PB666

Not exactly true, in fact the statement is wrong. In both Texas and Minnesota during the Winter there is wind turbine production that exceeds demand and the price of wind powered electricity drops to zero. There are periods of electrical excess which could be used to generate hydrogen and oxygen for fuels provided an efficient means of hydrolysis. The power plants associated with lake LBJ only run periodically as lake levels permit. Since I used to live in the hill country we used to go fishing below the damn, you have to be prepared to scramble when they turn on the power plant. I agree that all forms of renewable power have their costs, that conservation is almost always the most eco-friendly and economical of the choices. But we also have to remember that our earth is not a static entity and that electrical demand is in flux with the seasons and diurnal cycle. Theoretically, for solar power you can have a nice cool day with no cloud cover where neither air-conditioning or heating are required, you have then excess. For this reason they only recommend that you solar power a third of your need. OK, shifting this thread BACK to space travel and away from quasi-political discussions of a green disposition. The primary problem, by a magnitude, is not eco-friendly sources of electricity BECAUSE you can't launch any kind of rocket with electric or battery provided power source for the ejection mass. ION drives do not work in the atmosphere. Given that electricity CANNOT be directly used as a propulsion source then the pertinent problem, by a magnitude, is efficient conversion of H20 (or CO2) and e- into H-H, C-H or O-O bond energies. Again we are taking about 9e- of waste for each e- of bond. This on top of 2 to 3 hv of waste for each hv generating solar power. IOW in the conversion of solar hv to bond energies there is roughly one unit of bond energy per each 100 units of hv. This has to improve by at least a magnitude. Yes it is true that excesses of wind or solar power could be used to make H2, the problem is that it would not suffice to make they quantities required for a robust space program and would best be diverted to other functions. Theoretically you could use that EMF to purify nuclear elements such as uranium or tritium, here again uranium power reactors in space are a fail, and nuclear fusion is still very early in the development phase (disregarding all discussion of the hideous Orion drive). So we talk aspects of future economy (including a robust and efficient space program as part of an efficient energy economy) we are talking about current R&D towards an efficient application of green power and efficient conversion to conventional sources of propulsion (or hydrogen for hydrogenating tar sands and heavy crude to light crude and kerosene that has broader economics). We might also include this as part of a program to generate power closer to the demand sources in large cities, etc. To get their means we need to use traditional fossil fuels including coal. This comes from someone who detests the renewal of coal fired plants for electricity when other sources of fuel are being made. Currently the largest source of solar power is china, and those panels are built with coal. Coals deep dark secret is that it kills the local environment, lignite coal is loaded with Mercury and a very foolish and short sighted society burns dirty simply for electric power. In addition to build rockets you need steel and to make steel you need coal, so . . . . . . . . Its all a dirty business . . . .evironmentally we humans are very exploitative and transforming, we cannot be us and not. The issue is doing it we less impact.

I am having problems landing on Duna. This has repeatedly happened. As I approach the surface of the planet I decrease the velocity on the HSI to almost zero and I get about 50 meters off the surface, then the surface suddenly accelerates to the craft even when I hold the vertical velocity as close as I can to zero. When this happens the texture of the surface goes fuzzy, like I am far away from the surface. For example I can see details of the surface 1000 meters above then around 50 meters or so it goes fuzzy and 2 seconds later the surface of the planet crashes my craft, just like that with landing velocities of 0-3 meters per second. Is this a game file problem, do I need to reinstall the program? - - - - - Edit- disregard, I had physics acceleration on, doh!

