wumpus

One implied followup would be "how hard would it be to get it into a habitable state (for the next several million years at least)"?

1. "Softness" usually works with social sciences where you argue "completely breaking established laws" is always more than 5% probable (humans are just to unpredictable and "the literature" isn't a strong base). Relativity has a "whole-lotta-nines" of correctness. You might be able to establish an unlikely theory (like the "Alcubierre Drive" works), but keeping the rest of the science is going to be hard (one "soft spot" would be entering and exiting the "Alcubierre bubble": I'm not sure anybody has suggested a means for that). 2. My HS science barely covered relativity (and I had two years of physics), so this might work. You aren't trying plausible at that level. 3. I'm assuming information transport. Transport matter without information and you will likely get pure energy as that would probably be the lowest form of entropy possible. I can understand information without matter (but will likely require energy), but not matter without information (which just doesn't make sense except as background entropy). 4. Go read any explanation of Relativity by Einstein. Causality is central to relativity and violating C implies violating causality. Look at how silly Star Trek is and at least they get this right. Get it wrong and you can't even "tech the tech" right. 5. Relativity is right, there is no question. Causality takes a beating in quantum theory (although never quite shown to be wrong during experiments) as well, so that is the one to go. 6. If you are going "soft" you get technobabble. You could go with something like Alcubierre and lose casuality and have a real explanation, but getting it mostly right will be *hard*. There is a reason the "golden age of Sci-fi is 10", because once you go deeper into (any one) science you know more about it than any writer who doesn't specialize in it. Don't ask about Turtledove and the US Civil War buffs. 7. Internal consistency + non-casual universes don't go too well. Expect to wind up with something like "He built a Crooked House".

Thus my comment "nothing you would want in career mode". Load in Realism Overhaul and it might make sense, but TSTO *rockets* are pretty much the standard. The real catch is that parachutes really don't work all that well IRL* (they are good for capsules and salvaging cylinders of thick steel that hit the sea at over 100mph) so using horizontal landing is an option for those stages. * not sure what happens in RO. I have enough trouble relearning the aero model of 1.0+.

Looks more like some of the preliminary shuttle designs. They were a lot more like the Falcon 9, but with manned first stages that landed horizontally. It certainly looks like a cool experiment, but nothing you would want in a career path. I'm pretty sure you would start out using the flight manager mod (to land both stages) and eventually use the "stage recovery" mod to blow off landing the first stage. Compared to "spacex style": Allows mortals to hit the runway for "100%" recovery (which might feel overpowered) Is *slow* up and fairly slow down (or not: note that OP didn't use jet engines. These might be fast spaceplanes). Does not require parachute for landings not within a few km of KSC, more realistic. Since OP didn't use jets, this might work in Realism Overhaul, and always useful for pining for the "space shuttle you really wanted" (since the mechjeb needed for spacex to work hadn't been invented when the shuttle first flew, much less when it was designed).

Do they have to use human speech? Obviously not a problem for parrots, but no idea how far parrots can evolve. If simply to "communicate with each other", then you probably need some sort of runaway sexual selection among songbirds. This isn't a bad explanation for the evolution of human brains, but it isn't clear that a powerful brain will aid the species in ways that a powerful brain pushed genus homo past other great apes. Perhaps a society that included both such birds and humans will have "bilingual" members of both species.

Except that this gives a scaled quadcopter 4 times the chances to crash thanks to an engine failure. With toy quadcopters, a quadcopter with an broken motor is thrown away regardless of how much it is broken in the fall. A scaled quadcopter is likely to have greater issues when crashing. You *could* employ some other means of altering the power levels to each propeller, but that would still likely be as complex and prone to failure as four motors. While the gimballing is expensive, I didn't think it was a major source of failure in helicopters. Even so these only help make a cheaper (if more dangerous) helicopter, which seems an extremely specialized form of flight. I think the existing NASA Mars Architecture still lists ISRU of oxygen and stored hydrogen, without suggesting how to maintain enough hydrogen at the end of the mission while stored form months in a containment system shipped to and landed on Mars. I'd expect kerosene would be a better choice myself.

From looking at what escape dynamics tried to do, I'd recommend waiting for the US Navy to start building its massive laser program. Even that sounds like it wouldn't quite provide the power escape dynamics needs, and the Navy blasters only need fire for milliseconds while the launch vehicle will need minutes of constant power (and don't ask about how the tech is supposed to get out from under wraps, even using a foreign spy's leaked data is iffy in the US). Did that need optical rectennas anyway? All it needed was to absorb the power and turn it into heat, while an antenna typically absorbs power as electricity (well, really as a signal, but I've used stuff powered by near field power). Quadcopters are based on the issue that four small electric engines typically require the same number of windings as a single motor four times more powerful, and don't require the fancy (and extremely expensive once scaled up, those forces are huge) gimballing on any rotor. They really aren't expected to scale, and any "scaled up" version would have the same issues that the Moeller "aircar" (and any less scamy competitors) would have had for decades.

