For Questions That Don't Merit Their Own Thread

[razark]

4 minutes ago, kerbiloid said:

But how should Fedor the Skybot count the ammo left in "his" akimbo pistols?

rounds_remaining = magazine_capacity - rounds_fired;

But that's kind of pointless. Just add "rounds_remaining--" to the fire_weapon() function.

[kerbiloid]

10 minutes ago, razark said:

rounds_remaining = magazine_capacity - rounds_fired;

Not every magazine is full on load.
Maybe even none, if it takes them from the fallen antirobots.

Of course, it can measure its weight.
Then the transparent windows are actually only for humans.

Edited December 1, 2019 by kerbiloid

[razark]

16 minutes ago, kerbiloid said:

Not every magazine is full on load.
Maybe even none, if it takes them from the fallen antirobots.

It's not my problem that you're not equipping your robots with sufficient ammunition.  My robots wouldn't have a need to scavenge for supplies.

[kerbiloid]

1 hour ago, razark said:

It's not my problem that you're not equipping your robots with sufficient ammunition.  My robots wouldn't have a need to scavenge for supplies.

Liquid metal ninja robots with armswords?

Edited December 1, 2019 by kerbiloid

[magnemoe]

On 12/1/2019 at 9:22 PM, kerbiloid said:

Not every magazine is full on load.
Maybe even none, if it takes them from the fallen antirobots.

Of course, it can measure its weight.
Then the transparent windows are actually only for humans.

An robot is unlikely to be able to reload, its also not bothered by having to carry an heavy unbalanced gun as it would be carrying it in an weapon station or turret so you use an belt feed gun with as much ammo it can carry and is needed for its rolle. 
An guard robot patrolling an border of an base would need less than something more like an light tank 

[Spacescifi]

We are familar with project Orion but I was thinking of giving it a slight upgrade. Since we know that nukes ablate the pusher plate, limiting the lifespan. Now they say you can spray the plate with oil between detonations to virtually eliminate ablation, but soonet or later you will run out of oil.

 

What if you made the pusher plate a powerful electromagnet? Magnetizing it right before each detonation and demagnetizing it for each bomblet release?

Would the magnetic field not help prevent ablation somewhat in the absence of oil spray?

Since magnetic fields would deflect and repel the plasma from the detonation.

With an uber enough magnet pusher plate, you could detonate the bomb only a few meters offand the magnetic field would still repel  the plasma cloud.

 

What do you think?

[DDE]

3 hours ago, Spacescifi said:

What if you made the pusher plate a powerful electromagnet?

You've just invented the NASA MiniMAG Orion.

[kerbiloid]

3 hours ago, Spacescifi said:

Since we know that nukes ablate the pusher plate

Since we know that they don't.

3 hours ago, Spacescifi said:

Now they say you can spray the plate with oil between detonations to virtually eliminate ablation, but soonet or later you will run out of oil.

Much earlier we will run out of nukes. The oil is cheap.

3 hours ago, Spacescifi said:

What if you made the pusher plate a powerful electromagnet? Magnetizing it right before each detonation and demagnetizing it for each bomblet release?

Would the magnetic field not help prevent ablation somewhat in the absence of oil spray?

A magnetic nozzle is a pusher plate itself. It doesn't have a need to prevent somebody's ablation.

3 hours ago, Spacescifi said:

With an uber enough magnet pusher plate, you could detonate the bomb only a few meters offand the magnetic field would still repel  the plasma cloud.

The bomb should be detonated enough far from the plate and form a focused jet.
It doesn't need to be as close as possible. First of all to prevent an ablation.

P.S.
Xray is not affected by magnetic fields, just in case.

Edited December 3, 2019 by kerbiloid

[Spacescifi]

8 hours ago, kerbiloid said:

 

Xray is not affected by magnetic fields, just in case.

 

So what if the electromagnet pusher plate was also an X-ray mirror?

 

Would that no doubt increase impulse given for each bomblet? And could you not detonate the bomb closer to the plate then?

 

I know some stand off distance is necessary, since a magnetic field will block plenty but not everything. But if the X-rays also get reflected back that should add up to overall impulse.

More than if you took a plain Orion with a plain oiled pusher plate and detonated bombs out the back.

Am I right?

 

EDIT: Whether wecan make X-ray mirrors matters not, this is assuming we could.

Edited December 3, 2019 by Spacescifi

[kerbiloid]

1 minute ago, Spacescifi said:

So what if the electromagnet pusher plate was also an X-ray mirror?