Classical physics does not apply to matter as they approach the speed of light from the position of an observer. Einstein predicted and his predictions have been verified for particles outside of the quantum scale. e = mc^2, as this translates, if you continue to increase speed e no longer = 1/2 m0v^2 but mass begins to increases. The observed mass, length and aging undergo Lorenz transformations. Secondarily, The reason that light travels at speed of light is that the default (straitline waveform propogation rate) speed of the observable universe is C, plank speed of 1. Its not that light travels at light speed, all non-massive particles (fields) travel at C. Perturbations are unidirectional (fractionalizing) in nature and generally attributed to the massive nature of particles. IOW you are granted a speed of C but complex interactions of waveforms slows you down. The most notorious are the fermions and bosons that give rise to massiveness. Briefly bosons of the higgs type create spacetime, that translates to dimensions of space and time. They also create stickyness of space that allow certain particles to have mass. Because energetic waveforms are trapped in atoms and not allowed to propogate in space e = mc^2 these particles also create mass. A single massive inert particle such as a helium can exist at the speed of comoving space at nearly zero thermal energy. As energy is applied in can generate radiation (infrared), orbital decay (emmission spectrum), directional change in motion, or non-spontaneous nuclear mutation. Thus the application of energy is seldomly perfectly efficient. Standard fuels are in the range of 100 kcal per mole. At their best they can produce ISP(sec) of 500, exhaust velocities of 5000 m/s. The best conventional space engine we have is ISP 475. ION drives provide ISP up to C/10 but at a tremendous cost of power. So much power to use even a 10,000 ISP ION drive at present would require a huge array of heat tolerant solar panels and fly-bys of mercury to generate the power to ION drives that would requires 1000 years at maximum solar input to reach 'C' (i.e. in the 0.1C to C range). The fission powered rocket only reachs 800 ISP and there are claims it could reach 4000 ISP, but engine is heavy and thrust to weight ratio is not good. This leaves the vaporous Fusion powered ION drives, conceivably possible to generate enough power to ION drive nuclear waste at an exhaust velocity of 0.5c again it would take at least 200 years to reach C. Again, such drives would have alot of waste heat an imperfect exhaust so even if one had 100 fuel to 1 fixed mass, you have a long way to go to reach C. The fuel for a fussion reactor is hydrogen, which is difficult to keep for 200 years. Optimistically (very much so) 0.1c is going to be practical limit for biological space speeds. Microscopic devices can be remotely powered. Humanized craft will accelerate at 1 or less g for a year to Millenia and likewise slowdown.

Not so fast, they imaged nothing, they only looked at light dimming. The shape of the ring and its composition are not easily discerned from that splattering of information. The ring itself may be transient do to the interation of the spinning planet with other nearby objects.

No, No, its not Swiss cheese, its brie. Maybe the mun and moon are really different. I know, i know, mercury has a deep hole on its northernmost pole, they found a Kraken living inside of it. It's not that they underwelm us, its that if it was really, really fantastically interesting, it would have been leaked before they made their announcement to announce.

Having been modding silently in the background here for several months. My latest creation is a RL10-b1 engine based on 2 photographs I have found online. Its made to scale and has the same performance characteristics. RL10-b1 is a big engine for a deep space thruster. its 2.24 meter nozzle and 4.11 meters long and produces 110 kn of thrust at 4600 m/s exhaust velocity an amazing weight of 277 kilograms. The concept of this engine is that if you are using INRU to resource your engines on things like dirty ice balls, comets or asteroid belt objects the end products are going to be hydrogen and oxygen. This is the engine to have. http://www.aerospaceguide.net/rocketengines/RL10B-2.html This version has the extended nozzle I have alot of detail in the nozzle, composed of conic sections with 96 sides per section, 192 trigs per section and interior and exterior. Plus the aluminum rings that hold the radiators on the outside. so each engine has about 4 conic section profiles so this is around 3000 trigs, plus the trigs for connection, piping going in and out of the engine. The photo shows irregularity in the lip of the bell, I used this to my advantage so that 24 of the pieces form the exterior limit. This lowered the collidor trig count considerable. All and all the RL10-b engine is more like anything in the stock game, and it works. But I need a base engine for a big off-world base lander. Blender has a Edit tool called duplicate that allows on to make exact copy of center engine to six equilateral hexagon position engines. Kept my collder mesh the count low be enshrouding the array so that only a few point on the engine stick out. So I figured I would make a three engine combo and seven engine combo. The three engine combo worked. but the seven engine combo gave me this when I imported it into Unity. Meshes may not have more than 65534 vertices or triangles at the moment. Mesh 'Circle' will be split into 2 parts: 'Circle_MeshPart0', 'Circle_MeshPart1'. UnityEditor.DockArea:OnGUI() Uh-oh, I broke Unity. No meshes were made. Apparently unity could not calculate the collider mesh, too many trigs.

