Correct, but they could have invested less into the system before attempting a transition to a reusable architecture. At this point, I think they are too deep in sunk cost territory to make a correction. I’m looking at RFA, ISAR, PLD as more viable alternatives.

I believe Germany proposed an A5+ variant while they waited to see if SpaceX style reuse was feasible. The French overruled them and we ended up with an A6 that is just a lower cost variant of A5, but different enough that it blew both schedule and cost. One of the reasons A5 cost so much to begin with was the future man rating requirement as well as being oversized. A6 tried to get around this by being smaller and using 4 boosters for the heavier payloads (similar to Atlas V & Vulcan, but larger boosters)

Probably more of the latter. The US competition was fossilized by perverse government incentive structures for many years. When a viable commercial market materialized (mostly due to SpaceX proving the way); it exposed the bankruptcy of the big government approach in absence of a commercial market that didn’t have any alternative up to that point.

Could you be thinking of the 2022 Pythom Space testing incident? That was a “master class” in how not to test rocket engines. https://arstechnica.com/science/2022/04/pythom-space-tests-its-rocket-with-questionable-safety-practices/

The problem is that you’ll have trouble spinning the propellant internally if the volume is not full. Taken to the extreme, if you were only 10% full, how do you get the propellant to the pumps, paddles, etc to circulate the fluid? A lot of it is stuck in the middle in absence of elaborate mechanical fluid conduits. The answer is you apply micro acceleration so the pumps can circulate the fluid, then the centripetal acceleration takes care of the rest, at least until something perturbs the system.

This is a minor point, but fewer dockings equals less wear & tear on the ship. The depot/tankers could have a heavier variant of the docking hardware, but you want to limit the weight of the lunar ship as much as possible.

No, the transfer has to be done with some acceleration. It doesn't take much, but you need to settle the propellant. You could try to do this by spinning the spacecraft, but this complicates the refueling architecture (stronger latches, different propellant feed lines, etc.)

I'd recommend against EVA in the current iteration of BO suits. You might get a little cold & lightheaded if you leave the spacecraft.

Translation from French/German: We didn't think reusability would work, so we didn't try. Now that we know it works, we don't want to admit it, so we make a new excuse not to try that allows us to keep doing the same things.

Dracos would likely be too slow. The issue is that you need a pretty steep reentry profile to prevent the station from breaking up before it enters thicker atmosphere, where it quickly decellerates. By entering at a steeper angle (ie faster reentry), the impact debris footprint on the surface is smaller and the location more predictable.

Think of the ISS like an airplane. While it doesn't need to pressurize/depress like an airliner, it does have to deal with some large thermal gradient changes every 90 or so minutes, which produces metal fatigue among other effects. The solar panels too are showing their age from everything from thermal cycles to micrometeorite/orbital debris damage. Inside, the crew spends a considerable portion of their waking hours cleaning all the surfaces to prevent molde, etc. All of the latches, wiring, insulation, plumbing, pumps, etc. also are showing their age. Combine that with the fact that the system was designed in the early 90's and needs an electronics update to the modern era.

On the second question, yes, the joints connecting the modules of the station experience flexure & torques and eventually will experience mechanical failure. This flexure is a result of everything from people moving around on the station to ships docking.

Solid iron meteorites are a pretty small sub-population. Most meteorites are composed of lighter materials (dust, ice, gravel, etc.). The reason that meteorites are perceived as metal is that more of those survive atmospheric entry to impact the ground (meteoriods). The lighter stuff typically doesn't make it that far and rains down as dust.

I can't believe this guy used Boeing in his list of supposedly "competent" companies. His argument pretty much self-destructs after that point.

What happens to people that believe this nonsense once Starships are flying on a weekly basis? Do they just move on to the next whataboutism? It seems like a sad way to live.

Hmm, French Guiana doesn't seem all that Euorpean, except for the name.

Yes. I know this because when the mount has no carry capacity, I can still carry things due to my pack, etc. If I take off the pack, the I’m overweight even when on a mount. Most of the time, the effect is not noticeable because many mounts have a carry capacity much greater than the pack.

Option A would be extremely difficult, but not impossible. You would need to separate out the free oxygen, probably by compression, which also produces a lot of heat. The Sabatier reaction for the methane would require CO2, which is pretty scarce in the atmosphere, let alone at high altitudes, so I see it as pretty much impossible. Easier to carry the methane you need with you since it is a small fraction by weight anyway.

Option B would have the difficulty of landing a rather heavy vehicle, which will have a much higher terminal velocity and turn like a pig.

Overall, landing with a significant quantity of LOX (beyond landing requirements), is a bad idea since LOX is so cheap here on earth, so Option B fails yet again.

Another question about giganyify. When gig wears off, does it just cut the maximum health or does it also reduce your current health?

No, the helium leaks were minor and within acceptable limits. The bigger problem is that some of the thrusters underperformed during the docking. The most likely cause is thruster overheating caused the propellant to vaporize before reaching the combustion chamber resulting in poor mixing. They did an experiment to test the thrusters while docked, but need more time to analyze the data. Since the service module burns up during reentry, this is the only opportunity they have to get more data.

Initial reuse goals proposed by Musk were 100 Ship and 1000 Booster. Those numbers were to make Mars possible, so I don't think they will achieve this for a long time. Probably by the time of Artemis 3 it will be closer to 10 Ship and 50 Booster. In the short term, I think it will be 2-3x for both over the next two years.

A couple of additions: * Hunter Hood - displays a large shield alerting everyone that you've activated the hood. They just kite you until it wears off in 4 sec. Useful in PVE, but not as much in PVP. * Buffs can be purged, so Leather such as Hellion Jacket can be deactivated. Any good ganking or zerg group will have a purge plus another player to reset the purge CD. Again, pretty valuable in PVE and some PVP, but not so much in ZvZ. * Offhand - If you use a 1h weapon, then some off-hand stuff is useful such as facebreaker, musiac, and mistcaller. You just have to coordinate with what you are doing. Mages should use something such as mistcaller. Healers could use musiac for the heal bonus. General warefare, maybe facebreaker.

A couple of tips on clearing camps: 1. Don’t clear the camp right away. Often the big dog will still be in the camp and attack you just for the stats or to make clearing the camp quicker since he doesn’t have to worry about you killing his mobs. The disadvantage is you may lose chests. 2. Escape gear. It’s hard to underrate some good boots or a hard to kill mount. Invisibility can also help, hoods, potions, etc. Use them until you spec up enough to stand your ground.

On your focus question: no, everyone gets the same focus from premium (10k/day). The difference is that high spec refiners, crafters, etc have more focus efficiency. While it may cost you 800 focus, it only costs them 100 (made up numbers).

No new information in the article. From other sources, the likely culprit is the thrusters heated up to much causing the propellant to vaporize prior to injection resulting in poor mixing/low thrust. The tests they ran should give them some confidence if this is the correct explanation. Overall, not a major hindrance since they can adjust the departure profile. Long term, this doesn’t look good for Boeing since a thruster redesign would take a while.

Two more possibilities are a system problem (interaction between hw and sw) and incorrect usage (trying to do something the system wasn’t designed for). The first is likely, but the second is not in this case.

Makes sense. We’ll have to keep our eyes out for additional deluge or rainbird equipment.

For armor, you craft this at the warriors forge. That is the building with a sword symbol on the map. For T3, you can craft in any of the smaller “cross” cities such as Swampcross, etc. It may be cheaper to do there since they don’t charge silver for crafting. For T4 and above, this can only be done in larger cities such as Thetford.