Who is trading anything? All the nominees are getting through, and no Republican will break ranks to vote against them, let alone enough to make a difference. They are not working in good faith, they will not repay this nor any other gesture, they’ll take it and laugh at your spinelessness.

They’re already working on laws to make boycotts they don’t agree with illegal.

One difference between the C and D versions is that the regenerative cooling (which formed the traditional rings around the nozzle) moved from tubes to a channel wall design which results in a smooth exterior appearance. The design is simpler to manufacture and somewhat more robust, running the cooling fluid around…

A large number of the team members are leaving at once. The game’s development continues, but basically a bunch of people quit.

NASA considered a similar design for a Mars Transfer Vehicle’s habitat. Once the departure burn was complete, the whole spacecraft would go into a rotation about one of it’s axis. Not full 1G acceleration, but a dang bit better than 0G for the entire trip (though apparently thats ok).

If he holds out a few more years, Crew Dragon or Starliner would be a much more interesting way to visit the ISS... And only a max of 2.5G during ascent!

Actually, the shuttle-as is was capable of taking the whole tank to orbit! A little trajectory tweaking and you’d just not dump it before you reach orbit.SLS will be similar in that its only being suborbital as a disposal measure, the core has enough energy to reach orbit (even with payload!).

It may be related to the way that ACES, unlike Centaur, is the full 5m or so width of the rocket, allowing much more volume. Also the common-bulkhead construction further increases volume.

2018 is the date they’re supposed to report to congress on what they’ve done, not to have the whole thing finished and ready to go.

The module would likely first see use around in cislunar space, being occasionally visited. It would be the perfect testbed for more advanced radiation shielding and other systems that we know how to use in Earth orbit, but haven’t had to use outside of Earth’s magnetic field.

This is seed money to start things moving. NASA is already investigating possible commercial partnerships with companies like Orbital ATK, Boeing and Bigelow to get proposals for what the habitat could be.

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”.