Sillychris

Is it my cultural inertia speaking when I say I need words and not individual letters? I will admit that people can think in binary, but I feel it would slow things down since the data is so not-compressed. The idea of a rocket is one object in my mind. Not 6 letters that I later derive to be a rocket. You say rocket, I picture cylinder. It would be unwieldy to s-a-y-[space]-r-o-c-k-e-t. The human mind can learn more than 2 symbols. Why would you restrict it to 2?

LMFAO "professional lithobraker!"

Tough question, but I think I tend towards iron. Ps, thanks for all the iron, moon!

IT's not just cultural inertia that makes binary unwieldy for humans... we don't have binary brains and our language is very slow since we have to speak it. Hey man, grab me a 110 pack of beer when you head out? How many miles does your car have? Oh, just 11010110101001010101010110. Decimal chunks information into groups that the human mind can easily grasp and use in language. Same reason we don't say every letter in a sentence and chunk that information into more easily understood words, instead. I can see the merits of switching to octal, base twelve or hexadecimal, but binary means nothing to a squishy, symbolic mind.

We know enough to predict near future geologically stable zones, yes. However, introduce any kind of geologic time scale and it becomes impossible to predict. The entire surface of the Earth has been recycled at some point in its history with the oldest rocks being very rare. It would take one hell of a lucky guess to stick a museum in a spot that escapes all tectonics for all time (If that's even possible on a planet as geologically active as Earth). Also: Erosion. Water and wind will wear down anything we can ever make. Besides, the OP asked for ideas of an orbital museum, and he didn't list price as a judgement criteria. This museum may very well be for the benefit of ET life stumbling upon our planet. Worried about bolide impacts with your orbital museum? Give it an automated defense system. You can't shoot down getting subducted into the freaking mantle. But at least records of our civilization are preserved instead of being turned into shanty huts and cheap memorabilia by struggling survivors in the short term aftermath.

Ever heard of plate tectonics? No museums getting subducted in space! (Note: This forum thinks subducted isn't a word) Also, I think restricting access until a civilization got space faring capabilities would seriously improve the odds of them not wrecking everything.

No, I haven't. Midterms... yknow.

As a race, we have become marvelous at manipulating the electroweak force and have just started to toy with the nuclear strong force. The remaining force, gravity, we haven't the foggiest idea how to work with. Controlling gravity is what we will need to create an inertial dampener... however that may be achieved.

It doesn't need to be high density, if just needs to be binary. If I scribble down a bunch of ones and zeroes on a piece of paper, it's still stored as binary. Also, I feel I can safely conclude that any civilization that can attain spaceflight will at some point figure out how to extract data from whatever medium we store it in... especially if we leave instructions in the form of pictures.

1) The orbit would be strictly circular and altitude would be greater than any atmospheric effects (Maybe 10000 km) 2) The station would have lead shielding. Lots of it and it would be an inch thick. We're not gonna mess around with pressurization. Vacuum is a pretty good method of preservation. 3) The station would have airlocks and be rated for pressurization, as well as have highly generalized air fittings for adding air. (think the vacuum lines in your chemistry lab. Any rubbery line shoved overtop will form a seal) The station would also have an east-orbit exactly over the equator, making it easy to dock to. In terms of docking, the station would have a large flat circular magnetic washer docking port. The inside radius would be large enough for two people in spacesuits and the outside radius would be much, much larger. You'd still have to get inside with a spacesuit. As far as access to items on board: The items would be restricted to items that can survive a vacuum, and they would be secured in a simple and easy to remove fashion. 4) The station's skin would have a texture of many spheres, and painted white or some other reflective colour. The bumpy texture should reflect light in every direction. I would store data in a strictly binary fashion. Nothing stands the test of time like data stored in binary and any civilization that could reach the station would have obviously figured out the benefits of binary and would be able to decode it without too much trouble. Perhaps crystal discs? MAgnetic tape would be a poor choice. Every component of the station (including the lead shielding) should have information etched onto it. Lots of math would be nice, since that's handy to any civilation. Maybe the proof of Fermat's last theorem? It would be nice to provide them with a dictionary, although that's a moot point as far as application goes. DNA sequences. Store as many dna sequences as possible. That can't be rederived.