Why need an Xray mirror (whatever it is) there, when all they need is to keep the pusher plate enough far from the reaction zone to keep its temperature below critical.

The explosion of the Casaba/Orion charge is anisotropic, the part of the yield energy received by the pusher plate doesn't depend on how close it happens.

4 minutes ago, Spacescifi said:

Would that no doubt increase impulse given for each bomblet?

Of course, it doesn't. All it needs is to receive the whole tungsten gas jet by the plate.
If its energy is received by the plate center instead of whole plate, it will just overheat the center, while the received energy stays same.

6 minutes ago, Spacescifi said:

But if the X-rays also get reflected back that should add up to overall impulse.

They won't, but they will vaporize the plate.
When the charge hull reflects some Xray back inside, this lasts for microseconds, and the charge hull becomes a cloud of plasma in process.

8 minutes ago, Spacescifi said:

Whether wecan make X-ray mirrors matters not, this is assuming we could.

We couldn't.  The Xray is poorly reflectable.

[Spacescifi]

30 minutes ago, kerbiloid said:

Why need an Xray mirror (whatever it is) there, when all they need is to keep the pusher plate enough far from the reaction zone to keep its temperature below critical.

The explosion of the Casaba/Orion charge is anisotropic, the part of the yield energy received by the pusher plate doesn't depend on how close it happens.

Of course, it doesn't. All it needs is to receive the whole tungsten gas jet by the plate.
If its energy is received by the plate center instead of whole plate, it will just overheat the center, while the received energy stays same.

They won't, but they will vaporize the plate.
When the charge hull reflects some Xray back inside, this lasts for microseconds, and the charge hull becomes a cloud of plasma in process.

We couldn't.  The Xray is poorly reflectable.

 

Okay... but would not a magnetic pusher plate be an improvement over a normal one?

Or would you have to oil the plate either way?

Would the magnetizing over the plate offer ANY advantages? And why is minimag orion called mini? Because you can get away with using a smaller plate as a big magnetic field allows you an artificial 'plate' of sorts?

[kerbiloid]

6 minutes ago, Spacescifi said:

Okay... but would not a magnetic pusher plate be an improvement over a normal one?

Or would you have to oil the plate either way?

Would the magnetizing over the plate offer ANY advantages? And why is minimag orion called mini? Because you can get away with using a smaller plate as a big magnetic field allows you an artificial 'plate' of sorts?

The pusher plate doesn't have a usage for the magnetic field.

A magnetic trap doesn't need a pusher plate. And oil.

Edited December 3, 2019 by kerbiloid

[DDE]

19 hours ago, Spacescifi said:

So what if the electromagnet pusher plate was also an X-ray mirror?

You missed the memo that (s) these exist but (b) they can only reflect inefficiently and at an extremely shallow angle. Not worth the bother.

[mikegarrison]

Does anybody want to share a source for combustion residence times inside a rocket engine?

[Spacescifi]

 

What would an alien world with oceans of vinegar instead of saltwater be like?

Would the atmosphere be air or something else?

 

Since I could easily say the lifeforms living there breath air different than us.

 

The whole reason for this is I wanna see bio-propelled rocket lifeforms. Take a tiny low mass animal, have them suck up some vinegar into a body pounch, mix in some natural body deposits of something like baking soda but with more kick and boom!  Expel the exhaust from body nozzles.

Creatutes can launch into the air higher than if they just jumped.

Gravity is 1g.

 

I would also presume both skin and bone would need to be ulra resistant against corrosion, as that is what vinegar does long term. More than water.

 

What can you think up?

Edited December 5, 2019 by Spacescifi

[kerbiloid]

It would be full of pickled fish.

2 hours ago, Spacescifi said:

The whole reason for this is I wanna see bio-propelled rocket lifeforms. Take a tiny low mass animal, have them suck up some vinegar into a body pounch, mix in some natural body deposits of something like baking soda but with more kick and boom!  Expel the exhaust from body nozzles.

Why not just smear some mustard under tail. Then it's no need.in the vinegar ocean

3 hours ago, Spacescifi said:

Creatutes can launch into the air higher than if they just jumped.

Yes, yes, it works this way, too.

3 hours ago, Spacescifi said:

I would also presume both skin and bone would need to be ulra resistant against corrosion, as that is what vinegar does long term. More than water.

A rubber duck.

