Jonfliesgoats

This is one of my favorite satellite trackers. I check it before leaving the hotel when I am on the road. In a previous life, with a set of different sensing capabilities, I used to use another tracker to identify moving dots in the sky. Nice to see other people using sat trackers to sky watch too.

There are shapes that reduce sonic boom, but it still remains a problem. Another difficulty is simple economics. Supersonic flight is expensive. Hypersonic flight even more so. The turnaround time for hypersonic aircraft is high too. A lot of exotic propositions come out in aerospace as cash grabs. Without downplaying the value of innovation, there are also a lot of con meant and con organizations that just want to abscond with the funds of venture capitalists, etc. That said, there is a market for getting wealthy fops from a to b as fast as possible and with as much dramatic flare as possible. It is plausible that suborbital spaceplanes will be part of corporate or royal flight departments in the future. Similar proposals like the Boeing Waverider, etc. exist.

You can run the tsiolkovsky rocket equation or use this calculator: http://www.strout.net/info/science/delta-v/

Fermentation is possible. I could see Kimchi being an option. It could be a nice treat to open up your Kiimchi pots as you finally arrive at mars. The cabbage would have a few years to ferment,. The down side: CO2. In microgravity, fermentation may not completely occur in the pits without some kind of stirring, too.

I'm game. Fur has many applications beyond thermal insulation. It is conceivable that "fur" would evolve on Tribbles in order to protect their reproductive organs from the effects of solar radiation. More likely the fur is actually an intricate system of whiskers to support Tribbles sensory organs. Perhaps they use fluffy whiskers to find food? They are hungry enough. Beyond this, we aren't sure that Tribbles originated in space. Like rats, they could just be vermin from a cold planet that now are pests on spaceships. Mudd may have just tried making money from vermin, which is entirely in line with his character. A larger problem is the balance of biomass. Tribbles eat food, but replicators synthesize food from energy in Star Trek. Even if Tribbles existed in the food processing units of a starship, they wouldn't have access to enough mass to grow to the huge populations we see. A darker thought emerge about mass and Tribbles: They could be eating the ship and its inorganic cargo! In this case, Tribbles are like spacefaring shipworms. Beyond just damaging the ship by clogging systems, they could actually cause a structural failure of the ship.

Alright. No moon menacing corporate evils! I tend to agree with the idea of Moon advertising being garish vandalism. I return to laser lig shows or somethign similar.

How fast can you deorbit something accurately? If you launch your penetrator, it would take, like half an hour, to reach its target right? So this could be great for hitting a cruising ship, airplane, etc. over water. I can't see it being used for anything in a high CDE area. Would it be possible to make stealthy penetrators? The right geometry and ceramics are theoretically doable. If you can bypass early warning radar, resolution on IR systems is poor. You could deorbit a number of leg-sized penetrators to collapse cave complexes, submarine oens and revetments in one foul swoop one could stop, say, an invasion across the strait of Formosa before millions of people die. Stealthy orbital strikes could actually save few, perhaps? INS accuracy: deoends on some other things too. Ideally some sort of additional terminal guidance could be provided. Beyond plasma, if anyone knows to look for your targeting info, they have an early warning. So without breaking any cryptology, a sudden increase in data burst transmissions, laser data links (there is always some scatter) etc would tip off an adversary. A scary revelation from 1991 was that the CCCP was monitoring commodity prices as an indicator of a first strike by the West. Had the price of blood suddenly gone up, a bunch of Soviet sleeper agents would have gone tearing around Europe and the US murdering pilots in their sleep. The world is and always has been strange. This is why we need more expeditionary weirdos with calculators.

Cool!

Launch would be expensive, but your kinetic platform never has to land, refuel change crews, etc.. Kinetic actually means something with regard to weapons employment, so going kinetic with a kinetic platform may actually be cost effective. The question as Tater mentions, is whether or not it's an effective deterrent. I can definitely see its value as a conventional bunker-busting system. I am a technician and not an historian. This is a decent summary of strategic bombing that is open source. My view of bombing is pessimistic. Tater's is more in line with the experts in that they suggest better targeting may have let strategic bombing bring about an end to a given conflict. Personal experiencempaysna role as well. http://www.militaryhistoryonline.com/wwii/articles/failurestratbombing.aspx

On a separate note, 84kg of reentry mass equals one ton of TNT. So something the size of your leg could level a large building.

