Lukaszenko
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Posts posted by Lukaszenko
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I don't think there is a shortage of people who want to go to space. Hell, even my girlfriend wants to go to space. Perhaps the question is "how bad do you want it", but nevertheless, it's literally an out-of-this-world experience and I doubt there will be a shortage of people lining up for it.
Parabolic weightless flights are nice, but they're not space. They give you weightlessness, but they don't show you the black sky, the curvature of the earth, the sense of nothingness-in-the-grand-scheme-of-things, and the snapshot of all of human and earth history within your field of view (or at least close to it). These are life-changing experiences that you can't get anywhere else. Telling people that you went to space will undoubtedly drop some panties, but that's certainly not the first reason people want to do it.
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I'm guessing, based on the values you are using, that you are sitting on the launch pad, and want to get to a velocity of 260 m/s in 4200 m....and you're trying to solve for what acceleration is needed to achieve this?
If that's the case, then indeed 8 m/s^2 is what you need. However, you must keep in mind that gravity is trying to pull you down at 9.81 m/s^2 (but can't because the ground is stopping you). If you want to actually lift off the ground, your acceleration has to be AT LEAST 9.81 m/s^2. If you want to go straight up at 8 m/s^2, then your rocket needs to provide thrust for 9.81 + 8 m/s^2.
As mentioned, once you get moving then drag starts working against you. Gravity also decreases with the square of the distance (from the CENTER of the planet), but this is probably not a huge effect at 4200 m.
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I've been playing ironman (with FAR and DRE) since .24, and I must say the most interesting change due to it was interplanetary manned missions. You now have to be VERY conservative with your aerobraking, and especially aerocapture as you only get one shot at it. This means you also have to bring a lot of extra fuel.
Due to this I only did one interplanetary mission so far, to Duna (well, two. I sent two separate simultaneous missions in case one failed :| ). And it was very nail-biting but very rewarding. The return was especially edge-of-my-seat as I didn't do a perfect transfer (I'm playing with life-support) which resulted in something like a 6 km/s reentry. With FAR and DRE that's pretty much suicide, but I had JUST enough fuel left to slow down sufficiently.
You don't get moments like that with with save-revert!
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The plasma inside a tokomak is held in place by a magnetic field. Since the gas inside the reactor is ionized, this is easy. The atmosphere of Jupiter, by contrast is not (as far as we know) a plasma at these altitudes/pressures. In addition,such devices usually cannot operate without some leakage
So wait...could work in the sun, then?
As for Jupiter, is there a way to ionize the atmosphere around you? Assuming we're in the future of course, and have access to insane (but possible) amounts of energy.
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Since a tokamak can function while holding multiples of a star's core inside of itself, would it be possible, theoretically, to have something working on the same principle that can hold extreme heat/ pressure (such as Jupiter) on the outside?
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That makes me wonder.
Suppose an infant, in the form of an embryo (still within a female), was launched to space. It survived, and was born in space in a station without a centrifuge onboard.
How would the infant have developed compared to earth-born humans? Will it ever have any chance of returning back to earth?
I've seen this question before here, and I answered the same way
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We know 1000 atm is survivable, from Mariana Trench landings
But yeah, all the other issues...
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I have some nice "booster" stages of various sizes that can usually achieve full orbit, or enough to give me time to circularize the payload and still land the booster. The "booster" stages are usually augmented by solid boosters which don't get recovered, but are cheap enough not to worry about.
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I've actually had instances where I had to pick up a few low-end contracts to scrape together some cash, but I'm playing with no quicksaves/ reverts, and ALL my testing is done in the main game, using my funds. That actually made my manned Duna trip a *bit* of a challenge and something of an accomplishment.
But still, generally I don't feel the need to cheat the game for cash.
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Since there is limited time, I say that you design the simplest and easiest-to-orbit craft you can come up with (with lots of control authority so it's not an issue). Give instructions to the class how to build it, tell them the basic controls, and have the class play around with it for some short time, maybe to try to get it in orbit. Then show them a step-by-step of how to get it in orbit. This is assuming they all have computers, of course.
Basically, a short tutorial of how to get to orbit. Just succeeding in that will tell them a lot about how all this works.
I wouldn't mess with mechjeb or even engineer redux. It will just confuse and scare the hell out of everybody. Just make sure the damn thing can reach orbit. Mechjeb and engineer only are useful once you start getting into details and are interested in optimizing the rocket.
The point is to show them only the most interesting stuff to get them hooked and explore the issue themselves. Don't bore them with the details.
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If efficiency isn't a problem, maybe you have tonnes of fuel (Bad planning maybe?), would it be more efficient to go straight from a solar orbit or to go straight from the SOI of the planet?
Either way, going from solar orbit is inefficient.
Whether efficiency is a problem or not, does not change the efficiency. It just changes how much you care. Perhaps you should reword your question?
Going from solar orbit does take less planning however. Game time and efficiency might be worse, but it might make better use of your real world time.
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I told some people about it, but don't advertise it too much besides making it clear that I like it and play it. I'm worried, and apparently rightfully so, that it just wouldn't catch on if I forced them to try it, and then I'd just look like an ass.
I was interested in KSP as soon as I heard about it. I figure that's what it takes for someone else to truly enjoy it.
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No aerocapture has ever been done, and none is planned that I know of.
(As in aerobrake from interplanetary transfer speeds to orbit, not simply slamming in and falling in the atmosphere)
Yeah, that's what I gathered. I'm still confused on the term though. Is "aerocapture" an aerobrake and only an aerobrake to orbit from interplanetary speeds? As in, if you aerobrake while firing an engine, it is no longer an aerocapture?
