Search results

Space combat is something that has been discussed many times before on this forum; however, discussion on the subject has mostly involved technical debate, with the uncertainty of tactical and strategic influences on these matters clouding things to a large degree. Thus, I have decided to start...

A greeble is a way to add a sense of scale or visual complexity to an image, physical model or computer model of an object, such as a spacecraft. It has been used extensively in science fiction for these purposes, and 'greebles' can probably be found on impressions of most sci-fi machinery and...

Here's a bit of fun; a probe is sent to a exoplanet system within 70 light years of Earth using handwavium. It will have a chance to explore one (extensive, like that of Jupiter) moon system and planet in detail. Primary Objectives: •Obtain relatively high resolution (at least 300 km per...

For the last few weeks, I've been trying to create speculative planetary bodies. I know that sounds like a tall order; that's because it is. Mainly I've been focused on a world with oceans, continents and tectonic activity, similar to Earth. It is quite a complex system to understand; plate...

(For the TL:DR version, scroll down to the bottom of the post.) It is the position, or opinion of some (such as the writer of this blog post) that liquid hydrogen/oxygen ('hydrolox') rocket engines are a poor choice for first stages of launch vehicles, because they are 'thrust limited' and/or...

As we all know, Ares I was sold on its supposed safety performance, which was said to be better than the EELVs studied in ESAS. But I got thinking: Orion was of the size range that only the EELV heavies could lift it. The heavies had more engines, and more seperation events. A smaller vehicle...

I don't see any reason why China is beating everyone else. After all, who maintains and crews a $100 billion dollar orbital complex? The US, Europe, and Russia. And Japan. Also, what is really beating US progress is nonsense politics. If we hadn't had this nonsense about SLS and whatnot, NASA...

Or: why NASA does not need systems like the MPCV or SLS and how human spaceflight can be achieved in an optimal manner instead of being turned into problematic and suboptimal politically motivated and money-draining programs. This is an example of a lunar mission with SpaceX hardware. It is...

Through musings of a Shuttle successor, the future of manned spaceflight, SSTO vehicles, and, uh... nuclear-powered spaceplanes... :uhh: Comes the Evolved Reusable Launch System concept. It is a VTOVL 1.5 stage-to-orbit vehicle, with (what I'd like to think are) some unique concepts. The...

I still don't believe the viability of the sidemount, or that the people who suggested it aren't RisingFury's "McExperts". RisingFury is pretty knowledgable about aerodynamics (more so than myself), I doubt he is just talking nonsense. Furthermore, in lieu of complaining about Energia-Buran's...

I am currently developing an addon in Spacecraft 3, that I hope to convert to .dll later. Part of my spacecraft is a series of booms arranged in a somewhat star-like pattern, with a total of twelve (seperation angle between booms of 30 degrees. I can easily scale the booms that align with the...

This silly little idea was inspired by the precooled SABRE engines. The premise is; instead of running the fuel (or in the case of SABRE, fluid cooled by the fuel) through channels in front of the engine, why not directly inject it into the air, to cool the inlet surface and more effectively...

An idea I had a week or two ago, a launch vehicle exclusively for delivering liquid hydrogen propellant to orbit, to supply a fusion spacecraft or similar. This concept uses hydrolox propulsion with a common bulkhead between the LOX and LH2 tanks; the payload is contained in the same tank as the...

Lately I've been wondering about 'mining' hydrogen, as well as other gases, from the atmosphere of a gas giant. My vague idea would be some sort of nuclear-powered scramjet, that could skim the upper atmosphere and slowly collect gases. It would maintain a high enough altitude that reaching...

Just a simple, solar array that can be used for station building/etc. Blue- solar arrays. Magenta- solar array roll-up canisters. Light blue- Solar array support structure. Pink- Rotational joints. Yellow- additional equipment. Green- truss structure. Red- unpressurised CBM port. Anyone...

I have come up with another incredulously useless idea: a vehicle that can fly into orbit atop a booster, grapple an orbiting object- such as a satellite, or space station module, and return it to Earth. Essentially, a castrated Shuttle- an unmanned shuttle, launched empty on an expendable...

I'm having a bit of a conundrum regarding the OMS and RCS propellant for my ROCS spacecraft. These are my options; - Gaseous pressurised oxygen/Sintin - Propellant combination used on the Buran shuttles. Sintin hydrocarbon fuel has an appreciable density, but gaseous oxygen has relatively low...

We pretty much all know that STS is costly to launch and refurbish. However, lately I have been wondering where most of this cost lies. How much, reletively speaking, lies in; TPS repair? Refurbishing the SSMEs? General after-flight maintainance? Payload handling? ET construction? SRB recovery...

Is a suited astronaut on EVA a spacecraft? Does it matter if they are using some sort of manuvering device? Is the suit itself a spacecraft? Are both a spacecraft?

O-F Staff Note: This thread is for discussing Dyson spheres and building them by transformation of energy into matter. Thread forked from "5 Earth sized planets in habitable zone found" discussion, and some quotes may refer the former thread. I'd like to point out that in all probability...