Bill Phil

As long as it makes money, they'll keep churning them out.

I've had enough of not playing KSP. I decided to wait for the expansion so I can take advantage of the new historic parts.

Your engine is more efficient when the pressure of the exhaust equals the pressure of the environment you're in. The longer the engine bell the lower the pressure, and in space there's very little pressure. An ideal engine would be infinitely long, but that's not possible, and eventually you'll start hurting your mass ratio as you add length.

The synodic period equation?

Great. Now I'm going down memory lane... Anyone remember @Whackjob?

Not really. If they could spin up Ceres within a generation they are at the point where they have so much energy to throw around that it doesn't matter. If they just wanted habitable area, they'd get more bang for the buck if they built separate rotating sections to live in. Could be 1g, too. It's a matter of engineering, and they could probably pull it off. The population of Ceres is, what - 6 million? That's less than the maximum population of an O'Neill cylinder. Not only would it be easier to build an O'Neill cylinder than spin up Ceres, life would probably be better in the cylinder than in Ceres. After all, the cylinder could easily have blue skies.

Difference there is that you can use already present air to move. Not really doable in space.

Probably cheaper than spinning the entire thing. Doing some back of the napkin math, it would take 100 years and 10^17 watts of power to spin up Ceres to a speed for 1/3 g, not accounting for losses. For comparison, we generate about 18 terawatts (10^12) on average. Breaking apart Ceres, based on more back of the napkin math, takes about 10^16 watts over 100 years, assuming no losses. Assuming 10 tonnes per square meter for shielding, and that shielding dominates (over 95%) mass for orbital habitats, then we get almost 10^17 square meters of land. Similar energy requirements, but breaking apart the asteroid gives us more land and we can spin that land up to provide 1g. Not to mention that Ceres would probably break apart if put under that much rotation, since it'd be rotating at over 1 km/s. If all we wanted was equivalent land area to Ceres, the energy requirement would be even less.

Ceres's gravity is so small that your floors/walls will be almost vertical. See: McKendree cylinder. Just one would have much more area than Ceres. Then we can use Ceres as a source of shielding material. Or just build a cluster of smaller habitats.

Enjoy your time in the area.

Yeah. Once you can spin up dwarf planets and keep them together, you've reached clarketech, end of.

Could be sabot rounds. Although there's not really a reason to use that when you could just use a properly sized barrel.

Again, what matters is the amount of powder in the cartridge. Cannons usually have quite a bit of powder and well sized shells, but if we use smaller shells (in terms of length and mass) and smaller cartridges and barrel lengths, it isn't overkill.

Depends on the cartridge. The bullet can be any diameter, but if the cartridge has relatively little powder, it'll have less energy, regardless. Not to mention bullet length, which can also change things. For example, the .223 is similar in diameter to the .22 LR, but the energies involved are vastly different.

It is an orbiter. Of Jupiter. With many planned Europa flybys.

I know what Ares IV is. It's just that Ares I and Ares V would've put a strain on NASA.

Not quite. Ares V and Ares I were two vehicles. They had a huge amount of issues and, ultimately, it became a huge hassle to develop two launch vehicles. Thus: SLS.

They were backed into a corner. (They being NASA) They were forced to use Shuttle derived hardware for SLS, and that didn't pan out so well. Ultimately it can't even be said to really be Shuttle derived anymore, it's basically unrelated. SRBs, core, launch pads, all had to be changed and/or redesigned. Not to mention lack of payloads... But the real problem is oppurtunity cost. Those billions could've gone to much better programs.

When did this happen in the series? I don't remember anything like that. Then again, my memory is awful. I do remember naquadah, naquariah, and trinium. Oh... it may just be a substance made of neutrons, not necessarily neutron star material, especially considering that it shows up on some planets. Also, is it really hard, or just really dense? Also, they could use non mechanical means of separating things, like laser drilling/cutting.

"I got elastic bands keepin' my shoes on. Got those swollen hand blues." Funnily enough that one's been in my head for a while. Along with Vera... which is kind of a funny song now that Vera Lynn has outlived some band members.

I'm afraid that those are airplanes, not airships.

Not really. Maybe the original concept, but the actual airship carriers? They weren't bombers at all. They were reconnaissance craft with planes. To put it this way: they carried slow biplanes (the biplanes had to have a low enough speed to match speeds with the airship and a decent cruising speed). Barely a defense against other fighters in the 1930s.

That's why it's sometimes not considered science fiction. Although in a world with literal magic, it's not that surprising.

That probably had more to do with the sheer amount of work and time it took to paint the tanks. Remember, they wanted to fly pretty often (about 14 times per year was the goal). Painting the tanks proved to be a waste of time, since the insulation worked just fine without it and it incurred a small mass penalty. It just wasn't worth doing. The mass penalty was actually very slight and could've been easily overcome by making other modifications to the external tank (this was later done anyways, shaving off tonnes of unnecessary dry mass, compared to the few hundred kilograms of paint). Since the vehicle took this tank almost to orbit, the payload increase was roughly one to one if you could reduce the external tank's dry mass.

@Streetwind I'm pretty sure 8th MS Team is an OVA...