shynung

Okay, I'll try that. Thanks.

Interstellar Fuel Switch makes the stock Mk2 fuel tanks switchable. Nertea uses that to make configs for his Cryo Engines mod.

I'd suggest an MM config to make it compatible with Community Resource Pack. This way, if CRP is installed, the nuclear rocket drinks liquid hydrogen instead of liquid fuel. Just my 2 cents.

I recall that the early Karborundrum torch drives gulp down liquid hydrogen in addition to plain Karborundrum. Will these ones do the same? Also, what are the planned engine specs? Thrust and specific impulse?

Gog freakin' dangit. I'm being pummeled in less than a minute by a few lines of code. Heck of a job on that AI pilot, Baha.

Fair enough.

In case you haven't noticed it, there's a search engine out there called 'Google' that answers this kind of question much faster.

So, according to your info, I'd say putting the object in a large glass bowl of water should sterilize it. Though, what if there isn't much water? Say, just dipped in water, then microwaved for a few minutes?

Microwave ovens heat anything with water in it, so, maybe.

700 was sea level Isp. I'm guessing it goes a bit higher as altitude increases. If that wasn't enough, a couple SRBs mounted alongside a la STS may be just enough to kick it up a little faster.

The RTG problem I was responding to concerned a Stirling RTG, which can be several times more efficient than a typical RTG. In a thick Venusian atmosphere, where solar panels might not generate much electricity, a self-contained power source such as an RTG is definitely worth sticking a radiator on the cruise stage. Plus, if one can get a liquid droplet radiator, the cooling system mass just went down considerably.

Huge radiator panels on the interplanetary cruise stage could be used. Just before Venusian atmospheric entry, these could be staged off along with the cruise stage.

Not necessarily. Some reptiles do not actually stand on their legs, but rather lay on their bellies. When at rest, they don't spend energy keeping themselves standing or balanced.

While I do agree with your stance, outer space is quite far from 'benign'. Dangers of decompression reeks everywhere. Sure, you can use pressurized living spaces and utility modules, but I'm quite sure we'll lose a few careless people to the vacuum of the void anyway.

The thing is that aneutronic fusion reaction is harder to achieve than D-T fusion; it takes much more energy. Going by Atomic Rocket's fusion fuels page, the Lawson criterion of a proton-Boron fusion goes into 500, while a neutron producing D-T fusion gets only 1; D-D gets 50. This means an aneutronic fusion-burning reactor is much harder to start - and keep running - than a typical non-aneutronic fusion. So, the incredible power-weight ratio does come at a steep cost. In a less-developed spacefaring civilization, it seemed much easier to build neutron-embrittlement-resistant engine components instead. That, or mount the propulsion bus on a long boom, place a thick neutron shield 1/3 of the way to the payload mount, and replace the engine every 50 years or so.

Fuel/propellant is a 2% solution of uranium/plutonium tetrabromide in water, tanked in bundles of pipes filled in-between by neutron absorbers. No reactor - fuel/propellant is injected into a long plenum bar (basically a large pipe). Critical mass develops in plenum bar, starting the nuclear reaction, turning it into superheated steam, which then goes out the nozzle. All this, compared to a full-blown nuclear reactor required for NERVA/solid core nuclear thermal rocket. Seemed pretty simple to me. Just like NERVA, it reacts the fuel directly without a heat exchanger. Main difference is that in a NERVA/solid core reactor, nuclear fuel is separated from propellant. In NSWR, fuel and propellant is stored in the same tank as a solution, going to the reaction chamber through the same pipes. No need for reactor controls; simple valves could be used to control engine power output. Close the valves, and no more UBr4 solution goes to the chamber, and reaction stops. What's problematic is cooling. As you said, an extensive system of cooling pipes would be needed to protect the plenum bar/reaction chamber and the nozzle assembly, what with those pipes supposed to hold a superheated steam cloud infused with fissioning nuclear fuel moving at past earth's escape velocity. By the way, 479k was Zubrin's claim, not mine. Though, given 90% enriched uranium, reaching 400k mark doesn't seem impossible to me. I have to say, this is actually a brilliant idea. Slashing the Isp in half doesn't really matter when one's paying it in liquid water, which is practically everywhere. That, and the fact that this is probably only used for final approach - at most, a few seconds to minutes at a time. So, magnetic confined fusion? Looks like a good idea, if we can get past the 'aneutronic' part. If not, the Isp boost still looks pretty impressive, if Atomic Rockets is to be trusted.

