Kerbin Versus Earth: A visual comparison

[Whackjob]

Stage two: Almost done. A little more reinforcement.

The second stage is so mind numbingly heavy that traditional support techniques are nowhere near sufficient. I had to build a supporting truss up from the first stage and bind in the second stage. Prior to this, going to launch resulted in an immediate and hilarious collapse. In that second screenshot, you cannot really tell, but one of the tank columns on stage 2 broke free and was just there... held in by the trussing. And it still flew!

Gonna work out the kinks on that, then go to stage 3.

#EDIT: In case anyone is wondering what the heck this is and why I'm posting it here... THIS is the Saturn V analog that the OP's picture describes. I was inspired to actually build and fly it.

[regex]

The second stage is so mind numbingly heavy that traditional support techniques are nowhere near sufficient.

How much does the second stage mass? I'm guessing it's more than the heaviest craft I've currently got in my library (811 tons). As it stands, your craft in launch is pretty damn heavy.

[Whackjob]

First and second stages net about 3.1 million kilograms. At the moment. Still stage 3 to go. Plus command module and lander.

Giving up for tonight... sleepy and I'm making bad decisions. Gonna leave it be, mull it over during coma, and see if I can get stages one and two to fly without spontaneous rapid second stage disassembly.

#EDIT: And as a plea, if someone could dig up the thrust and fuel KSP equivalents of the command module and lunar lander's two stages, I'd appreciate it. Gonna build those on to spec also.

#EDIT2: I think I just came up with a way to fix the spontaneous calving issue.

#EDIT3: Grabbing my own figures... wikipedia is my friend. Sleep can wait. I have 40 minutes... redoing this from the lander module on down. Doing it right. Tomorrow around noon EST I should have a final design. Maybe.

#EDIT4: Lunar lander descent and ascent stages complete. It looks nothing like the real thing, but I'm going for more mechanical accuracy than I am looks.

Now I just gotta put together a command/service module, invert the lander and bolt it on, then I can start rebuilding the actual rocket.

#EDIT5: Apparently my figures are way off for the command module. With a poodle and the rockomax32 tank, it's telling me I have a delta-V of 800. According to the wiki article, I need 2,500m/s. I suspect that the delta-v listed is for the module itself and does not include the weight of the attached lander. I must think this over.

Edited August 17, 2013 by Whackjob

[Diche Bach]

I'm coming to realize this myself . I grew up during the Space Race so as a child I fully expected to go to Jupiter when I was grown (Mars having been settled in the meantime). But watching the Voyager missions unfold throughout my teens, coming to understand why it took years to get between planets and why the probes couldn't stop at any of them, gradually convinced me, along with starting college in aerospace engineering, of our inability to do much more than that. Then I married a rocket scientist with an obsession about going to Mars, and got even more depressed .

Well, yes, I subjectively think that having a mere handful of non-permanent residents in a non-self-sustaining shanty town in LEO hardly counts as "sending people to space". Now, if we had a number of orbital, self-sufficient cities housing thousands of full-time residents each, THAT would be "sending people to space".

But you can also look at this objectively. With foreseeable technology, we can't do much more than we've already done, mostly because we live at the bottom of the significant gravity well shown in the original post. So what practical benefit accrues back on Earth from doing something like the ISS, or Apollo, or Apollo-on-Mars? Other than the odd new consumer product, nothing. (NOTE: unmanned missions have had real benefits: satellites for weather and communications, for example) And you can't regard any of our manned efforts as 1st steps towards something greater because the gravity well puts such a cap on doing anything on a larger scale with people.

And that's the real pity of it all. I would love to stripmine the Moon for Helium-3 or whatever it is up there that's supposed to be such a great fusion fuel. I would love to export millions of people (especially my ex-wife ) to orbital cities or other planets, both to ease overpopulation on Earth (from which most problems stem) and to have truly viable colonies elsewhere. But until we can get all that stuff off the ground here, none of that is possible. Instead, we're stuck with what we've been doing. So if it was up to me, I would concentrate all space research on finding a way to defeat Earth's gravity well so thoroughly that LEO effectively becomes part of the surface. Then, and only then, can humans do something meaningful in space.

I suppose you can still call this subjective, although I prefer to think it's a realistic assessment .

You make excellent points Gesch! Wish I had the ability to rebut them. Although I went the social scientist path, I am afraid I have come to largely the same conclusion as you. With one exception: I do retain 'hope'(?) that eventually humans WILL defeat the tyranny of Earth's gravity well (and the myriad other obstacles) and making good use of the solar system will ensue.

Even if it is 1000, or 10,000 years from now, that is a lot different than 'never!'

[Mr Shifty]

Well, yes, I subjectively think that having a mere handful of non-permanent residents in a non-self-sustaining shanty town in LEO hardly counts as "sending people to space". Now, if we had a number of orbital, self-sufficient cities housing thousands of full-time residents each, THAT would be "sending people to space".

Note that we also don't have self-sufficient cities at the bottom of the ocean, even in the shallow water on the continental shelf. Nor do we have cities in Antarctica, at the top of Mount Everest, or in the middle of Death Valley. And those environments are downright cozy compared to space. There are perhaps other reasons than gravity for not establishing large colonies in space. It took a billion years or so of chemical processing and evolutionary co-development to modify the Earth's environment so as to permit the self-sustaining existence of large biological constructs such as ourselves. Self-sustaining arcologies in the vacuum of space are a fantasy. And terraforming is such a long-term project that it might as well be fantasy too, at least from the perspective of those of us alive now. I suspect that in the next 20 years we'll see lunar bases and people walking on Mars, but long-term, large-scale occupation of extraterrestrial habitats? Not on any time-scale that matters.

[Wheffle]

Stage two: Almost done. A little more reinforcement.

<snip>

You are my hero.

As far as continued space missions go, it's absolutely possible and within our grasp, even to put men on mars. There's technology available for converting CO2 on Mars to O2, there's technology for converting elements on Mars to fuel, there's technology for getting their, providing artificial gravity using a tether and a spent engine stage while getting there, radiation shielding, etc. etc.

The primary inhibitor is funding and payoff. I think the latest plan for a 2-year mission to Mars and back fell in at around $45 billion. With no obvious payoff, no one is going to back that up. Although, really, it's not a ridiculous amount compared to other things our tax money goes to.

Someone mentioned 10% of the US budget... that would be WAY more than enough to get some really interesting missions off the ground. I'd say less than 1% would be fine. As it stands, NASA receives beans for funding.

[Kimberly]

Someone mentioned 10% of the US budget... that would be WAY more than enough to get some really interesting missions off the ground. I'd say less than 1% would be fine. As it stands, NASA receives beans for funding.

"Less than 1%" is pretty much NASA's budget now. If we decided to make 1% the absolute minimum for NASA's budget, that would be a sizable improvement, compared to most years.

[Respawn]

After some random web browsing i found something quite interesting.

http://www.spacelaunchreport.com/falcon9.html

At the bottom of the page there's a data sheet of the falcon 9 rocket.

Not sure if this is the real numbers (lots of "?") but still.

The Isp of the stage 1 thrusterblock seems a bit low compared to KSPs numbers (275s - 304s "vac"). ?

Slightly lower than the mainsail engine.

Is that due to the use of RP-1 (C12H24?), instead of other fuels like pure hydrogen H2?

Cheaper overall in large quantities maybe? or just easier to handle?

Anyway i found it interesting and thought i'd share it here in this kerbin vs earth thread.