kerbiloid

Where is 594?

This is our best soupscreen. It's both edible and protective. Bartender! Wizard of oz! 1 oz more to this glass, please!

A sharknado brings away the shark from the cookie. Tara Reid Cookie.

Gets a speech. Inserts a Martian coin.

Xylophone < "xylo" = "dry" and "phone" A phone, dried after sudden washing.

Using dots instead of letters is cheating.

The leprechauns surround you. Hollow Hills

"Who has left this ancient oil lamp on the sand?"

Granted. Now you have no colored TV, no internet, no cellphone, and start wondering seeing them. I wish the steampunk did not include the XIX excessive clothes.

Yes, being here and there is a business, too. Why are the snowflakes not sweet?

Agent Purple is banned.

Next forum month is March.

Colonial thinking. Use their native self-calling: Mn'Thwonnpwling people. It's just "The Only True People" in their native speech. Though, I really don't understand. As the place is Kerbin, it's people are Kerbians.

Hunting is a sport, and the hunters are obviously a part of this sport. Thus, I don't understand, why does the hunting license not include the hunters as a legal hunt object for each other. This would make the sport much more honest and interesting. The private military companies are legal or semi-legal, but the hunters are discriminated in their rights to hunt. It's strange. Hunting parks, licenses, animals, hunters. That's the way to harmony.

