Rakaydos

If there's no reason for the Mk 55 (or other lesser engines) to exist, why do I need to scroll past them to get to the RCS fuel and fuel lines? Just take them out and be done with it.

SpaceX may be lowering prices, but Planetary Resources is going to be a medium term customer thats going to draw demand. Building off NASA's asteroid retrieval mission, Planetary resources wants to capture and MINE asteroids to crash the market in Rare Earths and letting the market discover new uses for the formerly expensive materials.

Can your warship carry more railgun rounds than the target station has RCS Delta V? Though if yo control the high orbitals, launching craft are dead meat- in order to reach orbit, they're pletty much locked into the gravity turn, and if they spend too much DV dodging railgun rounds they'll fall short of orbit and halve to abort.

My Jool 5 Expedition craft had a staging error- an asparagus stage clipped a lift engine without damaging the fuel tanks I'm using as drop tanks. Remaining capability after damage: 102%

Well, apparently not having a ladder means I need to launch new lander, but this is how I got my lander refueled. (warning, dark images)

Too cheap to bring ladders to Tylo.

3rd try: a 30ms landing looked intact, though pretty much all the landing legs broke, but the craft abruptly wobbled itself to death. It remained upright until a side fuel tank blew up, though... EDIT: 4th try: Success! I'm too cheap for ladders...

Does that include launcher? Because mine is rather silly.

First try: manual landing tipped over, but still have over 3000 Dv left in the tank, so if I did manage to land it upright, I should be good to get back to my refueling ship.

Getting ready to test my single stage tylo lander... Just the fuel cans up front. And it's using the Stock Rebalance, so the Mk55 are actually useful.

The big question is, How. How do you get atmosphere away from Venus's gravity well in enough bulk to "inflate" Mars?

Which is why most satelites seem to be able to function while half-dead, because we can still squeeze a bit more use out of the investment. Unless a perfect edge-on hit completely kesslerizes the array, the satelite should be able to beam down at least SOME power until they can send up replacement panels.

Ground based solar is unsutible for base load, but space based solar is. In geosynch "night" only lasts 4 hours, someone said, so instead of being screwed by a cloudy day, the price of electricity simply jumps between 11 PM and 3 AM. The "death beam" cant warm a cup of coffee, but they stick enough antennas in the beam to generate significant power anyway. And the recever sends a homing beam back to the satelite so it CANT get lost. And it's being built on an artificial island, so if it DID get lost nothing else is in danger.

Ok, since theproblem with my tylo lander was pogoing and running out of return fuel, I took off half my engines, as well as the science gear. Now it's a single stage lander with 6000 M/s of delta V and 1.1 to 5.2 TWR on Kerbin. Unfortunately, I accidentally overwrote my launcher with an older version, and I need to debug my fuel lines and staging again.

It's not that much larger than the ISS, and in a less crowded orbit. I'm just not seeing it as an issue.

Turn up the power of your car engine, and you have a fuel air bomb! And one that makes a hydrogen bomb look like a firecracker. Imagine if an accident happened, and it took out a city. Not in my neiborhood! If you read the article, the beam couldnt even warm a decent cup of coffee.

"Although still in a prototype phase, ADAM managed to burn through multiple layers of the rubber hull of military-grade speed boats in less than 30 seconds from a mile away. The boat is stationary while the laser melts its hull." 30 seconds, against a stationary target, against the thermal mass of RUBBER. While powered by a warship that has an entire ocean to dump waste heat into. My point about lasers being effective against smaller targets stands (and is supported), but lasers are MORE than useless against a comparable (thermal) mass craft.

Once they figure out how to capture near earth asteroids, they will make better manufacturing sites than the Moon So it seems like: Cons- Expensive infrastructure, low output, expensive to reach to maintain. Pros: Safe from ANY earth based disaster, safe from terrorist attack, low maintanance costs.

90% efficent lasers vs 90% efficent laser defense- 10% of the energy is wasted, 9% is absorbed by the target, and 81% is absorbed by sandcasters or redirected by metamaterial cloaks. Advantage is still with the defense.

The problem with lasers is that, assuming even a token antilaser coating, you actually do more thermal "damage" to yorself than to the target. a 50% efficent laser vs a 50% efficient mirror coat (say, a titanium hull) that puts 100 Mj into a shot, generates 50Mj of heat and fires a 50 Mj laser. The mirroring reflects 50% of the laser, meaning the target only takes 25 Mj of transfer energy while the firing craft takes 50 Mj of waste heat. They're only useful against targets with a smaller thermal mass than the firing ship. (so, a capital ship or base firing at microwave-sized fighters would DEFINATELY use lasers, because a base can absorb 50 Mj into it's structure, whereas the fighter is vaporized by the 25 Mj pulse) Because the best weapons against parasite warships ("fighters") damage the firing craft, it's still worth it to throw fighters and cheap missiles at the enemy, because it forces the enemy to raise it's thermal signature, bleeding off their capaciters and heat sinks before the real fight begins.

Why not? you get all the maneuverability of a "space fighter" (probably trade some MWR for ISP, but still), but the 10% that isnt engine is far larger- call it a battlecruiser or light cruiser, depending on mass. It's just more expensive and takes longer to build.

Be careful going too far down that analigy- On earth, aircraft carriers work becuse of the difference between heavier than air flight and powered sailing. In space, there's no real difference in performance between a 10 ton hunter killer that is 90% engine, and a 100,000 ton courier vessel that is 90% engine. Therefore, a space fighter can only be made more effective if it plays to it's strengths- disposability. (Therefore allowing sacrifices to be made in operating range and combat endurance- and almost certiantly life support- in order to achieve greater short term performance than larger, more expensive craft. Think Tie Fighters manned by droids- dirt cheap noone cares if they die)

You say that like it's a bad thing. That is exactly what capital ships will fire at each other

What about a Bussard-Antimatter drive? Have low-drag scoops bring intersteller hydrogen through the craft, and inject antihydrogen into the fuel flow, instead of relying on fusion pinch. You still need to bring antimatter along, but only as a catalyst- the compressed hydrogen forms reactant and reaction mass. And the idea of a pure Bussard deceleration mode is a good one, that fits nicely with this design.

Just waiting to catch someone's leg up to orbit... and down again...