** The Official Space Flight Thread - The Space Station and Beyond **

I'm just trying to understand the staging, since the Delta II can launch to HCO and interplanetary - just a guess but is it a case of the boosters and first stage get it off the ground, second stage gets it to LEO and third stage gets it to lunar orbit? Or is the third stage only used when breaking free of the Earth-Moon system?

Anyway, i've been reading up on Gemini - apparently there were proposals to land on the moon with it for 1/20th of the cost of the Apollo project. And while it's a bit cramped (Gusmobile :rolleyes:) i don't think you'd see modern day NASA turn down something like that.

http://astronautix.com/articles/bygemoon.htm

That's a good site by the way, tons of interesting articles. Bit time consuming though :p
 
PermaBanned said:
How is everybody missing literally the first sentence in that article? This is like that time when NASA scrapped the Shuttle and everybody was like "omg so the ISS is abandoned now?".
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Skim and assume is the name of the game.

Don't panic folks:

(Reuters) - Moscow no longer sees manned spaceflight as its top priority but remains committed to its International Space Station obligations, the head of Russian space agency Roskosmos said on Wednesday
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PermaBanned said:
Well at least they said they'll fulfil their obligations on the ISS, but still... the US won't have anything for a good few years, Russia seems to be pulling out, what do we have to look forward to? Watching rich people pay for rides on private suborbitals? No thanks :(
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all the rich people funding commercial services, and offering huge prizes for people to reach orbit, the moon and Mars?


the massive commercial bodies producing orbital craft, the companies producing spacecraft to transport men and materials to the ISS?


what about the commercial group planning lunar orbit missions soon? heck they're planning their first flight to the moon in 2015 that's sooner than any government as far as i know.


Don't know about you but I'd much prefer to see 20 competitors with 20+ designs than just 2 with decades old stuff.
 
PermaBanned said:
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-14653371

Roscosmos haven't had much luck with getting into the right orbit lately... still, the article implies that it's in an orbit, i wonder if there'l be some sort of rescue mission mounted, be it from the ground or from the station using the Soyuz' docked there as runabouts.
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Looks like it came back down and crashed:

August 24, 2011 18:40

Progress spacecraft wreckage falls in unpopulated area in Altai
MOSCOW. Aug 24 (Interfax) - The wreckage of the Progress resupply spacecraft came down in the Republic of Altai, causing no destruction.

"The Progress resupply vehicle that failed to reach the target orbit crashed in the Choisk region of the Republic of Altai," a source in the regional law enforcement agencies told Interfax.

The crash caused neither loss of life nor destruction. There are no populated areas near the crash site, he said.

sd eb
(Our editorial staff can be reached at [email protected])
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http://www.interfax.com/newsinf.asp?id=268143
 
Tefal said:
what about the commercial group planning lunar orbit missions soon? heck they're planning their first flight to the moon in 2015 that's sooner than any government as far as i know.
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Source? They all say they can do these amazing things to get publicity but the only one that's even close to doing anything is SpaceX.

How about this:

http://www.copenhagensuborbitals.com/tychobrahe.php

From what i can tell it lands head first. You can barely move your arms. But still, it's amazing back yard engineering. I don't know when that stopped being something us brits were known for...
 
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