[If NASA had more funding...]

I think that nasa should try harder to find more advanced radiation shielding, as current radiation protection is not very good at coping with the high energy radiation in space; cosmic rays and such. Im pretty sure people are already working on that, but it is really an important step in the road to manned interplanetary missions. It doesn't matter if we can build rockets big enough to get men to and from another planet, if they will all die from some radiation induced illness, ie radiation poisoning, or cancer or whatnot. And this technology wouldn't only be useful in space, it would be useful everywhere.

[Manned mission to mars]

I would like to point out the fact that my written language skills suck, (as if you couldn't tell), so most of what you're reading is not what im meaning, so some of my correct statements seem realy quite wrong just because of how I conveyed it, so sorry about that, (I am working on this).

First of all, water does work as a radiation shield, however Is a horrible idea. Shielding capabilities are not directly linked to mass, meaning that 1000Kg of water has far less shielding than 1000Kg of lead, and takes up a hell of a lot more space, so I would tend to agree with the majority of professional physicists who would suggest lead for radiation shielding...or yo could always use uranium, I hear that works well..lol, ..(It actually would work very well if it wasn't hazardous)

With the artificial gravity thing, I think my biggest problem is that I am more than likely overestimating the rotation speed required. However, I still think that artificial gravity in its current theoretical state needs a lot of work to get it to be only bearably bad (as opposed to being extremely bad). From what I can work out, any rotating room design will not allow astronauts to stand straight up (because the artificial gravity comes from the centripetal acceleration, and your tangential linear momentum, so will always be angled, so it will always feel like walking uphill (though by how much is determined by the radius and speed (which im sure Im overestimating)), and walking in the opposite direction to the rotation could lead to problems.

I still think Phobos is a bad idea for now, but yea (Im not even going to bother trying to explain this fully because you still wont believe me, and because im lazy)

I did not suggest that parachutes were the only kind of descent techniques,..when I clearly mentioned curiosity's parachute, powered descent, skycrane, technique...but anyway, I know a full parachute descent will not work with mars' thin atmosphere, and I would expect that a fully powered descent would require far to much fuel, and is just a horrible Idea, So im just sayin that the landing will require more work that anything,..then you have to remember the ascent and return.

When I suggested the electromagnet I did know that It would require a lot of energy to work, but I was just saying it.

I did not really realize that space discussions where just as bad as religious discussions lol

Also I would like everyone to take into account "Just because you are wrong, it does not mean that I am right" - me

This also goes the other way around, just because im wrong, does not make you right,.. just remember that

[Manned mission to mars]

It seems that quite a few people here have no idea what they're on about, (but to be honest I don't either, but yea)

I see a few people thinking that It would be easy to land on phobos...which to some extent may be true, but from what I can gather, it would be absolutly rediculously way too hard, due to the fact that It doen't have an atmosphere, so slowing down enough for a landing would require far too much fuel. Even landing on mars will require quite a sophisticated landing system, since mars' atmosphere is too thin for just parachutes...even the curiosity rover had a 3 (around that amount) stage landing system, so the large 7 man lander would have to be a bit more sophisticated than the rover.

and now back to near the start of the thread,..water is not sufficient for radioactive shielding.

I havn't put any actual thought into the following, so just bear with me. There is no (or at least very little) radioactive shielding, on he ISS, because it is close enough to earth that earth's magnetic field deflects a large majority of the harmful radiation, so with that logic, would a extremely high tech electromagnet work for deflecting radiation?

Next: the artificial gravity solution for the trip to and from the planet would in theory work, though the 26 months on mars where these artificial gravity designs won't work, will still result in some quite bad bone decay. But I am yet to see an artificial gravity design that will actually work, and then even for one that does work, being on board will not be a pleasant experience.

So far I have only seen two different styles artificial gravity designs (only on KSP, and not a single one in real life (not that ive been looking)), One of the designs is a simple spinning room (like that carnival ride), this will not do anything aside from make everyone vomit,...the other design I've seen is that which Scott Manley did in his reusable space program (Youtube, for those of you who don't know what im on about) , this design would actually somewhat work, but to the astronauts it would not feel anything like normal gravity, and will only work at the outermost points, and will be angled so really is not a good design, also aside from the fact that it would rip itself apart in real life.

