Deutherius

15 5char

It makes sense to me - if you shoot the debris from the ground, there is a very low chance to impart prograde momentum (the debris orbits, and you probably won't be shooting a high powered laser right over the horizon), which of course would be undesirable if you want to deorbit the thing. Realistically, you will most likely impart a radial-out thrust to the debris, which puts its periapsis deeper into the atmosphere, causing it to re-enter sooner. At least that's how I would imagine it. Of course, when shooting from orbit it could (and probably is) different.

Whoa there guys... Going a little too fast for comfort. How much would you hate me if I told you that the game is still at 16? Make that 15, hue. So, MRS's -15 is obviously invalid. That invalidates Ethan's 16, and subsequently Dman's 17 and so on. Even if Dman just continued from the valid 16, he would have continued from his own post, which is illegal.

Don't quote me on this, but I recall reading somewhere that someone did the math/physics, and that the plasma discharge is going to deorbit the debris regardless of where you hit it with the laser. EDIT: That was for a ground based system, though. It could very well be different for a space station based one.

Unfortunately, yes. The user below me plays guitar.

Correct. 207 cm (6'9.5", I think). Yes, the weather is nice up here. And yes, I do have a problem with door frames The user below me has had a lucid dream.

Awesome stuff! Oh, hey, weren't there 4 lightning towers at the time of launch?

I don't think that applies here - there are powerful electromagnets directing the proton beam all along the way at LHC. Aiming a laser at something 100 km away and moving at orbital velocity is a little different than guiding a beam of particles all the way to their destination. (If you just mean that "if we can build THAT, we probably have the engineering skills to build the laser", then yes, I agree)

Correct. The user below me actually doesn't mind spiders.

Well, if structural parts are allowed, there was a bug that could accelerate a kerbal to tremendous speeds ( ), only with a few decouplers fired off at once. I wasn't able to recreate it, but that might just be my incompetence.Anyway, even if the easy and medium challenges might be possible with a use of bugs like this one, the hard mode is most likely impossible.

Seismically unstable ground really baffled Kerbal cosmonauts. vtasosme

Temporary Hysteretic Reaction (of) Unprotected Strut Tempering LIFTOFF

You could use the biggest SRBs, emptied, as structural elements to lessen the part count. Or just get UbioZur Welding mod and pray to the Kraken that it will be able to weld together 1000-part segments of empty SRBs.

I'd guess it's just tied to losing focus, regardless of how.

I usualy turn my attention away from the KSP rocketry to the second monitor, where I begin to study real rocketry. Or browse this forum, generally looking for interesting stuff about rocketry. Or just chill and listen to some music! Preferably rock (etry).

You'll encounter this whenever googling a programming related problem, but I'm just gonna throw it out here - stackoverflow.com. You will learn to love it. Oh, oh! I do! It'll throw out an error during compilation, because you are missing a semicolon after "<< 52" I can has cookie? I think it does a sum of 0.5n from n = 0 to k 2.0 is the maximum value of the sum, and the bit before that is just generating higher powers of 0.5 to subtract from it. Efficient because there is no need to actually calculate the whole sum, just one power, and you can do that by bit shifting. Pretty neat, albeit highly unreadable. As others have pointed out, it's probably not the best practice, but it makes for an interesting puzzle.

You can buy and add one if you want to, nobody is forcing you not to. It's not necessary to the goal, however, so I would omit it. Alright, since nobody is giving me any figures, I'm going to attempt some very rough and wild 10 minute napkin math. Assuming an Isp of about 115 seconds, a maximum wet/dry mass ratio of ~3:1 (a very wild guess, feel free to correct me), a goal of 2500 m/s deltaV, and a stage deltaV distribution as 1000 m/s for booster stage and 1500 m/s for sustainer stage. If you can manage to make your dry mass of sustainer stage 20 kg, your sustainer stage wet mass will be ~95.6 kg, and to get 1000 m/s with this Isp you have to make your wet/dry booster mass ratio of about 1:1. We are talking about 232 kg of full wet mass of the entire assembly minus booster stage body. An estimate would be that if we can build a 20 kg body for 75.6 kg of fuel, we could build a 62 kg body for the entire assembly we have so far. I'll go wild and say the booster stage body is 100 kg, just for that extra structural integrity. That puts me at ~474.5 kg full wet mass. These figures go down when you decrease the sustainer stage dry mass, of course (~170 kg full wet mass for a sustainer dry mass of 10 kg. ~70 kg full wet mass for a 5 kg dry sustainer mass. And so on.) <edit>Now that I read it after myself again - I meant a fuel to not-fuel ratio with that "wet/dry". 3 parts fuel to 1 part the other stuff (hull, engine, fins, staging...). Same with booster stage, 1:1 meaning 1 part is fuel and 1 part is sustainer stage + booster hull. Should be a propellant mass ratio of ~0.74 for the sustainer stage and ~0.6 for the booster stage.</edit> Granted, there is a lot of assumptions, but at least it's some actual numbers (I'd be happy to hear the real figures and why I'm wrong, if I am wrong). I'll be the first one to admit that it's a lot more than I estimated, but it's nowhere near the 1-2 metric tons you are describing (that would require a sustainer dry mass of around 100 kg by my calculations). I also now have an image in my head of someone trying to cook a 400 kg batch of rocket candy. What could go wrong? What exactly do you mean by "communications" that need direct LOS? There is nothing I can think of that cannot be made automated and/or sent/retrieved via a satellite link. The second part, I agree, that is a very good reason.

