Jump to content

AHHans

Members
 View Profile  See their activity

  • Posts

    1,490

  • Joined

  • Last visited

 Content Type 

Posts posted by AHHans

    Nuclear quotes and anecdotes thread

    in Science & Spaceflight

    Posted · Edited by AHHans

    15 hours ago, kerbiloid said:

    Is their CEO name Duke?

    Not that I know of. But I'm sure they had CEOs that ran the company like their own private fiefdom. And, yes, the company deals with nuclear fuel. (I'm sure, if you asked them nicely they could help you to some weapons-grade U235.)

    Although the company is mostly (in-)famous for they way they(*) ... errr ... mislaid some few thousand (cough) barrles of nuclear waste in the late 1980ies. :cool:
    (*) Technically one of their daughter companies: Transnuklear.

    I need help!!!

    in KSP1 Gameplay Questions and Tutorials

    Posted

    On 1/28/2022 at 2:14 PM, KingRaulDamian said:

    That is Strange Because, In one of the craft I have mp tanks and on the other craft I have no mp in the command module. But it allows me to transfer it? I can post another screenshot. If you didn't see the one I already have.

    As @king of nowhere wrote: monopropellant ignores crossfeed rules, so it can be transferred from anywhere to anywhere. (And all your RCS thrusters get fuel while you still have monopropellant!) Also, heat shields block crossfeed and cannot be "unblocked" like decouplers. :(

    There are only two options: put fuel ducts across the heat shield(s) (in both directions in order to allow fuel transfer!) or disable the "Resurce Transfer Obeys Crossfeed Rules" options in the advanced difficulty settings.

    And a bonus piece of trivia: fuel that is freshly created from ore will ignore all crossfeed rules and just gets deposited in the tank with the highest priority that is available.

    Remote Probe Control

    in KSP1 Gameplay Questions and Tutorials

    Posted · Edited by AHHans

    Have a look at the relevant wiki page: Probe Control Point

    On the controlling ship you always need a relay-type antenna, i.e. either the HG-5, or one of the RA-... antennas. And when using the Mk2 lander can then you need at least two pilots on the ship.

    If you are close enough then you can indeed use only the internal antenna on the controlled probe.

    P.S. I actually have never used that feature myself: I always found it easier to build a relay network that gives a connection back to the KSC.

    For Questions That Don't Merit Their Own Thread

    in Science & Spaceflight

    Posted

    8 hours ago, FleshJeb said:

    Gravitational anomalies:
    [...]

    Thanks! I knew you could explain that better than me. Picture me adding a number of "That's exactly what I meant" to your post. :)

    9 hours ago, FleshJeb said:

    I'll think about that some more on a day when I haven't been building and measuring a network of very large triangles at a sewage treatment plant.

    Well, looking at what I wrote, I didn't explain that well. You used the total gravitational force of the Moon in your calculations. But the gravitational force of the Moon mostly keeps Earth in its orbit around the barycenter. Only the difference between the Moon's force at the position on the Earth's surface and of the Moon's force at the Earth's center of gravity actually matters. From the Wikipedia article:

    Tidal-forces.svg

    Black circle: Earth. The Moon is far to the right. The top picture shows the Moon's gravitational force on the surface away from the Moon, in the center, and on the surface facing the Moon. The lower picture shows the residual forces after the force at the center is subtracted. (Well, with the actual difference exaggerated for effect.)

    This residual force is called tidal force, and is the only one that will change the direction of "down" due to the Moon being at a different position relative to you. (Which is how it causes the actual tides.) In reality the Earth's surface will also deform somewhat with the tides and lower their effect on you as you stand on the Earth's surface, but I just ignored that in my calculation.

    9 hours ago, FleshJeb said:

    Bonus: It's for deformation monitoring, so it's time-dependent. My brain (and the rest of me) hurts.

    So, you want to prevent - or at least mitigate - something like what happened here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ph9O9yJoeZY

     

    For Questions That Don't Merit Their Own Thread

    in Science & Spaceflight

    Posted

    11 hours ago, aziazukra said:

    If you had 1kg of antimatter (safely contained), what would you do?

