Comments by "Vikki McDonough" (@vikkimcdonough6153) on "Scott Manley" channel.

  1. And it may look short, but the Shuttle Landing Facility runway is actually one of the longest runways in the world.
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  2. It's a pity they couldn't have brought Salyut 7/Kosmos 1686 over and attached it to Mir; that would have been so, so Kerbal.
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  3. That $5 telescope would probably work better as a potato cannon than a telescope.
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  4. 6:11 - Eww, you should throw out that Earth and buy a new one. That one's all mouldy!
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  5. "The case where a brave shuttle astronaut would have to ride in the back of the space shuttle instead of, you know, in the cabin with everyone else" - I think I've had KSP flights like that.
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  6. And here I thought using one's engines as a heatshield would stay restricted to Kerbal Space Program...
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  7. 2:29 - I don't know; the Ariane 4 looks pretty cute to me in an endearingly Kerbal sort of way.
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  8. 1:11 - Also, real spacecraft usually don't wait quite that long to deploy their parachutes.
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  9. 6:30 - If I've got my numbers right, that would be -157C to +121C.
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  10. 4:53 - Technically, the gyroscope would still have been in its original starting position; the rocket was rotating around it.
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  11. I think the suit looks, frankly, adorable; the colour scheme reminds me of a late-model Kerbal spacesuit.
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  12. 4:14 - They did still see a satellite, though - just not the one they thought they saw.
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  13. 6:11 - Manufacturer: Found lying by the side of the road.
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  14. 7:32 - They should've just checked "Ignore Max Temperature" in the debug menu.
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  15. 1:50 - "Strategic Rocket Forces" is the most awesome name for a military branch ever. (It also makes much more sense than lumping in satellites and ballistic missiles with the Air Force like the U.S. did for the longest time.)
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  16. 9:25 - Why couldn't they make multiple aerobraking passes through the extreme upper atmosphere to bleed off speed before the final reentry? Since the shuttle's heatshield wasn't ablative, it was peak-heat-flux-limited rather than total-heat-absorbed-limited, so it should have been possible to spread out the deceleration over several aerobraking passes rather than reentering directly from a lunar return.
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  17. 1:48 - Note that this happens even without a load connected, because even dilute sulphuric acid corrodes lead and lead dioxide (albeit slowly), evolving hydrogen and oxygen in the process; this is why lead-acid batteries have such a short storage life.
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  18. 13:39 - With ion drives, the problem is getting energy into the spacecraft. With antimatter drives, the problem is getting energy out of the spacecraft.
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  19. 10:37 - Moral of the story: You can't progress quickly without blowing up rockets.
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  20. 4:51 - Rockwell: "Nah, payload doors on top introduce a point of structural weakness." cuts fuselage circumferentially behind cockpit so that it can hinge to one side
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  21. It's much much much much much harder to get back from an Eve landing nowadays, of course.
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  22. It's SpaceX's curse: every one of their rockets above a certain size threshold has to blow up spectacularly on the ground once for no apparent reason.
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  23. 14:01 - Oh noes, the police have come to arrest the Starship!
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  24. 7:59 - The solution for that problem is ridiculously simple: more Sepratrons to get the capsule farther away from the exploding rocket.
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  25.  @professorg8383  Defense contractor PR shill detected
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  26. 4:05 - On the other hand, it also relies on the SLS, which is why the rest of us can see why it's a good thing it wasn't chosen.
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  27. 4:30 - Reminds me of my Nerv-powered upper stages and spaceplanes...
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  28. Triethylborane lighter fluid wasn't the only good thing that came of the zip fuel programme. It also contributed hugely to scientific knowledge about the physical and chemical properties of the boranes, their derivatives, and other boron compounds.
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  29. He probably does know about it... when he's sober.
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  30. 3:29 - Air-cooled nuclear reactor: REALLY BAD IDEA.
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  31. 7:41 - Of course, the truest measure of a gas or ice giant's rotational period would be the rotation of its solid core. Bit tricky to measure, though.
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  32. 10:20 - I thought it was a proven fact that Stuxnet was built for sabotaging the Iranian nuclear programme?
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  33. 7:14 - Could it potentially have spun up enough to have disassembled itself before we got to it?
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  34. 12:35 - How do you know that it isn't actually leaving Saturn?
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  35. 4:02 - That, plus many many many many abort scenarios even with the stock shuttle configuration, could have been solved by the simple expedient of putting separation motors on the ET in order to assure its positive separation from the orbiter during an abort.
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  36. 11:17 - What field artillery do you use that would fit on a mount that small?
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  37. 3:06 - More like an impossible order.
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  38. They used to have an Atlas 410, but it's no longer available.
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  39. No, defense contractors should be required to avoid budget overruns completely. Their costs are much more predictable than NASA's.
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  40. 5:15 - Calling Venus "warm" is kind of like calling a supernova "a bit lively".
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  41. 6:29 - Please tell me their plan was to actually use a Learjet with a rocket strapped to it.
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  42. Two final questions: 1. Are they going to start actually going to space, or just to 50 miles? 2. Are they planning on having the operational fleet max out at four SpaceShipsTwo, or are they going to build a sixth one to replace Enterprise?
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  43. 13:57 - And now we know who at ESA is responsible for pressing F5.
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  44. 10:11 - Why does a cruise missile have landing gear?!
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  45.  @Jona69  That would fall under "shielding".
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  46. 1:15 - Solution: MORE duct tape.
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  47. 1:57 - Plus, if they'd parachuted it down to a soft landing, they could've recovered it for a few hundred funds.
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  48. 7:20 - Pretty surprising that the U.S. wouldn't bend the rules to accommodate the Israelis, given that they're practically bedmates (to the extent that the U.S. government has bent lots of things for Israel over the years)!
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  49. 1:50 - Not to be confused with the Low Accuracy Radial Planetary Searcher, or LARPS.
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  50. 10:28 - Kinda difficult to put the crew in danger when the mission has no crew.
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