I think the OP meant "the amount of land/sea you can explore, measured in square distance units", kinda like "The map of GTA V is 5x bigger than the map of GTA: San andreas" thing you see a lot in reviews and stuff. In which case, yes, KSP would have a LOT of ground to explore. It's mostly empty, though, so one could argue that your average game with an average map size probably has a lot more interesting stuff to be found.

Noun [Ehr-na-li-tees] Plural of Ernality; A misbehaving singularity; A singularity with sass puondugre

Camera is a luxury. Expensive luxury. This is about kitchen rocketry with high chance of the payload not surviving. I wouldn't risk my camera unless there was a history of successful launches and recoveries. Regarding the tailfins, that will highly depend on the altitude that you launch from. The lower you launch, the faster your rocket should be moving through high atmo, and the less the high winds will affect it. Going for cost-effectivity, I'd go with static fins, no flight computer and optimal launch altitude, whatever that is. Catastrophic failure with expensive payload is going to hurt much more than catastrophic failure with no electronics at all (or inexpensive ones). It's also going to be way harder and expensive to design actuated tailfins. Anyway, this whole "flight computer" stuff I was referring to was in regards to your post about decouplers, and how it is not necessary for decoupling and low altitude flight, which would be optimal for enthusiast sugar rocketry. UpsilonAerospace mentioned a balloon + 2 stages to just barely reach space - I don't have any figures, but I wouldn't imagine the rocket itself is going to be in the region of multiple hundreds of kg, which I would consider "heavy". The balloon drifting off is an issue how, exactly? Assuming you go with the simple and stupid route, you're not going to have anything remotely controlled, so distance from ground control should not be an issue. Lets be realistic - if you really want to reach space, is 50 km of balloon drift going to matter in the end? You are most likely not recovering that payload anyway (assuming it even survives).

From the OP: RTGs clipping is fine

I think you are overcomplicating the original idea, again, we are talking sugar rockets here. Adding expensive and unnecessary hardware seems like overkill for this kind of inexpensive kitchen rocketry (not to mention limiting its already sub-par performance). At most you will want something to measure max altitude, a radio beacon to find the payload after touchdown and a simple parachute system for this small electronic circuit to survive the fall (if we make the rocket stages disposable, the payload can be separated at burnout passively, or with a help of a simple sepratron system initiated by a longer fuse after the last stage burns out). The rocket doesn't need guidance, communications with ground control, anything like that. Simple stabilizing tailfins are just fine and dandy. You can add GPS transmitter if you want to for better tracking, but be wary that commercial units might have CoCom limits regarding max velocity and/or altitude. Well, if you really want to get a sugar rocket to space, it's probably the most inexpensive solution. I don't have figures on a rocket that would, but I doubt it's going to be very heavy. I don't know why you would want to stick navigation systems on it - the idea is getting the rocket to space and getting a confirmation that it has reached space, the balloon itself can be kilometers away from ground control when the rocket launches. The lighting mechanism can be easily made from a barometric digital altimeter, no need for remote control. The stability at ascent and launch is an issue, but nothing that can't be solved by some clever designing and a few tests. I also like the idea of the OP, and it sparked my interest in low cost propellants - I would just try to go as simple as possible.

Probably way off, but it reminds me of the Chernobyl power plant.

From the OP:

I think mechjeb itself is a great piece of software that you an use to automate mundane procedures. I think it's sad when someone doesn't bother learning and trying because "mechjeb can do it for me, why should I care lolz the NASA does it too". The user below me prefers dogs to cats.