1. I hate writing lists like this.
2. but only because I'm afraid I don't have enough cool stuff to put on them
3. I swear.. a lot, but I get away with it... in person, because I'm Irish, and in writing, because I'm an eloquent motherfucker
4. When I was a kid, I really wanted to be a space shuttle pilot. My entire room was covered in space posters, until I was eventually convinced this wouldn't happen in my early teens (kinda hard to be a shuttle pilot when you live in a country with no space program or even an airforce).... at which point....
5. I started listening to heavy metal and for years I wanted to be a touring musician. Played in a few bands, even recorded some stuff, but I was never really that good, but I did teach my brother to start playing
6.... who is now waaaay better than I ever was, has a degree in music and releases some of my favourite music.
7. I am by a long way the most level-headed member of my family.
8. I like to think I'm resourceful (read as "watched one too many episodes of macgyver as a kid") and set myself little challenges all the time (like trying to break into my own house)
9. I've been arrested once and spent a night in a cell
10. I love the mountains (snowboarding, mountain biking) but didn't realise this until my late 20s. It's one of my great regrets that I didn't start these things sooner.
11. I'm a 3rd dan (soon to be 4th!) black belt in Aikido, but....
12. I haven't been in a fight since high school.
13. A small immature part of me really wants someone to attack me so I can find out.
14. The rest of me isn't nearly that stupid.
15. I love to cook (especially BBQ), and will happily spend all day preparing a meal for my wife or my friends.
16. I don't have or want kids, but I get on great with them (I suspect they think I roughly as mature as they are).
17. I teach a kids Aikido class.
18. I'm very good at my job, but it's just a means to an end for me. If I never needed to work again, I wouldn't.
19. No-one will read this far.
20. I think people are basically good, but they're also stupid and easily manipulated... this goes for me too.
21. I really want to travel again, but life keeps getting in the way.
22. I'm a total geek.
23. I like to look at everything from all angles, but there are somethings I have no time for (homepathy, racism, homophobia, climate deniers, etc). I don't believe in debating these people.
24. I sometimes wonder if I should put my money where my mouth is and run for public office, but then I remember that that would seriously cut into my snowboarding/mountainbiking/aikido-ing time.
25. I am very tempted to delete this list.

At the point of separation, the booster has jettisoned its entire payload and most of its fuel, so the energy required for the return leg should be significantly less than the initial burn.

As far as I know boosters would normally have some fuel left at separation, so the question is really how much more fuel is required for the return than the normal safety margin?

If the answer is "none" then you get your booster back almost for free... any higher amount is a tradeoff of cost of booster vs reduced payload.

Every account I've read suggests that if it can be made to work then it's a large cost saving, but then they said that about the Space Shuttle too.

100 lbs to LEO for $1M: that's $10k/lb. Cheaper than the space shuttle, but a fair bit more than what the private launch folks (will eventually) launch for. Also the video doesn't show de-orbit or passivization of the 2nd stage, meaning this is a potential source of a lot of new space junk. Furthermore, since this is Darpa/military, it strikes me as a cover story for further weaponization of space.

1960's actually, but no less impressive for that.

The blackbird is just an incredible machine. When I was a kid, one of my lifes ambitions was to fly one. Sadly, I'll never get to do that, but I did get to see one in person on the USS Intrepid in New York. Also they have a Space Shuttle there! I highly recommend it.

I think this is a very important point. I watched a movie about the Challenger disaster yesterday with Richard Feynman on the committee. Richard Feynman was some sort of kook, who asked the experts at NASA what was the failure rate of the Challenger. They said there was a 1 in 100,000 chance that a Space Shuttle would fail catastrophically (Destroyed and all Crew Dead). Feynman knew that was "a wish" because that would mean if you launched Space Shuttles every day it would be 274 years until one failed (on average). Furthermore he polled the engineers of the shuttles and their numbers were 1 in 200 some as low as 1 in 50.

You throw numbers at people and a lot of times they don't know what to do with them. How to categorized what they're hearing. And if you throw science at them which specifically NASA was doing to the public to try and confuse them, it takes a brilliant mind such as Feynmans to explain in basic terms what is going on.

The same method to determine whether or not the world is heading for serious ecological collapse is why we are all standing here today. Why our medicines work, why our machines work, why the little rectangles that we gaze at all day bring us the entire world.

If you are curious about this sort of thing, and you come at it with an open mind and work off of a basis of scientific knowledge to understand the world, you will come to the conclusion that global climate change is happening and it's getting very serious. If you come at this with cynicism, or superiority, or especially politics you won't get it and that's on you, not science.

It's a space dogfighting game, so there is atmosphere in space, or at least it controls like it is. The human spaceships are supposed to look something like WW2 era fighter planes, since that's what this game is about, WW2 dogfighting in space.

You can even see what could be atmospheric maneuvering controls on one of the ships at the 4 minute mark. Wings or rudders or something wiggling about.

As for realism, there's much worse lapses here than just "omg spaceships with wings!". You could put wings on a spaceship for practical purposes, to make a spaceplane like the space shuttle. Or for decoration. But then you get things like the really fast military fighters have a top speed much lower than C, they can turn and kill their old inertia as if pushing against air, all the fighting is done at visual ranges under accelerations slow enough for a human to react to (and survive physically), lasers fire discrete, visible, tracer like lines rather than an invisible ray traveling at the speed of light... I'm sure there's more.

Your video, Space Shuttle Thermal Tile Demonstration, has made it into the Top 15 New Videos listing. Congratulations on your achievement. For your contribution you have been awarded 1 Power Point.

Found this Choggie: The rocket was fueled by Aluminum Perchlorate, which is also used in fueling the Space Shuttle Solid Rocket Boosters.

always get a kick out of how russian designs are so similar to US designs.

The proposed russian design for the space shuttle was ridiculously similar to our space shuttle.

Reusable launch vehicles aren't flawed as a concept. They just require innovation that a bureaucratic risk averse govt organisation like NASA can't produce.

The space shuttles were designed in the 60s/70s, its like saying cars are unsafe because a government designed 80's car doesn't have a modern 5 star crash rating.

Captain Cook or Christopher Columbus would never have sailed if people worried about ships sinking or people dying.>> ^deedub81:

"reusable launch vehicles"
Just ask NASA how that worked out for them.

This is how a Space Shuttle is was Prepared for a Flight

>> ^pumkinandstorm:

dead


Dead? It works for me. Maybe region blocked?

Da fuck does MLK have to do with drive-bys?
>> ^quantumushroom:

MLK Blvd? A drive-by in the space shuttle, now that would be something.

MLK Blvd? A drive-by in the space shuttle, now that would be something.

>> ^radx:

Your comment beat me by 20 seconds, mate. See my second update and feel free to submit it now.


Submitted and credited you: http://videosift.com/video/Trees-cut-down-so-space-shuttle-can-pass