Nuke

this is known in mod circles as a "total conversion". usually there is some focus such as to make a game in another scifi universe, or to make a game with a particular theme or gameplay style. there is a lot of potential in ksp for this kinda thing.

we dont really have the materials. we have a few forms of carbon which are theoretically very good. but we are just barely starting to figure out how to manufacture products from those. so this is years down the line. it might get side stepped by fusion rockets while we are waiting for lighter stronger composites.

as i understand it this thing will get up to orbital speed without actually leaving the thin upper atmosphere. id bet its some kind of atmospheric ion propulsion, like what you see on those ionocraft lifters, or one of those air purifiers, so this would eliminate the need to carry propellant (except for the upper stage). http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ionocraft lifters in particular are very light, its just a thin corona wire in front of a piece of foil called the collector. since graphene is conductive you could probibly have a conductive (graphene) leading edge of the wing with a corona wire (nanotubes/graphene) suspended in front of it on non conductive strakes. but the high voltage power supply is going to be big and require a lot of solar panels (probibly those experimental light flexable ones that you can epoxy into its skin). you could probibly do away with the hvdc power supply with the right solar arrangement (lots of cells in series). so you can build it so that the wing/gasbag is also the engine with the power plant being on top of it in the form of membrane solar panels. one structure to do it all and it should be pretty light for its size. now you have added dangers of having high voltages on a hydrogen blimp in an oxygen atmosphere. helium would solve this at a cost of buoyancy. then im not sure how this is going to hold its form under the drag forces (atmospheric particles hitting it at orbital velocity would probibly shred it). let alone have enough thrust to maintain positive acceleration under said drag (especially using ionocraft propulsion). build it bigger you get more drag, but more buoyancy but probibly more thrust from extra solar panel area. it would take someone with better maths work ethic than me to figure out if its viable or not.

i dont kittens swear! and how do you know it wasnt "kittens"? i even self censored because i respect the fact that there are just some members on this board that cannot handle all the squee.

i figure with nanotube and graphene based materials it might be possible to engineer and build the neccisary structures. hydrogen loss is manageable with regular refillings. it may be possible to replenish lost hydrogen from atmospheric compounds, though the question is if it can keep up with loss rates without being too heavy.

i like to say kethane is one of those high quality mods that has a reasonably consistent asthetic, is incredibly useful, and it doesnt really feel like cheating because all the mapping you need to do to, and the precision landings you need to pull off. infernal robitics is a pretty good improvement over damned robtics, it looks nicer and the animation is less wonky. i personally dont like the gui. id love to see it use action groups instead of keystrokes or gui clicks. you cant really get any precision out of it, and you cant program it to do exotic things like inverse kinematics. but for what it does it does it fine. it doesnt have the winch, that would be the kerbal attachment system. i find the kas to be one of those buggy mods that usually causes more problems than it solves. but its kind of essential equipment for ground bases. you can of course live without it if all you are doing is collecting fuel. i should point out that i use all these mods.

i need to reiterate that im not talking about having random failures. im talking more about having newly unlocked parts in a weakened, unrefined state. you might even have a little gauge or even a bit of comical text to discrive the state of a part. say you get a new engine. this engine might have twice the heat production and half the structural integrity of the refined version. the part info window will display the strength and heat ratings. you may have a trl gauge to indicate level of refinement. you might also have some engineer's notes. first time you fly it: "brand new part with brand new bugs!" upon having an overheat (and returning data): "we fixed the overheating problem, but it still looks a little weak" overheat problem fixed! +50 science! upon having a structural failure (and returning data): "this part is as good as it can be" structural problem fixed! +50 science! at this point the part is reliable. every part would have 2 or 3 "bugs" which you can "fix" for science and a better part. the engineer notes will provide hints about what the problems the part may be. a smart player would conduct test flights to exploit these problems for science. it also makes abort procedures important so that data can be returned to the engineers.

how many test pilots hate their job?

^ you got a source for that, it sounds interesting. emcc website is back up and claims they are working on wb8, which is phase 2 of a 3 phase plan where phase 3 results in a breakeven reactor. i believe they are funded through phase 2. the problem with polywell is that the us navy is footing the bill, and they want a little bit of secrecy. as a result they dont want any papers to be published on polywells. bussard had this problem when he was still alive. but so long as the science is being funded i dont mind it being a little secret. several other science teams are testing polywells, but i dont think they are as far along as emcc (at the very least they are confirming some of bussard's findings).

i figure once you have a base, some small scale agriculture (underground hydroponic farms), a mining operation (metals, gravel, water), a foundry, a water purification and electrolysis facility, and a nuclear reactor to power it all. you could build an entire self sustaining lunar city around just that. going to mars is just a publicity stunt, when the get back we still wont have anyone living beyond leo and we still wont have any infrastructure for going elsewhere. at least till we get polywell+mpd.

