PB666

Lets perform a thought experiment. Species Blech lives on Planet Zyxwvut in the Star system Ponmlk. That star system is in the Way-too-milky galaxy in the Inverse Universe (the universe that went in the negative time direction of our own) which they call the Universe and they call our Universe the Inverse Universe. OK, Blechs are very intelligent and they have studied their star system and are now discovering planets including their own. In this Universe Blechs were the very first life-form to develop sentiency within their own visible Universe and all of the universe that can measure X billion or less years back to the time of Big-Bang (which they call Gnab-gib) Based on their observations, many people in the Blech system believe they are not the only sentient species in their Universe, and also that there many varieties in their own galaxy, they have even sent messages on golden records attached to slow moving satellites poking their way out of their star system (fractionally more significant than space dust and less significant than the billions of larger size protocomets that float in an out of their stars sphere of influence). Despite any evidence thereof. What shall we say of Blech's beliefs. 1. They are making a judgement that they are unlikely the first because . . . . . . . . 2. They are making a frequency argument based on counting a single planet with known sentients under the assumption that 1 cannot be true. 3. They are disregarding that their planets biological descendants cannot possibly be the only sentient life to develop before the heat-death of the universe. This is by definition a circular argument regarding the belief of the Blechs. This thought experiment shows the perils of trying to lead science with faulty assumptions. So next the Blech's start exploring the galaxy (they differ from humans in they enjoy long periods of frozen stasis). They go from planet to planet looking for life. As careful as they try to be in their exploration, they cannot help but deposit life on planets that are by magnitudes more favored for evolutionary development than the per-existing life. Blech's do not believe contamination is a serious issue because "other sentients must have existed and already visited the planet and the indigenous species already evolved after that exposure". Of course Blech-kind themselves are evolving, but now not on one world but many worlds, and in their wake many evolving sentient organisms went extinct and were replaced by species with Blech-like biochemistry (48 amino acids, 6 Nucleotides encoding their DNA . . . . . ). On the otherside of the galaxy species Y starts doing the same thing, but now they encounter planets, oddly, in which the organisms have similar xeno-biochemisty. Their conclusion based on their observation is that a omniscient god-like creature seeded the planets with life after these planets formed. So instead of looking for a bumbling, careless and foolish race we have a second race scouring the universe looking for 'god'. -or- http://hitchhikersguidequotes.tumblr.com/post/17038225839/in-the-beginning-the-universe-was-created-this The answer is there are exactly 42 sentient species in the Universe and the Vogon's carelessly wiped one out.