From the description, they certainly had to replace the whole landing leg structure. Being within limits seems to mean that the damage was limited to the legs (relatively cheap). They might have a ways to go before they are at the "gas and go" stage of the plan, but appear to be on schedule to go way beyond "shuttle-level" reuse (once they light this bird for real). I'm guessing they wanted maximum Oberth effect (or at least minimum gravity acceleration). I suspect that is more an artifact from just how far away they are: you can't flip over a rocket fast enough to be "close" for the back burn. I'm guessing if it worries them, they'll just light the second stage a little earlier.

Good night bunny.

I think I've seen this, and it appeared to load the engine turned off (on while saved). The physics started, the engine lit, and the additional forces blew up the rocket. I wrote it off as a Unity engine change bug.

Oddly enough, if your goal is simply hitting escape velocity (either for contracts or practice), solid final stages are likely best (no extra engine mass). This can come right down to a flea/hammer stage followed by a "true last stage" made up of sepratrons. Don't count on being able to hit the SOI of another planet without a full NASA-style countdown (to launch when Kerbin is at the exact correct angle), NASA level computers and orbital scientists (at least '60s-'90s grade, you can't use modern funky gravity tricks* in stock KSP). You might be able to get such a craft to hit an orbit, but don't expect to specify *which* orbit. Also I think seperatrons are pretty late in career, so don't expect to find any contract you can fill this way. * "funky gravity tricks" meaning things like the interplanetary highway. The basic slingshot maneuvers available in stock KSP were common in the 1970s and likely determined well before sputnik. I think pretty much all the tricks should be available with the "real gravity mod", but expect a heavy toll on your CPU.

More experimentation for me. My career mode is mostly halted, and no idea what I'll do with the current mission (which seems to have taken much longer than was budgeted). No idea when they are getting outside of Kerbin's SOI. Now I have to face that I still don't understand 1.1's atmospheric model. I think most of my issues involved use of terrier/poodle upper stages, with those you have to be moving *fast* to be able to move fast enough. I'll have to wade through the whole thread, I'm guessing at 1.1 you can use kickbacks for a second stage.

But did they "dial down" the power off the pad? Getting low thrust by limiting the number of SRBs (compared to the mass of the rocket) in the first stage is completely different than nerfing the thrust of the SRB. SRBs provide two things: cheap delta-v (from the pad) and cheap thrust. Typically nerfing the thrust hurts the delta-v as well. On the other hand, it certainly isn't an absolute thing. But in almost all cases, if you lowered the thrust of 10 boosters to 90%, you would be better off with 9 boosters firing full thrust, and then moving the remaining (ignoring the issue of balance) on the second stage. Using SRBs as a second stage is rare, but sometimes makes sense (I'm pretty sure I've made interplanetary probes that worked that way).

The various changes between 1.0 and 1.1.3 make it difficult to tell the current options, but any reduction in thrust should be done for control only (unless you have cranked up the re-entry heating and are having heating issues. 1.1.3 base difficulty should overheat the rockets). Efficiency also seems to go up as the thrust goes high (around TWR>2.0 off the pad, which gets interesting to control). One low-cost means to control an otherwise rowdy amount of SRBs is to place AV-R8 winglets (the ones that act as control surfaces) on the north and south surfaces of your rocket (the door is facing East). This lets you control the gravity turn with the fins, and let the capsule or whatever control everything else (which shouldn't require much). Wrangling a rocket with high TWR can be different from simply setting a course and letting it turn, so expect a few more controls. Note that the "tilted when launch" does not allow fine tuning of pitch, and tends to reset the angle when touched (to something extreme). There was a recent forum suggestion where mechjeb could be used to just set the angle when launched (and type in the specific number of degrees), this seems a better choice.

Assuming they could come up with the liquid oxygen (seems unlikely), alcohol would still likely to be a preferred fuel over kerosene/oil. The V-2 used an alcohol*/liquid oxygen mix and barely lost any ISP and had 1000 degrees less temperatures to deal with (probably F, but still much easier to deal with). They still aren't overcoming all the other issues (read fuel pump) to make liquid rockets. * roughly 60% water. So something like 80 proof vodka (US proof). Expect losses when your techs (especially sailors) check your fuel tanks.

Human growth hormone has issues of odd head growth (often used as evidence against Barry Bonds). More seriously, you really don't want to have growth hormone in your system when developing cancer.

I wonder how much they did the KSP pre-vector cheat and pre-gimbaled the rockets off center. From the drawings they appear straight down, but that might really be at full extension.

~3.5 means p<.05 and ready for publication in sciences less deluged with data (and mostly less picky and not willing to admit the size of the data) than particle physics. Not sure how many sciences get the shear quantity and quality (after lots of calculation and filtering) of particle physics.

That's a lot of mass for guys who barely top 1m. I wonder how much of that is the RCS system. Now we know why they do that funky waddle: too much gear weighing them down (and possibly simply fat kerbals as well).

