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Everything posted by Bill Phil
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RP-1 is a terrible hydrocarbon though. Methane and lower 'anes are much more efficient. Propane is of special interest, because it has a decent ISP and has a similar density to RP-1. Hydrogen is difficult to store, and difficult to freeze, especially in space where there is often a lot of light and heat on one side and the opposite on the other side.
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You know you overbuilt your rocket when...
Bill Phil replied to Deadpangod3's topic in KSP1 Discussion
... When Jool has to use your ship for a gravity assist. -
The point is that you aren't on earth. Hydrocarbons like methane are very efficient, especially compared to RP-1. So, yeah.
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Have you had any mysterious or unexplainable evnts in KSP?
Bill Phil replied to SubzeroSpartan7's topic in KSP1 Discussion
My Kariner 1 got a sudden case of Kraken Drive. It got blasted out of the system for no reason. It was just in orbit over Kerbol, on a Duna transfer, and I wanted to check up on it, so I selected it in the tracking station. Then it went kraken. I immediately went back to the KSC and everything was fixed... Some weird computer simulation I guess... -
Come to think of it, Doom has a good soundtrack. So does Black Mesa, a Half Life remake. Surface Tension 1 and Questionable Ethics 1 are good. Links are really tough for me to figure out, sorry.
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Tank of pressurized hot hydrogen, poor man's NERVA?
Bill Phil replied to Pds314's topic in Science & Spaceflight
Technically no. A NERVA is a NTR developed* by NERVA. A NTR is what you're thinking about. Having a reactor heating up the tank itself isn't like NERVA, but rather a different concept. *key word here. They never really built any flight models as far as I know -
We already have... Ejected urine from the shuttle... Etc.
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It would probably require not loading all parts during the load screen. KSP loads ALL things on startup, and thanks to 32-bit and Unity, it's limited to 4gigs of RAM. That means that it's not practical at the moment, unless the secs implemented texture reduction pack. Otherwise I think it's a good idea.
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A question about Entropy and the heat death of the Universe
Bill Phil replied to pyrosheep's topic in Science & Spaceflight
If we didn't think like humans, we wouldn't have physics. Plus, it does look random, because how can it be ordered? I'm not much of a thermodynamics genius, so if wouldn't know. -
A question about Entropy and the heat death of the Universe
Bill Phil replied to pyrosheep's topic in Science & Spaceflight
I'm not a thermo guy, but I have a related question. If entropy always increases, why did the universe become more orderly? As in planets and stars, unless I'm missing something, like if stars could have enough entropy for the whole solar system. I know this seems stupid too, but I would like to know. As it started as a cloud of random flying atoms with tons of energy. -
How'd you pick that up?
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Drills are not practical in space. At least on very low gravity objects. First off, why would you assume we would use a drill? There's laser cutters now, although they have a big power requirement, but it's not impossible (in theory). Considering that there's a lot of empty space that we can put solar arrays at... Or we could use shovel-esque devices. Then you use various methods of seperating materials. The space shovels would need to be hard enough, and I don't know how hard Phobos or Deimos is. Probably not very, considering they have little gravity.
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Interstellar : 2 scienc-y questions
Bill Phil replied to Error404brain's topic in Science & Spaceflight
Yes, if the black hole had one solar mass, it would be the same. The black hole here, Gargantua, is more than one solar mass by at least a few orders of magnitude. Plus, orbital speeds wouldn't be "just" like our solar system, they would be more uniform. Btw, any object compressed can be a black hole... -
ah, but Mars takes less Dv to get into orbit.And the Moon takes less as well, but Deimos has practically no gravity, so mining it and Phibos is preferable.
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Interstellar : 2 scienc-y questions
Bill Phil replied to Error404brain's topic in Science & Spaceflight
In the sense that you can orbit. The velocities would be HUGE though. -
You can stop with the educating, because I know that's how it's done. Yeah, it is semantics. But I don't understand what your original point was. I was saying it was beyond us, and I was refering to its usefulness as a resource, such as in the ISV Venturestar. What are you saying? It's already used? Well, that's technically correct. It is used, but not in the way I was talking about. Which is as a catalyst or a direct energy source.
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That's not using antimatter, it's taking advantage of it, sure. But it's not USING antimatter, the antimatter is a byproduct and allows the detection of where the problem is indirectly. It's taking advantage of the fact that antimatter does specific things, which is just a useful property of antimatter. WE can only produce a few particles of the stuff, and can only contain it for a short time. Positrons from decay are surrounded by matter, so it can't be contained because of that.
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Any good source? I'm not saying magic, it's just a very volatile substance that we can't make much of. Plus, PETs only TRACK positrons. They don't shoot a super-beam or anything resembling a beam of particles.
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Oh I know, however, it's not pushing it, and the ISS orbit is still low, and takes a few hundred m/s to rendezvous at most, probably less, including the initial boost from your lower orbit to the target. Maybe a smaller propulsion stage rather than a full SM.
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Orion is designed to operate without the SM. The F9 can orbit almost 13 tons, Orion capsule is almost 10 tons. Hardly pushing it.
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What Are Some Interesting Planet Concepts from Sci-fi?
Bill Phil replied to CaptRobau's topic in Science & Spaceflight
They did have to so that. The reliance on that as well as food being shipped in contributed to the fall of the Galactic Empire. Oh, and Terminus. It has little metals, if any at all. Arth in Starflight is interesting, as well as the Crystal Planet.