wumpus

Don't forget to add plenty of reputation: your available contracts depend on reputation. Crank that up (and leave money and science low) and you can quickly progress to the Mun and beyond (well, be paid for it. You can go there without the reputation). Without the reputation, you will be putting up an endless string of satellites. If you are interested in the "leadership initiative" (massive bonus to milestones and science, practically removes contracts*), that requires you to have a huge reputation before allowing you to buy it.

Where was the night landing video coming from? The one that looked like a magic act "tada, rocket!"? I'm pretty sure I've seen some post-landing video of a rocket on the barge, but can hardly claim that it was mounted on the barge and not on a drone.

With at least two cameras used for the footage, you had a pretty good look at this one. I was expecting another night landing like the last one "and for my next trick, I will make a rocket appear [smoke and bright lights ... smoke clears] tada! A rocket."

From what I've heard JP-7 is sufficiently expensive to eat up any fuel savings (best quote was that it was similar in price to a "fine scotch"). Not sure if they have to refill with JP-7 on the immediate fill up after launch. So the question comes down to any microsat launcher willing to build a micro-falcon (or similar lander) and operate it for $5M a pop (and get 10 launches in a row). Coming down from a mach 2 stage ought to be far easier than what spacex does. I wonder if blue origin is interested. $50M for ten flights without having to risk passengers might be clearly worth it.

https://www.nasaspaceflight.com/2016/07/darpa-pushing-experimental-spaceplane-xs-1/ Not sure if this has anything to do with the recent "DSTO" SABRE plan. Initial goals are for staging at mach 2, with a goal of staging at mach 10. I'm strongly suspecting a "me too" plan that will only pay for powerpoint slides. Note that Lockheed's M-21 staged at similar levels, and included at least one fatality (the plan says "traveling at mach 3, staging at mach 2", but presumably the SR-71 could fly whatever flight plan this could, and do some sort of "parabolic travel into thinner atmosphere" to launch, if necessary). The "mach 10" snippet implies skipping SABRE and going straight to the X-43's SCRAMJETS. Note that the X-43 was nearly all solid rocket booster (staged before the X-43 took off), so it would take some impressive development to carry something to get to mach 4, the X-43 engines themselves, and then >900lbs of cargo (I'm not sure the X-43 weighed 900lbs empty). I can only imagine what the Stratolaunch backers feel about this. Apparently the DoD feels it can thumb its nose at them with impunity (or really is only planning on buying some expensive powerpoint slides).

I think the wiki for N-1 (or similarly unreliable source) claimed an absolutely impossible requirement for the N-1 control logic. Note that "impossible" was for the 1960s, I suspect you could get something off the shelf around 2000 from Cisco, but it really pushed the control network beyond comprehension. Even today, having to get such a complex network to work right from the first launch would be an immense feat. Has anyone noted the "engine out" feature of falcon 9? If your engines are light enough, that is a huge advantage. If you can pull it off, suddenly your cluster went from 1/10th the reliability of a big engine to much higher.

I'm pretty sure you can't have a thread on the political decisions that went into the directions NASA went without at least a five minute hate toward Proxmire. For those too young to remember, Proxmire was NASA's biggest enemy and a firm believer that the federal government only existed to provide cheese subsidies (he was a senator from Wisconsin). Only in the sense that *everything* that Congress does is a jobs program. If they really wanted a jobs program, they would have simply extended the Apollo program (possibly at starvation levels) much like SLS prolongs the Shuttle program. It was really to different to be merely a jobs program, but cut enough to not really do the job. Employing a ton of people was pretty critical in maintaining the shuttle program through 100+ launches. If you want over a hundred launches, you have to convince somebody to pay for it someway or another. While I've often thought that this was the "problem" with the shuttle, I'm not so sure anymore. Assuming that a proper escape system would make Challenger survivable, I can't really fault the "recoverable to orbit" assumptions of the shuttle. A bigger thing is that by discarding the upper stage is avoiding that whole "return the entire cargo bay" which I assume is the biggest issue in the whole thing. In any event, taking 3 times your maximum lift capacity to orbit as mere dry weight was a disaster.

The problem is that as far as I know, when a "jet" pulls up to your gate you will probably see a [mostly] ducted fan. While there might be a jet engine somewhere under all that, a large amount of air is bypassed (I suspect to be later heated by the exhaust). Pure jet engines were a development step of the 1940s, but might still exist in afterburners (and I'd expect "pure" jets to be roughly as inefficient). I'm sure this is mostly wrong (but still slightly more accurate than calling modern jets "jets"), so any corrections would be appreciated.

