Thunderbirds are...

[Ocean1]

Heh, spot the fluffy dice.

[bogan]

Neat! I like that there's still a bit going on in that area.

[Ocean1]

Neat! I like that there's still a bit going on in that area.

Rear vision ornamentation?

Ohyeah, cool as.

[Laava]

Starting service in 2017. Doing what? Six million dollar man remake?

[BoristheBiter]

One test landing, one wheel down.



so that means second test the second wheel should come down.

[Ocean1]

Starting service in 2017. Doing what? Six million dollar man remake?

Whatever the market says, it's a private company. But I'd say the biggest job initially will be ferrying crew to and from the ISS.

The thing that get me was the massive resources they'd assembled to get the design and build so far so quickly, something not possible for NASA since before there was a split house.

[Laava]

Boris video was in some ways much better than the first. Teething problems? Meh!
Looks like a 2 or 3 seater? Small payload though surely? Unless it is a lot bigger than it looks.

[James Deuce]

Whatever the market says, it's a private company. But I'd say the biggest job initially will be ferrying crew to and from the ISS.

The thing that get me was the massive resources they'd assembled to get the design and build so far so quickly, something not possible for NASA since before there was a split house.

Given that NASA don't buy $900 hammers anymore, I struggle to see how a meatpuppet ferrying service will make any money when the Vostok/Soyuz combo only costs two cows and a tractor to build.

It carries up to 7 astronauts. Hobbit astronauts. Because they need to escape the Nazgul.

[Ocean1]

Looks like a 2 or 3 seater? Small payload though surely? Unless it is a lot bigger than it looks.

Seven crew / passengers, don't know payload numbers.

[James Deuce]

Seven crew / passengers, don't know payload numbers.

The people are the payload I believe. It's a commercial take on a scheme NASA and the US Air Farce cooked up a while ago.

[Ocean1]

The people are the payload I believe. It's a commercial take on a scheme NASA and the US Air Farce cooked up a while ago.

Aye, it ain't new, but commerce isn't necessarily a swearword, and at least SOMEONE is doing it.

I like SpaceX's Grasshopper, but they seem to have been at it a while and they're still well short of orbital range.

I remember as a kid listening to live commentary from NASA of the Apollo 11 mission, on a crystal radio I built myself. I never built another radio, and NASA never built another groundbreaking manned space mission.

I listened to a speech at Cornell two decades ago, where the speaker observed that the government’s science team had closed the door on any project of similar scope because the cost was extravagantly and insupportably wasteful and that better use could be made of the funds. Next year NASA’s budget was slashed again. The cost, then involved in another, similar manned space mission? US$14 per family per year for five years. They spent more on coffee every week.

It was a revelation to me insomuch as I’d previously thought that most people thought the same about the importance of space based science to the species as I did. They don’t.

[bogan]

I never built another radio, and NASA never built another groundbreaking manned space mission.

So, now we know who to blame

I think technologically, we could do away with the cumbersome multi-stage lifters in my lifetime, but whether the funds become available is another matter.

[James Deuce]

Aye, it ain't new, but commerce isn't necessarily a swearword, and at least SOMEONE is doing it.

Wasn't implying it was. If I was doing a commercial plan, I'd be buying Sri Lanka and looking at using carbon Nano-tubes to build me a space elevator, so I can cheaply fling people and resource at Ceres to setup the Asteroid Belt Mining Corp. Ceres appears to have more water than Earth meaning that we have reaction mass, radiation shielding and the building blocks of life available to take advantage of the unlimited metals, hydrocarbons, and energy rich compounds like Helium 3 that abound across the belt. We need to stop focusing on lifting in and out of gravity wells and make the commercial exploitation of the asteroid belt the primary focus of space "exploration". We need to stop being so fucking airy fairy about it and let Russian peasants, Romany, and Lebanese merchants do their shit. One of those asteroids that missed us recently was assayed at being worth 44 trillion dollars in exploitable metals alone after spectroscopic analysis. There's no way we can catch them though. There are plenty of ways to deliver raw material from the belt to Earth orbit very cheaply. A gentle nudge goes a long way in a vacuum. We have the engine systems to move large quantities of building materials to the belt and we have recently downgraded the danger posed by radiation to meatpuppets in space.

My main problem with this little PoS is that it is a people mover. We don't need another one. We have three serviceable methods available right now with another coming on-stream soon, that are combined people/payload movers. We need tonnage movers. Computers navigate better than humans and robots build better. Stop putting people in space until you're doing it to manage a commercial mining operation is all I'm saying.

[pzkpfw]

...

Nudge the valuable stuff to land on North Korea.

Win-win.

[mashman]

Cool stuff... wish I could go for a burn.

@cost ... We have the technology, we can't afford it.