Delta IV Heavy 1/96

[Bionic Modeler]

Originally Posted by Paper Kosmonaut

- and yesterday we had a relatively small 3.9 Richterscale earthquake here in Grunn! The first one I ever experienced.

Your first earthwuake can be quite an experience. We have them quite reularly here where I live in Southern CA USA. We had one around 7 on the scale occur last year when we were watching the movie 2012. It happened just as the ground was splittng apart in the first action scene and went on for a good 30 seconds. Now that was the best special effects I have ever experienced. My wife and I just looked at each other and then burst out laughing shee then said "No wayyyy!". The whole house just kepts swaying back and forth like it was being shuffled in a frying pan.

[Paper Kosmonaut]

It's all got to do with the gas extraction they do here in the province. The ground level has sunk significantly in the past 50 years due to subsidence. Some villages reported a lot of damage like cracked walls. These quakes are not as deep as regular earthquakes are, but occur at around 3 km depth, where they get the gas.
Although it isn't in any way comparable to what a *real* earthquake is, it was quite the experience, I can tell you.

[Retired_for_now]

Sounds like another geo-engineering project for your ever-industrious country. But you need the ground level to go UP, not down.
Yogi (above sea level, just barely ...)

[Paper Kosmonaut]

Most of the Netherlands already is below sea level. Only because of the dunes, the dykes and some clever waterworks we keep our feet dry. This map shows all the land that's below sea level. In Groningen (Northeast) the two areas below sea level are mainly because of gas extraction.



But we Dutchies are not really afraid of the sinking ground level here. We just heighten the dykes some more. (-:

[Bengt Fredén]

Holy smoke!

I didn't think it was that bad in the Netherlands. Isn't Lelystad an aerodrome, or sort of museum airport?

Bengt in Stockholm

[Paper Kosmonaut]

Originally Posted by Bengt Fredén

Holy smoke!

I didn't think it was that bad in the Netherlands. Isn't Lelystad an aerodrome, or sort of museum airport?

Bengt in Stockholm

Lelystad is a city, named after the engineer that thought up the Afsluitdijk and the way to polder Flevoland. It was founded in 1967 and it has an airport which also houses the Aviodrome, the biggest aircraft museum in the Netherlands. Dutch aircraft, a huge Lockheed Constellation, some beautiful helicopters and lots of jets in the backyard. They even built a fullsize replica of the original airport building of Schiphol in the 1920's. Upstairs in the museum there's the Dutch Space Museum. They now have a couple of my models - and if I'm correct, they now also will have Billy's Apollo capsule for display.
(more info on Lelystad)

[mk310149]

I have delete the post

[Konstantine00]

Just FYI guys...but soon there will be an AXM Delta IV Heavy, with EFT-1 in 1:144 and also 1:96. I'm getting pretty excited to build it once it comes out.

[Paper Kosmonaut]

Oh... That indeed is pretty exciting news! Nothing wrong with Mark's models but the EFT-1 mission is a great one to build of course.

ON a sidenote: I could foresee something like this big pretty Delta IV Heavy become the standard launch vehicle for Orion in the end. I still don't see the usefulness of SLS. the D-IVH easily could be made man-rated and used for LEO. With the D-IVH and the Falcon 9H elements to make the Mars project spacecraft could be sent up and assembled in LEO. After assembly the journey can start from LEO instead from Earth. We don't need SLS to get there at all. Use the money for better exploration tools and vehicles. And please, let's make it an international mission. For all mankind and all that.

[dhanners]

I'm no rocket scientist but it seems to me it would make more sense to go with the Delta IV Heavy, too. It is already flying and I would think the per-unit cost goes down the more of them you fly. It's characteristics are already well-understood. I say spend the money on hardware you actually put into orbit.

I remember reading an interview with former NASA administrator Daniel Goldin years back in which he said it wasn't a huge stretch to man-rate rockets like the Delta IV or Atlas 5. His comment was basically, "We're not going to put a multi-million dollar satellite on a launch vehicle that isn't reliable and carries a fair amount of redundancy." So going from that to a man-rating isn't a big deal.