Im going to add some facts to this thread. I know many of you want to consider cost first. Launches. So my basic assumption is that using a variety of shuttle vehicles we can transports goods to an orbit of 150 km. The dV required is in the 10E4 dV range. At best currently 20% of launchpad mass can be placed in orbit. You could pack 100 humans in a sardine can with 30 minutes of oxygen and a CO2 scrubber and for the cost of Falcon-9 you could have them into space. Good luck finding a place to keep them alive. The weight of the human and its immediate needs are not the problem, therefore keeping them alive is. Earth Elliptical space. From LEO-150km to SOI is 3300 dV, in this zone we can convert payload into fuel. So for instance if you have a ship that does not have enough dV. You can burn 3300 dV to get in a highly elliptical orbit, refuel that lost dV with a supply ship, and then tweek the supply ships orbit so that it reenters Earths atmosphere. Another option is that you have a ION drive and solar panels and slowly bring the ship back to an orbit where it can be used to resupply. So lets consider the competition. For the Elliptical LEO-150-SOI limit how much dV is required. These are best case transfers (to targets Pe if orbit is insides earth or Ap if orbit is outside earths) and all assume direct intercept, altitudes are assumed to be minimal and drag used whenever possible to break. The assumption is that shipping fuel to refuel a lander would be cheaper if one just attached fuel tanks to the transfer ship. All orbits assume that departure is at the semi-major axis for earth. Transfer Land (if possible) Total (m/s) Mercury 3438, 5851* (0.27 yr) 4254 16,543 dV Venus 493, 3422** (0.39 yr) ?** 3,915 dV. Mars 584, 1877*** (0.77 yr) 1104*** 3,565 dV Ceres 2261, 4024 (1.4 yr) 392**** 6,677 dV Jupiter 3156, 18465 (2.9 yr) ***** 21,621 dV Saturn 4112, 11361 ( 6.6 yr) ***** 11,361 dV Uranus 4753, 6777 (17.14 yr) ***** 11,530 dV Neptune 4992, 7304 (31.3 yr) ***** 12,296 dV Pluto 5237, 2226 (63 yr) 1197 8,660 dV Eris 5519, 1323 (179 yr) 1273 8115 dV Phobos Not considered Minos Not considered MakeMake Not considered Haumea Not considered. * Given that the priority is on transfer window very close to inclination node and the Mercuries short period and relatively low gravity, some additional dV would be needed to correctly intercept Mercury before the circularization burn close to Mercury. ** assumes that you are not using Eve's atmosphere for circularizing and that the ship does something other than land, although what is the question. *** assumes that Mars atmosphere is not used for circularization, but that landing includes sometime of breaking (I used a tri-wing structure) and was able in KSP RSS (5 crew full science package) to have enough fuel to get back into orbit. The ship would then have enough dV to transfer back to Earth if it was refueled and provided with a supplemental tank. The lander used RL10-B and assumes an infinite life for engine (cheat). **** Ceres landers could also be ION driven and ION drive could provide a means back to Earth provided a proper power supply can be devised. A major consideration with ceres would be the length of the transfer. ***** Other targets would require reformulating 2nd transfer dV number. There are several judgements that one can make based on these numbers. 1. Mars is the best choice for 2 reasons . . . . . .a place to land, lowest dV, which includes the potential to return to orbit (4000 dV versus 8000 from Venusian cloud tops). 2. Eve and Ceres are the next two logical choices. Ceres becomes highly potent if a high power density nuclear reactor (such as a fusion reactor) is provided as a source of ION driven power). 3. While Mercury's transfer time is lower, the total dV is all but unobtainable for a chemical based engine, ION drives could be used to knock down the end transfer burn but this would require more orbits. 4. Transfer times to pluto place these out of range unless stasis is available. Ceres is still a better choice than pluto given the low landing requirement. 5. Ceres gravity, at 0.029 g is the lowest on the list, the assumption is that the technology for microgravity survival exist for any medium duration interplanetary mission. The above list is prefaced by the fact that getting the 13,000 dV required to place materials in near escape orbits about earth and to routinely dock with and resupply vessels in that orbit prior transfer. The alternative is that the refueling occurs at N1 or N2. However there are certain advantages of taking the final burn at Pe of 150km in getting to difficult targets (like Mercury or Ceres). Thus the total dV values given are the 'must be carried' dV required.

My favorite rocket engine is the one that: 1. Has 3000 ISP 2. Runs on Iron and Silicon that can be stored at a density of 10 (or does not need a fuel tank, can be hung on the side of the ship). 3. Has a TWR of 1000:1 4. Has unlimited duty cycle. 5. Thrust per M2 of surface area is 3000 kN IOW its the engine that can get you to Mars and back. Also known as the VW3000 (Vapor ware 3000). RL-10b-2 from orbit outbound. ISP of 475 at 227 kg weight is just unbeatable performance to weight. Drawback, full thrust only 220 seconds. Your not getting Jeb to Mercury with that engine. Rocketdyne RS-68A for anything from the ground into orbit.

MY judgement on the circumstance is that life on earth is compared to extremely rare run-a-way circumstance (like for instance a black hole, a quasar, . . . . . . . .). All the things you say can be explained within Earths run-a-way context. Here it is. Life of the differentiated multicellular variety is very difficult to create; however, once it is created its akin to adding a catalyst to an epoxide reaction. . . . it goes and diversifies ever faster. If you happen to live on the extremely rare worlds that have differentiated life for say a couple billion years then your experience is that form of life is common, however your perception is obscured by ignorance of the difficulty of getting say the first organism with a differentiated nervous system. To give an example. Here on earth the first life probably appeared a few hundred million years after the crust cooled, it appears to have been wiped, but it arose again 3.3 to 3.8 billion years ago. Somewhere 2 to 3 billion years later under near ideal conditions the first nervous system appeared. So on earth the opportunities for neobiogenesis were abundant and could have reoccurred on multiple occasions following a wipe, but the occasion of getting a nervous system requires 3 billion years of relatively celestial quiescence. SN here, mega-asteroid hit there, and it never happened. We could all be sitting here chatting with each other . . . . . .an 50 mile diameter asteroid traveling at 400,000 m/s hits . . . . . .no more Eucarotes [poof]. You looking out from another star scarcely noticed our loss, you might ponder how a bluish transition on an orange star turned brownish, spectragraphic information shows a large amount of salty water vapor orbiting our sun. The other thing is that many many species that could have evolved to form nervous systems simply went extinct before they had a chance. Uh, you got it, Voyager 1 and 2. 1. No longer in our solar system. 2. Little bacterial spores dot their little metal surfaces.

