Nuke

its a matter of what is heavier/costs more/more robust. a ductd fan powered by a brushless motor for example is incredibly simple. so simple its better to have different ones for vertical and horizontal flight. you can optimize the fan blades for hover or cruise. using the same fan for both usually means having controllable blade pitch which adds weight and complexity to the system. not to mention the structural and mechanical components for mounting fan that can be rotated. granted this is specific to an electric hybrid system. if you are driving the fans mechanically through a shaft you add a whole lot of weight and complexity where it might pay off to reduce the number of fans in use.

i dont really have any problem with unity. especially as it made ksp1 work just fine. i don't think any other engine could have pulled it off. though i would like it to go back to the old ways where game devs wrote their own engines which can better fit their requirements so games aren't made out of bodges and workarounds. and usually results in a lot of very smart people on the dev team that can solve unforeseen problems. of course nobody does this anymore (unless they intend to sell the engine to other devs with the base game essentially being a tech demo) so im not going to freak out ksp2 doesn't do this.

vertical intake fans are fine for ground operations. but you are better off closing them when your main engines starts giving you enough speed to get lift.

just make sure your power supply can handle the abuse you are going to throw its way. *debates whether or not my 2 year old sfx650w psu can handle an rtx2080* holesntly this supply has been rock solid since i got it. but im going to be adding another 100 or so tdp to the system.

baconitism. the force that is exerted by bacon that makes everyone want to eat as much as possible of it and make fond memes about it and generally have a positive outlook on all things bacon.

a military ship would definitely want aerocapture and hot launch capability. so an egg shaped ship (think overlord from battletech) might be the best shape for that and your drive might have high enough acceleration for thrust gravity rather than a centrifuge.

i started working on something like this, but im glad to see somone beat me to the punch. my c# is not strong (the forced oop was starting to get to me).

you actually can forgo a lot of the engineering in managing the stresses of launch and reentry. you can effectively launch at low velocity possibly using some light atmospheric engines, even just ducted fans or props. you simply shut em down when the atmosphere is too thin and coast out, then fire up your vacuum rated drives. in space things get weird. removing gravity from the equation your ship no longer responds to gravity as any normal ship would. travel would be direct point to point on a straight trajectory. you could effectively arrive at your destination at a walking pace and re-enter at significantly safer velocities. but if you don't mind pulling a few gs in an aerocapture maneuver you could save some fuel, but requiring some heat shielding. it would probably be better just to use a little more fuel and come to a slow velocity before entry since you really aren't paying for gravity losses anymore and you can build a lighter ship that doesn't have to handle any g loads beyond what its drive can do. for geometry i think i might actually want to go with a saucer or some kind of toroid, a sphere perhaps. presumably you are taking the gravity away both for the ship and its crew, even on a planet, so you probably want to facilitate a centrifuge.

im partial to old boom boom myself.

i think the hanger design isnt that great in most scifi. the only one that even came close to how it should be is babylon 5. the airlock is small so you dont have to take an eternity to cycle them but you have a large internal hanger that can accommodate a large number of ships. it also has a secondary zero g dock which i presume is for freight. the whole station is just a great design. all pressurized docks should have an airlock. unpressurized docking bays also make a lot of sense for certain applications. especially in situations where you are just offloading passengers (using a pressurized tunnel that seals to one of the ships airlocks) or cargo, refueling and departing. anywhere you have an a lot of ships rotating through on a regular basis (much like current airports).

a lot of these things are more to save your effects budget than to represent advanced technology. few led strips = forcefield = cheap, building a giant door on set that operates = expensive. the transporter on star trek was invented because the shuttle model wasn't ready yet. a tractor beam is cheaper to throw in with effects than it is to have a proper waldo model, which would be cheaper and more practical. you see these on a lot of pre-cgi scifi shows. in reality the simple solution is often the best solution.

if it looks cool, its wrong. actually that kind of thing is plausible. you can create a plasma field that objects can pass through but atmosphere cannot. small test articles exist. however the power requirements of that system is going to be absurd compared to just a door, and failsafes are impossible (lose power that's a lot of dead storm troopers, unless those suits have life support).