Somewhat inefficient. Cargo capacity of the vehicle (say, Dragon) has to be shared between production equipment and feedstock/product. Great for limited production quantities, but not very useful if one wants mass-production capabilities, even small-scale. A more likely scenario for orbital mass production would be to launch one Dragon filled with more production equipment, but no feedstock. Instead, a second Dragon docks in carrying feedstock a bit later, and stays docked while its cargo bay is slowly depleted of feedstock, and filled with products. When the second Dragon is filled with products, it undocks and deorbits; at the same time, a third Dragon goes into RDV with the first Dragon, carrying another load of feedstock, and docks not long after the second Dragon undocks. The cycle then repeats. Though, I agree that nobody has taken up this kind of offer yet. Most likely, we'll see manufacturing tests using Dragon with shared feedstock-equipment at first to test viability, then move on to multi-vehicle setup when it's time to scale up.

I'm not sure a metal wool ball can reach the surface from past orbital velocity without disintegrating on the way down. Sure, they have high drag and low mass, but they don't have much structure other than tension. Yes, it's open cycle nuclear. Yes, it does spew radioactive steam out the nozzle. Though, it's hard to say no to a ridiculously simple engine (compared to, say, solid core nuclear thermal engine) with a TWR comparable to lower-stage chemical engines (40), yet still manage 6728 seconds of Isp while using 20% enriched uranium - 479000 seconds, if using 90% enriched/weapons grade uranium. On a more serious note, there are people questioning whether we can build a practically usable ship that could survive turning the engine on. That, and it leaves glowing-blue craters whenever it lifts off from unprotected ground.

A fitting performance for what is essentially atomic squirt guns, don't you think? Not to mention it being hypergolic. Agreed. Stuff in space is expensive because it is in space; getting it off the earth is the expensive part.

It's a clarification. It's not meant to be a direct reply, since you seemed to either misunderstood the definitions of 'ideas' and 'resources', and user tater didn't attempt to clarify further. And yes, I do this a lot. Some to you, some to others. You shouldn't be surprised by now.

Four words. Nuclear Salt Water Rocket. Forget the puny DS4G thruster. This thing will get it to the surface via propulsive landing without much problem.

An idea is like knowledge. People can take it from you, willingly or otherwise, but you can never actually lose it. Resources, on the other hand, inevitably disappear if someone takes enough of it. Suppose I had an idea for a ship. I drew the design over a piece of paper. People ask me for the design, so I gave copies of the drawing to them. Here, the ship design would be an idea. I cannot completely lose this ship design, unless I forgot about it; if someone stole the original drawing, I can just draw another one. On the other hand, the actual ship itself is a resource. If someone were to hijack my ship, I cease to receive benefits from its presence - hence, I lost the ship. Taking this into context, the knowledge that a certain minable asteroid exists, along with certain relevant information - where it is, how to get there, what tools one needs to mine, and what materials are expected to be acquired from mining it - is an idea. I can shut up about it and not tell everyone, or go ahead and tell everyone I know, but I will not actually lose the knowledge unless I forgot it. The asteroid itself, however, is a resource. I can mine it dry, and it stops being beneficial to me - I lost the asteroid. Someone could attach a rocket booster to it to move it somewhere I can't reach, and it stops being beneficial to me - I lost it.

KSP =/= Real World. IRL, it took 9500 m/s of deltaV just to get to low orbit. In KSP, only about 3500.

What do you think war is? Yep. Though, to be fair, drug cartels simply have other ways to maintain financial capability. Ground operations can be hidden carefully. Not so space operations; anyone with a good enough telescope can see what's going on.

I understand that. What I'm pointing out is that doing all the docking movements while being in a suborbital trajectory puts a time limit on the docking maneuver.