Of any fastastical places, it would be one of the easiest. Of course, I think Orion was only expected to get to .1C, which wouldn't allow the Lorentz effect to get anywhere near the effects you need (and then if you had the increased momentum* you would need more fuel, and extreme shielding beyond any known tech). But it shouldn't break any known laws (note that when Douglas Adams wrote this, we weren't aware that the universe was increasing in the rate of expansion, which might put the restaurant in an "impossible" position where we couldn't outrace the expansion). Getting back appears impossible. But getting there shouldn't be. * My physics classes seemed to emphasize momentum far less than most, but this looks right. Significantly increasing velocity near c isn't quite accurate.

In other words BAE is building something because they think its cool and they think the British Government will pay them to do it. Because I can't really imagining that the RAF needs to drop that many droneswarms in places they can't easily get wildly closer (just anchor a ship nearby). Missiles do everything a Scanlon (or any other SABRE powered-vehicle) can, and at much lower initial price. I can't even imagine the USAF needing to drop that many drones. They wouldn't need it for Afghanistan (they're already there), similar for Iraq, and if they needed to check out what was going on in Turkey (such as right now), they could have used those bases. They usually have some sort of warning, but if not they have plenty of big missiles. I suspect there may be a political difference between a rocket and a mach 6 plane, but without a huge explosion it will be a hard sell.

As far as I know, realism overhaul deals with a number of these issues, but I'm not at all sure about turbopump spool-up rate. I think it models that one, as well. I haven't downloaded it (I have enough trouble with near-stock), but I think I've seen you-tube vids with spool-up, ignition, and then liftoff.

This reminds me, I need to get Spaceward Ho! on android... (the last edition had a "radical tech" that included all sorts of weird results. One of which was a biological space monster class craft. Although I think the graphics were more squidlike than ameoba).

How deep can you go for 8 million (I'm guessing that is for the first stage study, but 5 years will go by quick if they try to fund each separate stage individually)? And what exactly are you expecting in Lunar geology? I'd assume that it more or less hardened into a uniform ball and everything you find on the surface is a mix of lunar rock (churned by meteors) and the bits of meteors themselves. Hopefully they will be able to guess that all of the sample isn't meteor, so presumably the majority is native moon (and what you mostly find if you dug deeper). I wonder if this is cheaper than a rover that would move around and pick up rocks?

http://arstechnica.com/business/2016/07/sonnens-new-battery-for-solar-self-consumption-could-succeed-in-us/ What caught my eye about the above article (and isn't commented on anywhere) is that the company is already announcing widespread use of a lithium-iron-phosphate battery. Of course, I suspect that this is one of many "bet the startup" (I couldn't get much about the company, but I suspect that is due to a lack of German). A lithium-iron-phosphate battery should charge (and discharge) at "ridiculous" speeds (although probably not kerbal speeds). Just about 60 years after whatever is also with "KSP batteries" on the tech tree.

Ouch. Looks safe enough for the X-43 program (as in I wouldn't expect that to be safer for a low run of disposable craft). Not good enough even for an unmanned SABRE-powered launcher.

Hm, is this the same Chris Kraft: http://arstechnica.com/science/2016/07/a-cold-war-mystery-why-did-jimmy-carter-save-the-space-shuttle/ ? Sounds like a good place to be to eventually become a big shot in the space program (when the paperclip guys died/retired/had their past catch up to them). Note: If I was going to ask Jimmy Carter about any technical/political policy it would be about the decision to not reprocess any spent nuclear fuel. It still seems a huge mistake, but I don't think any high level political decisions have ever been made by someone more qualified to decide on nuclear power than Jimmy Carter.

Now that I think of it, the Blackbird was originally designed with a launchable rocket to go anywhere the Blackbird couldn't. Since the only thing stopping the Blackbird were treaties and threats of Soviet reprisals (they couldn't hit the thing directly), the extra rocket was "never" used. Anybody know if it was tested (and the results unclassified/leaked)? Another example would be the Pegasus booster for the X-43. That takes the combined aircraft from nominal jet speed (~mach .8?) to over mach 4. This appears similar to vertical staging, except the vehicle is flying horizontally. Note that since both craft are disposable, they might even use "fire in the hole" staging. That little black spot on the front is the X-43, the rest is the Pegasus booster.

The point is that it is lighter than kerosene/jet fuel*, even with a larger tank (well, only if stored as a liquid. The size of the tanks might get extreme if stored as a compressed gas. I wouldn't be surprised if those are some of the many reasons hydrogen isn't used. If it can't handle the boiloff on the runway, it can't handle the boiloff over 20+ hours in flight (normal subsonic flight). If it can't handle that, it probably can't handle the weight and drag of the supersized compressed air tank either). * pretty much the same stuff as RP1, but without quite as much extra cost.