the minie ball in of itself was a pretty lethal advancement. its why the civil war was one of the bloodiest conflicts in american history. firearms technology really took off after the war. it was equivalent to the advancement of computers in the last 40 or so years. went from single shot muzzle loaded rifles to gatling guns in very short order. the advent of the cartridge brought in the modern era of firearms. you also had the rise of iron ships too. ironclads were completely impenetrable with standard ball ammo which lead to more advanced naval munitions, which also led to better field artillery. this also completely obsoleted wooden ships for use in naval warfare. civil war also brought medical advances. field surgery for example, granted it usually involved a bottle of whisky and a hack saw, but you were able to survive wounds which would have been a death sentence a few years prior. and any medical advancement spills over into the civilian sector pretty rapidly. much technological advancement actually comes from the aftermath of war. nuclear technology for example didnt take off until the end of ww2, we had a few nukes. periods of peace time between conflict are essential to put the lessons learned in the previous conflict into practice in both military and civilian sectors. i have a feeling prolonged total war would actually be pretty destructive to advancement. this puts civilian science and engineering facilities on the target list along with production and infrastructure. facilities like iter and the lhc would likely be obliterated to avoid giving an enemy a leg up on technology. you have young minds being groomed for battle rather than higher education. unless you were going into a field of science that could help the war effort it was far more likely you would find yourself drafted. most of the western nations have come to the conclusion that total war is far too destructive a doctrine and are more likely to resort to diplomacy.

in this context its pulsed plasma thruster thruster. like twice the thrust from the same pulsed plasma.

i know, im one of them.

i mostly grew up in anchorage. in the winter it was dark when we went to school and it was dark when we came home. the only time we had a chance to see sunlight was during class. of course in summer you could go get you a coke at 1am in full daylight.

dst really doesn't serve any real purpose in the modern world. much of the people live and work under constant artificial light now, so only people who work mostly outdoors (farmers, construction workers) would really be affected, and they tend to vary their schedules based on weather and lighting conditions all the time and dont really care about the number on the clock.

you can get a little more umph if you use cleaning vinegar, it usually has a little bit higher concentration. maybe also try reducing your vinnegar to get a higher concentration. if i didnt think spraying acid everywhere was a bad idea, id recommend getting some muriatic from home depot, not that i would recommend that kind of thing. peroxide works as a monopropellant if you can find high concentration peroxide and use a catalyst (platinum works, just find some plated platinum jewelry scrap).

https://hackaday.com/2019/09/09/plasma-powered-thrusters-for-your-homebrew-satellite-needs/ need an engine for your cube sat? its still being tested so no word as to what the thrust or isp is going to be, but its being designed for the pocketqube form factor.

people just need new frontiers. this is why the leaders of man find it so easy to get people to go to war. the thrill of battle certainly attracts its young fools. of course then you have the space race show that there are other ways to fulfil the same role traditionally filled by war. it simply doesn't have the same capacity at present. its simply easier to join the army than it is to join nasa. technology has advanced so far that the cost of war is so high now and warfare is on the decline as a result, mostly asymmetrical proxy wars. or perhaps its just a temporary lull. way i see it is people can squabble over the same diminishing horde of resources or they can unlock new hordes within the whole of the solar system. then we will do this again when we get to type 2.

i'm still convinced its a memory address and they didn't cast it right.

moon pirates. im game.

i always figured the developers accidentally cast the class meanngOfLife() as a void pointer and accidentally returned that instead.

i suddenly find myself hooked on ftl.

id like a little more detail in the resources. not as far as some of the realistic fuels mods go, but more than just four things. and more than one primary ore and a magic converter to make whatever you want with it. you might have to go 2 or 3 places to get everything you need at first. id like to see more raw resources that can be used as is without any processing with intakes and pumps. every atmosphere and ocean in the game needs to have its own composition. and likewise ores may have different compositions where the ore has to contain the thing you need if you want to have access to it. different biomes and different types of asteroids would yield different stuff. and there should be no single converter that gives you everything you need.