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Ancient philosophers suspected an anti-Earth existed opposite an "eternal fire" in a geocentric model. More modern philosophers suggested it could be behind the sun in a heliocentric model. Science had proven a Counter-Earth to be impossible... but what if? Download (Now at SpaceDock) The counter-earth is a planet with a height-map that is Earth's, except for two major differences. One: It's inverted east/west. Two: It's inverted High/Low. The mod does not require Real Solar System to be used, but If you don't use RSS it will be in a strangely inclined orbit far outside the distance of Eeloo. The mod is meant to be played with RealSolarSystem, and as such has had its orbital characterics modified to become identical to Earth's, except 180 behind in the orbit (on the opposite side of the sun.) Side note on naming: The planet is named Antichthon, or "Opposite of The Earth." It is important not to confuse it with a Chthonian planet, a type of exoplanet with it's atmosphere being stripped away. Those planets get their name from the same greek word "Of the Earth" except in the context of those exoplanets "of the Earth" refers to greek deities in the underworld.

[1.3] Hypothetical Worlds: will add planets to the Kerbol system that represent some objects scientist think (or used to think) might exist. This mod is compatible with OPM! Changelog: Red: Basic idea, not started Orange: Buggy and/or just started Yellow: Prototype finished Light Green: Almost done (description/science defs) Green: Completely finished unnamed: lava planet close to the sun half the size of kerbin Moradus: second moon of eve, purple, 50km radius. Planet K: Planet X analogue Kyche: Very high orbit (Planned)Special features: -Large nebula surrounding the kerbol system -Force field that is actually hazardous -Animated star surfaces (currently implemented) Want to help? Just ask and I will reply suggestions gladly accepted DOWNLOAD V0.1.1 HERE AT SPACEDOCK Installation- Put the HW file into your gamedata folder. Includes configurations for EVE. Download it here This mod requires Kopernicus, get it here Pics: http://imgur.com/a/1RGr2 Special thanks; @Gameslinx for giving me some tips on creating planets.

If different Kerbal nations existed, how in general would they engage in warfare against one another given Kerbin's smaller size and their ability to run extremely efficient economies(as evidenced by the ridiculously cheap spacecrafts they can build), but with lower populations and presumably denser urbanization? What would Kerbal body armor look like, and what kinds of martial arts would they develop? How would spaceflight play in to their wars? And what do we know about their preexisting violent tendencies? We know from STEADLER Engineering Corps' agency description that Kerbals have stun guns and know what a military is, and from the description of the science node for nuclear propulsion it says "Let's just hope it doesn't start any conflicts." And lastly, from the part description of the Mainsail engine, it references "entire small nations", meaning that they likely have organized themselves into differing nations, so: tl;dr, Kerbals are not peaceful at all, at least outside spaceflight.

I was wondering if there is anything that, if dropped into the Sun, would survive for very long, say, long enough to get to the surface. What would happen if you dropped the same thing into different stars? If you changed the speed of the object? Discuss.

Ok, just thought of this, so its not a fully fledged engineering proposal, nor is it guaranteed original. I was inspired by @Ty Tan Tu's thread: So, you find all of the interesting historical objects in NEO, and neatly tend them into the "museum orbit". They would all share the exact same altitude, inclination etc. but would follow each other in a "string", in this way they would only require minor tending to maintain separation/position. The museum building itself would be a toroidal structure surrounding the exhibit "string". In this way the main building can share the same orbit as, and remain stationary with respect to, the exhibits. Small changes in altitude would allow the main building to move up and down the exhibit string without perturbing them. (See Neal Stephensons "SevenEves" for where I got this idea) Most importantly, the exhibits are *still in orbit where we left them*. Not in the exact same orbit, but still *in* orbit, in their "natural habitat" if you like. Sounds neat, no?

There was a book series I read when I was younger called Pendragon. One of the books took place on an Earth-like world called Eelong which, instead of a normal sun, had a bright band (called a "sunbelt") that stretched from the northern horizon to the southern one, and still had a normal day/night cycle. Obviously it's not hard sci-fi, but I was wondering if something like that could actually exist in the real world somewhere. Perhaps the planet orbits a pulsar, and the sunbelt is the bright beam of radiation that constantly spews from its poles. Is there are scientific basis to this? Any place I could experiment with the concept?