BTW, Im hearth-less

I think the question is poorly phrased. Examples of Life outside earth. 1. There is life, in fact trillions of living things on the International Space station. From what I understand right now is about 300 to 600 miles above the earth's surface. 2. There is almost certainly microbes in a state of permanent stasis on the three landers we placed on the moon, not to mention the gobs of life inside the lander module that were sent in orbit around the sun. 3. THere are probably a few dried microbes on the oldest things we sent to Mars. 4. Of course since the scientist that built the Voyager and Mariner programs were probably not as sensitive to the xenobiology issue, you will probably find some dehydrated bacteria on these vessels, the last two which are now in interstellar space. IOW no longer in the extended atmosphere of our Sun. While they are still in the suns gravitation sphere of influence their radial velocity is such that its trivial. I don't think life is as common as many here want it to be, and sentient life is very uncommon. Those that have set their hopes in the next earth-like planet are more often than not disappointed. THeres alot that goes into making our planet tick, a long check list of things that need to just so to have sentient life. I think asking the question whether there are other sentients in the Universe is a bit like asking what happens beyond the event horizon of a black hole or when one travels faster than the speed of light. The profound distances involved in Intergalactic spaces makes it unlikely whether we will ever know. That creates a false argument because then we have to ask 'well what about other sentient life within our galaxy (start checking of a large number of creatures on earth)' we are expanding our list of sentient creatures at home, or redefining the word . . . . . . . . I would argue that we are not easy to detect and we should likewise expect other sentients on other planets as difficult to detect. Finding quality planets has proved to be a problem .. . . . . Well thats not exactly true. Within the distances or OUR observably universe we can see euclidian geometry is essentially flat. Or space is buried in the inflation bubble where space expanded relatively uniformly. In terms of the commonness or rarity. The use of earth as an example creates a potentially severe ascertainment bias. You are from earth, therefore life is familiar to you. You would have to begin an objective sample in a part of the universe that you are unfamiliar with. Statistically speaking if you sample 1, that being earth, your degrees of freedom are zero; therefore life will always be common. THe way to determine the rate of life per planet is to remove Earth from any consideration and look at the probability of life on all the other planets detected. What happens if they sample billions of stars and planets of stars and find no evidence of life supporting planets?

