shynung

That's what a turbopump is for - boosting pressure without using high-pressure propellant tanks, which gets heavier the higher the expected pressure goes. BTW, stay away from hypergolics. Those stuff are highly toxic, corrosive, and expensive.

Vaccines present in food products (e.g. meat from a vaccinated animal) has no effect on humans. They get digested, and are harmless. A solid chunk of high-purity Beryllium is not harmless if ingested.

Typical RS-25s burn hydrogen-oxygen propellant. Replace the oxygen with fluorine, up goes your specific impulse. Sure, you'll have to deal with the stream of HF going out your nozzle afterwards. But, by replacing the aluminium in the SRBs fired alongside (which typically burn aluminium-ammonium perchlorate) with beryllium, the HF and BeO (along with chlorine leftovers) react into BeF2 and HCl, which is less dangerous, in addition to giving a boost to SRB specific impulse. Yes, this is all stupidly dangerous (and expensive) stuff that even the DoD probably wouldn't even bother. But the performance gains are there.

Actually, it's more like "We need half-strength SRBs, but we can't change the thrust profile of the SRBs, and our factory cannot produce half-length SRBs without a significant upgrade. Let's stick only one SRB to the side and adjust nozzle geometries to compensate." Like that, the factory can focus on building only one type of SRB, reducing production machinery requirements (only one product is expected) and cost.

Ah, I know this one. 'Internet Sehat', right? AFAIK their filtering system isn't hard to counter, though they have DNS hijackers now; basically they redirect any and all incoming DNS requests to their own server. Google DNS won't work on this one. That said, attempting to block internet access is like trying to block gamma radiation; no matter how good the 'wall' is, something eventually gets through anyway.

It's also for practical reasons. Suppose that the extra thrust of only one booster is needed. If the manufacturer insists on using two boosters for stability, they'd have to manufacture half-length boosters.

This is an electrodynamic tether. It pushes off a planetary/stellar magnetic field, and consumes only electricity.

I was talking about oxygen and water production for LSS. In a setting where hydrogen peroxide is used as RCS, oxygen and water is stored in the same tank as RCS. Heating and cooling systems (via absorption refrigeration) from decomposing H2O2 is also possible. On CO2, I think either a scrubber or air-liquefier-fractional distiller system could be used. While these can be made simple, I'm not really sure how steampunk-ish they are.

Hydrogen peroxide. It decomposes into water and oxygen, generating heat. Also great for RCS.

They compensate by having better access to polar orbits, due to latitude.

Even old rockets go kaboom sometimes. Look at the Russian Proton.

Not a source, but rather a picture. As in, what happened in it is quite close to what's actually going on IRL.

Not necessarily. The people working at SLS could have simply moved over to the new launcher project, if they ever start another one. That way, jobs don't get lost, yet the public thinks something is actually being done. I'd recommend anyone to watch The Pentagon Wars should they ever wonder why it is as it is.

Yes, that equation didn't take TWR into account; Tsiolkovsky's original equation didn't either, and that's all I have (understood) to start with. However, generally gravity drag (from TWR) and aerodynamic drag is taken into account by increasing the target deltaV. In my case, 3900m/s is enough to get to 90km circular orbit, so about 600m/s (from 3300) are for aerodynamic drag and gravity 'tax'. Optimizing TWR is usually by choosing the right engines, whose Isp is then taken into account.

As of KSP v1.0.2, deltaV to 80km orbit is approx. 3300m/s. 4500 was from pre-v1.0 days, when KSP hasn't gotten aerodynamics right.

Quick-n-dirty math. If anyone found a mistake, please kindly correct me. Also, this assumes a single-stage rocket. Not sure how to adapt this to multistage, so some help is appreciated. Starting from the regular rocket equation: deltaV = ( Isp * g0 ) logN ( mWet / mDry ) Rearranging this gave me: mDry = mWet / ( N ^ ( deltaV / ( Isp * g0 ) ) where: deltaV = target delta-V (approx. 3300 m/s, in KSP v1.0.2) Isp = engine specific impulse g0 = standard gravity (9.08865, though 9.81 works too) mWet = craft wet mass (fully-fueled) mDry = craft dry mass (out of fuel) Further: mDry = mStruct + mPay mWet = mDry + mProp where: mStruct = structural mass (tanks, engines, struts, anything that isn't the payload) mPay = payload capacity, what you're looking for.

It actually is. A landed Space Shuttle has to be left alone on the runway for several hours for said shields to cool down.

More of a joke, actually.

Rather than pressurized water, it's much better to use pressurized hydrogen peroxide, and stick a silver mesh filter just after the input valve, but before the turbine inlet. This will generate a stream of superheated steam and hot oxygen gas at much higher pressures than a water tank of comparable pressure and mass. This system works almost anywhere, in almost any condition, within the temperature ranges where hydrogen peroxide is a liquid.

They're not, they're mainly heat sinks. Also doubles as insulation.

According to this, mostly resin(plastic)-impregnated carbon-fiber. The Space Shuttle, meanwhile, uses a material called LI-900, which is actually made out of silica(glass) fibers, and have 94% of is volume being air. Reinforced carbon-carbon is used on the wing leading edges and the nosecone.

You just wrote a couple. Technically, paragraphs can consist on only one sentence. And since the first one serves as an example rather than a description, it gets the point through despite not adhering to official grammar conventions. Anyway, the modus operandi for the forum discussions seemed to be presenting an idea/observation, then either asking a question or asking (or waiting) for some response. How the idea is presented doesn't matter much (one user once wrote a long, essay-like paragraph, others include lists, graphs, photos, or anything else that shows the points), other than that the idea has to be something understandable, and (if a question) ask in a clearly-worded manner. Then again, some threads do fit the stereotype you depicted. Other than a very few that asks something not allowed to be asked (forum rules), most simply exists without too much trouble.

Charcoal can burn pretty hot, and are usually used to forge iron. If the ancient people have access to that, they could smelt metals. Making charcoal isn't very complicated either. Burning wood or coconut shells in a pit would produce some charcoal. After the ancient people found that limiting the air supply was the key, building stone kilns to improve efficiency aren't very far off.

Not an exact year, yeah, but I think it's a safe bet that people start smelting stuff not very long after fire was discovered. It'd be as simple as throwing rocks into the fire, though occasionally molten metal would leak out of their ores if heated long enough.

They come quite close. Not outright lying, but very uncomfortably close.