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I stopped playing Kerbal Space Program back when it was still being beta-tested years ago. Most of the rockets I fielded back then while playing the game were "yeah, this ain't going to work" because I actually am an engineer who has seen some shit. The Kerbal Language? That's Mexican Spanish...

I'll need to use or pass that joke on to someone some day.

The Soviets were highly critical of the Space Shuttle. They didn't think it was actually a civilian project and their "copy" was a) much more thoroughly tested, b) didn't need a crew for the orbital test flight, and c) had an autopilot capable of handling re-entry and safely landing at a...

To paraphrase John D. Clark: the Soviets did it right. Need more thrust? Build a bigger rocket. Need more Δ-v? Add more stages. The first stage of a modern Soyuz is an improved version of the 20-nozzle monster used to get Sputnik-1 into space.

You will get no arguments from me in response to that statement. EDIT: The heaviest thing in a rocket is the oxidizer and LOX is one of the lightest and most energetic ones you can get. Fluorine is somewhat more energetic, but you need 2.25lbs of F2 for 1lb of O2 and I'm pretty sure everyone...

I'm not confident NASA got this right. The RS-25 has a mixture ratio of about 6:1 and a specific impulse of about 453s with a chamber pressure of 2,740psi. It's wasting enormous amounts of liquid oxygen because that specific impulse is doable at 4.83:1 and 1,000psi before even getting into the...

I was thinking about this and came to the conclusion that SpaceX is very intellingent in how they go about things when designing and building a rocket motor. If they were going for broke by trying to wring the maximum amount of specific impulse possible they wouldn't be using LOX/RP-1 or...

When Saturn V's were being launched there was a several mile wide exclusion zone because if something went wrong with a Rocketdyne F-1 during liftoff you're getting a mushroom cloud. NASA actually expected that and the first stage of a Saturn V was designed in such a way that it could lose an...

That's assuming Carnival actually cares about such things. They don't because Janie in her bikini is a paying customer. SpaceX is not.

Your tax dollars at play. That little stunt cost NASA tens of thousands of dollars just to get the suit up there.

257bar is roughly 3,725psi. That's comparable to the water pressure a Seawolf-class submarine encounters at the published Test Depth. Unlike a submarine, a rocket motor is containing and directing a fire that's trying to melt the motor.

I'm amazed by just how resilient, versatile, and long-lived the Hubble space telescope is. It was launched in 1990 with an improperly shaped mirror and last serviced by Astronauts in May '09. It still has a lot of life left. It gave us this...

The G-forces were too high for the human body to survive and the velocity needed to reach orbit can not be done without using a multi-stage platform with the technology we've got. Optimally, the take-off mass of a ground launhed orbital rocket is about 80% first stage fuel and that only gets...

Impressive. The youngest of the four is someone NASA would never even consider sending into space unless it was a situation like in the movie Armageddon.

Space launches from American launch sites already require FAA pre-approval. This is just the FAA being petty about who does and does not get astronaut wings because space tourism is now a thing.

I'm wondering who came up with that acronym word salad. The SPACE portion makes it sound like something most would be inclined to support without actually reading the bill or knowing what's in it. If it's really targeting carbon emissions instead of just a blatant cash grab I can think of three...