I'm asking because of that Mars probe that got destroyed due to the wrong units...I understood it went to deep into the atmosphere while attempting to do some sort of aerocapture maneuver, no? Or was it supposed to avoid the atmosphere altogether?
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I don't have Deadly re-entry, so forgive me if I talk nonsense here.
Can't you areobrake in 2 or even more sessions? So, dive in deep enough to get your apoapsis just inside Eve's SOI. Use next pass to lower it etc.
This is the part that OP is having problems with. I had the same problem as well. When going 5 km/s, diving deep enough not to fly out of the SOI WILL destroy your heat shield.
One solution I found was using the inflatable heat shield, as it seems indestructible (although feels cheaty). But even then, it becomes a fine balance between going deep enough and not getting destroyed by the g-forces. Streetwind, is that the 6.25 m shield you were talking about?
I also don't know, but in real life do they rely only on aerocapture when going into orbit around other planets, or do they combine it with firing the engines? Seems like a highly risky and variable maneuver to pull off with only the air. I understand that when lowering an orbit using aerobraking, they make many many passes over a span of months.
EDIT: According to Wikipedia, an aerocapture has never been performed in real life. So if it seems difficult in KSP, now you know why
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Well they have bring back crew just as much as they have to bring them up there.
Plus I hear they have a 6-month or so shelf-life due to their fuel deteriorating.
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What's also cool is seeing the Iridium flares if you can catch one. The other day I was out hopelessly looking for it on a overcast night, with no stars or planets visible. And then BAM this thing shone right through the clouds for a couple seconds. Holy ****!, I said to myself.
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Are you kidding me ? You think the rockets and engines they put on a launchpad haven't been tested in computer simulations millions of times before being unit tested in facilities thousands of times before being put on the launchpad ? There's a reason they don't fail... They know it's gonna work.well, I'm sure they do to an extent, but bear with me
Besides, in KSP the engines and other parts are already KNOWN to work. It's just a question of whether the whole contraption slapped together will. You can be pretty confident that it will hold up (in KSP and in real life), but nobody's going to go sit in the thing until it's been demonstrated to work.
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I really wish there was a "hard" mode that you can pick when you start a new career, which permanently disables quickload/revert. Of course you'd need an option to "simulate" missions in order to test your design.
That could be actually really simple: instead of clicking "Launch", you click a "Simulate" button which lets you do everything, except no contract can be completed, obviously, ships doesn't cost anything and you have a 'Revert simulation" option in the echap menu, once you're done, which acts like a "revert to VAB".
To make it even more challenging and fun, I don't "simulate", I test. And I use my own funds to do that. SpaceX doesn't "simulate" (well, I'm sure they do to an extent, but bear with me) their rockets and engines, they put them on the pad or strap them on the test rig and fire them up. And they pay for it. If they piggyback their test on top a contract, all the better, but if not, too bad.
So far it's proven fun, and I'm still left with more that enough money. How it pans out after I start flying (and testing) interplanetary missions is yet to be seen, but there's always a profitable contract available if I run short of funds.
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I enjoy using DRE and always play with it, but I do have some nagging questions that I just couldn't find the answer to anywhere. Perhaps they are buried in this thread, but it is so long and encompasses so many versions of DRE that the answer is impossible to find, or obsolete.
The problems I encounter is unexpected behavior of the heat shields. For example, if I come in too hot, the heat shield will overheat and explode despite having lots of ablative surface left. Other times, I've had the ablative surface burn off completely and yet the heat shield held up. Is this normal behavior, and if so what exactly does the ablative surface do?
Another thing, where exactly should a question like this be posted in the future?
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Are pilot probes sufficient to figure what trajectory is needed...don't they need at least similar ballistic coefficients to be useful? Any other variables I should look into?
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When using the inflatable heat shield, I always add LOTS of control authority, usually with a lot of reaction wheels. For realism you could replace that with RCS or with the new vernor motors.
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Anybody have any tips for not using quicksaving when playing with FAR and DRE? The only way I could ever get a proper aerobrake is simply trial and error. I just can't see playing a multi-hour interplanetary mission and losing my ship because I dipped a bit low into the atmosphere.
As for an idea for making the game more challenging, has anybody tried playing where you have to use your funds for all testing purposes? This could easily make each mission multiple times costlier.
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Interesting idea on paper, but I do see some issues.
For one, it looks like KSP but with MANY more parts and MANY more variables and MUCH more detailed physics. The deeper you want to go, the more computer power it takes, and it can quickly escalate to requiring a supercomputer, or letting a regular computer render the simulation overnight.
Two, how deep exactly do you want to go? To design an actual spaceship takes countless man-hours simply designing each and every component piece-by-piece, bolt-by-bolt on a CAD station. Then indeed they probably run the whole things on multiple-thousands of Euro software on high-end workstations. Overnight/ week. So perhaps the thing you are asking for already exists, but is still computer generations away from being practical. And then, when trying to make a spaceship, exactly how many hours do you want to spend designing an electrical cable routing for the toilet light? .01? 1? 20?
Besides this and other concerns, I could indeed see a more complex and/or more tweakable version of KSP being fun. But one must be very careful to not get carried away and make it overly complex and mundane.
Mitigating Deep Space Travel Acceleration
in Science & Spaceflight
Posted
By the time we need to worry about this, and the way medical advancements are going, we will be able to do away with the human body altogether (except maybe for the brain). I imagine we'll be able to pick and choose whatever strength body we want for the journey (and the destination), organic or otherwise.
If we ever get a full understanding of the brain, we might be able to just do away with that as well. Then you can just beam your information to the destination at the speed of light, and then "3D print" yourself there. But that's a bit more far-fetched. At least the first paragraph is medically sound and plausible.