Keywords, BLender, Unity, Axes, Axis (I am writing this because I seem to keep forgetting this and look up answer here on KSP forum, so I decided to create a mathematical definition of the problem). This is what I have learned trying to position attachment nodes. Blender X become KSP - X. That means if you create a box of size 1 with one outward facing side on the x = 0 plane and another at x = 1 plane then any "attach_node" that is flush with the "x" walls will have x coordintates of x = 0 and x = -1 Blender Y becomes KSP -Z. That means if two more walls are y = 0 and y =1 then and "node_stack" that is flush will have z coordinates of z = 0 and z = -1 Blender Z becomes KSP Y. That means if last two walls are z= 0 and z = 1 then they will become y = 0 and y = 1 So lets imaging a blender cube with 8 xyz vertices. I have intentionally offset the center of the cube from the origin. the center of this cube in blender is 0.5, 0.5, 0.5 x,y,z vertices (in blender) 1. 0,0,0 2. 1,0,0 3. 0,1,0 4. 1,1,0 5. 0,0,1 6. 1,0,1 7. 0,1,1 8. 1,1,1 These vertices can form the 6 faces of a cube in blender. To make this cube set the 3D cursor in blender to xyz 0.5, 0.5, 0.5. The create a cube of radius 0.5. face plane(in Blender) vertices (see above) A x = 0 1, 3, 5, and 7 B y = 0 1, 2, 5, and 6 C z = 0 1, 2, 3, and 4 D x = 1 2, 4, 6, and 8 E y = 1 3, 4, 7, and 8 F z = 1 5, 6, 7, and 8 Now if you are going to make nodes on the center of each face (A, B, C, D, E, F) you will need to make the following script in your cfg file. node_stack_A = 0.00, 0.5, -0.5, 1.0, 0.0, 0.00, 1 \\-KSP x+ orientation faces east, '090 in VAB is derived from blender x- node_stack_B = -0.5, 0.5, 0.00, 0.0, 0.0, 1.0, 1 \\-KSP z+ orientation faces north, '000 in VAB is derived from blender y- node_stack_C = -0.5, 0.00, -0.5, 0.0, -1.0, 0, 1 \\-KSP y- orientation faces down, -'090 pitch in VAB is derived from blender z- node_stack_D = -1.00, 0.5, -0.5, -1.0, 0.0, 0.00, 1 \\-KSP x-negative orientation faces west '270 in VAB is derived from blender x+ node_stack_E = -0.5, 0.5, -1.00, 0.0, 0.0, -1.0, 1 \\-KSP z-negative orientation faces south '180 in VAB is derived from blender y+ node_stack_F = -0.5, 1.00, -0.5, 0.0, 1.0, 0, 1 \\-KSP y+ orientation faces up is derived from blender z+ Thus no direction in blender holds true in KSP. To put is simple the chirality of the axes in blender and Unity are mirror images and are not superimposable. You cannot simply flip by -90 degrees on X axis to fix vertical usage problem because this does not change chirality. If unity does sign reverse one set of coordinates, the the model you produce in KSP will be a chiral image of the model created in blender. The problem half lies in blender and unity, and is not due to the -90 rotation on the X-axis. There are two ways (chirality) of displaying X+, Y+ and Z+ orientations. When looking down from Z+ perspective X+ can be clockwise or counterclockwise of Y. In chemistry these are known as stereo isomers and each are valid (e.g. d-amino acids versus l-amino acids). To put is quite simply blender and unity coordinate systems is a mirror image of each and cannot be superimposed. Blender uses an x+ axis that is clockwise from y+ axis when viewed from a +z position, whereas blender uses a x+ axis that is counterclockwise of y+ axis when viewed from the z+ axis. Therefore Unity could not just rotate around x axis by 90 degrees, it would actually have to invert an axis in order to fix the problem during the import and create a chirality representative in some dimension of blender. . I hope this explains this. I agree its a major pain in the ___. I always seem to forget and have to go look it up.

It starts off simple enough, there was power failure will I was entering the atmosphere of Kerbin. There-after MechJeb does not produce Vessel information or Delta-V stats. I reloaded MechJeb2 into its directory, didn't work. I reinstalled KSP_64 into its directory, didn't work.