[SuperFastJellyfish]

11 hours ago, Spacescifi said:

The whole reason for this is I wanna see bio-propelled rocket lifeforms. Take a tiny low mass animal, have them suck up some vinegar into a body pounch, mix in some natural body deposits of something like baking soda but with more kick and boom!  Expel the exhaust from body nozzles.

Bombardier beetles react hydrogen peroxide with hydroquinone in a reaction chamber until it blasts out of them through a gimballed nozzle.

Edited December 6, 2019 by SuperFastJellyfish

[Spacescifi]

1 hour ago, SuperFastJellyfish said:

Bombardier beetles react hydrogen peroxide with hydroquinone in a reaction chamber until it blasts out of them out through of a gimballed nozzle.

 

Very interesting thanks!

 

In my case I need the reaction to be powerful enough to at least launch a 7 year old child into the air (they weigh anywhere from 60 to 85 pounds).

Wanting the reaction to launch an adult male into the air who weighs 175 pounds is asking for a bit much of a chemical reaction happening inside the body though.

 

At that point they will need special organs to pressurize the chemical mixture further, which likely take a toll heatwise on the humanoid.

Or simply have chemical reaction that is powerful enough to launch them up a few feet. Such heat amd power woukd require limely some kind of hard exoskeletal chamber for the reaction.

You do not want that happening in your stomach or on inside your buttocks.

 

But at least I no longer need a vinegar ocean!

 

Just a weird diet that allows them to produce their own chemical propellant.

Edited December 5, 2019 by Spacescifi

[kerbiloid]

Any tropical cuisine provides that. Eat&jump.

Edited December 6, 2019 by kerbiloid

[ARS]

Is it possible for human to survive atmospheric reentry in free-fall? Most manned reentry capsule in use has blunt body shape with heat shield, with the crew inside seated in specific position in order for them to survive the massive G-force during reentry. Now here's the scenario:

1. Assume that the person is wearing a space suit/ space marine/ power armor/ whatever that's strong enough to survive atmospheric reentry

2. There's no joint lock on the suit, the limbs are free to move during the reentry. There's no main thrusters in the suit, but there's RCS thrusters like those found in the space suit

3. There's parachute and airbrake flaps that could be used once in-atmosphere at safe altitude and velocity

Now assuming that this guy starts at suborbital trajectory and just about to enter the atmosphere, assuming this guy only have this suit and nothing else (reentry angle at 45°), would it be better to position his body with arms tucked back like those in skydiving? Or spread his arms and legs like flying squirrel? What's the effect of G-force from reentry on human body on positions like that, especially when not seated like those in proper reentry capsules

Oh and the last, this is unrelated, but assuming we have the suit like this, does the KSP stunt of "strap the heat shield on your back and pray to god you'll make it through" possible to do in real life?

Edited December 7, 2019 by ARS

[GDJ]

1 minute ago, ARS said:

Is it possible for human to survive atmospheric reentry in free-fall? Most manned reentry capsule in use has blunt body shape with heat shield, with the crew inside seated in specific position in order for them to survive the massive G-force during reentry. Now here's the scenario:

1. Assume that the person is wearing a space suit/ space marine/ power armor/ whatever that's strong enough to survive atmospheric reentry

2. There's no joint lock on the suit, the limbs are free to move during the reentry. There's no main thrusters in the suit, but there's RCS thrusters like those found in the space suit

3. There's parachute and airbrake flaps that could be used once in-atmosphere at safe altitude and velocity

Now assuming that this guy starts at suborbital trajectory and just about to enter the atmosphere, assuming this guy only have this suit and nothing else (reentry angle at 45°), would it be better to position his body with arms tucked back like those in skydiving? Or spread his arms and legs like flying squirrel? What's the effect of G-force from reentry on human body on positions like that, especially when not seated like those in proper reentry capsules

Oh and the last, this is unrelated, but assuming we have the suit like this, does the KSP stunt of "strap the heat shield on your back and pray to god you'll make it through" possible to do in real life?

Theoretically with proper materials that has super insulating properties? Sure.

There is no way in hell that I would personally fund this or want anybody to try this. The risks are just too high.

[SuperFastJellyfish]

 

3 hours ago, ARS said:

Oh and the last, this is unrelated, but assuming we have the suit like this, does the KSP stunt of "strap the heat shield on your back and pray to god you'll make it through" possible to do in real life?