Safely about M 0.95, higher and risk of cavitation. Alright so the biggest ones are the PW4000-112, GE90 and RR Trent 8000 8105/15 that produce up 113,000 foot pounds of thrust (>500kN) at sea level. As you get over 8000 feet, although the air cools making jet engines more efficient, but the problem is the density drops. Unlike the engines on the 747 which can operate at Mach 0.93, the largest turbofans only operate to about Mach 0.9. ( GE90-115B is cabable of producing 569 kN and flying either 747 or 777 with a single engine). Thats the biggest problem as the inlet density falls, so does fuel flow and so does thrust. It may move faster at higher altitudes but the volume is much less. So lets define space flight as anything with an orbit higher than 130,000 meters (80 miles). This a = 6,501,000 meters. if we use the equation u/2a to define SKE = 30656856 J/Kg . SPE = u/s - u/a = 1251104 J/Kg. The total energy added to an orbit is (if could we could warp from the ground to orbit) is 31907959. OK so we can see the problem with out too much more insight. The energy added to altitude (1.2E6 is much less than the energy added orbital energy 31.6E6. And the turbofan is not going to produce alot of thust above 15000 feet ~5000 meters). As stated above it will not move a vehicle more than say 0.95 before special engines are need. this is < 273 m/s. So our best case situation is that we get 0.086E6 j/kg of energy and we need 31.9E6 j/kg. So that equals to 50,000 kg of lift. So now lets ask the question, how much weight do we need to life and how far. So lets say what if. What if Space X built a launch facility Given that these powerhousse weight 8700 kg, and assuming we had an additional 3000 kg for each engine in support mountings. Could we build a launch pad and lift it to a certain altitude and launch. Lets see. Space X rocket weighs. 549,054, lets just assume we only need a TWR of 1.1 given the efficiency of the engines and all we want to do is lift. 549054 x 9.81 = 5386220 N required. Each Engine needs 114777N just to lift itself and it and the rocket support. That means that each engine would have a net 454223N of thrust. So to get a rocket off the ground how many of these engines, running at their full intesity would you need? The answer is 12. So basically you would have a Ring with a grating and two supporting towers for the rocket and 12 rocket engines on the ring. Would this actually work, not exactly. Vertical launching jet aircraft have the problem of exhaust reuptake into the jets, the hot CO2 gases markedely reduce compression. Instead of one harrier jet or a JSF sitting on the lauch site you have 12 of the largest jet engines built filling the entire area with hot waste gas. The next problem is Load. Jet engines like face velocities. At 1g*mass of thrust the face velocity is all induction, the best results at sea level are with face velocities of 100 m/s. THe problem is this is not true airspeed but indicated airspeed. As altitude drops the IAS to TAS ratio drops, at 45000 feet its about 1/3. This is around coffins corner for the engine. The reason is that Mach limits faster flight and thrust generated at such a speed is insufficient to lift the aircraft when drag is factored in. At the IAS above a few thousand meters the face pressure is dropping. So lets argue that we need 100 m/s by 5000 meters. If we assume constant acceleration (we cant) this gives a required net acceleration of 1 m/s. Therefore the amount of Net thrust needed is at least 5,935,000N requiring 13 jet engines (14 for balance). The next problem is balance and coordination of such a structure keeping in from turning in wind, even turning it to convert some of the vertical motion into the badly needed horizontal motion. Finally you reach a point in which you need to fire your main engine, how do you protect your 14 high dollar jet engines from the heat coming from a Kerosene/Air explosion and point blank range. If you want to recover those engines you need to control the engines descent back to the launch site. Here is the cost of those 14 jet engines. At a cost of 15,000,000 US dollars the 14 jet engines would run 210 million dollars not considering the cost of the rest of the launch pad, You are probably taking about a half of a billion dollar launch pad that may go Poof on its first launch.

Wish the had some kind of automated fire suppression system on the deck

Landed but Southeast facing side was on fire, lol. On the bright side it did not melt down, [cough]

Everest is not ideal. No air.

Hmmm, well had to convert everything to H2 and 02. The ET FT for SST has 629.3 and 106.3 kT of oxygen and hydrogen, respectively. This gives an O:H mass ratio of 5.92:1 (6:1 as the stated burn ratio). The reaction is 2H2 + 02 = 2H20 which 4H = 4.0316 and 2O = 15.9996 mass units this produces a mass ration of 7.93:1. Seems like there is too much oxygen in the big orange tank.

Not yet most of my parts have already been tranformed to real life values. I just never had the need to a heavy lift engine.

I'm actually looking at rocket engines trying to decide which engine I am going build, lol. Should I build an F1 engine or supersize a SSME. So far as yet all my part mods are mine, so that if I need an engine and it exists then I make it in blender and config it in the game. http://www.projectrho.com/public_html/rocket/supplement/RocketChart04_ManualEdit2.pdf Got a big graphic in front of me right now trying to find something. If I cant get an engine that gets fuel enough to get to Mercury, then I need a final stage engine efficient enough to finish the job. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/RS-27A gee, why build an engine that you cannot throttle. This is going to make some of you unhappy since you detest the Delta IV program but . . . . . . https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/RS-68 This is the engine I am going with. SSME despite having a higher ISP does not have the energy production per surface area that this engine has and is much easier to block on large fuel tanks. At 3136kN of Thrust and engine weight of 6.6 t, its a much better choice. Ve of 4140 and 3700 at MSL this is efficient enough to do the job. Its diameter is 2.45m perfectly fitting into the tanks.