If you aren't expected to do the rocket equation with every launch, why do they include delta-v with every burn (or does that come with KE and I've never noticed)? Also the "there's a mod" argument no longer works as of the PS4 launch. How many times has a delta-v calculator been written for the game? There is KE (and a claim that KSPedu uses it), mech jeb, and any others? Certainly the hard part is determining multiple overlapping stages with different ISPs (something common on my rockets and a reason I never feel that calculating the rocket equation is all that easy). But I really think that the PS4 (and other consoles) launch will make delta-v a necessary item.

Liquid oxygen is harmless, unless it sets you on fire. Or sets something else on fire. Or seeps into something and then explodes (LOX and charcoal is a favorite industrial explosive. Explosive as dynomite, but if your detonator fails all you have to do is wait for the LOX to evaporate and your [dud] detonator is sitting on a pile of charcoal (dealing with dud detonators can't be safe, but it has to be better than dealing with then directly connected to explosives)). It isn't so much how unsafe it is, it is how unsafe it makes just about everything that can burn. I'm having issues linking images, try Guys working with UDMH. Do you think all that is so they don't eat it? My main moral qualm with UDMH is the huge quantities involved in the Proton. I'd be happier using hybrid-style rockets, but understand that for many things you need that "instant on/instant off" bit to happen more often that any igniter (even semiconductor lasers?) can reasonably deal with. The main point was that all of this is likely worse than whatever happens to a NTR. Also I think the context was the astronauts at ground zero and not the total environmental effects. LOX would only be dangerous if it somehow *all* leaked into the ground and exploded (with the carbon in the soil) on a city wide effect. But there are plenty of ways for it to kill you on the same spaceship.

The only benefit higher oil prices on hydrogen would be the chance to lower weight on long haul flights. Best guess is that the problems with using a cryofuel is so high that they would still leave the methane uncracked even for flights for England/Australia (note that much of this is that you would pretty much need to redesign the entire aircraft to use hydrogen, those tanks would be huge. Designing a plane for such limited use isn't going to happen). The obvious lack of long haul aircraft (who could lose 30-40% of their takeoff weight by using hydrogen) is an obvious strike against using such a silly fuel in much less weight conscious areas such as cars.

They just happened to have enough gimbal to handle asymmetric boosters??? I don't think its a shuttle derivative, was it based on submarines (which would have funky launch angle issues)?

Hardly unsolved, and nothing like the challenges of SSTO. Solution one: air launch. See Orbital's Pegasus. Additional problem air launching at mach 6 might be a bigger issue. Solution two: space launch. See shuttle dropping the boosters and fuel tank. Additional problem: losing a bunch of delta-v when moving from air-breathing flight ceiling to sufficient vacuum to launch. Personally, I'd eat the delta-v and avoid having to design a SABRE that can use a stored oxidizer (even though I love the idea of increasing an air-breather's speed by using an oxidizer to maximize the speed and then the amount of air available, thus increasing the speed). Hopefully the whole thing is unmanned so you can easily add COTS SRBs to get you from mach 6 to vacuum (ok, that last bit is just too kerbal. But I still think you should launch in vacuum and avoid using oxidizer in the SABRE). Solution three: Maximum kerbal. Light an [well, presumably multiple] X-43 engine at mach five and go all the way to mach 10 or more. Pull up and launch a rocket with an incredible mass ratio into orbit. Problem: never will happen.

I'm sure the mark III spaceplane parts exist for a reason. I'm not too familar with spaceplanes (I've flown one, but prefer rockets and got cought up with career mode). Bigger rockets can be vastly trickier to fly than small rockets, I'd expect big spaceplanes to be more of a handful then the little jobs.

Trading reaction mass for cooling will destroy your ISP (the whole point of the NTR). There is also the issue for stop/starting your reaction and cooling after your burn. You can't just remove fuel and oxidizer to stop a nuclear reaction. I'm guessing that you would need to separate your reactor mass (uranium) as well as add control rods, something that nuclear plants either don't need/can't do (I suspect anything that would provide a "fast SCRAM" would already be implemented, thus implying that it is rather hard engineering problem). I wouldn't put too much faith in afterburners. It first assumes you aren't heating your fuel up enough (otherwise heating it up any more would melt rocket internals/nozzles). It should (barely) work in the nozzles, but only after expansion had allowed the gasses to cool off enough. You would then be heating up low amounts of fuel back up to exhaust velocity but have to deal with somehow having air entering you nozzle, a difficult situation (maybe some sort of two-stage aerospike?). In any event expect to lost nearly (if not more) as you gain. "Because science fiction stories" isn't a good means to drive the methods of engineering. "Because I want a flying car*/tricorder/warp drive" might generate good results. Trying to build semiconductors by using positrons to etch the chips "because Issac Asimov" won't generate anything good. * forget the "flying car" and go for short/zero takeoff and landing. But don't expect to be good at both flying and taxiing.