 

MOOSE:

 

Quote

The design was proposed by General Electric in the early 1960s. The system was quite compact, weighing 200 lb (91 kg) and fitting inside a suitcase-sized container. It consisted of a small twin-nozzle rocket motor sufficient to deorbit the astronaut, a PET film bag 6 ft (1.8 m) long with a flexible 0.25 in (6.4 mm) ablative heat shield on the back, two pressurized canisters to fill it with polyurethane foam, a parachute, radio equipment and a survival kit.^{[citation needed]}

The astronaut would leave the vehicle in a space suit, climb inside the plastic bag, and then fill it with foam. The bag had the shape of a blunt cone, with the astronaut embedded in its base facing outward. The rocket pack would protrude from the bag and be used to slow the astronaut's orbital speed enough so that they would reenter Earth's atmosphere, and the foam-filled bag would act as insulation during the subsequent aerobraking. Finally, once the astronaut had descended to 30,000 ft (9.1 km) where the air was sufficiently dense, the parachute would automatically deploy and slow the astronaut's fall to 17 mph (7.6 m/s). The foam heat shield would serve a final role as cushioning when the astronaut touched down and as a flotation device should they land on water. The radio beacon would guide rescuers.^{[citation needed]}

 

[Spacescifi]

Which do you think is superior, given similar tech for both opponents?

If one opponent nation went all in for mass produced cheap space vehicles, would that not beat one that produced a limited number of heavily armed spacecraft?

Scenario is a space battle only, from deep interplanetary space to orbital battle.

No planetary bonbardment

[ARS]

1 hour ago, Spacescifi said:

Which do you think is superior, given similar tech for both opponents?

If one opponent nation went all in for mass produced cheap space vehicles, would that not beat one that produced a limited number of heavily armed spacecraft?

Scenario is a space battle only, from deep interplanetary space to orbital battle.

No planetary bonbardment

This is basically a repeat of a Soviet vs German in world war 2, but in space, which is more like Kushan vs Kadeshi in Homeworld. The first thing is, depending on what you describe as superior, it could mean superior general quality (better guns, armor, thrusters), in which quantity will win by overwhelming it or specific superiority, such as being superior in dealing with swarm attacks (multiguns, multi-target tracking) in which quality will win.

I'll reiterate the battle between Kushan and Kadeshi in Homeworld, which is basically this situation. The Kadeshi uses swarms of cheap strike fighters to overwhelm the Kushan, they are very fast and armed with rapid fire energy weapon that can tear off opposing strike fighters with ease, and they outnumber Kushan by a factor of 10. However, their small size and cheap nature also means they have practically nothing else, so they are only good against strike fighters, and need time to destroy anything corvette-sized or larger, which is where their multibeam frigate comes in, appearing in much fewer numbers but can destroy capital ships.

Now this scenario depends on the player how it turns out. If you're a newbie and think that their strike fighters can't reliably damage anything larger than corvette, and focus on building that, you'll definitely lose since Kadeshi can pump out fighters faster than you can produce frigate-class ship or larger. By the time you attempt to brute force your way by forcing your fleet to push through the swarm, you'll either:

1. Managed to destroy their mothership, at the cost of heavy damage to your fleet and immense resource drain on your side

2. Gets obliterated and cannot build replacement forces in time to defend your mothership before being overwhelmed

That's the definition of when it's just "superior", which is not very cost effective in terms of resources for Kushan. Now let's see the "specific superior". Experienced players will instantly knows that fighting the swarm is futile, and going straight to their mothership is risky. In general, there are 2 main intended ways of completing this mission:

1. Players will notice that Kadeshi swarm fighters still needs refueling (you can't fire that breakneck thrusters forever) and noticed that they always come in squadrons that accompany a fuel tanker ship. Destroying or capturing this ship will cripple several squadrons at once as they floats aimlessly in space once their fuel is depleted, making it much easier to push through into their mothership

2. Alternatively, if player pays attention to the battle chatter as it drags long enough they'll notice that Kushan has finished enemy analysis to build a multigun corvette, which is hard to destroy by Kadeshi swarm fighters and posses enough guns to multi target several fighters at once. This corvette allows you to tear your way through their swarm

While their rarer but much more powerful multi beam frigate poses credible threat to your mothership, and sometimes hard to find (which is neat, because it reflects their doctrine, overwhelming their enemies with fighters while the frigate moves to kill the mothership, which is why they disguised the frigate to look like their fighters, albeit slightly larger and slower, which means they can't afford to lose it, since it's limited in number and isn't spammable, so they had to make it hard for the enemy to find it amidst their swarm fighters), savvy commander can spot them easily not by visual, but by movement (they fly straight instead of doing maneuvers) and either destroy it before it's reaching the mothership or hijack it for their own use