the cpu was an 80C86, which is only a 16 bit processor which ran at 10 mhz. it came with 1mb/2mb ram. storage was with battery backed ram in 256kb/512kb cards. screen was a monochrome 640x400 cga display. you could probibly play elite on it. i still want one. its probibly a collectors item at this point there isnt even one on ebay.

i knew the enterprise had ejector seats. this was just a shuttle for atmospheric test flights and was not capable of making orbit or re-entering. but it did allow for glide testing.

awesome, where can i get one?

its not a random failure if you launch a space mission with an untested part! it failed because you launched with an untested part. therefore its not random at all. of course once jeb has destroyed it a couple times (and earned some science in the process), it becomes reliable. this would actually be a good way to reward conducting test flights with science. this is up there with levelable parts and trl modeling. i see "random failures" being the game engine decided to throw a monkey wrench into your mission because of a dice roll. but im all for failures caused by stupidity. so you might unlock a part and it would have the same rating except maybe it overheats, or it is too weak structurally, or the power requirements are ludicrous, or the efficiency is not there. all this stuff would be in the parts information tab, so you can see that something is not right with it. you might build an unmanned test flight (or have a really good abort system) and test the parts. science would be rewarded each time you identify a problem with a part (this would require you fly, have the part fail, and recover it), also the part will be improved. this is part of running a real space program and would be a welcome addition to the game in my book.

i like to launch ships that are over 1000 metric tons, multi kiloton boosters with 500+ ton payloads.

what i would like to see is some more/better sound content. i mostly play on mute because its mind numbingly bland.

i dont think pv cells are as sensitive. i can understand where you have dopped traces a couple atoms wide that could really be damaged by a lattice shift. but the structure of a photovoltaic cell is very simple in comparison. you might get some localized degradation manifested as a slight drop in power output. you probibly get more damage from space dust and solar wind than you do from radiation.

i could live with a hundred less isp if it means i dont have to carry liquid fluorine around.

depends on the gauge and how good you are on driving it. you might need a dac to drive one of those galvanometric gauges. you can fake it with a servo, which is rather easy and doesn't need a driver circuit (though an isolated power supply for the servos is nice). want something more robust? maybe try a stepper motor or a regular old dc motor with a rotory encoder or perhaps a hall sensor. motor driver ics are pretty cheap. there are led displays, 7 segment displays and bar graph displays and drivers ics for them. of course there are a lot of lcd modules, character, graphic, color, etc. basically go nuts.

i really dont see the difference, you are going to get an arm device that is locked down and totally useless for anything but the most mundane of applications. its not like a pc where you can purge the system and install a new one without voiding the warranty and being unable to find drivers, then write code for the machine on the machine.

im pretty sure you can use them in such intense light that they would fail to ablation of material from the surface. but so long as you limit the current (and you can just use a resistor for that) they shouldnt burn out due to pushing too much current through them. a panel is really an array of smaller units, use a row of cells in series till you get a voltage that you want, then connect a bunch of rows in parallel till you get the current you want. then just keep the sun on it. put the output through a switch mode supply and onto the mains.

i got this: etched the board myself, never finished the firmware though. its a 2313 so i dont have much flash, my code doesnt fit so i need to refactor all the things. its not the display code its the serial/i2c inteface that needs to be reduced. it needs to connect to an arduino over i2c for the pc interface. and this would make a pretty good gauge display: this screen cost me $9 on ebay and has a very easy to use arduino library. catch is its a 3.3v screen so you need a bunch of resistor dividers or zener diods or n-channel mosfets to drop the signal level. its not as fast as a parallel display but its fast enough to draw a basic gauge on it (or asteroids).

oh its possible, its just going to be very limited. textures will need to be compressed and reduced (not with mods). physics will probibly need to be simplified (primitive based collision detection for example). part limits are going to be an issue. mod support may need to be disabled. not to mention new interface code. it would be different enough to completely change the look and feel of the game.

my 3770k can barely handle some of the ships i build, i dont think an arm processor would do very well. i personally wouldn't want to play ksp on a touch screen though.

iter/demo wont give us anything we can use in space. tokamaks have a minimum size that is a major physical limit to how small you can make a reactor. it might generate data that is useful in other lines of reactor research, and may produce breakeven terrestrial power reactors in time. its the compact reactor designs you really want to place your bets on for use in space. dense plasma focus fusion would be a very small sized reactor. a polywell (its supporters are a little less radical than the dpf croud, which is a good sign) would be small enough to put in a space craft (3 meters for the polywell), its also going to be capable of direct conversion under the p-b11 reaction, thus removing heavy thermodynamic engine: pumps, coolant loops, radiators, turbines, generators, etc, from the reactor (you might still have one to eliminate and utilize reactor waste heat, but not as big).