@Cirrus Light  
The Redstone rocket wasn’t terribly powerful; they had to make a lengthened version just to get the capsule into space at all, and I imagine they flew a steep trajectory to maximize time in space. Even with the retro pack, Shepard’s flight peaked at over 11g during re-entry.

@gallagher117  
I honestly don’t know that about the Mercury-Redstone. Seeing as it’s just a suborbital flight, though, it seems odd that they’d set the thing up that way. Seems like it’d be much safer to fly it on a trajectory that doesn’t require the retroboosters.
 
But then again, maybe it was so they could test the heat shield right up to its peak design capacity? Maybe they thought; “Well, it’ll be a much worse death for them if they completely fail to fire while on-orbit, anyways…” and so decided to make it mission-critical for this one as well?
 
In any case, I know they went through an absolutely tremendous amount of effort to make it as darn reliable as possible. Three engines, hypergolic propellants, only one had to fire to de-orbit it.
 
 
@Jim Prower  
Heh. Well, honestly, I’m afraid I’d have to side with Elon Musk on this one. I remember hearing about a Soyuz resupply mission (unmanned Progress craft, thank goodness) where the second stage failed to ignite, and then the Phobos-grunt mission just recently aswell. Heh, Russia has… Quite the predicament when it comes to going to Mars.
 
But anyways, the biggest thing is probably me blaming them for the failure of the DC-X. Read on.
 
And, well, I’m honestly just a bit relieved SpaceX is doing alright. To be honest, I don’t know much about how Virgin Galactic does things, but I know SpaceX is actually going way beyond the industry’s standards in safety. Their staggering successes have really led me to believe that they’re the best mankind can do - probably for the entire forseeable future: So a lot of my hopes are riding on their success.
 
Virgin’s cool, but sub-orbital spaceflight is a whole different animal than orbital, never mind SpaceX’s Mars colonization goals.

@Cirrus Light  
The rocket was an Orbital Sciences Antares, which has had several successful launches with those same NK-33 engines. It’s important to remember that there was also a successful Soyuz launch, as well as a ULA Atlas V with Russian-built RD-180 engines as well last week, so there’s not really an issue with the engines’ country of origin - the Russians are mostly quite good with rockets, no matter what Elon Musk says.
 
The plane was Virgin Galactic’s SpaceShipTwo, which is definitely going to be a setback for that program, as well as the tragic death of one of their test pilots.

@Cirrus Light  
@VladimirMacHolzraum
 
There’s more reason to like Mercury-Atlas than that. It was, AFAIK(as far as I know), by most accounts, the closest anyone has ever been to launching a SSTO(single stage to orbit) vehicle (on Earth).
 
Appearantly, if you took only the first stage of Titan II with a tiny payload, it would have been SSTO(single stage to orbit). AFAIK(as far as I know) it was never launched that way, though.
 
On a related note, could the Mercury capsule (on Mercury-Redstone) have survived reentry if the retro boosters completely failed to fire? I seem to recall that it couldn’t.

@Jim Prower  
The vertical take-off rocket that failed was an unmanned resupply mission; not even a probe of any kind (the scientists and engineers who work on the probes sometimes become so attached to them over about a decade of working on them, that they need grief counsellors sometimes when they fail).
 
The one where someone died was a horizontal takeoff spaceplane, so it’d be “Spaceplane Hanger”… Sub-orbital, at that.
 
I really need to look into this more, though, and find out what the vertical launch vehicle was… REAAAALLY hoping it wasn’t a Falcon; I don’t think it was, though, ’cause I heard it was a Russian engine that failed…

…If there hadn’t been a launch failure and a flight-test tragedy last week I’d have made a joke of “You could just revert to the VAB if it fails,” but that doesn’t seem appropriate right now…

@Mikanada  
Actually it kept the status of Kingdom, versus a principalty which is a level above the micronation. Canterlot and its surrounding region could be a principality, and other regions could be labelled a duchy (like Burgundy) or counties. but the whole nation, disregard if there’s a king, queen, prince/princess/duke/chancelor/emperor can handle the tile of Kingdom, under the crown, etc. well, i think i have a whole book about how it works and the miscellaneous forms of political organizations, and i don’t seek to ignite a world war three with this post.
 
 
@Cirrus Light  
hence the “this will end in tears” tag.

@Cirrus Light  
Yeah, I always thought the stage-and-a-half design was an interesting way of overcoming the problem of not knowing if you could start a liquid fuel rocket with no G-loading. And the only other rocket I can think of that uses “balloon” type construction is the Centaur upper stage.

@VladimirMacHolzraum  
Oh, yes, but what I said was mostly referring to his; “Where are the capsules?” and bit about lunar transfer.
 
…And I dunno why it took me this long to realize he said “Lunar Transfer” because of the arrow and “moon.” I think I was too busy focusing on the actual document part, not the “drawn-in” stuff Xp
 
But yeah. You know the Mercury-Atlas is actually my favorite launch vehicle. It just looks so sleek and cool, and I’m really fascinated by its awesome stage-and-a-half design, not to mention its “balloon” tanks (though that’s not unique to Atlas, I don’t think).

Equestria is not a Kingdom it’s a Principality.

Source URL links to this very page.

Ah, adapting military ordinance to civilian needs!
 
Short deadlines? Need your satellite in orbit ASAP? Cut on the time of transport to the cosmodrome and waiting in line for a launch window! Order a START-1 orbital delivery vehicle today!
 
START-1 orbital delivery rocket for civilian purposes is the only civilian launch system that can be delivered to arbitrary location with an all-terrain vehicle travelling 50km/hour through snow, mud and sand, and can be deployed into a fully functional orbital launch station in 20 minutes ready for launch at press of a trigger, requiring only about an acre of relatively flat open terrain.
 
So, instead of getting your satellite to the cosmodrome, bring the cosmodrome to you! Even the parking lot in front of your company building can be your cosmodrome, and it takes under an hour since completion of building your satellite to having it operational in the orbit! All thanks to START-1!
 
(yep, START-1 is a real thing, based on TOPOL ICBM, and yes, it’s used for civilian/commercial launches, although the all-terrain capability is hardly ever used, most START-1 launch platforms stationed at Baikonur cosmodrome).

@Cirrus Light  
Well, that’s basically what they did IRL for Mercury, Gemini, and pretty much the entire Soviet/Russian manned space program.

@patachu  
Yeah. It would also make it a lot more suggestive :D

@Background Pony #FB80  
Celestia’s Royal dildoes.
 
 
@Cirrus Light  
the real difference between a huge missile and a rocket, you hope the missile will explode, and you hope the rocket won’t.
 
 
@jazzaman  
muh budget!
 
 
@Smudge_Proof  
like between the stages ?

They look like dildos

@jazzaman  
I’m pretty sure those are just ICBM’s…  

The thumbnail has seriously misled me.
 
Hahaha

I’d suggest adding a ring to those rockets :D

Where are the capsules? How do they stage? What kind of payload can these things support? Delta V? ISP? These design document is lacking some crucial details. And also, none of them are lunar transfer capable.
 
Back to the drawing board you go!