About a dozen satellite companies, a smattering of specialised space hardware and components, one couple trying to launch rockets from Scotland (Kaber Toss) and some bloke from Ashton-under-Lyne driving around with a rocket on a pick-up he once managed to launch from Morecambe beach.
Sniff, our most successful scientific Spacecraft by publications. The new Voyage 2050 programme certainly provides science topics that could lead to a worthy successor.
Godspeed! I don’t think Ariane 6 will go down in history as a successful rocket, mostly on account of the shift in economics forced on the rest of the industry by SpaceX. But I do get excited for debut launches – some very clever people worked very hard on this. :)
Outside an atmosphere like Earth’s, everything is already exposed to intense ionizing radiation from the sun/stars. A bit more from an RTG, even a big one, is a drop in the ocean. If we found signs of extraterrestrial life, then we’d want to be extra cautious about not sterilizing by accident, but that’s not currently a major concern. And of course, any sort of nuclear rocket propulsion would need to be handed with utmost care, but it’s also not a major issue once it’s outside the atmosphere.
I find it quaint that so much of the Deep Space Network is essentially “shout really loudly at the spacecraft with giant radio dishes”. Future missions will probably make use of laser relay networks, but since there are still so many currently operating missions which use radio, it seems like these dishes will be with us for a long time.
If that’s launching on a Vega-C first stage then the payload must be tiny. Using a disposable 1st stage also feels like it defeats the purpose a bit. It’s cool that they’re at least studying the concept, though.
Hold up, it’s only 23 m tall? That’s like 1/3 the height of Starship, and 1/27 the mass and volume. Does the Starship architecture even work at that scale?
SpaceX are having enough challenges as it is getting a useful payload fraction out of the 9 m wide Starship, which they have stretched once and plan to stretch again.
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