[zawhmqswly]

CS tested their new LOX engine last sunday (jump to 5:50) :

[9TWSg835]

Pioneered by government?

[jabader]

They've got what? 520 kilos if they successfully reach the ISS? Great but they've got a long way yet to go to catch up with the big players.

[SNUfR8uI]

CS tested their new LOX engine last sunday (jump to 5:50) :

I gave up on that video after it reached 2 minutes of nothing happening. Have you Danes figured out how to do video editing yet?

[cauddyVab]

Err, yeah. Gemini, Apollo, the Shuttle...?

That's pioneering?

[Vomazoono]

Tsiolkovsky, Goddard, and Nazis. Everything else is refinement.

[rushiddink]

It's only carrying 520 kg on this mission, but its capacity is 6000 kg. To put it in perspective, that's about a quarter that of the best rockets we have today and similar to the early Apollos. I'm not pooh-poohing it, but still a ways to go before they will match the Atlas V.

[Ruiptuptubre]

As pies in the sky go, some asteroids do look pretty tasty. A lot are unconsolidated piles of rubble left over from the beginning of the solar system. Many, though, are pieces of small planets that bashed into each other over the past few billion years. These, in particular, will be high on Planetary Resources’ shopping list because the planet-forming processes of mineral-melting and subsequent stratification into core, mantle and crust will have sorted their contents in ways that can concentrate valuable materials into exploitable ores. On Earth, for example, platinum and its allied elements, though rare at the surface, are reckoned more common in the planet’s metal-rich core. The same was probably true of the planets shattered to make asteroids. Platinum, iridium and the rest are expensive precisely because they are rare. Make them common, by digging them out of the heart of a shattered planet, and they will become cheap. I guess they're loosely defining planets again (Pluto isn't one any more), I'd like to know how big a planet must be to differentiate heavy elements. The current theory for the asteroids was a failed planet - a planet failed to form due to Jupiter's gravity (why Jupiter formed first is another matter), now they're saying a massive collision occurred at the asteroid belt between planets? Is it possible the "Earth" was one of those colliding planets and was pushed here with its plentiful water?

[Nesskissabe]

Also, the Nazis were a government.

Just not ours.

[eskimosik]

I'm sorry, at what point is this human spaceflight? After they get the Atlas Heavy, human spaceflight will be possible again.

[Donadoni1809]

Tsiolkovsky, Goddard, and Nazis. Everything else is refinement.

Johnie come latlies, the bunch. 13th century Chinese FTW!

[DextExexy]

I thought about that, but they weren't actively trying to get something off the planet -- the others were.

Too busy avoiding the mongols at the time.

[Auzuigcx]

I think you're abusing the term, much like Humpty-Dumpty over in the other thread.

[Zhgpavye]

...which has nothing to do with this rocket.

[karaburatoreror]

This is just a BDR with an improved guidance package on the payload. None of it represents a leap in understanding beyond what was already known with the V2s.

[Ferkilort]

Obviously, the person who invented the first tool is the true pioneer of human spaceflight.

[VXHLrsO1]

He worked for Wiley Post first. He refined his designs as he went on, and was picked up by NASA because of that.

[weO1bVp1]

This is just a BDR with an improved guidance package on the payload. None of it represents a leap in understanding beyond what was already known with the V2s.

I, personally, am enjoying the thrust of your argument.

[scoussysows]

China has already sent armed men into space. They are way more prepared for what's out there than us.

[TOD4wDTQ]

Its operation looks very familiar. :\