Rakaydos

Ion engines might be capable of this sort of trajectory, but they fall far short of "1 foot per second" that you ask.

Which means it comes down to how much money SpaceX can shave off launch costs by recovering stages. Both Skylon and the Falcon R are trying to cut launch costs with reusability- SpaceX claims they will eventally be able to get the cost per pound to orbit to a fraction of NASA's cost. The question is if Skylon's flight and recertification can get their price that low.

Depends on if they did the prepwork while they waited for the engine design to be finalized. All the "untried technoligy" in the hull basicallly amounts to a big flowerpot holding a hydrogen tank-not exactly complicated compared to a passanger aircraft.

Lestat, what exactly is the problem with situating a colony at a thermally stable altitude- I'm unclear of your argument. Most of what I've been seeing is Rubis suggesting minor revisions of Landis's plans, and you insisting that he is wrong in every particlar where he contradicts what you have read. If it is easier to maintain a city at a thermaly stable altitude, why build a city at at any other altitude? If it isnt, why is it easier to build something and actively cool it, than build it at altitude and use the power for other things?

It sounds like the problem with the precooler wasnt actually cooling the air. The intake compressor is actually powered by the thermal differential between the hypersonic air and the hydrogen fuel.

The shuttle was originally intended to be made of titanium, not foamed glass. A certain senator however, demanded the plan be scrapped for "some cheaper alternative", and NASA had to spend millions finding said alternative. Not being bound by crazy political overhead, or by a plan that puts crew below falling ice, SpaceX is already ahead of NASA in saftey.

The reactor isnt the issue, it's the propellant- Unlike NERVA, you're spitting pure radioactive waste out the back.

(double post)

In my FAR enabled, Space Plane Hanger Only, Carear Mode, I flew past the moon twice... to unlock turbojets and landing gear. How did I get there, without landing gear or turbojets? Like this:

Fusion pinch with a magnetic ramscoop. A torroidal spacecraft that is sped up to a high velocity by electron-beamed magsails, it protects it's crew from ionizing radiation with a magnetic field. This magnetic field pinches interstellar hydrogen plasma through the center of the torus, where pinch fusion is induced, pushing the vessel faster through space.

"The Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics is made up of the Harvard College Observatory and the Smithsonian Astrophysics Observatory. Scientists at the center pursue studies of those basic physical process that determine the nature and evolution of the universe," according to the CfA website's official description. " So dark mater/dark energy seems a likely canidate.

Out of curiosity, can the physics-inclined explain the difference between this and the Woodward_effect?

Just to note, the ship DOES move when the arm moves. The center of mass of the arm+ship remains completel stationary, because the arm is pushing off the ship. Same with this device. It doesnt matter what you do with the balls, the center of mass isnt moving an inch.

Class 2. We dont know if it exists, but we cant prove it doesnt.

Arg. My existing two stage cargo design ran afoul of my installing FAR for a different save. I'm having to go back to the drawing board.

Bear in mind, it WAS considered impractical and useless when it required the mass-energy of jupiter to work. There's no way to build something with that much power and fit it into the field area- by definiton, it would have taken a Jupiter of antimatter. This is a Class 3 Impossiblility... we can prove it doesnt work. Now that that problem was fixed, it is now a Class 2 imposssibility: Something we havnt proven does not work. A Class 1 Impossibility is simply an infrastructure problem. It works, but we cant build it yet. Space Elevators fall in this category.

Hmm... a Mun sligshot can resonably give you an elipse almost to Kerbin SoI. From there, it should be fairly easy to "correct" into a minmus-style drop and slingshot.

Space is big. one could miss us by a 12th of a lightyear and we'd never notice. Especially if it was an iceball. As I mentioned, though, the idea of an ejected gas giant with tidally heated moons is interesting. No star, but the potential for life...

Did the thesis explain Uranus and Neptune forming so far out, this "early" in the solar system? I took that as one of the "proofs" for the rogue planet theory. Or is nemisis something else?

That might be a relatively recent revision- I lerned it as overlapping, but that was 10 years ago.

I found an article talking about how Sol (probably) used to have 5 gas giants beyond the asteroid belt, but it was ejected from the solar system as part of moving Uranus and Neptune as far out as they are. Models of exoplanet systems suggest that events like this are even more common- every hot superjupiter would have ejected one or more rocky planets that were closer to the sun than where it formed. Imagining a rogue gas giant with tidally heated moons is particularly interesting- there's no reason there couldnt be an intersteller Europa floating around somewhere, life forming without a star.

The same was said of the Hyperlense requiring a negative index of refraction. And nothing in nature HAS a negative index of refraction... but we can make microstructures that can mimic it well enough to fool light of long enough frequency.

Ask anyway, please. A calculus student's worst enemy is basic arithmatic- I can only inagine it becoming more dramattic as you rely more and more on automaton- its easy to understand if a simple error like this crept into it.

How many bananas of radiation for wifi then? Or any of the other "banned radiation hazards?"

Radio frequency lasers exist- they're called Masers. (microwaves are a frequency of radio that happens to generate a harmonic in water)