Mad Rocket Scientist

New Mexico is really beautiful.

"A reaction drive's efficiency as a weapon is in direct proportion to its efficiency as a drive." -Larry Niven And as a corollary, a reaction drive's efficiency as a drive is in direct proportion to its "interestingness." Nuclear gas cores aren't quite interesting enough, but the quicker you can get from planet to planet in sci-fi universes, the more unlikely it would be that the drive system would not be very tightly controlled piece of technology.

I don't remember SpaceX or Elon Musk blaming anyone or saying anything beyond that they were investigating the possibility of sabotage. They definitely kept it quiet that they hired a sniper. To keep on topic though, I don't believe this was planned sabotage. It could be a disgruntled/drunk worker, but I don't think any organized group smart and capable enough to infiltrate the Soyuz production plant would commit such a pointless act of sabotage, when there are more delicate and critical parts (such as parachutes) that are probably as closely inspected as the hull.

I remember a Stephen Baxter book, I think on of the Manifold series, talked about using superconductor rings to spin Venus up. Might be easier than moving 100 solar systems worth of asteroids. Of course, extra-solar asteroids would hit at above solar escape velocity, so you should need less of them. Actually, Venus escape velocity is probably an inaccurate estimate for asteroids from this solar system, since most of the asteroids would be coming in from the asteroid belt.

I ran the numbers on this a while ago, assuming 375 s isp, it has 9689.63 m/s. That is with a 85t dry weight, and Elon Musk said it would be 75t with some increase. He also said the Isp would be improved by 5-10 s. The slides from the presentation said 85t, but the propellant mass stated in the slides would give the same mass fraction (propellant/wet) of ~0.93 as the 2016 ITS, which makes me suspicious of the numbers.

My guess would be that the amount of asteroids needed would exceed the amount needed to cool Venus down by just making giant orbital solar shields.

Further suggestions appreciated, Thanks! Imgur albums do not work, the imgur album button in the editor is a trap. They used to work, which is why you still see instructions for how to embed them. A direct link (i.e. xxxx.jpg, xxxx.png) to most images will auto-embed, no need to to "insert other media."

I like to take inspiration from (or just steal) names of ships in the Culture series of books. Here's a sampling: "No More Mr Nice Guy" "It's Character Forming" "Ultimate Ship The Second" "Sanctioned Parts List" "Another Fine Product From The Nonsense Factory" It's OK because SpaceX does it too.

It depends on how much money your career has. It's entirely possible to send over 100 kilotons in one shot with unlimited money. You should probably use mostly solids to minimize the cost. If you use any liquid stages, and are concerned with accidentally burning the payload propellant, just click the little green arrow next to the resource on each part, and it will be locked so nothing can use it.

Space Engineers isn't realistic, and it's a bit buggy and empty, but it's still fun. Stationeers I have not yet played, but it looks good. Take on Mars I also have not yet played, but it does sound like what you are looking for. For realistic sims, there's KSP, Orbiter, and Children of a Dead Earth. Children of a Dead Earth offers only one advantage over KSP, and that is that you can design nuclear weapons in it. Everything else is inferior, sadly. There's always Moonbase Alpha, which is free and worth what it costs.

"Whoops, just put a hole in the Soyuz pressure vessel here, better stick some gum in that." It is interesting how leak-resistant spaceships are though.

Nice looking crew transfer vehicle! On asteroid aerobraking: I recommend dropping the asteroid as low as you want, then disconnecting the asteroid tug and propulsively braking it above the atmosphere. Then do some fancy high-DV maneuvers to get back to the asteroid. This also lets you use the nuke on your tug, since that part never aerobrakes.

Amazing, it looks like it was made with a drill it's so clean. If it went that far through, does that mean it entered the cabin rather than being vaporized on impact?

I as far I can tell, there's probably no physics reason that it would be impossible. A rabbit's kidney was successfully vitrified and thawed out, and transplanted back into the rabbit in this study, although not all of the rabbits survived: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2781097/ As far as I can tell the unknowns are, assuming you were completely healthy when vitrified: Is there significant damage to organs from long term vitrification? Can a brain be vitrified without major damage for any period of time? (it seems like ice crystal damage isn't the problem) Can you be unfrozen in the distant future? 1 and 3 are both dependent on future technological advances, which are notoriously hard to predict. Even for the next 20-50 years, people disagree on whether something as impactful as superintelligent AI will exist. Similar disagreement exists, although on slightly different timescales, over nanotechnology, brain uploading, and replacement organs. Any of these would probably completely change what death even means. There's no guarantee that they could solve problems 1 and 3, much less 2, but it's definitely a possibility. It's also worth considering that 50 years ago, people expected a completely different future (space colonized, flying cars, general AI, etc) than the one we have (internet, computing power, amazing medical advances, li-ion batteries, etc).

It's currently on sale on the humble store for %60 off. The DLCs are on less of a deal though. https://www.humblebundle.com/store/stellaris

Please. It's best to just measure everything in Hiroshima equivalent. Gasoline (style as "gas" for extra confusion) gallon equivalent is pretty good alternative. "Nutrition experts recommend a daily food intake of 1.3 nanoHiroshimas"

No they can't, I hadn't considered that. Although if you knew the number of engines you might be able to work backwards to figure out which engines were being used from a set (such as stock engines). You'd also need the payload mass though... I'm not sure.

I could probably make it work for that, although I'm not sure exactly what the minimum number of variables I would need would be. It might be possible with just mass ratio and initial TWR. They are sometimes also called nomograms. You're welcome, I hope they're useful.

Ah, that makes sense. Still slightly odd, since I have uBlock origin also and it isn't blocked.

Just switched over to firefox, windows 10, still showing up for me. Very mysterious. Are you using a user style mod for the forums? Or browsing on a very wide monitor? It might be a responsive layout bug.

It's right here: It's a trendy share icon rather than a button with text. Although It may not show up on mobile. EDIT: Just checked, it does.

Thanks, I'll take a look at those playthroughs.

Falcon Heavy is surprisingly capable for interplanetary missions.

"Does anyone else have any ideas?" I get a little too enthusiastic about answering as well. Speaking of math class, today's class included difference quotients, although I already (unofficially) know basic derivatives. I worked through everything and was annoyed when I realized the result was just a derivative.

@Gargamel answered this already, but you can also click the "posted <whatever> ago" which is a direct link to the post.