What if the kid is really annoying? There's a balanced ethical question.

I wish someone would update these conversations from time to time. Unity has changed considerably since KSP 0.18 came out. I get confused about the directory structures in Unity. Assuming I have directory Root. what structures work best for creating a part with a trig-downed collider mesh? The reason I ask the question is when I add a collider I get this vibrating 'duplicity' appear haze on the edge of my parts. From past experience with this happens its bad mojo for stability.

Did you try loading the version for 1.2.2 when you click in the 1.2.2 link in Curse this is the download you get. So one has to assume this is the correct version. Here I will show you. Click for larger image Project Manager: r4m0n Contributor: sarbian, Anatid Kerbal Space Program 29,317 Monthly Downloads Supports: 1.2.2 <------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------ Yep says it supports 1.2.2 plain as day. 1,831,559 Total Downloads With a big button off to the side that says download. So the current version obviously is not for 1.2.2 and the website is in error, not me. But given your comments I was alerted to search the backfiles and found the compatible version.

That was helpful, not.

Ok I just tried to run MechJeb2. 2.6.1.0 on KSP 1.2.2.1622 (x64) after a successful and test clean install of the game. MechJeb definitely crashed the game. Remove it and the game works, add and the game crashed. Simple as that. Note: I did not use launcher to launch the game. The reason is that since I changed from steam to direct purchase the launcher has not worked. Not just the current versions but all versions and on two different PCs. As soon as the launcher comes up it just sits there, forever, 'checking for updates'. Forever, or at least until the next power failure. In this case I DLed the 64bit version without the launcher from Squad and installed as per instruction. Would say the same for MechJeb but no instructions given assumed that everything when into the game data folder. Unity Player [version: Unity 5.4.0p4_b15b5ae035b7] mono.dll caused an Access Violation (0xc0000005) in module mono.dll at 0033:cbf20e6a. Error occurred at 2017-06-01_115934. C:\KSP_win64\KSP_x64.exe, run by PB. 16% memory in use. 16327 MB physical memory [13571 MB free]. 19271 MB paging file [15241 MB free]. 134217728 MB user address space [134216694 MB free]. Read from location 00000010 caused an access violation. Context: Bytes at CS:EIP: 48 8b 48 10 48 85 c9 74 0b e8 e0 71 fb ff 48 8b

Gravity is a faux force. Space-time creates the illusion of gravity. Quantum gravity is supposed to be the most fundemental force in the universe, and it is very difficult to parse out of its dominion. Thus creating negative gravity would have to have some aspect of space-time as a negative value. The curvature of space-time is caused by energy and its mass equivalents, therefore you would have to have negative mass or negative energy at one end of the drive. Energy is driven from entropy and entropy and time are woven together. The interesting thing about our observed universe is that while time can go backwards, on the space-time scale it does not. Some have speculated that from the origin we went this way in time and maybe half the universe went the other way in time. Thus if such a negative energy/negative mass circumstance is possible, but not on our temporal side of the universe. In statistics we run into the circumstance all the time where one observed limit of something is always zero, if the expected value is 1 you have a skewed distribution, if the mean probability is a million you have a near normal distribution. The skewing in the observations gives a pretty good indication that you have found the limit. When you get to the very low end of measurement and you start seeing the skewed distribution of sampled values, then you pretty much know your never going to go below that limit. In Quantum physics such a finite limit is laughable, but we have never observed what happens at the transition between quantum and relativistic observations .. .vis a vis we have different interpretations, (Copenhagen, multiple worlds, . . . . ). You can postulate all you want on the possibility of negative time, energy or mass but until we can observe then transiting into space-time, speculation is what they are.

Alternatively, ignore people who tweet too much. I can think of one name that comes to mind right off the bat.

