Bill Phil
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KSP2 Release Notes
Posts posted by Bill Phil
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There's a lot of benefits in delivering cargo in one go instead of multiple. Most importantly: It's BY FAR less risky. But also allows you to fly different payloads that otherwise wouldn't be possible to bring into orbit (either due to weight or volume limitations - remember that SLS also takes much larger cargo than Angara, not just heavier).
Oh yes. However, most of those 70 tons is a stage in and of itself, so you could divide it into two stages ( more efficient, too) and dock them, then depart from Earth. Now for the boil off problem...
SLS is most likely going to be cancelled. Although super-heavy launchers are useful, they aren't needed for Mars. In fact, once we build a good infrastructure in space based on in-space resources, the only launches will be crew and payload that only Earth can build.
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The concept of Angara is really interesting. It's similar to EELVs, but the single core version (Angara 1) has only a few tons worth of payload ( ~ 3.8 metric tons) rather than almost 10 tons for Delta IV. NASA should have gone this route rather than SLS. SLS can deliver 70 tons to LEO for Block 1, when three Angara A5s can deliver a total of 72. If they were mass produced, you could get a much cheaper alternative. But NASA doesn't choose what to fund, and Congress just loves those super-heavy launchers... which we don't need.
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Is this supposed to be Rosetta?
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The real possibility of a habitable land planet( less water than earth on surface) does exist. It actually has larger habitable zones because they can have high albedo's.
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Yes. That is just how complaints work.
You have some people pointing out errors and suggestions for improving on said errors, and you have a lot of people voicing their displeasure without pointing out errors. Thus, the issue is brought to the attention of the developers which can then separate the actual criticism from people simply voicing their displeasure.
While the second group is larger and more annoying, they are vital to the success of the complaint as the sheer number of them convinces the devs that this isn't some minor issue only a few people care about, but a major thing lots of people dislike and needs to be changed.
Sorry if this makes it sound like I'm talking down to you, I'm just trying to explain my stance on this thing.
Either way people need a lot more respect for the devs, w/o them we wouldn't have ksp at all
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I wouldn't call the ship "small". It's around a diameter that's about the height of the Space Shuttle, not just the Orbiter, but the whole thing.
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Methane, is that a good solvent? I wouldn't know, but I doubt it is.
A life form that massive? Not very easy, and must be very energy intensive. I doubt that the synthesized nutrients in the atmosphere would be enough, unless it's hibernating...
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Gus Grissom. Died in Apollo 1 fire. He helped with the design of the Gemini spacecraft a ton. Flew on the second manned Mercury mission. He's pretty cool.
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Exactly. Hence the response on this thread, to point out the errors in hopes that Squad will fix them.
But people are saying that they hope this is just a WIP when it's only been a few weeks. Of course it's a WIP!
Only a small minority of complaints were pointing out errors, most were saying they didn't like it and they voiced it loudly with lots of fluff words.
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Just because everyone has a different vision of what T1 space center should look like does not make up for the poor quality of the textures and models released in the preview.
As I said, I'm pretty neutral on whether or not your starting area is a bought farm. Whatever it is, it should look good (no sloppy texturing and modelling) and consistent.
I only know a few people who don't start sloppy. Most do, and make it better.
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It's acting like a multi staged vehicle, which means the energy from the Ranger and the Lander where given to the Endurance as a boost, which is why we call boosters "boosters". That's exactly what they do. And then the Oberth effect takes hold near the black hole, and so the Endurance is capable of reaching Edmunds. Plus, scientific data from Gargantua was gained.
Honestly though, the biggest problem is that the whole mission was pointless, because the mission only existed to get Cooper and TARS to the black hole.
Btw, TARS said it, not Cooper.
Plus, what's usually left behind is propellant, but on multi staged vehicles the stages are left behind, too. It's more efficient than single stages for things like getting into orbit.
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Nice notes, guys!
Any news on the new biomes?
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The hostility here is surprising.
Yeah the wooden path is weird, but that can be fixed.
Personally, my problem is that there are some useless buildings. I think a shack for Mission Control, a few shacks with a shack-observatory for R&D, another lone shack for Admin, a group of RVs for Astronaut Complex, a flattened out area of dirt surrounded with sandbags as a launch facility, and a bigger shack that's a horizontal construction facility with train tracks leading to the pad smas the "VAB". Some dirt paths between them, and you're all set. It's humble and not too grandiose. The barn VAB is very grandiose, and not really "humble" because of its size.
Don't get me wrong, I like the KSC in this stage, but the barn is a bit big. This stage should be an interim between Shackville and the current KSC.
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3D printing of metals is not new. Industrially it's been done for quite a while (look up direct laser metal sintering for an example), for rapid prototyping of parts. More recently SpaceX has been using it to produce combustion chambers for their SuperDraco engines. So yeah, printing metals is doable, and relatively easy. Shipping your 3D printer to the Moon and making sure it works under lunar conditions is a different matter and assembling all your nice 3D printed parts into a new 3D printer, without human intervention is just a whole other class of hard.