I was playing around with Real Solar systems mod for KSP. I get a kick out of how freaking hard it is. The biggest problem, I need more engine and higher density of thrust per unit of surface area. I can get the rocket off the ground but when I go to make a gravity turn . . . . I was looking at the engines, they are either of poor ISP or they have a fraction of the thrust needed to carry 50 tons needed. So im now search Wikipedia for a better rocket engine, lol.

That quote is not from me, I don't know where you got it from. I am not in favor of Arkships (this is something now best handled by molecular biology and biotechnology). Be more careful before you attribute material.

Why stop at 1.2, give yourself infinite fuel and use 4 g of thrust. At 70 km v =2295. where v = SQRT(u/r). V2/r = u/r2 that is derived from the equation w2r = u/r2 Since u/r2 provides ~.8 g (kerbin unlike earth is so compact that the atmosphere height significantly decreases g from ground level) of pull and TWR = 4 gives you 4.8 or approximately 48 a downward force. 48 = V2/r V2 = 48 * 675000 [altitude = 75000, altitude management will be difficult with such a downward force] V = SQRT(48*670000) = 5670 m/s

I want to thank the person who created this thread, Its badly needed having searched hours and having come up bone dry. I want to install real solar system (RSS) for KSP version 1.3. I am having difficulty finding the components required. Is there a ready-to-use patched version of Module Manager (I haven't used since 0.24) or will CKAN work? Which is better. Is there a ready-to-use patched version of RSS or something that can be patched easily. I have Visual Studio installed for Windows 10 (latest free version as of 2016). Is there an installation guide for RSS on KSP 1.3???? - - - - - - Edit - I found he help I needed for version 1.2.2 here: which appears to be the only valid place to get help and has the relevant links. In brief the folder that is supplied all the execution files needed but textures can be obtained here. https://github.com/KSP-RO/RSS-Textures/releases And I will see if it works.

42122 is the average escape velocity of an earth for sol at a (which we are approximate to). 29785 would be the velocity relative to the sun of earth. If the artifact was traveling 20000 m/s faster along the prograde, then we can see that its total velocity should be 49785. The SKE of that is 1239273112.2 J/kg the SPE of earths current position is 887130066 J/kg and the difference is 350,000,000 J/kg. But because of its tilt and angle I will shave this down to 300,000,000. Remember that any energy you leave a system with in excess of the integral of gh, deprecating m, you must keep as potential energy relative to the systems center. The Vexit > SQRT (2 * 300000) then Vexit >= 24942 m/s (about 54,000 miles per hour). This is actually a relatively slow differential velocity, and it could simply be an object tossed by a jovian sized planet in a nearby star system. There are probably a great many objects that travel to us along the polar angles that are traveling so fast we only have time to track them when they streak through our atmosphere or collide with something. I read one article that a typical interstellar differential velocity would be something 100,000 to 500,000 m/s. Just to give you an idea how fast this is relative to natural objects we are familiar with. The surface of jupiter -- 12600 m/s, relative to the sun at angle to prograde 90. 25,665 m/s. The horizontal component of motion of the surface of the surface of the Sun - 1,995,000 m/s If you sent a spacecraft to Mercury (Vintercept = 50,912 m/s) and as you cycled close to Mercury applied ~10,000 dV of thrust prograde relative to mercury and the sun, you could create a similar hermit. We live in squishy little bodies on a fairly squishy planet in a rather gentle part of the solar system in a relatively quite corner of our galaxy, lucky for us.

Its been accumulating space dust (frozen volatiles) as it has been traveling. 42122 m/sec BTW. I think there are little green space aliens inside spying on us.

I was cleaning my pockets and some life accidentally fell out, sorry next time I will clean them at 60,000 meters. Of course everyone has heard of the Jet stream and cat 5 storms. These things eject lots of particulates high in to the atmosphere where they redistribute, spores of microbes can survive. Not such an astounding find. If the ISS strikes a spore while traveling at 7600 m/s that spore and all of its contents would be instantly ionized. "In the beginning the Universe was created. This has made a lot of people very angry and been widely regarded as a bad move . . . .. the Universe being the puzzling place it is, other explanations are constantly being sought. " Douglas Adams in HHGTTG.