LIst the atomic oxidants. What is the frequency of flourine, chorine, oxygen, iodine, bromine. What is their natural frequency in the universe, in our galaxy or in interstellar space. The bond energy for double bonded oxygen is 119 kcal per mole, which is only slightly higher than O-H bond at 110 kcal permole. Thus the assumption is that oxygen exist between ::O*-O*:: state (unstable and prone to reduction) and ::O=O::. This is not the case for C02 See wikipedia: Electronegativities and bond lengths The C–O bond is strongly polarized towards oxygen (electronegativity of C vs O, 2.55 vs 3.44). Bond lengths for paraffinic C–O bonds are in the range of 143 pm – less than those of C–N or C–C bonds. Shortened single bonds are found with carboxylic acids (136 pm) due to partial double bond character and elongated bonds are found in epoxides (147 pm).[5] The C–O bond strength is also larger than C–N or C–C. For example, bond strengths are 91 kilocalories (380 kJ)/mol (at 298 K) in methanol, 87 kilocalories (360 kJ)/mol in methylamine, and 88 kilocalories (370 kJ)/mol in ethane.[5] Carbon and oxygen form terminal double bonds in functional groups collectively known as carbonyl compounds to which belong such compounds as ketones, esters, carboxylic acids and many more. Internal C=O bonds are found in positively charged oxonium ions. In furans, the oxygen atom contributes to pi-electron delocalization via its filled p-orbital and hence furans are aromatic. Bond lengths of C=O bonds are around 123 pm in carbonyl compounds. The C=O bond length in carbon dioxide is 116 pm. The C=O bonds in acyl halides have partial triple bond character and are subsequently very short: 117 pm. Compounds with formal C–O triple bonds do not exist except for carbon monoxide, which has a very short, strong bond (112.8 pm). Such triple bonds have a very high bond energy, even higher than N–N triple bonds.[6] Oxygen can also be trivalent, for example in triethyloxonium tetrafluoroborate. The last part has relevance because in a very cold climate there is a preference to form CO bonds as these exhibit the greatest stability, and in such a cold climate once stability of this sort is reached it is maintained. Once you get into space where there are free radicals (e.g. plasma) and higher energy EM the stable state can be preserved, but when you are talking about kelvin in the double digit temperatures, sublimated C02 is the preferential state of volatile oxygen. There is another problem in deep space, during the sedimentation of planets themselves, if the surface and mantle energies never reach a certain point, then the metal oxides from space will never preferentially undergo heat induced reduction and expulsion of volatile gases, which means for planets in the outer solar system you will find more oxides in the mantel than in the inner solar system. I should point out this is the biggest problem with climate change that the earth faces. Fixation of oxygen is a very energy intensive process in mass, in the rawest calculations about 1/1000th of the energy that reaches the growing biosphere results in generationally stable bonds energy formation. The rest undergoes liberation as heat. Of course our chemist could find a more efficient way, but duplicating what life does is very difficult task, doing it better is more difficult also. Releasing the stored energy in Oxygen and Carbon reserves is relatively easy, returning that energy is difficult. It becomes appreciably more easy as CO2 levels rise, because the disequilibrium that favors destruction of O2 relaxes as O2 concentrations fall (O2 really is the driver of heterotrophic life on earth, not carbon). As O2 falls heterotrophs can still exist, but their rates of metabolism must fall. This then allows carbon fixation to increase stability under a variety of 'overgrowth' situations that will more likely result in coal formation. Unfortunately those situations exist under circumstances in which humans also have asphixiated.

Thats an oxygen dynamic though, because the atmosphere is so thin it can exist for a period but as so as you add heat and a reductant, time it will equilibrate to zero. IOW there is an insuitable amount of oxygen to breath, conduct oxygen based life, etc. SO the gedanken experiment is here, suppose we gave Jovian-laythe an atmosphere with earth like pressure (although at the temperatures you state, sorry that pressure will not hold up because gases start to sublimate and precipitate). But lets say there is an evil genious who constantly detonate atomic bombs in underground cavity heating the surface gases up so they stay up. WHat kind of pressure can we expect for oxygen. Imagine an oxygen free radical, what are its potential mates - we have iron, carbon, hydrogen, ect. So imagine you are going to form a dimer, whats going to get to it first, iron, carbon, sulfur. All of these reactions are pretty low kinetic energy reactions, the highest energy reaction is O, O reaction - this is because there is both a kinetic and thermodynamic problem. So for instance once O reacts with Carbon, its going to stay with the carbon for a very long time, in liquid it will exchange with water oxygen, but thats about it. So at a earth like pressure and temperature but no active carbon production, oxygen becomes oxides of metals, carbons or non-metalic substances.

