Recent content by nixonshead

Very interesting, thanks for sharing. It looks high-level, of course, but nicely thought out (I'm a big fan of the risk matrix at the end).

Love this so far! However, I do wonder how much longer NASA can buck the OTL historical failure rate of ~1 loss-of-vehicle per 100 flights. I also wonder if the people behind BuranCorp got a good look at the state of the hardware - and it's support and manufacturing infrastructure - before...

Honestly, I've been so busy with other stuff I haven't had a chance to follow the thread so closely. It's nice that the thread keeps appearing near the top of the forum, makes me look more popular :D But yeah, probably best to open specific threads for specific topics. Also, to reassure you...

The talented brickmack has done a model of this Ariane X concept. Here are some cool renders of it.

In addition to the points on cost already made, launching on an expendable vehicle means a need for automated rendezvous and docking capability, adding to the complexity, mass and cost of the ACRV. When launching on shuttle, it's swapped out with the RMS. On the question of what will be used...

Station crew sizes: Zarya is nominally 3, up to 6 on crew handover. It could be more, if to wanted more Slava's launched at once - Zarya has ports for as many as 5 Slavas (so 15 crew), and crew facilities are in any case handled by the Slava FGBs, but in practice this has never been done. I...

A couple of bonus images, taking a closer look at the expanded Skylab-B, plus a comparison of the US and Soviet stations of the late-1980s.

Interesting, thanks! I'd not seen this, but the Zond 9 announcement in the timeline fit to a general pattern of how the Soviets announced things. IIRC, I based it on an OTL announcement for a failed lunar probe. Regarding the UK space effort ITTL, it's about where it was IOTL, at least in...

Wow, a double win! Thanks to everyone who voted!

In this case, I'm using it in reverse: The next generation Freedom capsule, developed for the moon, is adapted to be an ACRV for Skylab.

I had a US ACRV as the front-runner next-gen spacecraft in The Snow Flies.

I still need to go through Hermes' development in detail for TTL, but my initial gut feeling is there's no getting away from the resource module. IOTL it started out because of mass constraints, and quickly developed into a universal solvant for any problems with the design (except not a very...

Hi eveyone. Sorry I went silent for a while there. I was planning to add in a few more renders and reply to some comments, but work and family life went a bit crazy. I see I have quite a backlog to read! But the main thing to say is, thank-you to everyone who has nominated and/or voted for A...

Thanks everyone for all the comments! I'm glad you seem to have enjoyed the final Interlude. I'm just sorry I couldn't get as many posts out for Part 2 as I'd originally planned, and that there weren't so many images this time. Hopefully Part 3 will make up for that! R7 is still going ITTL...

"Oh great God, why have you sent this plague upon us, your people?" "Ah... sorry, I forgot I'd set that up in Part 1 Post 3. Um, let's just say the symptoms weren't as bad as expected and move on, shall we..?" US-A: Kosmos 954. The satellite failed to boost into a nuclear-safe storage orbit...