[Manned mission to mars]

One way to raise the money for this would be for America to stop making pennies (Ive never been to america, but I would expect that no one would use them, as no one uses the 10c coins in new zealand, so why would anyone use a 1c coin)..they each cost 1.7 cents to produce, meaning a loss of $1billion per year, this wont do it all, but it will help.

Also the reason I said lead before, was because thats what a guy from nasa said in a video I watched, and I know it works (from personal experience in radiation shielding (this sounds cool, lol, but is kinda an exageration, really, it was maybe a 1 hour experiment with low level gamma radiation, and a maybe 30 year old geiger counter)), and doesnt take up much room (comparatively)...and I didn't even think about water, I might actually go and test that today (I love being able to do this lol)

[Manned mission to mars]

I think the problem with the radiation, is not so much the slight overall increase, its more the fact that if a solar flare flares (not sure how to word that), then the radiation from that causes death within a couple days (or somewhere in the order of magnitude), which is disastrous.

[Manned mission to mars]

Ok so I have been seeing, posts, on these forums, as well as various other websites, with people complaining about why we havn't had a manned mission to mars yet..we got to the moon, in the sixties, in a tin can, surely we can go to mars, we have rovers in mars, why not men, so I would like to say some reasons as to why we aren't there yet, and welcome anyone who can give ideas on how we can get there

Let's begin...

First of all, the trip to mars is approximately 8.5 months i believe, and in order to return, the astronauts must wait there for 26 months for the launch window for a 8.5 month return journey..so whats that?, 33 months?...33 months is a long time to go without food, so of course you must bring food..a lot of food..however, we have the ability to grow our own food while on the way there, and while there, and on the way back, but Im not quite sure how well plants grow in space (They do grow, I think, but I don't know quite how well), but the human body cant survive that well on only plants so you need other nutritional space food (I believe NASA and such know what to eat in space)..but thats still a lot of food...so yea...a BIG rocket is required to carry that amount of food..so thats food sorted.

Now, Radiation...quite a big poblem in space I believe..so as far as I know, the best way to stop radiation deaths, is to have a lead lined room on the ship..easy enough..but lead is heavy...so a big rocket is required yet again.

Next, muscle, and bone decay (or whatever....less dense bones and weak muscles) and other "weightlessness" caused problems...for 33 months is going to be quite bad, we can delay it for a while, but it will inevitably be deadly (or something close to deadly)....:we'll just leave this out of the final story

Fuel...Its somewhat easy enough to have enough fuel to get there..but carrying the fuel to get back is reeeeeeally difficult (This is what you should think hardest about, as solving this problem will get you a nobel prize...or 50 of them)

now due to the fact that its 2:20am I am rather tired, so I will just end this here, with these major issues (worry about the other problems after you've solved these ones)

Now Im going to sit back and watch you argue amongst yourselves (or sensibly collaborate ideas) (I may participate if I find something interesting to comment on, or if when I wake up, I realise I made some stupid mistakes or something)..go!!

(also don't yell at me please, if I got anything wrong ok, Im close enough..lol)

[Best settings.cfg configuration?]

(do you want the best settings as in to work fastest, or to look the best?)

well this is to the best of my knowledge

"max physics delta-time per frame" under general...is the amount of effort that goes into physics, (not sure about specifics) but setting the slider to the left is for less processing power, so better frames, and as to the right is better physics, but can kill your computer (unless it kicks ass), I personally have it set to far left, and it works great

and in graphics...scenery and rendering seem pretty straight forward, and in video, "anti-aliasing" I think has something to do with how textures fit together (like it affects how the edges join or something), the higher the number the better (graphics wise) ie 8x is best, so setting it to off makes it run faster.

and v-sync I think is similar to a frame limiter, I would recommend setting this to "don't sync", and then set the "frame limit" to your monitor's refresh rate, which as far as I know is 60fps for everyone so yea (if the frame limit is higher than the refresh rate of the monitor (and assuming your graphics card can push out better frames) then the computer will be working overtime to give you better frames than is physically possible, so will just slow your computer down).

Hope this helps in some way (also Im not sure if all of what Ive said here is fact, but I think its close to factual)