Here is an earlier thread (I think it is what Fredino means by the "point of divergence" thread) Some thoughts on earlier ideas: Randal Monroe's what if already covered gunpowder (i.e. model rocket engine) rockets. A gunpower rocket capable of puting an ant in orbit would resemble the Great Pyramid. https://what-if.xkcd.com/24/ Liquid rockets are right out: V2's fuel [turbo]pump: 4000hp. Wright Brothers (~1900) 24hp. Liquid rockets in 1900 might be scaled up from Goddard, but they aren't going to space. Don't underestimate gun launches. In steampunk times they probably have more delta-v available than *anything* else. See the Paris Gun for a real-world example of Steampunk power. As far as getting to space, I'm guessing that Paris Gun + multi-stage gunpower (or nitrocelese if sufficiently stable) could provide enough delta-v to get into Kerbin's orbit. 8000m/s just isn't happening. Control and stabilization also aren't happening. Spin stabilization is your best bet (but requires extreme balancing of solid rockets), 1950s rockets spun at single-digit rpms (no stress from the spin). With a *ton* of handwaving, you might get Victorians into space from a Kerbin-sized planet (probably smaller once you start working out all the details). Not going to happen on Earth. PS: In a book published in 1958 (rushed out after Sputnik), it described a proposal for lifting two 100lb [45kg assuming weighed on Earth] [male] astronauts. One objection was that while finding said 100lb men might be difficult, 100lb women would not. The objector received a surprising amount of fan mail from the ladies. I expect that Victorian times would likely be similar to the 1950s, with women being considered (and probably ideal considering the mass advantage) but ultimately rejected for such missions. On the other hand, it might well turn out that a few of the "original 7" of Victorian times might be women in "drag": plenty of women fought as men in the US Civil War, not so sure if it was possible/done in later wars.

Note that non-scientists can take data from goo and junior materials bay if you don't think they will make it back. They can also take data from thermometers, barometers, and anything else that self-resets. But for something like your first trip into space it is often a hard decision between Jeb/Val (who can hit the SAS button and make it easy) and Bob who can grab science from the lower atmosphere for everything, wait until reaching space, EVA and grab all the data from lower atmosphere, reset and run all the experiments again, grab all the science from space, and then reset all the experiments for the upper atmosphere on the way down. With 1.1.3 (and standard re-entry) I'd recommend letting Bob do his thing on the "going into space" mission, and then let Jeb/Val do the fancy flying into orbit. Once you have unlocked the Octoprobe you can put Bob back into space (and let the probe handle SAS), so you can go to Minmus/Mun and grab the data for *lots* of biomes.

1. That sounds right. 2. I can't remember a laser being used, but lighting hydrolox isn't hard (I think it is the easiest of non-hypergolic fuels). Hypergolics remain in use, and I'm guessing because igniters keep failing. From memory, I think The Register's Lohan project had a failed electric igniter at altitude. Things like that are hard to test, and can't be assumed working until tested. Testing (in the correct environment) is going to be hard for smallsat builders (especially the amatures).

"De-ionized water". How much anti-freeze do you think it needs mixed in? I'd expect all kinds of issues in full sunlight as well as night. Or do they just let it start to freeze and time the burns well after "dawn" (and assume the thing can handle any boiling it might have)? I've heard that PVC ablation is a cheap way to make an ion engine, but never found out how cheap. I'd still prefer something like a boring old hybrid rocket, and note that the Isp shouldn't be much of an issue assuming the weight of the water isn't a large portion of the satellite (i.e. not going to the Moon of something). Note that while the hybrid rocket needs to be ignited, so does our hydrolox engine as well. I'd just assume that microsat builders aren't at all interested in dealing with hypergolics nor the paperwork, permissions, and procedures.

Don't underestimate how important this is. I've seen a few videos that suggest doing complicated maneuvers to line up the spacecraft, when all you have to do is flip to the "target" and point you docking port at the ship that wants to dock. Make sure both vessels are going as slowly as possible, or otherwise can be left alone for as long as it takes (KSP tends to "forget" your target, forcing you back on the navigation screen to painfully click on a target you are nearly on top of). Did not know about the autobalancer. Note that "the slightest sneeze" includes a blast from any non-RCS thruster. RCS have the magical property of having physicsless reaction mass, so are the only ones you can safely use in close. Also SAS is critical for anything with buggy torques. I've returned to a spinning craft because of landing wheels (for a contract) that magically applied torque. It really is important to have the time to correct for that when coming in. And above all else SLOW DOWN. In real life, the rendezvous takes multiple days between whatever and the ISS. The final approach is cm/s. While KSP simplifies things by a few orders of magnitude thus lets you go faster, those last final meters should be SLOW.

Nope. They use a Lockheed L-1011 and before that a B-52. A quick googling says they have a flight ceiling within a few percent, and the L-1011 can fly ~10% faster.