With regards to AI, that covers a bunch of established technologies. Wikipedia has a good article. These hypothetical moonbase building von Neumann machines wouldn't need to pass a Turing test, but they would need good machine vision, ability to navigate in unfamiliar surroundings (not a trivial task, especially on the Moon. Some of the Apollo astronauts got to grips with their lunar maps fairly easily, others certainly did not), ability to autonomously build new structures. This is not the sci-fi, 'sentient machines taking over the Moon' level of AI, but it is very definitely AI.
TL: DR. It would be easier to send Bruce Willis to the Moon to build your base, than to rely on von Neumann machines.
That's more like Siri AI, though. It's just a name in this case. You need input dependent programming, sure. And probably some kind of lunar GPS, if that's possible at all.
We can build robots that LEARN how navigate a maze, and if you added a new sensor for detecting minerals, it could learn where it is, and subsequent robots can mine it.
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Any food will contain all essential amino acids.
The question is if they are in the right quantities. If you have to eat 100kg of food X to get sufficient leucine, its not a very good food source.
And no, cyanobacteria are not algae.
as to what can go wrong - there is so much death in this world already from genetic diseases if you occasionally screw something up - who cares. Its not like you're going to be modifying all 7 billion peoples genomes simultaneously. Natural selection will still be at work.
And its not that complicated to add a gene to humans, nor is it some great unknown as to what the effects would be. We do it all the time in mice, and in cultured human cells.
I don't know why I bother with you.
Go try additive manufacturing for magnesium alloys, or carbon fiber, or a steel girder... its obvious you don't understand what you're talking about.
I don't know why I bother with you, its obvious you don't understand what you're talking about.
Because of people like you who fear what they don't understand, Because of ethical fears of "übermensch", because people still protest GMO food and would raise hell about GMO humans.
There are many changes that could be made that we would fully understand.
But why change humans? It would take just as much resources, but more time than others. Plus, you'd have to do it to an embryo, before it has grown. At that stage any tiny change could kill it easily. Then you need to get funding from your government or sponsor to do it again. Good luck with that. I'm not fearful of me not knowing, I know I don't understand it, and few people do. And why are you so inhumane? All people have a right to life.
Additive manufacturing was pioneered in the 1980s, but it still needed a lot of technological development.
I don't know what you're even talking about. It's not easy of course, but nothing in space is, so why not go further? The cells in the human body can replicate and accomplish tasks that are simple. You do the same thing with robots. Specialized variants that are built on a common chassis. That way a factory could build surveyor bots, mining bots, transport bots, etc. It's still difficult, but this is for HUGE lunar bases, not small 6-man ones. But for thousands if not tens of thousands. So it's worth it. This is still in the future though, and I admit I'm optimistic when it comes to using Von Neumann machines, but no one can tell the future can they?
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Yes, death is different than sleep, but I have a problem with saying that the interruption of neural activity during mind transfer being equated to death for the original mind. Minds are information; if you were to temporarily halt execution of a computer program, does that mean that the program died? Of course not- it just temporarily halted execution, and the program can be continued at a later time with no loss of information or functionality.
Also, I'm pretty sure that anesthetics can produce artificial comas where our neural activity in the areas of the brain that produces consciousness goes significantly lower than during any stage of sleep. Is that death? Of course not. The person wakes up, and resumes being the person he was before. He/she just temporarily had their conscious state suspended- there was no information loss and there was no change in the "program".
But if they don't wake up? What about that? Could it then be equated to death?
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Arrakhis. Desert planet with some crazy spice. It's key for interstellar travel in the Dune universe. It has giant sand worms and the like.
Home, also a desert planet. It's the home world of the Race, a species of intelligent reptile-like creatures.
Pandora, which is a "habitable" moon orbiting Polyphemus, a gas giant.
There's a few.
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Empirical observations? Unless CERN has been annexed by the Swiss Empire.
I would argue that we know plenty about antimatter - we've been making and using it in particle physics labs for decades, and we're getting to the point where we can look at anti-atoms in detail, rather than being limited to charged particles. So I disagree that we need large amounts of it for empirical observations.
Practical applications in energy generation or spacecraft propulsion though? Yeah, that's way beyond us at the moment.
Well, it could have strange qualities that won't be apparent until it has a certain size. It could, keep in mind could have a different reaction to gravity, less of a reaction or even repelling it. But probably not. I'm saying that the best observations are empirical ones. Besides, we'll need that much antimatter before we ever build a decently sized ship to go interstellar. It's best to know what it's qualities are.
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I'd say you are overestimating it, by a lot. If you don't understand why advanced AI is needed for Von neumann machines, you either don't understand what such a machine is, or what AI is, or the complexity of the task for such a machine.