I was downloading a lot via a thin, unstable channel, so had to refrain from disturbing it by excessive network activity. At the same time I was unduplicating and sorting the downloaded gigabytes (SearchMyFiles is great, but the HDD and CPU are busy), so I also was mostly reading and doing small things, requiring less system resources. (My bigger smartphone works via the same wi-fi channel, so it would overload it, too). Thus, I was launching the browser from time to time, but avoided the 502-hunting. All the time I was deeply studying the available info about Orion (Dyson's book, General Atomic(s) GA-5009 docs, available articles), comparing, calculating, 3d-modelling the pusher intestines. Now I understand the Orion evolution much better, and can definitely say: the actual Orion propellant is a hydrocarbon compound, while the tungsten is a mediator. As I sad earlier, the pulse unit picture is semi-fake. It lacks internal conical structure (like a H.E.A.T. shell funnel), radiation channel between the nested funnels, filled by plastic, and the filler is not beryllium oxide, it's a hydrocarbonic compound, used as propellant, probably close to the urea-like "oil" on the pusher plate. They were going to mine the fuel on the icy moons, and the 40-m and 56-m Orion pulse units are 1..1.2 and 1.5 m in diameter, respectively, while the yield is up to to 15 kt (so, the same 380 mm charge is used). The Orion pulse unit is actually a barrel, with two large nested cones (depleted uranium radiation case and tungsten or maybe even steel cumulative funnel inside). At the very bottom of the barrel there is a small 380-mm nuke. You can take the empty barrels with nukes from Earth, mine the ice at Enceladus, produce the hydrocarbon fillers for both funnel and radiation channel, and thus save a half or more of the unit mass (several hundred tonnes or more). Thus, the Orion drive is much more traditional than it seems on the first glance. The interesting thing is that as the most part of pressure, pushing out the tungsten jet, is provided by electron gas, the actual Orion propellant is not even the hydrocarbon itself, but the electrons, comtained in it. It's an electron-gas rocket engine. Also, I unexpectedly understood the curved path of the Orion parts design, why the 10-m Orion magazines are 3.2 m in diameter instead of the honest 3.0 m, that the 20-m Orion design was an atavism, and got all strange sizes of the Orion pusher plates (26 m, 34 m, 40 m, 56 m) by simple calculations. Also I can say that the 10-m was using 280 mm (11") caliber charges with W54 warhead inside, and the same was the Casaba howitzer original view, while the 20-m and bigger ones use 380 mm (15") caliber, and the delimting factor was the 1 kt yield. I believe, the 10-m magazine internal structure from the know cut-out Orion picture is inaccurate, and actually the magazines had not one, but two (for the 10-m Orion) and four (for the 20-m) pulse unit Archimedean spiral conveyors inside. Like the PPSh magazine had. That's why the 10-m magazines contain 90(+2 spare) units, and the 20-m contain 160(+3 spare) ones. It's just 2x(45+1) and 4x(40+1) spiral conveyors, of absolutely submachinegun 40..50 rounds per clip. The strange 3.2 m magazine diameter of the 10-m is because original the Orions were planned to spend 800 units to reach the LEO, and have the same amount in the magazines, but then this number was increased up to 900. (Notice, that the magazines contain additional stock, and aren't used directly. The operational stock is stored in the propulsion module cylindric body, in conveyors, and it's refilled from the magazines during the coasting periods). So, I see, that originally the 10-m Orion had 10-ft, 3.0 m magazines, 2x(40+1) = 82 unites each. When the 800 became 900, they had to increase its capacity and make it 3.2 m, sticking out from the 9 m cylindric body. While the 6-m magazines of the 20-m, 163 units each, remained unchanged, implementing the obsolete, 800-unit scheme, and this requires adding uneven, half-empty- excessive layer of the magazines above. Notice, that the pulse units don't contain fluids, required to launch them. The operational stock of the propulsion fluid is stored inside the body, in tanks, while the additional units in magazines require external fluid tanks, stored in magazine-like expandable cylindric tanks. Thus, every 6 "magazines" on the pictures are actually 5 magazines with pulse units and 1 fluid tank. When they had 800-unit scheme, the things were good. The external additional stock was: 10-m = 2 layers x (5 x 3-m magazines x 80 + 1 x 3 m fluid tank for 400 units)= 800 units + 800 unit amount of fluid. 20-m = 1 layers x (5 x 6 m magazines x 160 + 1 x 6 m fluid tank for 800 units)= 800 units + 800 unit amount of fluid. But when they changed to 900: 10-m = 2 layers x (5 x 3.2 m magazines x 90 + 1 x 3.2 m fluid tank for 450 units)= 900 units + 900 unit amount of fluid. 20-m = oops... Stayed same, but now requires another layer with either 1 magazine with 100 units of 160, and a mostly-empty tank, or (for symmetry) 2 magazines with 50 units of 160 and two almost empty tanks. So, the 20-m Orion is a typical "I will think about it tomorrow". Also the Open Space Force 27-m Orion hull ideally matches the 20-m upper vehicle. I.e what the 20-m Orion has on top, the 27-m Orion would have inside, with a bigger propulsion module. So, I guess the 20-m Orion was never studied seriously, it was a pre-design of something bigger. At the same time, the mentioned 34-m Orion looks like a dead end of the 10-m and 20-m artificial gravity model, when the ship is flipping rather than spinning. Its size can be easily gotten by adding cylindric habitats around the central cylindric spine, instead of the toroidal habitat. Also I can say that the Orion escape rocket (and also its command pod) was absolutely stupid, and nobody was thinking that the artificial gravity works in the command pod, too. They have the main toroidal habitat interior overturned, with furniture on ceiling, because the ship must be flipping for artificial gravity. But the control room inside the escape rocket, and the dormitory next to it, are "normal", because they sit there during the acceleration periods, and during the radiation storms (it's a radiation walls with additional protection). Thus, when the ship is coasting, you can only hang in the control room with head down. And the puny "escape" rocket lacks heatshield, chutes, wings, but has a 90-day food stock. With its own delta-V ~600 m/s. It thus can't neither land them on aborted launch, nor deorbit, nor return from Mars, nor land on Mars, nor return from te Moon surface to the Moon orbit, nor return from the Moon orbit to LEO, nor abort the failed start to Mars. It's just absolutely stupid and useless. Also, the excitement about the Orion interstellar capabilities are overestimated, as it interstellar version would require a 150 km wide pusher plate. At the same time, its external combustion is still the closest thing to go interstellar. P.S. Btw, according to the book, the 10 Gt Sundial+Orion was 1650 t heavy. I estimated 1 Gt Gnomon and 10 Gt Sundial, and I got that Gnomon is ~100..150 t heavy and ~4.5 m in diameter, while Sundial is ~1200 t and ~8.5 m. Both lengths are ~1.5 of diameter.