Nuke

ive done direct landings before. those odd occasions where my maneuvers were so precise my orbit intersected the object i was going to land on anyway. i figured the deltav cost to enter orbit from that point was greater than what it would have cost to land, so i landed instead to save fuel. i routinely aerocapture, but its still somewhat easier to come in with a little bit of wiggle room so that i remain in orbit after the maneuver. if i dont like where my periapsis is in relation to the surface, i can always do a small prograde burn at apoapsis to push the trajectory out of the atmosphere. i also have the option to continue aerobraking maneuvers to bring my orbit in closer if so desired.

there is no reason the exhaust need be radioactive. if the reactor is only providing the thermal energy neccisary to run the engine, it can be isolated from the propellant with a heat exchanger. you are going to loose some efficiency when you do that, but you get a safer engine. the engine also provides the cold side of a brayton cycle so you can use the engines in place of a radiator to generate power. so you might be able to augment the engine exhaust with an arcjet or ionic type device to increase the isp of the engine. if that is not viable, you have the power for other systems, such as life support. another thing you get is versatility as to where your thermal power winds up. if your engine is a stacked turbine/ram/scram/thermal configuration of sorts, you will likely need a number of different heat exchangers to deliver thermal power to the various stages of the engine. its beneficial to use as few heat exchangers as possible, because they are really heavy. you might combine the ram and scram portions of the engine into a dual mode system that only requires one heat exchanger for example. its hard to build a combined cycle engine around a solid core reactor. if your goal is to build an ssto that can fly from earth's surface to leo, you want clean exhaust the whole way. if you want an engine to use in space or on the surface of the moon, you are probibly better off with a more traditional nerva design.

after reading the first page, i spotted 5 things that were bogus, this isnt worth my time.

well i was going by this http://www.grc.nasa.gov/WWW/k-12/airplane/specth.html i was tired and maybe didnt interpret the equations correctly.

i expect this will result in a new discovery channel reality show: deadliest catch europa

specific thrust is thrust/mass flow. how much thrust you get for each unit of propellant mass injected into the engine. this being high allows things like rockets that go up instead of just sit on the pad and go nowhere. source: google specific thrust and click the first link (its nasa).

and another http://www.adn.com/article/20140825/army-rocket-exploded-seconds-after-lift-kodiak-site it was more of a hypersonic weapon test, but the rocket still blew up on the pad and damaged the launch complex.

when you start doing ac, capacitors start looking like resistors. all kinds of weird stuff happens. you can plant florescent bulbs in the ground under high tension lines and get them to illuminate for example. the interaction between asteroids and spacecraft will mostly be dc. you can just use a resistor probe to safely equalize electric charges. much in the way you make a power supply or crt monitor safe to work on. does make me wonder if you cant use a bunch of insulated objects and tap power off of their electrical differential, mainly because objects of different sizes and shapes of objects will develop charges at different rates. might be a useful alternative to solar power in space stations.

in my experience: crowbar. get out all the screws you can to minimixe damage. some you might be able to cut wit a reciprocating saw. the crowbar would probibly do less damage. exploit metal fatigue whenever possible.

integrate all the things. just dont complain when the kracken hurls your homeworld on an escape trajectory into the universe.

i haven't anticipated a game for a very long time.

you need a couple nuclear reactors, but thats ok, carriers have those. then you need a laser, carriers probibly have these too. then you need an atmospheric laser thermal engine that is small enough to cram into a space shuttle and powerful enough to allow it to maintain altitude. ??? profit.

having horizontal landing capability pretty much doubles acceptable failure modes. no gliding, but if you have a fan or two you might make it. but of course that means you need tougher landing gear. one advantage of electric transmission is if you loose an engine, you have additional power available for the others. i actually rather like this kind of config. 2 sets of tandem props in horizontal flight, quad copter in vtol mode, horizontal landing capability (if you put wheels on it). of course this config introduces a bad failure mode if you loose a motor while in a hover. perhaps you can get two contra-rotating props in the same housing using independent motors. one fails the other can work double time.

