Search the Community

Wanna go around KSC fast? Or make your Kerbal looks like a king? Well I present this.....thing. The "anti-gravity" throne (which has nothing to do with anti gravity) using Juno basic jet engine, ~1000 m/s delta-V, inspired by the Hierarchs' gravity throne from Halo Link to the craft: https://www.dropbox.com/s/ogg4bmj7tocioqs/GravityThrone.zip?dl=0 NOTE: This was built in 1.1-pre, it's uncertain if this craft would work in 1.0.5

So I have been reading the through the book series The Expanse, which the tv show is based on. Within the books they talk about different types of gravity, like the gravity of a planet(or moon), null gravity, spin gravity and thrust gravity. I have seen videos(My wife says that I love Scott Manly) about spin gravity, but can we have thrust gravity in KSP? In the book, they talk about having tower like ships where floors start going away from the engine. so how would we test this in KSP?

Is it hypothetically possible to thicken the atmosphere of a low-gravity world like Mars to the point that it feels like 1g on the surface? Just curious.

If you're going to build an actual spaceship -- a craft you can take to another planet as easily as a pirate could sail across the Mediterranean -- there are a few things to keep in mind. Gravity. You're going to need artificial gravity if you want to be able to manage long trips, so you'll need to either have a spinning hab, or you'll need to spin the whole ship. Power. You need high-thrust engines to get on and off of planets, high-impulse engines to make your transfer burns propellant-efficient, and energy to run your ship in transit. Trimodal nuclear thermal engines are your only real choice (a trimodal NTR has three modes: high-impulse, where low-density propellant is heated and ejected by the nuclear core, high-thrust, where LOX is injected into the propellant stream to increase thrust at the expense of impulse, and thermal-electric, where the circulation of coolant generates electricity). Shielding. Your hab needs to be shielded from both solar radiation and the nuclear radiation of your engine(s). Volume. You need a large internal volume to carry an enormous amount of fuel if you're going to be able to make a transfer, land, take off again, and head back. Granted, you'd use in-orbit refueling wherever possible, but you need the flexibility to make a round-trip to unvisited worlds. Surface area. Although you need a large volume, you also need a form factor with a blunt-body surface area, allowing re-entry heating to be as minimal as possible. Further, large surface area will help with radiating heat away in space. Finally, a lifting-body shape will make launch and re-entry a bit nicer. What, then, is the optimal shape and configuration? Here you go. Yep, it's a flying saucer. The hab is located in the center column and is a single floor, preventing any unpleasant gravity gradients. Because the center is open, it allows windows to be embedded in the ceiling, which will feel more natural. The hab is far more "open" overall than most designs, while still being well-protected from radiation and micrometeoroid strikes due to its location in the center of the ship. It will feel very natural to have the sky "up" and the ground "down". The hab is shielded by wrapping the ship's tankage completely around it. The triangular cross-section maximizes internal volume while also having the optimal shielding profile. Obviously, the entire ship rotates. The ship is powered by six small nuclear reactors, feeding three linear exhaust nozzles: Each of the three exhaust nozzles is capable of running on a single reactor, so you still have maneuverability even if you need to scram one or two of your reactors. The coolant cyclers and generators are also in this area. Only minimal shielding is necessary, due to the placement of the large internal tanks. For on-orbit burns, the three nozzles all fire together, providing moderate thrust even at the highest operating impulse: During any such burn, there will be a slight misalignment of the apparent gravitational field, but it will likely be no more disorienting than standing on a train while it starts to move. It is also likely that in most cases, the ship will only "spin up" after its transfer injection burns, relieving this issue entirely. Takeoff and landing use the same orientation as on-orbit burns, but with the injection of liquid hydrogen or another oxidizer to dramatically increase thrust at the expense of specific impulse: During takeoff, however, maintaining this thrust orientation would make drag losses altogether unmanageable. For this reason, the nozzles are able to change orientation in order to thrust backward during in-atmosphere climbs (for reaching orbit from Terra, Mars, etc.): Because the "flying saucer" shape is one of the only shapes which is capable of achieving reasonable lift in subsonic, supersonic, and hypersonic flight, this allows for the higher-specific-impulse burn to be used (when applicable) to achieve orbital velocities. Obviously, on worlds without atmospheres, liftoff would be purely vertical without any intermediate horizontally-oriented burn stage. Re-entry uses the large blunt surface area underneath to dissipate heat passively (although active cooling could be used, in principle): Passengers are seated in the upper ring during takeoff and landing, both for gravitational orientation and for safety reasons. Launch abort escape would be achieved either through individual ejection seats or through the ejection of the entire upper ring using built-in thrusters. It is possible that the upper ring could also be configured to serve as an ejectable lifeboat in the case of an on-orbit accident. \ Attitude control could be achieved either by vectoring the thrusters, or by venting coolant. Placing the heavy engines at the outside isn't ideal, but given that this is going to be designed with enough structural integrity for powered landing, it shouldn't prove too problematic. The hab would have nearly 8500 square feet of floor space under artificial gravity, with more than 30 times the pressurized volume of the Space Shuttle crew cabin. I'm estimating a nominal dry weight of 1200 tonnes. The body encloses enough space for 9800 cubic meters of tankage; using a dense propellant like hydrazine, this corresponds to 9,900 metric tonnes of fuel. With pebble-bed reactors giving a specific impulse of around 520 seconds, you get a lovely 11 km/s of dV. Enough to reach orbit as SSTO (if you use LOX-injection augmentation). Also enough to fly to the moon, land, take off, and come back. Now to build the damn thing...