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Thor Wotansen

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    Space Viking
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  1. I'm currently trying to use this for a challenge involving Duna. I'm doing the challenge in a sandbox save, but it was launched legitimately, without cheats, and weighs in at a cool 1020ish tons. It's currently loaded up with various landers and base pieces, and has a ΔV of about 2300m/s (with the landers all fully fueled). On the launch pad, the part count was just shy of 1000 parts.
  2. Can you fault a hard working booster for wanting a bit of R&R in the ocean after a job well done?
  3. The following mission ideas can be taken as challenges, however I will not be scoring them. I will continue adding more missions to the series as time progresses. Feel free to follow the series from Mission 1 through numerically, or just pick one that sounds fun, just be forewarned that the later missions will be structured with the assumption that you have completed the previous missions. I am pulling inspiration from several real life mission proposals from various sources, as will be evident, and each Mission will have a few options for how to complete it. I won't put any mod restrictions on anything, since I won't be scoring anything, but I am designing the missions for stock KSP with DLCs. Feel free to use whatever mods, cheats, or divine rituals to the Kracken you wish. The only requirement is that you enjoy yourself. If you don't, the Fun Police will be administering Mandatory Fun according to Hilarity Protocol 365.7 subsection A. Mission 1: Return to the Mun! I will be adding more missions as I complete them. Enjoy
  4. That landing was epicly casual, lol. The booster was like "man, I got this."
  5. Well, if you do design a separate service module for Dragon to dock to to go around the Moon, you could always add in a cabin, I mean, you're already docking to it. That way you wouldn't have to jeopardize the abort capabilities of the Dragon by loading the trunk with a full service module.
  6. It would be easier to launch a separate service module on the FH and then launch a Dragon on a F9 to dock in LEO before going on to the Moon. The 30ish tons of payload should be enough for a service module to put a Dragon around the moon and back.
  7. @kerbiloid and @Dragon01 what do you guys think about Thorium liquid sodium reactors? I know you guys have a lively discussion about nuclear treaties over in the SSTO thread, just thought I'd throw another element in the mix over here.
  8. I'm starting this thread as a place to discuss ideas and nerdy details for all forms of alternative energy, from nuclear reactors providing electrical power, to linear generators powered by the movement of a human doing human things to power personal devices. It seems nerdy discussions of the merits of various energy sources and their carbon footprint pop up in various places, so why not condense them into one place? To start off, I've had an idea kicking around in my head for a year or so now, for a linear permanent magnet generator built into something like a knapsack or backpack that charges a few 18650 cells for the purpose of recharging personal devices like cell phones and cameras. I've seen flashlights use these and achieve remarkable efficiency in the process. Something similar could also be built into a belt or something you can clip onto a belt, and your batteries could be arranged like the ammo belts of the wild west for that cyberpunk look. Another idea I had is a collapsible vertical axis wind turbine that can fit in a bag like the ones you stuff camp chairs into. There's a lot of options for outdoorsy types to recharge things with solar, but solar doesn't work so well under trees or at night. I haven't done any 3D modeling, but the geometry should work.
  9. From Wikipedia: The reaction is exothermic, meaning it produces heat. This means you can remove heat while still maintaining the 300-400 °C needed for the optimal reaction. Heat can be used for all sorts of useful things, like powering a sterling engine to run a generator to electrolize water for hydrogen, or liquefy air to extract pure CO2, with a cryocooler. So yes, as long as you don't let any methane escape into the atmosphere, you can have some of your lunch for free.
  10. I believe SpaceX is eventually planning to have a ISRU unit using the Sabatier process to make their own methane out of a bit of hydrogen and CO2 from the atmosphere. One benefit of this is that it creates a decent amount of excess energy that can be harnessed to do things like make electricity. I wouldn't be surprised if SpaceX was carbon neutral by 2030.
  11. I wonder if they're going to use the Roc to transport submarines or something.... I do hope it gets used for something, and doesn't just become another aviation record holder that slowly wastes away in a hangar somewhere where people pay $5 to see it.
  12. Sounds like it might end up being a net loss then....
  13. I have a very hard time imagining a serious spaceship design that includes 6 meter thick concrete anywhere, while still being something that can accelerate at multiple Gs. The reason we use concrete as radiation containment for reactors here on Earth is that it has a fairly high water content (hence hydrogen), it is a structural material that is easy to build with, it can be mixed with all sorts of things like pieces of lead, and it's very inexpensive compared to other alternatives. We also tend to worry about contamination of the surroundings of the reactor, something that's just not a concern in space. A spaceship with a fission or fusion reactor will have minimal radiation shielding compared to a ground based power plant, and it will not use 6 meters of concrete for any of it. There are plenty of materials and techniques for shielding reactors that are significantly lighter and more compact than concrete, not to mention easier to produce in places without limestone. A 10kg tungsten projectile traveling at 5km/s is remarkably good at poking holes in all sorts of things, since 10kg of tungsten is only 520 cubic centimeters, or a little more than half a liter (~1 quart, 22lbs).
  14. I you punch a neat hole in a nuclear reactor, how well does it work? Deigning armor to defeat a high energy projectile that shatters like that is challenging, but doable, especially if you use your armored outer hull as an oversized whipple shield and armor your reactor with a good slab of high strength ceramics with a reactive surface composite over top. It's much harder to design an armor system to defeat a solid slug that doesn't deform much on it's way through a nuclear reactor at a decent fraction of orbital velocity for LEO I know the writers of The Expanse aren't science nerds to the level folks like us are, and therefore I forgive them for writing a railgun that fires projectiles at relativistic speeds that can be mounted to a ship or space station. Let's be real here, it doesn't matter if you're firing a one gram projectile, if it leaves your barrel at "near relativistic" speeds, your ship/space station is being flung in the other direction with some alacrity, that is if it hasn't turned itself to plasma in the process of accelerating that slug. 5-10km/s in a vacuum environment with near-ish future tech is believable, but nothing short of a massive mass driver built into a moon is going to get anything to near relativistic speeds without some serious issues. The Lorentz forces on the rails from the energy needed for that kind of speed would overcome any structural material we can imagine, not to mention the sheer amount of electrical energy you'd have to put through the rails to achieve those forces. You'd be better off using a nuke as propellant for a big slab of something. A more sensible solution would be a staged coilgun with a barrel a good 100km long accelerating a 500kg hunk of steel to 20km/s or something, maybe even 30km/s is believable for a mass driver of that size.
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