they are electric ducted fans, you are going to need some thick cables for those but thats manageable. this actually gets around the issue of multiple engine vtols. normally you would need to shaft all the rotors together to compensate for loss of an engine. if you use ultra-reliable electric engine and an ultra-reliable generator(s), such as gas turbines. the motors will work so long as their bearings hold out (im assuming ac induction motors, maybe dc brushless). i really dont see needing 16 of them, 12 or 8 makes more sense. if motors can run at twice their lifting power in an emergency, then in an emergency on an 8 motor version you could loose 4 (one in each pod), or an entire pod and still land safely vertically, and you might be able to land horizontally if you loose more than that while in cruise. im actually worried more about loosing your generator.

if you can build a cubesat sized test rig (such as the one in the video), it would be fairly affordable to test it in space. not sure what nasa spent on its experiments but i doubt its cheap. you could even get over enthusiastic space geeks to pay for your launch costs.

you would need to stagger them. rear set would be mounted up higher than the front set. i do this in a lot of vtols i build in ksp. engine thrust can do a full traversal over 90 degrees without hitting any part of the ship. tandem props are a thing, but i dont think it works with ducted fans.

depends. newer games just get installed to the c: drive. if the game can run independant of being installed, it goes on the d drive and i never have to worry about installing it ever. i just rebuild new shortcuts, with a batch file when i re-install the os. needless to say most of those games are 90s titles that are very easy to make installer independent. ksp is on d:\. dont ever change.

my state has very few roads, light aircraft reign supreme here. i think we also have the highest aircraft ownership per capita. this kind of ship would work quite well here if it has any kind of range.

the only way you can get rid of loading screens is to generate everything procedurally. of course if you ever played something like kkreiger you know that content generation takes longer than loading. ssds have actually pretty much eliminated loading times for me. if you are still not happy with that, get several identical ssds and put them in a raid 0 array.

i rather like the idea of using a generator to power a bunch of lightweight electric motors. but 16 of them seems overkill. and those brackets around the motors just scream out 'drag!', you can surely do better than that. id make pods with 3 motors in a side by side configuration, where the whole thing can rotate. you can loose 2 motors per pod and still fly, and you might be able to fly if you loose an entire pod by shutting down the kitty corner motors and continue to fly on the remaining 6 motors. thing about these motors is they can actually be way more powerful than needed, they might run at a third of their max performance, and if you loose motors, you can increase the power output on the others. actually 2 motor pods would probibly be good enough, considering that electric motors can be extremely reliable.

a power supply is also a requisite. you cant extract water without it, you cant make oxygen without it. no ifs ands or buts. solar would need to be very large scale to be effective. nuclear reactors are the best option that we have now (im not worried about irradiating mars, its already pretty hot, hot enough to need to extra shielding for your habitat). but i have a feeling a mars colony wont happen till we are in a post fusion world. a polywell or dpf type reactor would be ideal for this situation. its all about power, you have power and you can do anything. you can colonize mars, you can colonize pluto.

surface to surface rocket travel shouldn't be much of an issue on mars. so long as both destination and origin both have the means to produce fuel, and that is going to be the first thing you set up when you get there. you need o2 and water for your base anyway. if you have the former you can make the latter, with hydrogen as a byproduct. then by using the atmosphere you get additional o2 (oxidizer), you have carbon as a byproduct. put the byproducts together you have methane (fuel). so the perquisites for life on mars are also the perquisites for inter-base transport. ultimately the availability of subsurface water will dictate how much moving around mars residents do.

you need to build the colonies where the resources are, and chances are they are not all in one spot. you are going to get a fair bit of inter base trade, and so you need a means of transport. rovers dont cut it unless your bases are in driving distance. aircraft are a maybe but they are going to need to be vtols to operate safely (runway landings on mars seem a little scary). id imagine reusable ballistic rockets being the best option, given the low gravity and ease of making methane and oxygen from the mars atmosphere and subsurface water. you might have a small first aid station at each base, but only one fully equipped hospital at the largest base. every base just has to have a medivac rocket for emergencies. its engine would be throttled for 1g if the patient surviving the trip is a concern.

the most i ever did is find a stupid big hill, sit on the board (which i found in a dumpster) and ride it down, then disintegrate my shoes trying to not die by running through traffic.

disney makes a fortune putting their own spin on public domain works. its sad that they are the same people killing it off with copyright lobbying every time there is danger of the mouse becoming public domain.