1101

"1000, as all seats would be “coach” & no toilets, pilot area or food galley needed. " That would be an ICBM that could MIRV Tsar Bombas, then....

Have you tried changing the rotor pitch? I made a similar addition to my multi fuselage design, but by far the biggest improvement was to change the pitch of the blades. I got up to 101m/s on a design that previously got 80 or so. Best to constantly change it during flight, the altered pitch produces basically no thrust at low speeds.

Experiments with the P-38 thing led to some improvements in speed, but testing of smaller motors gave this (Proof of concept, about 5-6 minutes of electricity, no fuel cells): Somehow it was able to fly through the big R&D bridge: Amusingly, landing turned out to be too much of a challenge. Approach started on the opposite bearing to this:

First 'nice' design: There really isn't much speed in this thing. Was trying to use a P-38 style design with props rotating opposite directions, as KSP does seem to give a realistic torque effect. Also really nose heavy and gets through the batteries in about 90s, uses fuel cells to give endurance.

Does there seem to be 'something' venting from the top of the first stage earlier in the stream? T + 1:48 for example....

So... I just did a flood response course a few weeks back, and as a guideline our instructor said to assume that 'floodwater' is about 50% water. The other 50% is whatever was formerly on the floor, every bit of debris, rubbish, excrement, hypodermic needle, disease, dirt, assorted chemicals, animals (alive, maybe) plus the contents of the drains. Obviously a tsunami is faster moving than your average (British) flood but the rule would hold for the water, where the hydraulic features aren't trying to kill you. The water can pin you under a vehicle (or a plane why not), against a fence, in a tree, inside a building if or when it gets in and that's just off the top of my head. If you're unlucky it could pull you down a manhole, the lid of which will be elsewhere. So, my vote, is in the building, as far away as possible. Nope! Rope is almost as good at getting you drowned as the water itself.

Sure. You don't need stealth though, when you can get 4,000 tons into orbit.... http://www.projectrho.com/public_html/rocket/realdesigns2.php#id--Project_Orion--Orion_Battleship https://www.deviantart.com/william-black/journal/Hard-SF-Feature-04-Scott-Lowther-504258455 The er, 'highlights', of which can be summarized as hundreds of RV nukes, and Naval guns.

Now re-reading this, up to the first Rald stranding. It is a very good thread!

Of course people will take it as doomsday stuff. But that isn't all bad. For starters, while it could be dismissed, there would still be the fact that someone had a really good guess on the effects of a large eruption such as that. And no one in 400AD or so could see worldwide events such as that, or do the cause effect analysis of volcanic winter. The funny possibility exists, of course, that mainstream science/literature types would dismiss it, but some crazy conspiracy site somewhere would guess at the truth. And everyone else worldwide would be like 'That's Crazy!' when it is in fact true.

Didn't see the idea mentioned, so here is my idea: Rather than encoding mathematics or anything like that, describing the past/future. My presence may change human history but it is likely that nothing we have done as a species changes geological events. So, describe a significant, distinct catastrophe, and get it in, for example, the Book of Revelation. The 'Boxing Day' Tsunami of 2004 is a large enough event that could be used. Tambora's 1815 eruption and subsequent 'Year without a summer' could also work, as an example of holy wrath. Modern scholars could look at it and say that the author was just describing (actual) past events, but a detailed or sequential enough description might work: "and then His wrath poured forth, and with it brought destruction through clouds of glowing fire. Those many leagues away could hear, the sky turned red and for a year none on his creation had summer" Or something like that. If around the time of the King James translation, encoding an actual, working Bible Code could work similarly. Use all major events you can think of to increase probability of it being detected, and possibly used: Tambora 1815 Krakatoa 1883 Tunguska 1908(?) San Fransisco Earthquake 1906 1960 Peru Earthquake Mt St Helens 1980 (include detail of lateral blast) 2004 Earthquake and Tsunami 2010 Haiti Earthquake 2011 Japan Earthquake 2013 Chelyabinsk Meteor And so on. I'm unlikely to influence human history, possibly include WW1 & 2, Moon Landing, Russian Revolution, French Revolution, Loss of the Titanic, Tenerife Airport Disaster, Lockerbie Disaster, 9/11 etc. Even if history does change, if all those are included but I got everything else right, then the conclusion that a time traveler was involved could be reached. If further back, i.e. before 0 AD or so, obvious problem is that your religion could die out first.

