Red Iron Crown

This may seem to be correct intuitively, but it isn't. Oberth effect applies to both prograde and retrograde burns. The most efficient way to change the energy of an orbit is to burn at periapsis.

It applies to retrograde burns as well. If a spacecraft burns for 10 seconds retrograde at a starting velocity of 1000m/s and for 10 seconds retrograde at a starting velocity of 100m/s, which burn covers more distance? It gels with the Wiki description perfectly, take a look at the very first formula given in the article.

I think it would make more sense for the probe to carry the radio transmitter and begin transmitting when it gets close enough to the destination system. That would save all the problems of deceleration and recovery. To the OP, I don't see the point of sending a corpse. We could send something more useful for that mass.

Possibly, but I don't think it's a given that intelligence and tool use will evolve. Dinosaurs had millions of years to develop it and we have no evidence that they did. I agree with this, if anything humans are devolving. Genetic disorders that would have been weeded out by natural selection have become more and more common, and the theory that more intelligent people breed less than less intelligent people can only mean bad things for us. My guess for humanity's future would be that we give up on evolution and move to intelligent design. That is, start genetically engineering desirable traits into the species.

What crumples on Kerbin may work perfectly well on a lower gravity body. Launch it to Minmus maybe? Or if walking around Kerbin is the plan, the obvious answer is MOAR LEGS!

Anticlockwise will have lower delta-V requirements, so it's usually the way to go. Less energy to launch, same energy to transfer, less energy to capture and land. When you do an anticlockwise Mun or Minmus transfer, you'll notice that you don't catch up to them, they catch up to you.

The simplest explanation of the Oberth effect I've come across is this: The energy state of a given orbit is fixed. The balance between potential energy and kinetic energy may change, but the total of the two remains the same. To change that energy state, work must be done. Recall that Work = Force * Distance For a given burn time, the force is constant. But if the burn is done at a higher speed, the distance covered during that burn time is greater, so the work completed is greater. More work completed means greater amount of energy added to the orbit. This applies whether burning prograde or retrograde.

That's not the same thing as saying they train on manual systems first, before being taught how the automated systems work. Unless you're talking about the pilots of spacecraft already knowing how to fly, which is a bit silly as no one is going to put an untrained person in the pilot's seat. Many rocket scientists of the early spaceflight era felt that pilots were unnecessary and, given the number of unmanned or crewed-by-animals missions, it's pretty clear they were right. As I mentioned in an earlier post, every achievement in space save for docking was accomplished by automated systems before they were done by men. Besides, these days, with fly-by-wire controls, manual control means telling the autopilot what maneuver is desired and the computer makes it happen.

Many other landers used in the field other than the Apollo LEM, just none of them were manned. Most of them had far, far lighter construction.

True enough. Seems to me, though, that adding key bindings that work on laptops as well as desktops is a fairly easy improvement to make.

Didn't know about this, what is it?

[citation needed]

An additional technique for overpowered landers is to right-click the engine and limit its thrust to an appropriate percentage. That way, you gain finer control over the throttle. Just be careful not to lower it too much, don't ask me how I know.

I play on a laptop, and I find it essential to add custom key bindings to control zoom (I use "-" and "="). Otherwise, there is no zoom control at all, as my laptop has no numeric keypad or scroll wheel. Really should be the default, as laptops outsell desktops considerably.

Sorry, I was asking a genuine question. When you said "This gives your landers better control over the rate of descent of your ship" when talking about 4 way symmetry I thought maybe you knew some subtlety of control multiple engines provides that I didn't know about.

I don't see how the number of engines matters. If I have a 200kN single engine or 4 50kN engines doesn't matter if everything else is equal. I don't know what the "violent maneuvers" you mention are about. Or did you miss the part where I said one bigger engine vs many smaller ones?

I agree, but it likely won't be you or me making the decision. It'll be some politician who has to pander to talking heads who'll make out that terraforming Mars is as bad as stealing Indian land.

How do you figure that 4 engines gives you better control? IME, one bigger engine vs many smaller ones doesn't make any difference in controllability.

Assuming there ever was life on Mars, which is far from a given. I agree, though, that terraforming Mars is as much a question of "should we" as "can we".

MechJeb has a good surface readout, with altitude above ground level, vertical speed and horizontal speed, among other things. May be more mod than you need, I'm not sure if there are other mods that only provide surface info without all of MechJeb's other features. I've found it useful to put 4 Illuminator Mk 1s mounted radially in 4 way symmetry on the body of a lander. The four spots of light get closer together as you approach the surface, which can be a useful guide.

The Wiki article has some good information: Aggregate mass of rings: 3 x 10^19 kg or 3 billion billion metric tons Age: Possibly as little as 100,000,000 years or as much as 4,000,000,000 years The only way I can think of to significantly disrupt the rings is to introduce some massive body, maybe one of Saturn's larger moons, into an elliptical orbit that intersectsthe rings. That would be enough to absorb much of the mass of the rings while perturbing the orbits of the rest. How to get such a body into such an orbit is left as an exercise for the reader.

I think it may end up being cheaper and easier to genetically engineer organisms to be able to survive on Mars, rather than changing Mars to suit Earth organisms. People included, probably.

I think it could kickstart industry in space by effectively being an asteroid that doesn't require towing to Earth. All those raw materials, already out of the deep end of Earth's gravity well... As for the physical effects on Earth, I suppose it might affect the tides, depending on its mass and distance. Culturally, our calendar might look a bit different, given that months were originally based on lunar cycles. If its orbital period were an integer divisor of the Earth year, we might have avoided thousands of years of bad calendars.

See also: moar struts

It is exceedingly rare for a remake to equal, let alone exceed, the original. I honestly don't know why they bother. Oh wait, it's because of the pile of money they make, right.