Planets are made of reductants, without reductants there cannot be planets. For example the earth is composed of an iron core, this core is not any type of iron in particular its molten and near molten iron as you might find in a rot iron smelter. If you take this iron an place it in a solution a voltmeter and some mild oxidant like potassium permangenate on the the other side you will get a very nice current. Thats a redox reaction. Oxygen reacts with Iron Sodium Magnesium Lithium Potassium Copper Aluminum Boron Nitrogen Sulfur Just about everything that would hold a planet together oxygen reacts with. So the question is why do we have oxygen on earth. The reason is that the bioshere is a very thin layer and in this very thin layer Calcium is locked away as calcium carbonate, silicon is already oxidized to silicates, iron sank but what is exposed are iron oxides. So basically gravity drove the reduce metals down, and the lighter and more volatile substances stayed up. Life, photosynthesis split Oxygen off of CO2, and made wood, that then made coal, which is buried away from the oxygen where its stable for billions of years. As a consequence we have an excess of oxygen and a deficit of carbon. If we burn all the carbon then we deplete the oxygen and have an abundance of green house gas. There was in a period of our earth a time when iron could be found in the more soluble +1 and +2 oxidation states (as is sometimes found in hemoglobins and cytochromes) because the conditions within the cells reflect the early redox state of our world. As photosynthesis began the redox state of the oceans began to rise from below -500mV to the current state between 0 and 500mV. This rise in redox cause iron to precipitate from the oceans, and deep seas saw iron accumulate in huge deposits that we no harvest for iron. To make iron from these however requires the heating up and atomization of iron sometimes in the presence of coal to produce slag iron or steel. Without photosynthesis this would not have happened. Our oceans would have stayed a nice red color the sea floor would have been black with iron sulfides (dig down about 4 inches at the beach, not the smell and the black sands). The sulfate in seawater would have been far lower, the amount of lower oxidations states of sulfur would be much higher. Occasionally a coal vein or carbon sink undergoes subduction at a techtonic convergence, the material goes down, and as the heavies dissociate from the volatiles the volatiles work their way to the surface causing a specific form of volcanism common about 100 to 200 miles from the surface fault. There are periods in earths history were this has causes a spike of CO2 and altered the climate for 10s of millions of years before cooling down again. What cools the climate down is the activity of photosynthetic life this removes and deposits Carbon and increases O2 in the atomsphere.

You need light to make oxygen, you need photochemistry. If you don't have some higher EM spectrum, not the type that cause atoms in molecules to wobble, but the type that cause electrons in a stable orbit to achieve a higher orbit, this unstable state allows the production of [H*] which then goes on to form H-C or H-Si or H-N, leaving the oxygen as a hydroxide free radical. Heat makes the atoms in a molecule wobble, but does not have the energy to place electrons in molecules in higher orbit. Thus if you are thinking about oxygen you need photochemistry. Oxygen (diatomic) is the high energy state of oxygen. Its lower energy states are H20 and C02. These are the prefer state, heat will only force oxygen toward a lower energy state, that is heating hydrogen with oxygen will cause an expected reaction, heating carbon with oxygen will produce an expected reaction (Coal and Air is essentially this). Heat encourages the loss of oxygen from the system. If you then have a black body radiation source, in standard terms this means more low energy than high energy EM, which means the favor is toward degradation. The suns spectrum is abundant at the high end, this allows larger amounts of light in EM capable of producing much more complex photochemistry, without this we would not have life on earth as we know it or oxygen.