    Try to expand our current understanding of physics! ;) E.g. figure out if the relation between its inertial and gravitational mass is the same as for regular matter.

    But after I ran out of ideas for that, I'd probably use it to convince the funding agencies to keep funding me for "safekeeping" of the antimatter. :cool:

    For Questions That Don't Merit Their Own Thread

    in Science & Spaceflight

    Posted · Edited by AHHans

    [P.S. I'm a bit late to the party, but now I already typed it, so you can damn well take the time and read it! (Or just ignore it, whatever.)]

    On 11/17/2021 at 6:27 AM, Gargamel said:

    “Down” is basically pointing to the barycenter of the Earth/Moon system, but that wobbles around slightly over time.  

    I don't think so. The Earth-Moon barycenter is about 75% of the Earth's radius away from the Earth's center. That means that as the Earth rotates the direction from any point on the surface to the barycenter changes by tens of degrees each day. I guess we would have noticed if that was also how the gravitation changes. ;)

    The thing is we are not in an orbit around the Earth-Moon barycenter, but more ore less stationary on the Earth's surface. Which is in a complex motion around the barycenter. So I guess what matter in the end is the tidal force that the Moon effects on the Earth's surface. According to the Wikipedia article the corresponding acceleration is:  gtidal = 1.10×10−6 m⋅s−2
    Compare to Earth's gravity:  gtidal / gEarth = 1.10×10−6 / 9.81 =1.121×10−7  Which corresponds to a maximum angle of about 0.02 arcsec

    This ignores all the more Earthly effects to the local gravity, like the mountain range over there, or variation in density of the Earth's crust (and mantle?), or whatever. If I remember the late night discussions in my student dormitory correctly (back when I still lived in one) then these variations can be quite significant and need to be taken into account by civil engineers. (Which IIRC they do by defining elevation in terms of local gravity.)

    On 11/17/2021 at 10:41 AM, FleshJeb said:

    Hmm, check my math,

    Your math is fine. But the force actually changes less than the value you used, because you move around relative to the Moon .

    21 hours ago, wumpus said:

    Fun fact: the runway at KSP's KSC is flat, and doesn't follow the curvature of Kerbin.  Presumably you can tell this by noting the difference in the size of the banks needed to "raise" the runway between the ends and the middle.

    You can also notice that by the fact that any wheeled craft that you "launch" from the SPH will roll forwards (towards the middle) on the runway. Because the ends of the runway are tilted with regards to the local gravitational field.

    Breaking ground (Control-Axis): How can you bind the KAL-1000-Controller to the SAS-Stabilization

    in KSP1 Gameplay Questions and Tutorials

    Posted

    I guess you want something like what is reported in issue #22946 on the bug tracker: i.e. that the control actions from SAS (and the built-in trim)  can be used as inputs for e.g. a KAL.

    As you can see, this feature request has been around for a while, but feel free to upvote it on the issue tracker.

    1 hour ago, logicnr3 said:

    P.S. Can somebody tell me what these Custom-Controll-Axis 1-4 are for? I really dont have a clue.

    They are "analog" inputs for the robotics parts. E.g. when you want to move something that shouldn't also be mapped to one of the other axes.

    And: Welcome to the Forums! ;)

    alt f12 set orbit help/question

    in KSP1 Gameplay Questions and Tutorials

    Posted

    Yes. By setting the semimajor-axis and the eccentricity to the appropriate values.

    The values in the set-orbit page are the orbital elements of the target orbit, see e.g. the Wikipedia page: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Orbital_elements

    One initially confusing issue is that the semimajor-axis on the set-orbit page includes the radius of the target body, in contrast to the altitude,  AP,  PE values given in the game.

    Poll: would you rate "asteroid harvester depletes asteroid mass while ore tank capacity is already full" a gameplay bug?

    in KSP1 Gameplay Questions and Tutorials

    Posted

    20 minutes ago, Hotel26 said:

    I think I may have seen the drills were running, the ore tanks were full and the asteroid mass was still dropping.  But I probably still had the refiner running with available capacity for LF/OX.