I designed mine for long term missions on lathe, so I coated it with copious solar panels. But in this competition, all that matters is the speed in your screenshot; if stopping to recharge is how you can get the best speed, then stop to recharge.

Yeah, how'd you do that? Good work

The object is very simple: Make a paddle wheel boat by abusing reaction wheels. Rules: 1) Your watercraft must carry at least 1 Kerbal. We'll see his face in the bottom right when you photograph your entry. 2) Only reaction wheels are permitted for power. Your source of electricity can be anything that doesn't consume fuel. (Extra command pods are ok). (I don't care how you get your boat to the water, but all other propulsion sources must disengage before competing. Also, your surface speed must be zero before accelerating with reaction wheels.) 3) Stock parts only. No mods, unless you insist on using mechjeb or other mods that do not affect parts. 4) Take a picture of your reaction wheel vessel. The surface speed pictured is your score. Highest score wins. 5) No debug menu. Here is my entry (10.2 m/s): 1) Lumie 18.9 2) sillychris 10.2

No no, I trust that it took you five seconds to hit the ground. I posted your approximate time on the leaderboard.

For the geometry geeks like myself, I have introduced a no clipping category.

xrayfish: Switch back to your capsule with ] to take a picture of capsule time. The reset timer is your KErbal's eva time.

It's a free for all. I will subdivide classes as demand requires.

The challenge's first entry: Bowling. http://i.imgur.com/RogkThz.png I think I got 5 or 6 of them. Need higher velocities for better kerbal scattering.

This is all about speed. We fly to the Mun with infinite fuel. 1) Infinite fuel and clipping allowed. 1) a) Clipping shall be a separate class. 2) Mods and stock parts shall be separate classes. 3) Mechjeb and non mechjeb shall be separate classes. Permutations of the above rules shall have unique classes 4) You must take a screenshot of a planted flag at the destination you are racing to. The time in the upper left hand corner is your score. 5) Lowest score wins. 6) Using save files is permitted. -Also accepting races to the Northern Ice Cap on Kerbal. Here is my entry, an obvious design: My time is 36:29 for Mun 1-way. Leaders: No-Mechjeb, No Mods. 1) Scott Manley 5:00 2) Exploding_Potato 11:14 3) SillyChris 36:29 4) 5) Mechjeb, No Mods 1) Xaiier 10:50 2) quietsamurai98 36:17 3) 4) 5) No Mechjeb, Mods 1) xrayfishx 17:17 (FAR, DRE, KER, KJR, KW Rocketry)

They didn't tell me that in phys 381 and now I'm mad at the U of A. KSP just contributed to my education... again.

A fission bomb's efficiency is dependent on lots of neutrons zipping around. Using deuterium (heavy hydrogen), you can boost the neutron flux by inducing fusion. That fusion costs energy, but you gain more energy from the boosted fission reaction. That is how a "hydrogen" bomb works.

If you launch an electron in a uniform magnetic field and its velocity is perfectly perpendicular to that field: It will go in a circle. Forever.

That doesn't work... you can't stand on the deck of a ship and blow on the sails to get propulsion. Due to Newton's third law, your wind has to come from somewhere else (In other words, conservation of momentum). Plus the antimatter would annihilate with the ordinary matter that the sail is made out of... unless your sail is made of antimatter, too. (which kind of makes the whole use of antimatter pointless) I like the idea of an anti-matter fueled photon rocket. One tank of hydrogen and one tank of anti-hydrogen. Mix them together inside your engine and focus the gamma photons out the back. Just don't point them at Kerbal. For anyone who's wondering how a photon would impart thrust, photons do have momentum. Weird, I know.

ie a neutron star

What you are describing is known as an unstable equillibrium in lagrangian mechanics. The planet between the two Jools sits carefully perched at the very top of a potential energy curve between the two large bodies... one tiny perturbation to either side (like a Kerbal farting) would send kerbal sliding down the curve. Think of it as similar to a pencil balanced on its tip. It is technically considered equilibrium, but is extremely unstable due to energetics favoring the pencil falling down.