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I feel like there should be a rainbow involved somewhere in that travel method.

My idiotic brain thought of the protomolecule from The Expanse books.

I was about to go do the conversion because I know im very close to that in cm. Turns out I barely make the cut for astronaut height at 157.48cm

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the nice thing is, we keep getting older and the forbidden planet stays basically the saaamme age

Encryption isn't all that interesting. Any alien signal won't be built on our protocols or use our language. We are unable to understand an alien signal whether encrypted or not. The signal will look artificial either way.

The real assumption is that aliens capable of transmitting signals over galactic distances are still using RF to communicate.

Yes, using AI is ludicrous. It brings nothing to the table that wasn't already being done. This is just part of the AI craze to get people excited about aliens.

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The big government program is NSSL , and both SpaceX and ULA are certified to do all of their launches, as that was a requirement to bid. And NASA has chosen falcon heavy for Europa clipper, a high energy mission.

What launches is ULA able to do that SpaceX can't?

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Acronyms, initialisms, abbreviations, contractions, and other phrases which expand to something larger, that I've seen in this thread:

|Fewer Letters|More Letters| |-------|---------|---| |AR|Area Ratio (between rocket engine nozzle and bell)| | |Aerojet Rocketdyne| | |Augmented Reality real-time processing| | |Anti-Reflective optical coating| |BE-4|Blue Engine 4 methalox rocket engine, developed by Blue Origin (2018), 2400kN| |BO|Blue Origin (Bezos Rocketry)| |EELV|Evolved Expendable Launch Vehicle| |ILC|Initial Launch Capability| |N1|Raketa Nositel-1, Soviet super-heavy-lift ("Russian Saturn V")| |NSSL|National Security Space Launch, formerly EELV| |RD-180|RD-series Russian-built rocket engine, used in the Atlas V first stage| |SLS|Space Launch System heavy-lift| |ULA|United Launch Alliance (Lockheed/Boeing joint venture)|

|Jargon|Definition| |-------|---------|---| |Raptor|Methane-fueled rocket engine under development by SpaceX| |Starlink|SpaceX's world-wide satellite broadband constellation| |engine-rich|Fuel mixture that includes engine parts on fire| |methalox|Portmanteau: methane fuel, liquid oxygen oxidizer|

^(13 acronyms in this thread; )^(the most compressed thread commented on today)^( has 22 acronyms.)
^([Thread #8612 for this sub, first seen 25th Feb 2023, 01:34]) ^[FAQ] ^([Full list]) ^[Contact] ^([Source code])

Starship for sure, but I'm also hoping Blue Origin surprises us with a New Glenn launch this year. I doubt it will happen but it would be nice to see some competition in reusable launchers.

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Amazon has bought a ton of capacity but we don't know the details of those contracts. Amazon may have the ability to flex to the provider that is more successful or cheaper.

Starship, but I’m going to take the lazy route and say all of them. There is just so much to be excited for.

AR hadn't made an engine since the rs-68, and that's a gas generator.

That ULA chose to go with blue origin is either an indication of what they think of AR's technical ability, of how much AR wanted, or some mix of the two.

Encryption doesn’t mean you can’t detect a signal only that the contents appear random. For example most wifi traffic is encrypted but if you examine the frequency spectrum near a device you can clearly see peaks around 2.4GHz where the signal is.

would have been nice to have this during the wow! signal

> They lit 31 engines, a world record.

They lit 32 engines, one shut down during the (short) static fire.

> The last time someone tried 30 they blew up four rockets in a row, the second one destroying the launch facility.

N1 is a very low standard to compare against. It's engines could not even be test fired prior to being mounted in the rocket, much less had a chance to do a full static fire like SH. Those were also the first staged combustion engines ever made, oxygen-rich on top. And the failures had more to do with the rocket than the engines themselves.

On the other end a very high standard of reliability is given by SpaceX itself. SpaceX flew Falcon Heavy five times, each firing 27 engines (plus the upper stage one) and it was 100% successful with no Merlin having a problem in any of the flights. 27 is almost the same as 30, the phantasm of N1 was slayed by SpaceX itself already.

Raptor is clearly immature and problematic if you compare it with Merlin, RD-180, Vulcan-2, etc. We have seen it's engine-rich exhaust several times and they are still tweaking the film-cooling for optimal performance, and might have other problems they haven't spoken.

Given ULA's more stringent standards (they aren't expecting to lose/scrap several test vehicles, going through dozens of engines like Spacex. They don't have engine-out capability to shrug off a few bad engines like SH), I do not see BE-4 as being less fine than Raptor.

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The cat says you've already been there as long as no one is looking.

Currently sf uses NSSL to buy most of their launches from SpaceX and ULA, and others they contract out individually.

In their proposed new approach, they do pretty much the same.

The real question is how many of the launches that would have been in the first category get moved to the second.