In our system, no. In the kerbin system. Consider that the density of Kerbin is 10 times that of earth, as with every other world. Its not clear what the solar output is but solar panels produce more energy, and yet kerbels don't die from sun exposure and grass grows, this indicates that the physics has been contrived for the sake of game play. Consequently we need to reject the hypothesis on the lack of precedence and wait for confirmatory evidence within the visible universe. In our universe, it is very unlikely that a planet one/tenth the volume of earth with the same mass and 10x density exists. It is unlikely that an earth-like planet could exist in orbit around Jupiter. For several reasons. Jupiter would likely make our persistent magnetic field unstable. Jupiter creates a much greater potential of asteroid and comet strikes because: 1. Its farther from sun and it drafts bolloids from outside the inner system, it is the major graveyard, this would bring oxygen in the form of ice, but it would also with lack of stable magnetic feild cause evolution of hydrogen. 2. Oxygen has a dependency of living material, such life does not fair too well under bombardment, persistently. The constant bombardment would favors forms of life that could live both being frozen for years on end and also being resilient to extreme heat. Jupiter's EM emission in the the photosynthetic part of its spectrum is minimal; and yet the sun is so far away photosynthetic life would have to be far more energy efficient than life on earth. THere is a dependency of oxygen on both liquid water and life, so oxygen is not possible.

So let me add my two cents on this. Regarding ISP and mass fraction, etc. If you are taking off from a high g environment with alot of turbulence and drag, ISP is less of a concern and brut thrust is what you want, with the typical booster its only in operation from 5 seconds to 1.5 minutes, you are not carrying it to the mun so this whole consideration does not have much value. When you are turning to achieve a positive rate of climb and horizontal velocity (in other words to place yourself on a trajectory that lasts more than a couple of minutes in the inertial state) you really want alot of thrust and ISP is important but less of a concern. Once you establish a good rate of climb while exiting all drag environment then ISP is very important and high fuel mass to engine ratios are important, BUT also important you need a maximum burn time to reach orbit that is only slightly higher that the time it takes to reach apogee from the previous stage separation. If your engine is incredibly efficient (800s) but you cannot circularize your orbit in time, well thats something we will all enjoy watching on U-tube. There is a caveot, which is the seat of your pants scenario in which you put just enough fuel in to get close to orbit and then after entering space run the ion drive engines to assist and then finish off the orbit with ION drives (or faster with NTR). I have done this many time and you have to launch essentially perfectly and maintain a perfect launch trajectory. Once you are in orbit, you can have ION drives stacked with a new elements lets call it Mg and give the ION drive 150000 ISPvel (instead of ISPsec). So the basic problem here is that in orbit you are at perigee +/- 20' for only a few minutes. And your ION drives are producing at this ISP are producing mN of thrust so basically you are kicking and an oblongated spiral out of orbit. This is not very time intelligent or efficient, its better to have enough thrust that in one kick and a 40' span you take advantage of oberth-like physics to get you from your circle to the desired. In fact with the New Horizons mission, one of the fastest space craft leaving earth, the best dynamic really involves kicking before circularization. IOW your take off pitch rolls you onto a holman trajectory that takes to deep into interstellar space and flies by pluto, its not a verticle shot but also never circularizes. Think of New Horizons as having a trajectory after its final LEO burn as intercepting the surface of the earth, not several 100 kilometers above the earth. The closer your (-time) trajectory is to the point mass that defines the gravitational body, the more impact the oberth effect has. So in this circumstance you want an engine and an efficiency most of the time that does not require more than say 3 or 4 kicks (IIRC orbit around kerbin is 30 minutes, earth is 80 minutes). So the engine should burn about 900dv acceleration at least in 15 min or your match and planning is going to be nuts. So now lets change the argument, lets suppose you are at on mojo and you want to then return back, we all know how difficult that is because it requires costly plane changes also. But with ion drive you have the benefit of sol, mojo you can change planes around mojo in the manner you lift off and then after circularlization use the ion drives to essentially drive the craft along a polar orbit until it suits a transition to whatever planet. Then of course you have to exit mojo. At the point you leave mojo you can forget about the planet and consider the position at perigee around the star (though depending on Mojo's perigee it may not be, but for a highly efficient low mass ION drive the good thing is mojo's period is 80 days, not 30 minutes which means a slow burning engine has an advantage of oberth-like physics on a long orbit and Ion drive has advantage of being close to the Sol. If you are deep in space and trying to leave the system, you have very long orbital periods and a long time to conduct burns, but the problem is that you have a tiny amount of energy. So a clever idea for getting way out in space fast is getting a very high ISP engine & fuel very close to sol, doesn't need to be on a circular, estimate how many burn days it would take, start the burn days/2 before perigee and burn all the fuel and wee you will be souring into deep space with no hope of return. Heres the problem in reality, in KSP the ION drives produce way more thrust than Earthmade ION drives and require way less energy. In reality if you had a really efficient ION drive, you would need dozens of heavy football field size solar panels to power it to burn that fuel fast enough to take advantage of oberth physics, even relatively close to the sun. At earths orbit the power requirements and weight and structural issues with the panels are too high, you really need something like nuclear power (which currently fission power offers the same weight problem and not as reliable in space as solar panels). So that leave fusion and fusion drives. So NTRs are the thing they expend nuclear fuel but they run on hydrogen that is difficult to store. In the game the ISP is around 800, in reality a modern age NTR the ISP would be close to 1000. In the game the tank holds reductant and oxidant side of the tank is wasted weight. In reality you would have for space circular shaped hydrogen tanks to minimize surface area to weight ratios and they probably would be mounted on a lattice of somesort that would release tanks as they expired. In the game tanks can hold the reductant indefinitely, in reality you would need a wrap around each tank and fuel lines that captured the hydrogen that leaked out and repressurized the tanks with it, and this would not last indefinietly. SO NTRs would only give a decent mass ratio but if used relative soon after lift-off, so if you wanted to use oberth affect around say jool, you need another less efficient propulsion system (fusion coupled to ion does not have enough thrust). I actually designed an NTR that could land and take off from the mun more efficiently than any in game rocket, the engine was large and tanks were mounted around the engine instead of above, and essentially I assumed that Kerbals were immune to radiation sickness or high gamma burns of any kind.

