While rocket propulsion has been stuck in the Sputnik era, other technologies have seen considerable improvement, particularly in the accuracy of navigation, which is what matters the most after you've reached escape velocity.
Accuracy of navigation? The 1960s had no problem sending Mariner missions to Mars orbit, navigation has never been the issue. Landing instead of crashing has been the big problem for unmanned missions to Mars, and there are a whole host of problems for a potential manned mission.
China and India can collaborate on the rocket's first stage, Russia can make the second stage, the USA can make the capsule, the EU can make the lander, and Canada can put a robot arm on top. Considering the reliability of good close working relations, the way different parts always work well together in rocket science, and the impossibility of changing budget priorities in any of the countries, it can't fail.
Chief marketing officer thinks his next product is good, and spiritually equivalent to things people like. This is credible because he's spent decades writing speeches for Microsoft saying similar things.
Direct investment is impossible. People won't allow that much of their taxes to be spent on research unless it's for a clear specific goal, like the moon.
It might be practical to give the second stage a full orbit to return to where it launched from. The problem is how to get it down without it burning up, since it'll be going I believe ~5x faster than the first stage.
Also, how much of the $60 million that the stage costs is due to the extra hardware/software and special parts needed for making it possible to land it again?
Must be a negligible amount, since they're the cheapest on the market already and the intent of reuse was built into their designs from the beginning.
And how much more fuel do you burn?
It's safe to assume the additional fuel cost in $ is 5 digits, so negligible compared to the other costs involved in space flight.
And how much more expensive it is per unit when they build fewer units because they re-use them?
Considering they're currently in a developmental stage where they're changing things all the time, and this was actually the first flight of a new configuration of Falcon 9, it's safe to say they will not be building fewer units -- the $60 mil, even though it's the lowest price out there, has been for an experimental evolving rocket rather than a mass production model. They're likely to need to build more units as lowered prices lead to more demand.
When driving, any momentary distraction is potentially deadly -- that's not true in many other situations, perhaps when operating dangerous industrial equipment but that's about it. Of course, those evil distracting video billboards are a lot worse than an offensive license plate -- but they're not issued by the government for identification purposes so it takes a higher standard of evidence to remove them.
Water is one of the simplest, most abundant things in the universe. Maybe life could use something else, but why would it when there's water everywhere? Even in our own solar system there's tons of moons and dwarf planets with water (including in liquid form internally), and even Mars with its extreme environment and lack of air has some occasional running water on the surface. Water does not seem to be the limiting factor for life.
License plates are different. The last thing we need is for license plates to shock other drivers or make them angry on the road, that's a public safety issue. And of course custom license plates are a luxury item sold by the state.
If we fought against Al Qaeda and ISIS like we fought against Germany and Japan, those organizations would not exist and new similar organizations would not take there place.
If you nuke Al Qaeda -- which would necessarily mean nuking a non-belligerent city full of civilians and a few dozen Al Qaeda operatives (let's say Karachi) -- it's certain that Al Queda would greatly expand its enrollment as a result and become much more dangerous. What survivor or neighbor wouldn't join them? There'd be nothing left to lose and every reason to die trying to revenge instead of die an uninvolved coward.
They won't do unmanned self-driving trains because people would freak out if they didn't think there was at least one human manning the train. Not everyone is enlightened as we few, we happy delusional few, we band of nerds who actually believe we're all going to be riding in self-driving cars in our lifetime.
I've been on the Vancouver SkyTrain. Nobody was freaking out. They were all enjoying fare-dodging because there was nobody on the train to check their ticket.
They're not cheering a competition, they're cheering for advancement. Or if you want to phrase it that way, what they're competing against is the obstacles nature puts in their way. I'm 100% certain that none of those people chanting U-S-A would be cheering the explosive failure of an innovative Chinese or Russian rocket, they'd be hoping for everyone to succeed, but obviously more invested in their own work.
Is that possible? A solid foundation through 3.3km of water (average depth of the Atlantic) sounds impossible to me, considering nobody has built a structure that tall.
John Glenn made it to space at age 77, so I don't think the g-forces are really that much of an issue. In fact the low gravity of the destination could help the mobility and self-sufficiency of old people and make falls less serious.
The lack of magnetosphere isn't really an issue for at least a million years. If you're capable of the magic of creating a planetary atmosphere from nothing then you'll be capable of refreshing it again every million years, no problem. We're talking about making an atmosphere 100 times thicker than it currently is, and changing the composition, and then replacing all the dirt on an entire planet with some that's suitable for planting.
Are you kidding? One of the biggest and first steps in terraforming Mars is to introduce massive amounts of carbon and greenhouse gasses into the atmosphere to warm it up on the global scale. We are experts in that field because we are doing it to our own planet at an alarming rate.
