Recent content by Slarty1080

Very interesting and it makes sense, I'm sure SpaceX will have made every effort to employ the best of the best whatever their nationality and background. It does seem strange that SpaceX has developed so quickly and who knows what has gone on behind the scenes. It has been very unfortunate that...

Kassinni, it is an interesting point that you raise as to what extent Russian technology and ideas have been used by SpaceX and other US launchers. Elon Musk has always praised the Russian engine technology and I believe other companies have used Russian engines on their rockets so it seems...

You are woefully misinformed about NASA launch failures. NASA had 4 launch failures in 1960 alone: Explorer S-46 / IE-B (Juno second stage malfunction) Echo A10 (Delta second stage failure) Mercury Atlas 1 (Lost after 59 seconds) Pioneer P-30 (Atlas-Able second stage failure) There were...

It’s clear from your post that you hate Elon Musk and SpaceX. But argument by repetitive statement is not a very convincing one no matter how many time you repeat it. There is all too much anger and ranting on the internet so I won’t add to it here and judging by your response you have not read...

Thank you, it is nice to have a discussion here which is respectful and informative. Unfortunately I am not that familiar with the Russian space program so it would be difficult for me to comment in detail, however SpaceX have a huge focus on cost and will, I suspect, have designed everything on...

It would appear that you do not understand what SpaceX is doing with its experimental Starship test program. Look what happened to the Falcon rocket trials, a dozen or more crashed into the sea or into a barge, but what does that prove? It proves that SpaceX were able to refine their rocket in...

I would agree humans aren't likely to be going anywhere beyond Mars anytime soon. But Solar flares are relatively easily shielded against using a well protected "storm shelter" refuge. GCR radiation is another matter however and is very hard to shield from. It is a serious issue for Mars...

The problem with the space shuttle were insufficient funds for the system that NASA wanted to build and too many compromises had to be made (an over large payload bay for the US Air force for example). The result just didn’t do what they wanted. But I don’t think that there is any reason why a...

I think it depends what we are talking about here. If its travel to the stars then the best that can be said is lets have another look at the question in a hundred years time and take it from there. If its sending humans to Mars then the biggest problem is our tendency to throw rockets into the...

The key factors in calculating the maximum velocity of a simple rocket are the exhaust velocity of the gases ejected from the combustion chamber and the mass fraction of the rocket (the percentage of the rocket that is propellant v the rest)...

It is relatively easy to settle the tanks by firing cold gas thrusters. This tech has been around for a long time even Apollo used this technique. But AFAIK no one has ever attempted to transfer such a large quantity of cryogenic propellant in 0g before, however theoretically is should be very...

The discrepancies between the measured speed of rotation of galaxies v the theoretical speeds based on gravitational calculations with observed mass of stars

I think we are basically in agreement. Dark matter is an invention to paper over huge discrepancies between theory and observation.

I thought dark matter was invented to account for that behavior of ordinary visible matter over very large distances like those seen in a galaxy as a whole. IIRC galaxies spin faster than our current theories say they should so dark matter has been suggested as a way of balancing up the books...

The reason why it has taken so long is because the vast majority of the political critters are simply not interested in space exploration. Some will give fine speeches about America's role in exploring space etc but they are not really engaged. Even president Kennedy didn't care about going to...