Yes but you would not have to keep the same orbit. The orbital period is dependent on the system mass, so you could move the mun 40% farther away lowering the gravitational attraction of the moon and the tides. You could move it then say 6 times further away only slowing the period by about 60%, but since the tides are dependent on the rotation of the earth it would only make a difference on earth of a few minutes every day. Having said that you cannot terraform the moon with a combination of Mars and Venus because together they lack sufficient quantities of hydrogen to create oceans. I don't know if there is enough oxygen once you recombine the sulfate and minerals in the soil and trap the carbonates into metalic formations. The turf of venus is probably pretty basic (or would become basic once you add water) given its excessive temperature. So this will pull sulfate and carbonates out of the atmosphere basically leaving nitrogen. From what I understand Venus lost all of its water and hydrogen and most of its oxygen due to its greenhouse effect.

Well you could use dueterium instead of hydrogen, expensive but doubles the reaction mass. You could also use lithium, heat it up to its vapor point and react it with oxgen. Thing about hydrogen, deuterium and tritium (later being generated in flight) is that these are the most productive fusion reactor fuels, the product ions once purified from starting materials could used as reaction mass. I don't say hydrogen is absolutely neccesary. You can use magnesium metal for ion drives, this does not even require a container in space, just put a hole in the middle and store it in blocks or plates on a rod have a robot remove a plate when fuel is needed. What is needed is a source of power, far from the sun there is none, except nuclear.

PUlsar binary systems would not be a happy place for kerbal-kind. 1. Even low magnetic pulsars would play great havoc on any ionosphere. Potentially ripping the atmosphere off the planets rapidly. 2. Yes relativistic effects occur for any two bodies that whose inertial reference frames are not strait lines from the other objects pov. Significant relativistic effects, because of the rate of rotation you would notice pulses in space-time at relatively close distance, this could cause shuttering of buildings or rattling of windows. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pulsar#Gravitational_waves_detectors https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pulsar#Milestones Imagine trying to build a brick wall as the brick and mortar are shuttering while you lay the brick, or to have a cake rise in the oven. 3. I rather does not matter the radiation, being blasted by high amounts of any kind of radiation which does not persist (for example a planet that passes in front ot the beam of a pulsar for 5 days in its year) could have devastating effects on the life on that planet. There is no orbit a planet can have except one that is coplanar with that of the pulsar that stops this from happening.

https://phys.org/news/2017-01-graphene-superconductivity-awakens.html There are other threads on similar topics, if read - note that this article (the link) contains many factual errors. 1. Other graphene superconductors not linked to superconductors. 2. Graphene superconductivity has been explored in a variety of different ways.