Virgin Galactic in HD

[Botsareus]

edit: Kinda like the story on your picy, if I am interpreting it correctly. Am I?
The question of the meaning of your picy has been hunting me for a while now. I know you sport this picy all over the web, so it is not a one time deal.

[Botsareus]

Numsgil, you probably have more experience with this stuff the I do at this point (I am considering kerbal for Christmas now)
Do you envision any other problems in design then faulty engines? Given the state of technology of today's engines?

[vrukt]

I couldn't care much about the politics either, in the end it's usually criminals on each side trying to make cash while invoking the flag, and peoples love of staying comfortable. I just don't like it when people write off soviet designs for just being soviet.

The moon base thing is what Putin is saying he wants to do right now. Right at the kick-off of Crimea tensions he announced it.

http://www.nydailynews.com/news/world/russia-plans-colonize-moon-permanent-lunar-base-report-article-1.1785673

It's kind of like the cold-war lite. Cold war with crippled ideologies and techno!

Now SpaceX just had a failure, and it will be interesting to see why. I'd guess the electronics, and guidance somehow screwed up on it, but I think engines still have a freeze up problem because they use the oxygen to cool the combustion chamber, to prevent the combustion from melting through the combustion vessel.

If a pump fails, or a tube gets clogged, you can have your engine melt.

Engine design hasn't moved that much either. Those soviet engine are #2 most efficient after that SpaceX Merlin engine, which is made from the soviet engines technology, which is from the 70s.

Good question though, I want to go look more into the causes of failures now, as I've just been searching it seems the Russians have had a ton lately, which is odd considering they had some solid designs.

I expect to see a few more SpaceX designs explode though, as anyone doing rocket research is bound to produce some impressive explosions.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vfUOJ1uYJUo

[Numsgil]

It's interesting how almost all other technologies we have today have followed something like Moore's law, from computers to agriculture to vehicles to all kinds of crazy things.  But rocket technology is basically the same today as it was in the 60s.  I think in a lot of ways the Apollo project was a good half century or more ahead of its time.  A combination of German know how and American money and political one-ups-man-ship.

Not to besmirch the soviet program.  But landing on the moon with a manned craft and bringing everyone back 6 different times is quite different from landing unmanned probes on the moon.

Of course the cost for the whole Apollo project was staggering.  More than $100 billion adjusted for inflation.  It would be hard for anyone to justify that cost today, and the price hasn't really changed.  If Russia wants to consider it, they're talking about ~5% of their GDP for a year.  Or .5% over 10 years.  That's just... a lot of money.  It turns out that going Mach 20 200km above the Earth is hard.  And then trying to get from there to somewhere else is even harder.

[vrukt]

It is very true, but after the initial development they really didn't expand too much towards engines.

Also for the soviet program, I think first ICBM, satellite, space station, and man in orbit is a pretty good accomplishment.

They also were first to physically touch the moon when they crashed a probe into it.

If you look at the moon landings, they were really playing catch-up, and had they been delayed, USSR would have made that first as well.