Topic: Space Marines!

[Nemesis]

Link to full article

The USMC has documented an ambitious need for a spacecraft that can transport up to 13 marines through space to any spot on Earth within 2h. The official concept - dubbed Small Unit Space Transport Insertion - was launched in 2002, but its requirement for an orbital-class, reusable spacecraft has pushed it perhaps decades into the future.

"They set the bar very, very high," Damphousse says. "In this latest iteration we said: 'Well, do we necessarily need that near-instantaneous crisis response? Do we need to attain orbit? Or is this something that can be shorter range? Let's look at the suborbital band'."

But meeting such "near-term" needs for suborbital transport should only be the beginning, he adds. The ultimate goal is to scale up the system to meet the USMC's documented requirement for a manned vehicle that can move small units anywhere in the world within 2h. "People talk about putting boots on the ground, but it's more than that," Damphousse says. "It's eyes, ears and brains on the ground - what some folks in the Marine Corps call situational curiosity."

The next step after the conference has not been defined. Damphousse's team will write up after-action reports based on discussions between industry and military officials. Any decision to proceed to a demonstrator or acquisition problem will require a decision to commit funding. "The next phase may not be anything," he notes. "We have to figure out if there is a next phase and what it should be."

Another job for Spaceship Two (or a derivative?)

Spaceship Two is intended to be reusable, could it be modified as expendable perhaps with a non reusable (but more powerful) main engine and/or dropable boosters (maybe reusable) to launch from a short airstrip or maybe even ship?

[Sirgod]

We need the Marines there to fight off the Space Mosquito menace from Russia.

http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,498784,00.html

  Sometimes it's just really hard to kill a bug.

According to the Russian news agency RIA Novosti, a mosquito managed to live 18 months clinging to the outside of the International Space Station, without any food, being bombarded by radiation and enduring fluctuating temperatures ranging from minus 230 degrees to 140 degrees Fahrenheit.

"We brought him back to Earth. He is alive, and his feet are moving," Anatoly Grigoryev of the Russian Academy of Sciences told RIA Novosti.

The buzzing bug was part of a larger experiment in which bacteria, barley seeds, small crustaceans and larval insects were placed in a container strapped to the exterior of the space station, which orbits in zero gravity about 200 miles above the surface of the Earth.

From the RIA Novosti report, it wasn't clear if the insect — which may in fact be a non-biting midge rather than a mosquito — was placed in the container in the larval or the adult stage.

A European Space Agency experiment last fall found that primitive animals called tardigrades, also known as water bears, survived an even harsher exposure to space, including full vacuum and direct solar ultraviolet blasts. Moreover, several of the surviving tardigrades were able to normally reproduce.

Stephen

[Nemesis]

We need the Marines there to fight off the Space Mosquito menace from Russia.

Stephen

So long as they didn't send a hamster we should be all right.  Even the marines would have trouble with Wooley Rufus .