It looks like the flip starts when you turned on timewarp, which is known to give such effects on occasion. Also, you may want to use bigger wing parts/control surfaces near the back, which should give more authority there as well as pull the center of lift further back. Prior to that, though, your speed was really dropping off, so you may need more engines or less mass...

Sorry to add a whole extra thing to think about, but the Drag Coefficient will also change depending on Mach number. It usually increases towards M = 1, then decreases again after and levels out after M = 1.2 or so. And the speed of sound itself changes with temperature, which varies depending on where in the atmosphere you are (decreases, then increases).

Well, they have raised their bars a bit in the on the spot hazard mitigation - no casualties from this event. The USGS have an absurd number of volcanoes to watch, including KIlauea, and have a good understanding of what is going on. To be fair that has been learned the hard way, for example with Mt St Helens (38 years ago to Yesterday!). As for other countries, I can't overly say because I don't follow those as much, but the impression I get is that it really is a cultural thing. Places like Merapi for example seem to have a lot of people who are unwilling to move or can't move for a long period of time if a lengthy evacuation notice is placed. The reasons for that probably stray too close to politics for this forum. Planning for floods, I can relate to that as I live near places that flood from tides or rain - and ultimately it does come down to prediction as much as anything else. If you can evacuate prior to the event, things can be rebuilt afterward. Evacs and resupplying for people who can't immediately ultimately comes down to relatively low cost, low risk approaches like wading with a boat and a team of first responders. Yeah, you need a helicopter for Hawaii. And I believe some of the affected area in Hawaii is actually on a 1955 lava flow, so yes it has been affected before.

I was surprised too, but this explains it: from https://volcanoes.usgs.gov/observatories/hvo/faq_lava.html Hazard map available here. The main argument I've seen is that people build in floodplains, earthquake zones, tornado areas, hurricane areas etc too, but that feels more like a lack of geohazard planning being a species wide thing.

The Destiny's Children books (Coalescent, Exultant, Transcendent) should make sense by themselves, more or less. I started with the big 'Xeelee: Omnibus' book, which has Raft, Timelike Infinity, Flux and Ring.

I daresay many people here are aware of Kilauea currently erupting, but for anyone who doesn't know, here was a livestream (not sure when it ended): Current Status of the whole situation here, courtesy of USGS. Map as of about mdnight (UTC) 19th May: Thermal map, base image is not current, but Thermal was as of about 0100UTC 19/5: Lighter colours are hotter. On the right where it is labeled as stalled it would seem to be poking through again - will be interesting to see the next image.

Guessing that would be the relevant quote then.... Or, your edit and post of the start of the prelude, that too.

Not sure on the exact canon as far as this story is concerned, but I assumed that Kerbals gave up violence after some sort of cataclysmic war, which explains all the rocket parts that are 'found lying by the side of the road'.

"Don't [BLEEP!] with the Culture Kerbals"

I think it is 20 pounds divided by 0.167 pounds burned per second is equal to a specific impulse of 120 seconds. Or, 20 lb/0.167lb.s-1 = 120s

I think, technically, they can both win.... and the structural integrity of FH loses...

I did kind of skim read those documents - one thing of note was that Skylab apparently got higher Isp (and about 18m/s more dV) than expected. I didn't know that the S-IC could change mix ratio, for some reason thought that was just the J-2 stages. Back to SpaceX I guess...

As an example, a comparison of Apollo 11 to Skylab 1 gives some interesting results - 3 second shorter S-IC burn time for Skylab, but peak accelerations prior to CECO/MECO were ~4.4g for skylab, ~3.9g for Apollo 11 with it's squishy LM and humans. Skylab MECO velocity was 2,565.3m/s, Apollo 11 2,402.7m/s. Figures from the Flight Evaluation reports for both missions: Skylab Apollo 11 So overall Delta-v would be really similar for S-IC performance across both launches (only 150m/s difference), burn times nearly identical. I presume small increments in mission procedures and payload type (crewed vs uncrewed) are other causes for the differences. So, as burn time is a function of tank size and fuel burn rate, more or less the same for most (non-recoverable) boosters. SpaceX, I get the impression at least, flies steeper (especially for RTLS) to give the second stage more time for a longer burn, and reduce velocity to be removed for recovery, but correct me if I'm wrong.

Add more mods! Like Ol' Boom Boom. Or Sea Dragon! And congrats on landing somewhere as evil as Venus. Did you spot any runaway greenhouses?

Probably to ensure an explosion, in the event of unplanned nominal behaviour.