Recent content by Bhodi Li

Well if anything the effects of environmental degradation on the ISS would be less than what they would be on Earth at ground level since there isn't much atmosphere where the ISS is.

Too bad they don't make cars that last like guns. A good car might last you ten years or so but guns can last many lifetimes. There's guns that've been in families for many generations, passed down from father to son to grandson and so forth and you will find muskets from the American...

So with the SpaceX space craft the first stage is reusable, after detaching it returns to the launch pad and can be used over and over again. This is a breakthrough for spacecraft technology but what I don't get is why they couldn't do that with older craft. For instance, the Saturn V rockets...

Well they've kept the Hubble Space Telescope in orbit and in operation way past the time at which it was anticipated they would retire it, and it remains in operation today despite there being much more advanced telescopes such as the James Webb in use.

The problem with raising the ISS to a higher orbital altitude is that it means more exposure to radiation from the sun for those staying on the ISS which can be very harmful especially considering the fact that people spend months there. Also, it would make the ISS much harder to get to from the...

And yet the moon experiences atmospheric drag because yes the moon is in the Earth's atmosphere even if just barely. The geocorona extends out past the moon's orbit so the moon does experience drag no matter how slight, and as you said any drag is a drag, and the moon doesn't need thrusters to...

So to the best of my knowledge the USS uses thrusters to keep it in orbit which means it must constantly expend fuel to stay in orbit. What Im wondering about is how much of a problem atmospheric drag is when you're up that high. You would never be able to maintain orbital velocity at sea level...

You would need a really big balloon to lift a spacecraft.

As it's been discussed in another thread, escape velocity on Earth is going straight up at about 25,000 MPH but that's at sea level. The higher you get the less speed you need to escape the Earth's gravity well, assuming you're going in the direction of straight up (that's what velocity is...

The muzzle velocity of a slug from a .44 magnum can be 1000 mph. The muzzle velocity of a .220 Swift slug fired from a .220 Swift rifle, one of the fastest bullets in the world, is around 2800 mph. That being said, escape velocity is quite fast, considering it's almost ten times the speed of...

With modern spacecraft such as those produced by Space X and Blue Origin the first stage returns to the launch pad for reuse. I was thinking, what if we were to build a spacecraft where the first stage gets the spacecraft to escape velocity and once it does it can detach and return to the launch...