Lukaszenko

Kinetic energy is always measured in relation to something. So, indeed if you measure it in relation to your rocket, it doesn't matter how fast you are moving. In fact, the rocket's kinetic energy in relation to the rocket is zero. But, when flying a rocket you are usually interested in changing your orbit or escaping a planet or a star, and in order to do that, you need to measure kinetic energy in relation to that planet or star. That's when the V^2 portion of the kinetic energy equation matters.

I think we'll send some robotic super-advanced 3D printers, and/or something that can clone/ incubate/ grow/ whatever human beings, to another star system, and we're most of the way there. Might be hard to keep a full-blown human or a colony alive for long enough, but it shouldn't be too difficult to keep a zygote or eggs and sperm in suspended animation. No need for lumbering interstellar arcs and people living like sardines for generations. Let the robots sit and wait for however long it takes them to travel the interstellar distances. This technology pretty much already exists or is at least very feasible. Maybe far into the future, but I don't see why not. Anyway, this is a viable way to only colonize another star system and spread our sphere of influence, but not to actually travel there ourselves. If, however, we allow ourselves to imagine that one day we'll be able to read and digitize human minds (assuming we are not made of magic, it should at least be theoretically possible), then if YOU wanted to go to another star system, it will just be a matter of e-mailing your mind into your clone who is waiting for you light years away. Your identical clone, a younger version perhaps with no imperfections, or maybe even whoever or whatever technology will allow us to "copy paste" our minds into. Yeah the infrastructure would have to be set up the long, traditional way, and even then we'd still be limited by the speed of light. But, as far as you're concerned, it will be instantaneous...and assuming we ever live in a world like this, a few years here and there will be a moot point.

I was meaning to ask the same question, as the "skip off the atmosphere like a rock off a lake" scenario didn't sit well with me. Glad to have it confirmed that indeed it shouldn't have.

While landing from the lowest possible orbit is theoretically best, practically that is not always the case. I landed on Tylo the other day, and found that due to insufficient TWR, I couldn't cancel all my velocity while burning retrograde in time before "reaching" the surface. I had to therefore retry, but with some thrust wasted for fighting gravity. I suspect that starting from a slightly higher orbit would be more efficient in this case.

Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence. FTL travel and the like is as extraordinary as it gets. Sure, it's POSSIBLE, but highly unlikely. There are infinite amounts of such possibilities, and so it is quite useless to discuss them without the aforementioned evidence, as then it is only a discussion of far-fetched "what ifs" and "maybes".

As others have pointed out, the effects are insignificant without cheating. Even if they were taken into account, I'm sure any calculation errors present in the game would drown them out by many orders of magnitude.

I've done it, but with FAR also. I used the large inflatable shield, but I saw nothing stopping me from using the other shields. At least weight wasn't as much a concern as making it all fit without part clipping. I should also note that I used the reinforced joints mod, but it was not for structural reasons, but more for computer performance and part count. The above design is pretty much the same as the original design I had, minus x00s of struts.

I just did it a few days ago, with deadly reentry and FAR to boot. Although honestly I think FAR might have made, at least the ascent, easier. Took me probably weeks to design and test and tweak the landers, to keep from burning up on entry and falling apart on touchdown. In order to test them, of course, I had to manually send each and every one to Eve and try it out, tweak, resend, repeat....all with refueling in Kerbin and Eve orbit. Unfortunately, I was finally forced to use the reinforced joints mod in order to save myself another many weeks of heavily lagging testing. The final design was practically the original, but without as many struts. I guess landing was the hardest part, as once I successfully accomplished that, the ascent vehicle worked the first time.

Nor safe. The worst aviation disaster in history was (in more ways than one) a result of ignoring this advise.

If you have the engines that are capable of sending you fast and high enough, suborbital transportation would be the logical application. I actually made a drunken bet with a guy that we will be doing this in 20 years. Might be a tad optimistic, but one can only wish

Finally got around to doing the actual flight, with Kerbal and science and all. Here's the ship: Apparently I had less delta v on the surface than in space. I wonder if the engineering plugin took the inefficiency of the engines in the atmosphere into account? The lower stages were LV-T30s and a Mainsail.

I just successfully tested a EVE descent/ ascent vehicle (using FAR and DRE) from around 1,500 meters. I used an MK1 lander can and no parts plug ins. I DID use reinforced joints but only because my computer couldn't handle the practically identical vehicle with all those struts. I gave it around 12,000 Dv, but to my surprise I had over 3000 left over when I reached orbit. The vehicle is large, but not absolutely monstrous. Apparently it could be much smaller, since how it has so much margin for error. I'll post up pictures at some point.

I've also been working on an Eve return craft. I'm using FAR and deadly reentry...I'm sure the latter makes it harder but not sure about the former. Anyway, I've been tweaking and testing and keep getting closer to a perfect craft, but it got to the point where my computer can't handle it anymore while keeping it fun. I'm going to to try to break it apart and put the science on a whole separate craft for that reason.

That's what I was saying. I'm pretty sure almost every rocket engine has some sort of turbine to draw power from the fuel. How else can you supply the stupid amount of horsepower needed to drive the pumps? Once you have such a configuration, attaching an alternator to it should be no biggie. But again, you're not going to carry with you and burn a 10000000000000000000000 lbf rocket engine just to run a few hundred watt dynamo.

A rocket engine needs auxillary components to let it run, such as pumps for fuel and whatnot, and some of these pumps can require horsepower in the tens-of-thousands range. This is why I'd guess that most rocket engines would need some means of extracting shaft power from their fuel. If that’s the case, slapping an alternator on the shaft should be no big deal. I’ll surmise that the reason for using fuel cells is so you don’t have to run a whole rocket engine in order to power a hand warmer, and where RTGs would be inappropriate (due to mission length/ power requirements?/ weight?).

I always felt uneasy with the struts. Not only do they look ugly and out of place (with no way to snap them to orderly locations), but I could never reconcile using them with decouplers. I mean, when the decoupler decouples, how do the struts know to break as well? Do they have small decouplers on their joints? Do they just tear out of the rocket? I've found myself lately using the small decouplers with 2.5 m rockets, strutting the joint to make up the strength defecit. It doesn't seem right that I can do that.

I find that you can only store one of each experiment, even though you have to do them multiple times in order to get the full science. The result is that you have to fly multiple missions to get the full science. Did this make sense, or am I doing something wrong?

Shouldn't the "huge distance" REDUCE the centrifugal force?

THIS will be MY first post Just wanted to jump on the black hole bandwagon....same thing that is probably at the center of every galaxy. It's the best-fit model.