The latest Russian budget cut Roscosmos funding to about $2.5 billion total, so its going to be a while.

2017 for LEO flights. 2020s for missions around the Moon. Possibly commercial space stations too...

I feel like if they want to go out into space, let Civ 6 have a mode where you can, as you progress into the future, start attempting to lay down cities on other bodies like the Moon or Mars (with the according tech development). Maybe they’re different maps that you switch between Earth - wherever.

Unfortunately Orbital-ATK has withdrawn from Stratolaunch leaving the plane again without a rocket:

This was changed. During Constellation, Ares 1 turned out not able to lift Orion as-designed, and as a result Orion lost a number of capabilities, including the land landing. Of course, now its on SLS so those limits are gone, but I guess thats past now.

Escape system is only on the Crew Dragon (Dragon 2). Its possible the capsule is what you see falling away, its designed to cope with some pretty heavy loads. Another example of an unmanned capsule falling off a destructing booster is Mercury-Atlas 1. In that case, the parachutes did not deploy and the capsule was…

There were two IDAs for the 2 crew ports. IDA 2 will now probably take IDA 1’s place, with IDA 3 likely being built from a structural spare.

The slide whistle appears in the film score; you can’t get away from it!

Those FWC cases ended up on display for a while with the Pathfinder shuttle simulator display. Apparently they were to remain unpainted, and thus the SLC-6 launches would likely have sported black SRBs. The technology is being proposed by Orbital/ATK as the SLS advanced booster casings called “Dark Knights”.

Ah, the manned booster.

I'm not sure if its changed at all, but at one point after release, the game was still rendering every single block in view. Even the underground ones. Optimization!

For some reason, they want to use it for their own proposed station. Note: the module was originally built for MIR-2 in the 1980s. It does its job but it is still a 30+ year old piece of equipment from the USSR.

Well, it is said that NASA may be looking to launch a cargo flight of SLS in 2017/18. Proposals have been made for a number of useful things...

A mission to refit the station would provide a solid, safe additional test flight before humans begin to ride it. Doing this would also make SLS more affordable, so much of…

Well, the Commercial Crew program has been given less money than requested for several years. Originally, commercial flights (including Dragon) were to begin NEXT year but last year they decided to buy more Soyuz seats through 2017, while keeping the allocation low.

And here we are.

Its a good thought, although when programs are cut at NASA, the money doesn't go back into their budget. It gets reallocated by the government somewhere else. Like, if they don't spend that $3Billion on the station, then NASA gets $3Billion less that year.