Comments by "remliqa" (@remliqa) on "The Skylon - Our Future Ride To Space? | Answers With Joe" video.

@davidlericain I'm interested in the desalination part.
5
@wirelesmike73 No, the most successful manned program is the Soyuz if we go by launch system (which the Space Shuttle is) . In fact I think their launch systems is also the most successful one if we go by the number of successful mission, regardless of manned or unmanned.
5
@wirelesmike73 It doesn't matter how non-reusebale the Soyuz is if the cost per launch is much cheaper.
4
@davidlericain That one is news to me. Care to share a link to that or explain how that could work?
3
@wirelesmike73 Again, The Space Shuttle is not reusable and it waste as much material per launch as The Soyuz. The only advantage The Space Shuttle have is that it can carry a wider variety of mission and have a much higher payload despite wasting so much of it on a non reusable craft (refurbishable=/= reusable). Reuseability is only useful if it either : A)lowers the cost of launch or/and B) lower launch cadence. If it can offer none of that than you are better off with a disposable launch system. Not that The Space Shuttle was even truly reusable in the first place. Wasteful only matter if it incurs cost and the Soyuz cost far less than The Shuttle. The Space Shuttle may not may not be a complete failure but it was a step in the wrong direction and may even set us back decades because of its flawed/compromised design.
3
Why not show us this better way , then?
2
Yes, and Piranha 2 was the best movie about flying man-eating piranhas.
2
@odysseusrex5908 What the hell are you talking about? Soyuz have over 1680 launches both manned and unmanned launches . It total manned mission was 326 in which only two failed attempts ended in fatality (total of 4 death in both of them combined). That give it a fatal failure rate of 0.6% of total number of manned mission (much lower than Space Shuttle's) . The actual failure rate of the Soyuz for both manned and unmanned mission is 27 which gives it a failure rate of 1.6%, not 3.5%. In short it is still more successful than the Space Shuttle in that regards.
2
@odysseusrex5908 Oh sorry. I confuse total of number of manned flight (326) vs total number of Soyuz flights (at 142) . Again even if we count the those 142 flights , the Soyuz still have a lower fatal accident rate (at only 4 people) compared to the Shuttle and thus making it a safer vehicle.
2
No, we can't. And even if we could it will be useless.
1
Why?
1
You do know that Lockheed Martin (X33's developer) was and still is a prominent military contractor (F-22, F-35 etc) , right? No, the reason why X33 was cancelled was because of cost (and deadline) overrun and because they (at the time) failed to overcome some of the key technical challenges (the composite tank keeps cracking e.g).
1
@wirelesmike73 No ,the material cost for building and transporting the Soyuz are already factored in into the equation when considering Soyuz's cost , this is why it was competitive on the commercial front and would have dominated if not for political factor (this is pre-Space X) . Again the Soyuz is cheaper compared to refurbishing (remember the Space Shuttle isn't really reusable ) the Space Shuttle after every flight . On top of that the amount of waste generated per launch for Soyuz are actually comparable when you count things like the massive fuel tank and the discarded heat tiles (among other thing the Space Shuttle cannot reuse) for every launch . You keep on acting like the Space Shuttle is reusable when it never was reusable in the first place. It is an expensive refurbishable craft.
1
@odysseusrex5908 Again, if we go by percentage of fatal launches per total flight (2/142 flights vs 2/135 flights ), then Soyuz is still a safer launch platform than the Space Shuttle. By the same merit if the BFS had only one fatal launch in 70 flights then it word have worse safety record than the Soyuz .
1
@odysseusrex5908 The fact that one failure of the Space Shuttle (or BFS) can have more casualties than several failure of the Soyuz proves my point that the y needed a much higher safety standard and why the Shuttle's safety record is terrible.
1
@Duhya Yeah, I know that feeling . I used to love (it is awesome thing) the Space Shuttle ( and I still do to some extent) but as the time goes one and I learn more about history behind the project I too realise how deeply flawed the whole thing was.
1
@koori3085 As I said I still have some love left for the Space Shuttle, that mainly because of its contributions (what you listed) during its lifetime. But lets not forget that It because of its compromised designs, all those function could be done cheaper using other methods. Heck , the Shuttle rarely even do recovery and maintenance of satellite because it would be to complicated and costly to use it too often. That is moist satellite that are to high to come down to Earth within reasonable timeline would be designated to a graveyard orbit even during the heyday of Space Shuttle.
1
@koori3085 Repairing satellite would pointless when it cost more to launch the repair mission that simply building a new satellite and launching them . There is a reason why such mission were rare and were only done when they can justify the cost (The Hubble eg). That said such repair can be done by some of the suggested precursor projects (all were jossed in the favour of The Space Shuttle ).
1
Isn't Burt Rutan a Climate Change denier?
1