Last I checked, we've increased the atmospheric thickness of Earth by 0%. Call me when we can make it 100x thicker.
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Accuracy of navigation? The 1960s had no problem sending Mariner missions to Mars orbit, navigation has never been the issue. Landing instead of crashing has been the big problem for unmanned missions to Mars, and there are a whole host of problems for a potential manned mission.
China and India can collaborate on the rocket's first stage, Russia can make the second stage, the USA can make the capsule, the EU can make the lander, and Canada can put a robot arm on top. Considering the reliability of good close working relations, the way different parts always work well together in rocket science, and the impossibility of changing budget priorities in any of the countries, it can't fail.
China has to oppress/spy very hard to prevent the poor working class from starting a communist revolution, eh?
Chief marketing officer thinks his next product is good, and spiritually equivalent to things people like. This is credible because he's spent decades writing speeches for Microsoft saying similar things.
Direct investment is impossible. People won't allow that much of their taxes to be spent on research unless it's for a clear specific goal, like the moon.
It might be practical to give the second stage a full orbit to return to where it launched from. The problem is how to get it down without it burning up, since it'll be going I believe ~5x faster than the first stage.
Must be a negligible amount, since they're the cheapest on the market already and the intent of reuse was built into their designs from the beginning.
It's safe to assume the additional fuel cost in $ is 5 digits, so negligible compared to the other costs involved in space flight.
Considering they're currently in a developmental stage where they're changing things all the time, and this was actually the first flight of a new configuration of Falcon 9, it's safe to say they will not be building fewer units -- the $60 mil, even though it's the lowest price out there, has been for an experimental evolving rocket rather than a mass production model. They're likely to need to build more units as lowered prices lead to more demand.
Possibly... but my '98 car has a tape deck and the only "tape" I use is the $5 tape adapter to plug in my phone.
When driving, any momentary distraction is potentially deadly -- that's not true in many other situations, perhaps when operating dangerous industrial equipment but that's about it. Of course, those evil distracting video billboards are a lot worse than an offensive license plate -- but they're not issued by the government for identification purposes so it takes a higher standard of evidence to remove them.
Water is one of the simplest, most abundant things in the universe. Maybe life could use something else, but why would it when there's water everywhere? Even in our own solar system there's tons of moons and dwarf planets with water (including in liquid form internally), and even Mars with its extreme environment and lack of air has some occasional running water on the surface. Water does not seem to be the limiting factor for life.
License plates are different. The last thing we need is for license plates to shock other drivers or make them angry on the road, that's a public safety issue. And of course custom license plates are a luxury item sold by the state.
If you nuke Al Qaeda -- which would necessarily mean nuking a non-belligerent city full of civilians and a few dozen Al Qaeda operatives (let's say Karachi) -- it's certain that Al Queda would greatly expand its enrollment as a result and become much more dangerous. What survivor or neighbor wouldn't join them? There'd be nothing left to lose and every reason to die trying to revenge instead of die an uninvolved coward.
Are technological advances actually necessary, or is it just a matter of gathering a lot more data with testing to refine the logic?
I've been on the Vancouver SkyTrain. Nobody was freaking out. They were all enjoying fare-dodging because there was nobody on the train to check their ticket.
They're not cheering a competition, they're cheering for advancement. Or if you want to phrase it that way, what they're competing against is the obstacles nature puts in their way. I'm 100% certain that none of those people chanting U-S-A would be cheering the explosive failure of an innovative Chinese or Russian rocket, they'd be hoping for everyone to succeed, but obviously more invested in their own work.
Is that possible? A solid foundation through 3.3km of water (average depth of the Atlantic) sounds impossible to me, considering nobody has built a structure that tall.
According to SpaceX this booster will be reused for static fire tests, then retired to a museum.
That may be the theory. In practice, the majority of 403 errors you'll encounter are due to server software bugs creating permissions problems.
That wouldn't be a credible threat, as no country could launch a missile at a defenseless Mars colony without public outrage on Earth.
And my laptop charge lasts weeks, thanks to my never turning it on.
Perhaps not when you consider that the lawyers and the useless "tracking company" get almost all of that money.
If you offer people free passage and don't mention the slavery part, you'll get enough slaves.
John Glenn made it to space at age 77, so I don't think the g-forces are really that much of an issue. In fact the low gravity of the destination could help the mobility and self-sufficiency of old people and make falls less serious.
The lack of magnetosphere isn't really an issue for at least a million years. If you're capable of the magic of creating a planetary atmosphere from nothing then you'll be capable of refreshing it again every million years, no problem. We're talking about making an atmosphere 100 times thicker than it currently is, and changing the composition, and then replacing all the dirt on an entire planet with some that's suitable for planting.
Last I checked, we've increased the atmospheric thickness of Earth by 0%. Call me when we can make it 100x thicker.