    Ah, yes. This happens. It is also the supposed behavior. As hinted to above: with the big convert-o-tron and no fuel/oxidizer/monoprop consumption the total mass of the craft should not change. It'll just convert asteroid mass to ore to fuel.

    Plane pulling to the side after steering

    in KSP1 Gameplay Questions and Tutorials

    Posted

    On 11/12/2021 at 1:35 AM, Goddess Bhavani said:

    Landing gear not perfectly aligned, even with snap angles.

    I align the landing gear on my planes with angle snap, but I make sure that the angle snap is set to absolute (i.e. snap relative to the SPH coordinate system) and not relative (== relative to the parent part). I also make sure that the gear is attached to a part that don't flex around much when the weight of the plane rests on them.

    Poll: would you rate "asteroid harvester depletes asteroid mass while ore tank capacity is already full" a gameplay bug?

    in KSP1 Gameplay Questions and Tutorials

    Posted

    10 hours ago, Hotel26 said:

    Does sound like this one.

    Which version do you play? As I mentioned I haven't seen this behavior when I was playing. (I don't care much about heat generation - radiators are cheap - but I'd like to think that I would have noticed if my dV calculations were significantly off.(*))

    (*) Unmined asteroids are rather efficient fuel-tanks. For many asteroids the fuel to dry-mass ratio is better than that of the stock fuel tanks. ;)

    Poll: would you rate "asteroid harvester depletes asteroid mass while ore tank capacity is already full" a gameplay bug?

    in KSP1 Gameplay Questions and Tutorials

    Posted

    Considering that this isn't the behavior that I observed in the versions that I played extensively (1.7.x, 1.8.x, 1.9.x, 1.10.x) I would indeed consider that a bug.

    But is that indeed what is happening, or do you have the small convert-o-tron installed? (Which discards 90% of the ore it processes, and converts 10% of the ore into fuel.)

    Why are rocket engines so complex?

    in Science & Spaceflight

    Posted

    I think the original question as to why many rocked engines are incredible complex has already been answered. (They don't have to, but when optimizing performance and efficiency is more important than cost then that's what you get.) But for anyone who just wants to revel in the glory of rocket engines - or just likes to watch top-grade rocket porn - I can recommend the latest video from Scott Manley:

     

    Fuel question

    in KSP1 Gameplay Questions and Tutorials

    Posted

    26 minutes ago, Staticalliam7 said:

    Is it possible to to have a tank drain to only a specific engine? 

    Only if you have a part that blocks crossfeed in between, e.g. a decoupler with crossfeed disabled. But if you have two engines connected to the same tank, then both engines will drain from that tank when they run.

    What you can do is:

    • Shut down an engine when you only want other engines to run. E.g. activate high-thrust engines only for launch and landing but only use high-Isp engines for in-orbit maneuvers.
    • Deactivate draining from a tank at all (by clicking on the green triangle next to the resource display in the PAW.
    • Pump around the fuel to the configuration that you want after (during?) the burn.

    The James Webb Space Telescope and stuff

    in Science & Spaceflight

    Posted

    2 hours ago, JoeSchmuckatelli said:

    My understanding is that it's going to have 'seasons' where parts of the sky are not available for viewing. But over a year it should be able to cover everything

    That! (Although I don't know if they'll call it seasons.)

    That's actually like every other scientific telescope is operated: for any given time there is "only" a certain region of the sky that can be observed, so you'll have to plan your observations around that. So astronomers are used to either choosing the targets that for the time of year, or applying for the time of year that fits their target. Bigger telescopes also have dedicated tools for planning observations which not only handle the "which target can be observed when" but also all the other settings for the telescope.

    Entering a target position into the telescope control software and then watching in panic as the telescopes swings across the sun and leaves a path of destruction on the instruments in the focus is not supposed to happen...

    Spoiler

    P.S. No I don't personally know of any actual incidents of molten receivers, but I'm sure that it has happened somewhere sometime. ;)
    P.P.S. It is something that we had in the back of our minds when doing observations though.
    P.P.P.S. If you got this far: Yes! Most radio telescopes do observe during daytime. And some are built that they can focus sunlight to dangerous levels.

     

×
×
  • Create New...