This is just an example of quantity vs quality in space battle. In the end it's not only numbers of units that matters, but also the strategic decision of cunning field commanders that makes the day

[Spacescifi]

31 minutes ago, ARS said:

This is basically a repeat of a Soviet vs German in world war 2, but in space, which is more like Kushan vs Kadeshi in Homeworld. The first thing is, depending on what you describe as superior, it could mean superior general quality (better guns, armor, thrusters), in which quantity will win by overwhelming it or specific superiority, such as being superior in dealing with swarm attacks (multiguns, multi-target tracking) in which quality will win.

I'll reiterate the battle between Kushan and Kadeshi in Homeworld, which is basically this situation. The Kadeshi uses swarms of cheap strike fighters to overwhelm the Kushan, they are very fast and armed with rapid fire energy weapon that can tear off opposing strike fighters with ease, and they outnumber Kushan by a factor of 10. However, their small size and cheap nature also means they have practically nothing else, so they are only good against strike fighters, and need time to destroy anything corvette-sized or larger, which is where their multibeam frigate comes in, appearing in much fewer numbers but can destroy capital ships.

Now this scenario depends on the player how it turns out. If you're a newbie and think that their strike fighters can't reliably damage anything larger than corvette, and focus on building that, you'll definitely lose since Kadeshi can pump out fighters faster than you can produce frigate-class ship or larger. By the time you attempt to brute force your way by forcing your fleet to push through the swarm, you'll either:

1. Managed to destroy their mothership, at the cost of heavy damage to your fleet and immense resource drain on your side

2. Gets obliterated and cannot build replacement forces in time to defend your mothership before being overwhelmed

That's the definition of when it's just "superior", which is not very cost effective in terms of resources for Kushan. Now let's see the "specific superior". Experienced players will instantly knows that fighting the swarm is futile, and going straight to their mothership is risky. In general, there are 2 main intended ways of completing this mission:

1. Players will notice that Kadeshi swarm fighters still needs refueling (you can't fire that breakneck thrusters forever) and noticed that they always come in squadrons that accompany a fuel tanker ship. Destroying or capturing this ship will cripple several squadrons at once as they floats aimlessly in space once their fuel is depleted, making it much easier to push through into their mothership

2. Alternatively, if player pays attention to the battle chatter as it drags long enough they'll notice that Kushan has finished enemy analysis to build a multigun corvette, which is hard to destroy by Kadeshi swarm fighters and posses enough guns to multi target several fighters at once. This corvette allows you to tear your way through their swarm

While their rarer but much more powerful multi beam frigate poses credible threat to your mothership, and sometimes hard to find (which is neat, because it reflects their doctrine, overwhelming their enemies with fighters while the frigate moves to kill the mothership, which is why they disguised the frigate to look like their fighters, albeit slightly larger and slower, which means they can't afford to lose it, since it's limited in number and isn't spammable, so they had to make it hard for the enemy to find it amidst their swarm fighters), savvy commander can spot them easily not by visual, but by movement (they fly straight instead of doing maneuvers) and either destroy it before it's reaching the mothership or hijack it for their own use

This is just an example of quantity vs quality in space battle. In the end it's not only numbers of units that matters, but also the strategic decision of cunning field commanders that makes the day

 

I still think cheap quality numbers wins, since one thing homeworld never did simulate was newtonian wreckage.

 

Witj realistic physics mods here is how it would go down if I am the Kadeshi Commander.

 

My fighters are easily destroyed yes, but I modify them all with grappling arms. Why? In space you can grab stuff.

 

Fleet formation: Tight. Yes I know you will shred my fighters, but the ones behind them will pick up the scrap and use it as a shield to close the gap of distancr between them and the Kushan mothreship.

You would have to literally vaporize a column of scrap coming your way, and once they get close they would break formation and go kamikazi on the Kushsn mothership... whatever it takes.

 

The way to counter this would be with 3-D tactics (hit them from above and below to miss the scrap shield).

 

But with less numbers that would be a challenge.

I would be s greater challengr than the typical Kadeshi so long real physics is on.

Furthermore, unless speed and trajectories or equal, time on target at close range will be in milliseconds, and any hit would be a disaster, even accounting for scifi shields... orbital speed coming at you kinetics is no joke for DPS. Especially if a bunch of kamikazi fighters.