You can't make every component out of a resin. How do you make the resin? 3d printing doesn't work for metals, for that you need CNC tools. Which means you'll need to identify the proper ores, smelt it, sufficiently purify it, etc. The electronics manufacturing is very complicated.
When all you need is a structural component of marginal strength, 3-d printing is fine.
IF the component needs to have certain electrical properties, certain mechanical strengths, withstand certain temperatures, not be coroded under certain conditions, have very tight tolerances, etc, 3d printing won't suffice.
Its good for making simple low strength mechanical parts. You need a lot more than that for a self propagating system.
Actually, most genetic manipulation is fairly easy- at least in bacteria and yeast and such.
With the new CRISPR technology, its becoming pretty easy in mammals/eukaryotes as well.
Indeed, I'm not saying its not possible. I'm just saying its non-trivial. So I don't understand why he was pessimistic/sarcastic about the lack of infrastructure built in the 80's, but then dismisses the hurdles for these other things.
FWIW, I think it would be easier to genetically modify humans to be able to synthesize every vitamin and essential amino acid. There is no reason we couldn't survive on a single food source, other than during our evolution, our diet was sufficiently varied, that loss of function of many synthesis pathways did not negatively affect our fitness.
I would correct that first - its much easier than trying to modify the algal proteome to get the right mix of amino acids.
Do you know what additive manufacturing is? It applies to all materials in the same sense as 3d printers. Did you not read those very inportant words?
But on to the next point: AI is NOT needed for Von Neumann machines. That's like saying you need AI to guide a spacecraft to its target objective, which you don't. I don't get why you keep stressing AI at all, they're all going to be many dozens of tons with many megawatts of waste heat and the only advantage is that they can think. That's not an advantage this close to Earth. Sure, that would be useful for a starship, but not for anything like Von Neumann machines.
It's difficult due to trial and error, learning what happens. The hardest part is patience, to see if it worked.
If you think that genetically modifying humans is easier, then why have we not? Oh yeah, it's really not. We still don't fully understand what these changes can do, so no one will get behind that and fund it anytime soon
If NASA had the same funding as the 60s in the 80s too, they could have built a logistics system based around Freedom as a staging point in LEO.
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I like the industrial look of it all, but some improvement is needed. That's a given. The barn, maybe it should be a long low structure where you build rockets like in the SPH. That way it can be small with a warehouse near it for part storage. The Russians had a HAB, with horizontal rocket transportation. And maybe railroad tracks leading from the HAB to the launch pad.
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Well, antimatter is way beyond our technology. We've only made a few particles of the stuff. The best way to contain it is to put it in an electromagnetic trap, but the trap needs to be extremely uniform or very very very big relative to the amount you're storing.
Antimatter is actually kind of useless, except as a catalyst for other more useful reactions. That's what ICAN-II does. And it doesn't even need that much antimatter(less than a gram). Either way it's beyond us currently. So let's wait till we know more about antimatter, which means imperial observations. Which requires a large amount of antimatter to do.
Although, Earth and Saturn have a good amount of antimatter trapped in their magnetic fields...
And it's replenished...
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I know. But for something like an ion engine, would adding a small rocket and zapping the exhaust with microwaves make it even more efficient?
The VASIMR uses microwaves to turn argon into a plasma. In fact, I don't think this is plasma as in super-hot, but ionized to the point of having no electrons. So it wouldn't necessarily help your engine's efficiency.
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Yeah, you could try to run a mining operation in the same way that the Mars rovers are analyzing rocks, with a lot of work, prompting humans to confirm every action before its executed. Whether you'd really want to do it that way is probably more dependent upon just how much material needs to be gathered. Creation of a quarry is an engineering challenge on its own, independent of the machines required to do it.
I don't think your analogy is very good. Mars is many light MINUTES away. Which means that it's a real tedium for the guys running the rovers. The moon is much closer. The operation would get easier and easier once you have the on-site logistics up and running, then the robots would build the base.
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Because gathering resources isn't an exact science. You can't just drop a robot somewhere, tell it to dig, and expect to get what you want. LOTS of planning goes into mining, and that requires a machine that is capable of advanced problem solving.
You would need chemical analysis tools, and tell it to check every fourth-meter. Problem solving? We have billions of problem solvers here. The Moon is only a little over a light second away. Although I suppose you would lose contact every once in a while. However, communications satellites could solve that problem.
Maybe not SELF-replicating machines, but machines that are built by a larger "parent".
First rollout of Angara-A5 rocket
in Science & Spaceflight
Posted
1. Not Orion in this scenario
2. It's more risky to launch all eggs in one basket ( one thing fails, you lose the whole rocket, but if it's a bunch of rockets, one can fail, and the whole mission isn't screwed)
3. Have you seen Congress lately? They'll cancel it just because a democrat started it.
4. SLS isn't needed for sending crew. EOR is going to be done anyways from what I hear.