Alright guys and gals, here's the situation. Despite being an engineer, I'm not up on orbital math like some of you, so this is mostly a "Can anyone tell if this is even within the realm of possibility?" type question. Enjoy. As we all know, or are learning now, the Hubble Space Telescope is in Low Earth Orbit at around 300 miles altitude. For reference the ISS is at about 250 miles. Hubble weighs about 24,500 lbs (11,110 kg) and is described as being 43x14 ft (13.2x4.2 meters) in size. What I propose as a possibility is the following: In short, utilize the Falcon Heavy as an unmanned recovery platform for the Hubble. The FH incidentally is 39.9 ft (12.2 m) in diameter. http://www.spacex.com/falcon-heavy I think the problem should be broken down into three aspects, the first is, regardless of HOW we go about attaching, securing, landing this whole thing together, does the FH have the dV to get up there to that orbit and land with that increased payload? The second is, can the FH carrying such a weight land at all? The third is, what sort of difficulties could we run into with the part where we attach and secure the Hubble to the FH? I've got a few random ideas on this, but do not take them as requirements for your solutions and proposals. First off, at current time how much effort, if any, is going into establishing a reusable 2nd stage rocket at SpaceX, is largely up for debate. I've heard reports that they are still working on it, others that say the effort has been shelved for the near term, etc. Given this, I posit that rather than attempting to use a system that doesn't exist yet (somewhat ironic of course, given that the FH has yet to fly, but it at least has prototypes under construction), we proceed along the lines of utilizing the FH without it's second stage rocket. Obviously this changes a lot of the equations a fair bit, that's for you all to discuss. I would state that the second stage is likely replaced by an extension to the main core of the FH, providing it with extra fuel for both the main rockets as well as the orbital maneuvering jets. Obviously any such system is going to need a some form of robotic arm/grappler, if only to help close up the satellite. For re-entry shielding purposes, I think one of NASAs deployable doughnut shields fit around the interface between the FH and the Hubble will suffice. Assorted possibilities to consider, if Hubble has any usable amount of propellant on board, it could be used to intentionally lower Hubble's orbit for the intercept with FH, thus reducing the dV requirements of the mission AND reducing Hubble's mass.

I've been reading about the Europa Clipper mission, and how it was decided upon instead of an orbiter because the radiation environment would be too hazardous for a ship to handle for any length of time. Given that Jool is in a 1/10th scale universe, and though KSP does not model radiation hazards, what would a reasonable "safe" altitude for Jool's radiation belt be, if one cared to respect it? Jupiter's covers Io and Europa, so should Laythe be considered within this zone? Idle curiosity. - Have a remarkable weekend my friends! (First manned Duna landing for my program tonight! Cross your fingers...)

For some time now I've had a hypothesis that Kerbol is not in fact a magical tiny G-class star but an old, relatively cool white dwarf (such as a DC9, which is spectrally similar to the Sun). The planets would also be made partially of electron-degenerate matter, making them much denser than any known planets and making possible their high surface gravities relative to their sizes. But today I decided to fact-check myself and look up the lower mass limits for stellar remnants such as white dwarfs, and I found the following: - White dwarf: at least 0.6 solar masses, below which it will convert into a "carbon planet" and expand to a much larger size and lower density - Neutron star: at least 0.1 solar masses, below which it will explode in an event similar to a type 1a supernova, and any core remnant left over will be composed of ordinary matter of assorted elements. Kerbol has a mass of roughly 0.01 solar masses, and Kerbin less than a millionth of a solar mass. So nothing in the Kerbolar system could actually be made of electron-degenerate matter or solid neutrons, which leaves the question: Exactly what might they be made of? So can anyone else come up with some ideas for how to greatly increase the density of a planet or star, so that we don't have to go with "gravity is stronger in the Kerbal universe" or "it's magic"? Yes, I do understand that it IS magic, but for the sake of mental stimulation, I'd like to try to come up with a headcanon that holds water. As an example, say we take a planet like Earth. It has a certain mass, and since it's made mainly of iron, silicon, and oxygen, it has a certain resulting radius and density. But if we converted it into pure gold, it would become denser and thus end up smaller. Can we come up with some configuration of materials, possibly including degenerate matter, that could produce the necessary densities?

"Matter has positive gravitational and inertial mass, that is, two objects attract each other, the lower mass faster than the more massive" A part of the law of gravity Newton. But how this applies to negative and imaginary masses? A hypothetical negative mass is a object that has negative gravitational and inertial mass, and therefore negative energy. A negative mass does not act as you think now. Obviously cause a repulsion towards the positive mass by the gravity, but have negative inertia, therefore the negative mass would not repelled by the positive mass, generating a "persecution" of negative mass after positive, that is, an acceleration of the set of masses of zero energy. Also, the negative mass repel itself, and thus a hypothetical negative solid mass tend to expand and disintegrate. On the other hand, an imaginary mass is a hypothetical mass that move at speeds greater than the speed of light and have positive energy, this is result of a squared negative mass, ie, imaginary-valued mass. How moves this? A real mass (either positive or negative), has a idle speed of 0m/s, the speed must always be less than the speed of light (c), and travels relatively to the future. A zero mass does not has repose velocity, always travels at light speed, and standing frozen (relatively) in time An imaginary mass has a idle speed of infinite speed, speed must always be major than the speed of light (more slower more energy required to slow, the reverse of real mass), and travels relatively to past. But how the imaginary mass interacts with itself, positive and negative real mass? I created this topic to disclose such hypothetical curiosities and find some conclusion, share information and delight in the truth.