In the words of K2, there's no reaction force. He's to far up. This is the equation looking at specific force. V^2/r = u/r2 V = SQRT(u/r) that is for a velocity of 7866 m/s ~ 9.5m/s Just guessing = (11300/7866)^2 ~ 2.2g. Therefore he need the application of 1.25 g of downforce, which means he need a rocket thrusting vectoring in the negative radial at 1.25*g*mass.

He was traveling at escape velocity not orbital velocity, its does not reflect reality.

Yes but cost of ISS is shared and Russians found at least a cheaper way to get our crews up . . . . .and. . . . .its in a relatively low orbit, only 300 km above the surface. So in terms of study-humans (and other biology) in space its a lower cost per person that doing the same thing on the moon or mars. The is not really about NASA goals, I like lofty goals, particularly when it includes science, like the moon-rocks and dust studies. That is not the primary problem, the primary problem is for many problems a computer can do it with alot lower payload mass. For the curiosity mission the only reason humans would be useful for is dusting the panels and changing the tires. The problem is that the remedy cost >10 times more than just sending an new rover to the point in which the previous rover dies and continue on. The reason the cost are so incredibly high is really due to the fact we do not know how to land humans on Mars. IN the same way a prototype car is way more expensive than a production model, the manned mars mission has the same problem. You go there, you analyze, to debug the problems, you repair problems then you farm the data to contractors to make it go more efficiently. They test them out on something like the moon, then go into production. Most of the unmanned Mars missions have worked well beyond programmed life, with humans, you go there, you execute until return window appears and you go home. There is no mission extensions. As far as I understand from NASA, they are not saying they are ready to send men to Mars, they are saying that there still major problems to work out. If that is the case you can't blame NASA for waiting for more efficient technologies to come along. You mean the pencils made with lead? lol.

Nasa's primary mission has not been flags and footprints since the 70s. I dont know what Zubrins intentions are, but any manned NASA mission to Mars is going to have a justifyably large science and engineering science component to it. The curiosity rover and other ongoing experiments have already set a very high standard for Mars science, along with missions like the New Horizons. People really dont care about footprints anymore, they want to see dazzling pictures and hypey science. And in particular, if the machines do not do it first, men will be gathering samples to return to earth. There is one other thing, the mission has to be planned in such a way that earth microbes are not brought to Mars. This is substantially different than the lunar missions. Mars is hard. As I said in the previous post when you have a spacecraft that can produce 150MW and has an ISP of 10,000 to 100,000 (In essense an fuel thrifty tow-boat) you can begin shipping resources into Mars orbit and finally onto Mars surface that you need. Particularly the case is proper targeting and small size packages may reduce retrograde dV close. The RL10b-2 has the ability to land and return to orbit the base of a 10t surface to LMO transfer ship, it can produce 6500 dV sufficing only to take 1 or 2 (very cramped) persons from Mars to 50km Orbit (3525 orbital velocity) plus fuel for final landing (when the crane fly's away) lifting and turning. This minimal craft would weight 10t. You would have to have a 50t crane to set it onto mars. This is the return vehicle only, because its H2/O2 rocket it can only remain stable for a few hours, so it has to land, crew crawl on board. This is only one aspect of the difficult, there are many equally challenging problems. I don't say that it cannot be done for 30 billion but I would argue that the spectrum of technology required is not present, you need a liars bench to properly estimate the cost at present. This is what I don't like, excluding Elon Musk, who appears to be making a real parallel effort to tackle the most basic problems, the rest of the proselytizing Professor Marvels putting themselves as potent Mars explorers are doing nothing more than selling snake-oil. Elon, OTOH, convincingly knows how to sell a ride.

Starting at 4'C the rate of biological rxns is double for each 10'c, Below 20'c life ceases in all its various functions. Life on some ancient world that at the beginning of our system may have had an atmosphere and may have had water as the u/r 'gravitational' heat dissipated. However when our sun went into main sequence it was no longer capable of melting water on ceres. Consequently the chemistry of life probably never made it to single cell stage.