese rockets use these fuels currently. The US unofficially phased them out with the retirement of the Titan vehicles. I say unofficially because there was no directive to any companies in the US to stop using those fuels - the industry just moved away from them.

Satellites and space vehicles like the Dragon still use these fuels though and it will be a long time before they are phased out for those applications. These fuels store very well (they stay liquid without refrigeration or heating) and because they don't need ignition systems, they make the overall system much simpler.

The EU has a directive to phase out hydrazine and there are better-performing alternatives out there. Unfortunately, those alternatives are not perfect and require a lot of energy to get them to burn. This has the side effect of making them less useful for attitude control as it makes it harder to rapidly pulse the thrusters without dumping a huge amount of electrical power to keep the system on stand-by. The new fuels are also more expensive and have almost no supply chain to speak of.

But the EU, being the EU, doesn't really care about what's reasonable and are fine with imposing high costs on businesses for marginal (or even non-existent) environmental gains and worker safety. Pollution caused by the manufacture of these fuels and the operations of space vehicles that use them is negligible*. In fact, while the new fuels are less toxic to people to handle, I doubt that their production processes will be any less dirty than most other chemical production processes or the production processes for hydrazine/NTO specifically.

And on worker safety - the new fuels aren't even non-toxic, they are just less toxic than the old stuff. And because there is decades of experience with the old fuels, the protocols for handling it while fueling spacecraft are well understood and generally pretty good. It looks bad that workers have to wear full chem-suits but they don't get poisoned. At least in the US and EU and I assume in Russia this is true. I can't say anything about how often Chinese technicians get poisoned by fuels but I wouldn't be surprised if it was a high number.


*This does not apply to launch vehicles (i.e. rockets) because they use huge amounts of these fuels, burn them in atmosphere and then the stages get dumped in the ocean or on the land. None of that applies to satellites and other non-launch space vehicles.

Also note that I acknowledge fully that manufacturing of space vehicles and satellites is a pollution-intensive process - it's just that the world doesn't build high volumes of these vehicles so the overall pollution footprint is small even if dis-proportionally large relative to the number of vehicles built. Since only a fraction of these space vehicles/satellites use these fuels at all then an even smaller portion of the overall pollution footprint is caused directly by fuel production and handling.

In other words the EU is misguided in this specific approach to dealing with industrial pollution. They are hurting an entire industry within their borders for almost non-existent environmental gains. This will cause them to lose market shares to industry from countries that don't have these anti-hydrazine initiatives. If this effort would have a measurable impact on pollution I'd be all for it but it just won't help anything.
 
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The fuel is called "heptyl" in Russian and its toxicity is one of the official reasons why they decided to scrap Protons in favor of Angara. Protons were launched from Baikonur in sparsely populated area, AFAIK fuel remains degrade in the environment fairly quickly and don't cause much harm unless they directly contaminate the area where people live.

Anyway, the decision to scrap Protons seems dubious. While the rocket is quite old, Soviet creation, it's still competitive in international market and Russia doesn't have adequate replacement for it.
 
r16 said:
ha , Ramirez is a qualified Alien dude , out there twice with Ellen Ripley .
Click to expand...
qouting myself twice . Back to guerilla posting , only the first paragraph of the spoiler is relevant , but the gist is practically as follows .

r16 said:
first time as a duffelbag , second time as a coat hanger
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red_elk said:
The fuel is called "heptyl" in Russian and its toxicity is one of the official reasons why they decided to scrap Protons in favor of Angara. Protons were launched from Baikonur in sparsely populated area, AFAIK fuel remains degrade in the environment fairly quickly and don't cause much harm unless they directly contaminate the area where people live.

Anyway, the decision to scrap Protons seems dubious. While the rocket is quite old, Soviet creation, it's still competitive in international market and Russia doesn't have adequate replacement for it.
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The fuels do degrade quickly because they are so reactive but not all the byproducts of that breakdown will be nice - especially given the sheer number and size of the dropped boosters.

I am also highly dubious of the claim to retire the Proton, especially when they just announced a new variant better tailored to the current launch market with their American marketing and sales team. In any case, here's a great video by Scott Manley on the Proton and the decision to retire it:

Broken_Erika said:
A small Japanese space rocket has failed seconds after launching. No injuries, but the launch platform is gonna need a new paint job.
https://www.bbc.com/news/av/world-asia-44668922/japan-rocket-crashes-down-to-earth
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These guys want to a Japanese SpaceX. They are backed by a billionaire who has some notoriety in Japan for his previous venture into journalism (IIRC). Here's hoping they get it next time.

I can't stress how much we're living in a golden age of spaceflight right now. Yes, Apollo was the pinnacle of badass but it was a national military industrial fantasy project that wasn't built on a foundation meant to last. Today's efforts will hopefully result in a ton of new launch and space vehicle companies who can figure out how to crack open the space markets and build up a more permanent space infrastructure.

I basically can't go more than a couple of weeks before finding out about some new satellite or rocket start up making great progress. Astra Space is another start up that are getting close to their first launch. Here's a picture of their test rocket spotted in San Francisco a few weeks back. They are meant to launch out of Alaska sometime this quarter per Space News.
maxresdefault.jpg

I actually have a good friend who just started there a couple of weeks ago.
 
NASA is rethinking it's planetary protection policy to better line up with missions either on the books or proposed that would land on various solar system bodies and even return samples.
http://spacenews.com/report-recommends-nasa-revise-its-planetary-protection-policies/

This is good because this policy was drafted back in the 70's and is onerous. Hopefully they can find a way to maintain diligence but avoid strangling mission concepts with unreasonable demands.
 
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