palioxis1248

Why aren't we funding this????

Magnetic-monopole catalysed proton decay. It basically allows you to throw anything into the reactor and get 70% of the might of E = mc^2 shooting out the exhaust. Plus it leaves out the finicky business of fuel confinement too.

I don't really understand the obssession with transfer windows, but that's probably because I overengineer the deltaV capability of my rockets. Basically if you have really capable vehicles (i.e. nukes and the like), you don't really need to eject prograde and time it right. Leaving at a 10 degree angle from Kerbin usually tacks on another .5kps, but at least it gets you there without you having to wait in-game years for transfer windows. My advice if you're trying to do this is to start in a circular orbit, and start with a regular prograde ejection. Then, once you've pulled out the opposite solar apsis until it touches the planetary orbit of choice, trying rotating the maneuver node around the circular orbit and adding some extra delta v and see where that gets you. Generally speaking if the planet is too far behind when you reach its orbit, don't change the ejection angle and just increase ejection delta v. Of course you should aerobrake wherever available. If the planet is too far in front, rotating the ejection angle towards the sun makes you cut across the inside of Kerbin's orbit, which should allow you to nail an intercept with the planet later on. Not exactly anything to do with transfer windows, but I hope this helps!

Hrm. So if I lit a hypothetical He* booster on the ground, I get a plume of ozone and superhot helium plasma? What's the lethal radius around the plume?

That was really helpful! Thanks a lot!

Granted, she blinds you with magic. I wish for more reputation tag-things.

If you read further on you'd see that I posted about how one might exploit orbital silos to the logical ultimate in that same thread.

The thing is you don't leave directly from the fuel silo. With the SOI-edge-scraping fuel silo, you rendezvous and refuel, then expend 200m/s to drop your periapse to about 80km thereabouts, then use the Oberth effect at periapse to sling yourself further. Of course you have to really get the dates of the rendezvous right, which is the whole point of me asking this question in the first place.

That's strange, because from what I read He*-He would be solid at room temperatures. Hmm...... Also, as an aside, anyone willing to comment on the part about EUV?

He gives it a good rating, then goes back to finishing up his Time Odyssey.

^This. You should go read his website.

Ignoring the bit about cheese, melting the Moon requires a nontrivial expenditure of energy, like say, all the energy Earth receives from the Sun over a few years or something like that. Nukes don't come close to the amount of energy needed to do that, even with the size of our current global stockpile. Besides, that's not destroying it. Unless you provide enough energy to completely overcome the Moon's gravitational binding energy, which requires yet another nontrivial expenditure of energy, all you are doing is reforming the internal structure of the Moon and eliminating some of Mankind's most famous monuments.

That doesn't make much sense. Assuming you don't overshoot the target orbit and swing back around, Hohmann transfers have the longest transfer windows of any other transfer orbit.

Well, since alexmun more or less answered it, anyone know how to change this thread to answered? I'm still open to suggestions on this though!

I'm trying to make a ring of fuel silos near the edge of the Kerbin System, so I need to know how many silos I'll need to account for all the transfer windows (because from an inertial reference frame the orbits aren't going to rotate once per Kerbin year). That certainly puts a monkey wrench into things. Any chance that extending the transfer window period to +5 degrees from the perfect alignment makes it more or less cyclic?

So I chanced upon this idea while trawling on the web, where one of helium's two electrons is boosted into its second electron shell and given the same spin as the electron in the inner shell, leaving the helium atom in a high-energy metastable state. Bonding this metastable atom with another ordinary helium atom (don't ask me how) would in theory form a stable, combustible solid. Last I checked, it could be used as a rocket fuel with Isp of 21kps! Being the irrelevant-detail-hunter that I am, I did a rather pointless calculation to find out what colour the helium exhaust would be. Basically I assumed exhaust velocity = rms speed of hot helium exhaust, then calculated the temperature using the ideal gas rms speed formula. I then plugged the temperature (~70000K!) into Wien's displacement law. I got a blackbody radiation wavelength of about 40nm, in the extreme ultraviolet range. Can someone help me verify this figure? Also, if any EUV/Soft X-ray expert happens to see this, what is the TVT of air against EUV and what are the effects of EUV?

Um ok. I think I didn't phrase this right. I understand that between the occurences of Kerbin and Duna lining up there can only be one transfer window. The thing is if you observe everything from an inertial reference frame above Kerbol, the next time Kerbin and Duna line up they will be at a different position. So my question in reality is this: Assuming unchanging camera angle from above Kerbol, and given Kerbin and Duna start out aligned, how many transfer windows are there before they return to that same configuration(i.e. without changing camera angle they are once again in the same position and alignment on the screen)?

False, although I have never been to Eeloo proper. The user below me knows Macey Dean.

False, sadly. Someday... The user below me is planning to land on Eeloo.

Has been done. See "Orphans in the Sky" by Robert Heinlein.

Triboluminescent

Ignite match in rectum. Why is the sky?

Granted, the Stig lands it on and totally obliterates your house, then sues you for obstructing traffic. I wish I could make better wish perversions.

If a planetary colony falls into barbarism, everybody reverts to a non-technological agrarian society. If an asteroid civilization falls into barbarism, everybody dies. From posting earlier on another thread.

0/10 Who are you people????