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FleshJeb

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  1. The people who play this game never cease to amaze me. From working turbines to internal combustion engines to giant robots to huge trains... Just one question though, how are you not bored out of your mind riding one? I get bored if I have to fly around for more than 5 minutes before getting into space!

    I'm not quite the purist that Overland is: MechJeb Rover control for me. I set waypoints and it autoquicksaves. So far, I've circumnavigated Minmus, halfway around Duna, and 1/4 of the way around the Mun.

    The fun part for me is designing something that will take the beating. The key is a frame of high-impact parts, some armor plating, and redundant parts.

  2. I made the wacky decision to colonize Moho. I'm in the process of designing a Walking City that follows the solar terminator like the one in Kim Stanley Robinson's Blue Mars. The sidereal rotational velocity is only 1.29 m/s so it should be very doable. I may even do the Elcano Challenge with it.

    There's no practical reason, I just thought it was fun and very Kerbal.

  3. Ah, but if you have it generate torque, in addition to being able to run mechanical parts like propellers, fans, rotors and wheels, you can choose to add a generator to it and use it as a turboshaft to generate power just like an atmospheric fuel cell. It's more flexible that way.

    I don't trust Squad to implement something like that in a coherent manner. They seem to have a consistent institutional blindness about the gameplay ramifications of their design decisions. I think your idea is bloody FANTASTIC, but I don't feel like beta-testing it for the next year. So, I offered a simpler solution. I very much appreciate your efforts.

    I'm still happily playing 0.25, and hoping (possibly vainly) that 1.1 will offer me enough incentive to upgrade. (I tried 0.90 and 1.02, and was underwhelmed by the quality.)

  4. The turbine could be used to produce both exhaust power and torque. For example, the F-35 uses a drive shaft to power its lift fan:

    This is a great opportunity to provide much more flexibility, gameplay and interesting design choices in KSP.

    Instead of torque, just have it generate excess electricity if there are no active nozzles, or the active nozzles are not using all available power. It's a really simple solution.

    Consider me solidly in the "Three-separate-parts" camp.

  5. I really want to use this: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Plowshare

    To blow a 100-mile channel from the Sea of Cortez to https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Salton_Sea

    Where it could be desalinated by these: http://clui.org/ludb/site/salton-sea-geothermal-plants

    via this: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Geothermal_desalination

    OK, OK, we don't really need Operation Plowshare for this, but it IS very Kerbal.

  6. I think this is my favorite KSP thread so far. :D

    I have a couple of points to add that haven't been mentioned yet. (And please correct any misconceptions I have.)

    1. We can do a very similar analysis for returns from moons to parent body Pe's.

    2. None of the analysis upthread applies to or accounts for Normal/Anti components of your ejection burn.

    2a. Plane change burns do not get ANY benefit from Oberth.

    2b. Plane change burns are least expensive at the lowest orbital velocity.

    2c. The scenario that would prove this best/be a worst case-scenario, is a direct ejection to Moho.

    3. The analysis upthread should still be valid for bi-elliptic transfers.

    3a. The only Kerbin transfer that benefits from bi-elliptic is Eeloo, and this should also be in OhioBob's chart.

    4. Jeb's Transfer: Gravity slingshotting a giant, overpowered, phallic ship named the Llewellyn Dowd off of Eve is STILL the BEST method :D

  7. Gah! Thanks for checking my work!

    I didn't run the calc again, but I estimated with the exponents, and it should be 10^-11 * 10^24 * 10^6^2 = 10^25.

    Also the 1.77*10^9 was from the bad 10^27 number, ignore it. I fixed my typos.

    Speaking of which, I had listed the exponent of G as positive and not negative, so I fixed that too.

    Yes, I'm sure it was the rounding, I think I only used four or five significant figures.

    Clearly, I should not do science on 40 hours without sleep.

    Did the colors help? I wasn't sure if they'd add to the confusion or not.

  8. when in doubt, wolfram alpha ;)

    Just plug in the equation above and ask how to solve for a.

    I grieve for our children's problem-solving skills...

    Der Anfang, you have to do the same thing to both sides of the equation to isolate the term you want. I'll do it in steps.

    Pardon my formatting:

    Original equation: T = (2*pi)*[a^3/G(M1+M2)]^2

    Step 1, divide by 2*pi: T/(2*pi) = [a^3/G*(M1+M2)]^(1/2)

    Step 2, square both sides: [T/(2*pi)]^2 = a^3/[G*(M1+M2)]

    Step 3, multiply by denominator: [G*(M1+M2)]*[T/(2*pi)]^2 = a^3

    Step 4, take cube root: {[G*(M1+M2)]*[T/(2*pi)]^2}^(1/3) = a

    EDIT: I'll solve it so you can check (with units):

    G = 6.67*10^-11 (m^3 kg^-1 s^-2) (gravitational constant of the universe) *EDIT negative exponent

    [T/(2*pi)]^2 = 1.41x10^13 (s^2)

    G*(M1+M2) = 4.04*10^14 (m^3 s^-2)(the kg cancels)

    [G*(M1+M2)]*[T/(2*pi)]^2 = 5.70*10^25 (m^3)(the s cancels) *EDIT typo in exponent

    cube root that big nasty mess above = 3.85*10^8 (m)(uncubed the meters) *deleted yet another typo

    That matches the listed value, so it looks like I did it right, within rounding errors.

  9. I don't get why pressure has any difference. I suppose it would be possible.

    Just like on Duna: Aerobraking and parachuting to the higher altitudes is hard. Curiosity is so massive they had to do the Seven Minutes of Terror landing.

    Valles Marineris is pretty deep and wide, landing there should be no problem, but I bet the terrain at the bottom is pretty chaotic.

    I was just about to suggest a drone airplane mission down the canyon, when I googled it: http://www.jmcgowan.com/marsplane.html

    The Tharsis Bulge, on the other hand? Hoo boy, that looks like a tough mission.

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