Read it, it's an Obama administration smear. The part about Obama's "antipathy towards American exceptionalism" should have told you this was some editorializing bullshit.

If you don't recall, the Obama administration was at the time trying to pass a lil measure called the Affordable Care Act and receiving withering criticism over it's propensity to swell federal deficits. It's not surprising he made trade-offs for a program his own White House commission deemed infeasible with current funding.

ELI5 The way I understand it, nuclear ships and power plans basically use the heat from the nuclear reaction to power a steam engine and thus turn a turbine or drive-shaft. So how does nuclear power create thrust without a propeller or other mechanical aid? Are they controlling and focusing a series of miniature nuclear explosions to create thrust???

Ok but like…. Who would save you first democrats or republicans? Can we PLEASE boil everything down to red vs blue then tell me I’m good if I support the same one you do?

They were attacking him for spending and he cut nasa in an attempt to appeal to republicans who wouldn’t accept military cuts.

Yeah, I'm leaving this subreddit. All it is now is clickbait articles and political discourse. /r/spaceporn is better.

Sounds to me they are just trying to figure out who they should support in order to get more funding for space exploration. It's an innocent question quickly answered by saying "neither, funding depends on the publics interest in it".

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More to do with the publics desire than anything. Funding for nasa goes up with people's interest in it.

This attitude is exactly why you are getting downvotes.

The manhole example is a back of the envelope assumption that it reached orbit and an assumption it actually stayed a manhole. No one is arguing whether an explosion has enough theoretical energy to move a hypothetical point-mass to a certain altitude, people are arguing that you are overestimating the strength of materials.

Even if you got a chunk of raw materials like steel or water into space and plan to intercept them with starship you still have huge problems. The first one is that you need to be able to dock with the payload if you plan to adjust it’s orbit, and you aren’t going to be able to dock with a fused reverse-meteor of steel. You actually need the structure to survive.

You are also going to have to circularize it’s orbit which is not as easy as you’d think. Your “manhole” example is one thing, but if you’ve played kerbal literally even once you’d know that going straight up is not a good way to get into orbit. You are going to have to angle your trajectory so that the relative speeds of your intercept are more similar than a straight vertical shot, and that is going to take way more explosive power. Add on top of that the fact that you’d have to travel sideways through the atmosphere if you want to Rendezvous in a single impulse and you need exponentially more explosive to overcome drag, plus more mass to protect from the atmosphere, which requires even more explosives.

And none of this even mentions the extreme difficulty of hitting your ideal trajectory in a single impulse with no way to error correct. Yeah it’s mathematically possible in a simulation, but you need to be able to adjust for error in the real world. Changes in the wind or air pressure at a certain altitude will have significant effects on your final altitude and position which will make to miss your intercept.

This tech would be much more useful on the moon sending water back to earth. There is no atmosphere to fight and your chances of making the Rendezvous are probably higher because you could circularize a bit using atmospheric braking. You’ve still got lots of other problems that make it difficult, like getting the nuclear material to the moon which is exactly why a spin launch installation on the moon makes way more sense, but whatever.

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You could launch a solid chunk of titanium to the altitude of the ISS, sure, but that isn’t a “working solution.” You need “machines” to be able to interact with the other spacecraft. You need to move able to adjust your trajectory. You need to be able to reuse your launch site and not destroy/irradiate it every time you launch. You need to be able to stop once you get to altitude, or you need to be able to somehow punch through the atmosphere and overcome the “I need more mass to block the atmosphere but that means I need more thrust but that means I need more reinforcement but that means I need more mass…” problem.

I think you are falling into that trap where you have a neat idea and then feel personally attacked by anyone who points out flaws. That’s not how you solve engineering challenges. Instead of arguing with the haters and insisting “trust me bro,” I encourage you to do the math. Get on kerbal and demonstrate an ISS rendezvous using a single impulse and a starship. I’d watch that video, for sure. Do some research on the g-force ratings for modern docking adapters and explain how they would be able to survive your hypothetical launch. You’ll get way better results than arguing “nuh ah” with people and then complaining about being downvoted.

Division, as the overlords desire. It fucking nauseating.

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Daughter of a lifelong NASA employee. Democrats consistently fund NASA better. Republicans also like to contrive a debt ceiling crisis (like they're about to again), which has historically damaged the local economy in Houston. It's not just government employees who are affected - it's every vendor, every business those employees utilize. The entire city shuts down.

I am sorry that treating your question seriously ended up in a fun-suck for you. I was trying to treat your question with respect and give you as close to a truthful answer as I am able. I apologize.

EDIT: You probably, can use them as space guns, actually. The big boom pushes something ballistic. Maybe a rock, or a BFSpear, or another bomb. Their are practical and logistical questions, but sure, you can use an atomic boom as space weapon. Just gotta find the right something that survives the propulsive blast.

Edit: and I can offer a book of fiction that uses an onboard exploding nuke as a weapon of attack. Peace offering. :-)

While Elon certainly contributed let's not forget most of what he spends is aimed at cornering the launch market.. the lunar lander is a good example of how this could come back to bite us later on.

His contribution is comparable to that of Bezons and the virgin orbit guy.

The end date for the space shuttle was set during the Bush administration.

Are you asking if the laws of physics cease to exist outside of the solar system? Short answer... No. But don't stop being curious.

Gravity is gravity. One object with mass attracts any other object with mass with a force proportional to their masses and inversely proportional to the distance between them. While kind of pointless, you could calculate the gravitational force between Alpha Centuri and my computer mouse. There are plenty of things between that are exerting more force, but that doesn't make the force zero. Close enough to zero that is doesn't matter? Sure. But it's not zero.

The sun is always exerting a gravitational force on the Parker Solar Probe. That's what causes it to orbit instead of just shoot past the sun in a straight line. As the probe approaches the sun, it accelerates due to the gravitational force and the velocity being similar in direction. Once the probe passes its closest distance from the sun, the velocity vector starts pointing away from the sun while gravity pulls towards it. This causes the probe to decelerate until it reaches its farthest point from the sun.

The speed of light is a constant. It's the fastest speed in the universe. That doesn't change when you're on earth, out near Pluto, in interstellar space, or in intergalactic space.

I hope this helps.

I just saw a clip on tiktok saying AI had already identified several possible radio sources near our solar system that had been previously undetected (from older data)

Republicans are against anything everything. They don’t better or advance anything in this society.

Democrats lay down and let the republicans do what they want.

Neither side actually cares about anything other than their money.

Obama cut NASA funding while president if I’m not mistaken. That’s why we had to send our astronauts up in Russian crafts for a few years

I’m more worried about the ISS. It’s bound to happen. And that number is coming up shortly.

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SpaceX has discussed how to handle radiation storms in Starship. I believe that was specific to while in flight. Might have been from before they were selected for HLS. But obviously something they've been thinking about.

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