Blowhard Mode: Engage! Daylight Strategic bombardment in WW2 was limited by targeting. We had the Norden bombsight and we're lucky if one in ten bombs was within 100m of target. At night, entire population centers were targeted on both continents. To be sure the Eighth Air Firce leveled Axis factories. Still fighter production increased. Production was decentralized. Despite repeated raids on synthetic fuel plants and oil fields, fuel production continued. Freeing escort fighters to strafe and attack trains and convoys during return legs did a lot to hamper the distribution of required resources. One can argue, did a lot more to cripple axis war efforts than the actual bombing campaigns. In Japan and Europe large fire bombing raids of Tokyo, Dresden and other places did not bring Axis powers to the negotiating table. Even after two nuclear attacks, the surrender of Japan was not assured and may not have happened at all without a Soviet invasion of Manchuria. Would we have been better off with those aircraft and crews dedicated to anti submarine roles in the North Atlantic? Close air support was certainly valuable. Heavy bombers failed to do the trick in Korea, due to political considerations and close air support again is where air power really showed its value. In Vietnam, during Linebackers 1 and 2, Rolling Thunder, etc. strategic bombardment failed. We kept resorting to regular infantry in Vietnam and irregular forces in other parts of Indochina. We were trying to stop men pushing bicycles through mud with supersonic jets. Wrong tool for the job! As recently as our bombing campaigns in Serbia, we saw that you can't break a resistance through air power alone. We keep trying and failing to win through bombing campaigns because doing so is politically expedient. We can sell a cheap war to our people where only a handful of people are at risk of bleeding. The reality is that winning any fight is damned bloody business. I believe in aerospace and have committed my professional life to aerospace in one form or another for decades. Victory is impossible without air dominance. However, air dominance in and of itself doesn't win wars. As long as we pretend we can fight on the cheap and clean by relying on gizmos, we will keep losing to illiterate rice farmers and goatherds. I sincerely hope I am wrong about my deductions. If strategic bombing works/ed, it means a lot of lives and a lot of my time hasn't been wasted. Can you think of examples of successful strategic bombing?

Fixed targets would still be doable with INS. For manned capsules, there is a period of maximum aerodynsmic pressure which also corresponds to maximum heating and maximum ionization. When you run the numbers for high angles, say 45, the reentry vehicle continues to accelerate all the way to the surface and generates tremendous heat and ionization. It never slows down. Check out formulae 4.1.7-7 and 4.1.7-8. https://www.faa.gov/other_visit/aviation_industry/designees_delegations/designee_types/ame/media/Section III.4.1.7 Returning from Space.pdf

Of course it would take a telescope! McDonalds would give them out with happy meals and advertise their new lunar effort on TV. People would run outside at night, stare through their Optix McScope, and think "We gotta buy stock in McDonald's!" as advert-o-doze shovels around lunar dust. Actually, I like the idea of McDonald's Optix McScope.

Hmm. I was afraid of this. I have an equally ridiculous suggestion to use lunar bulldozers to advertise fast food. Space development from sandwiches: scratched off my list of things to consider

Agreed with all of you. Also, a single projector at a Lagrange point would be better than many in geosynchronous orbit. With regard to the moon being teeny, it is still the moon. When people see the McDonald's logo on the new moon, even if only teensy and faint, it will have an impact. Honestly, who really wants a garish, vegas moon, right? BUt incentives to exploit space are required for the benefit of mankind. Whether we land an advertising bulldozer or project garish ads, finding some commercial reason for space development is important. So batting around ridiculous ideas is fun and may actually get "us" onto something.

Ideally to advertise to people on earth. The Soviets scattered many metal, red stars on the dark side of the moon.

Imagine landing a solar powered bull-dozed on the moon. Companies pay for the dozen to shovel their corporate logo on given patches of lunar surface. Anyone with a telescope could tell that Burger King sponsored a given crater, Boeing a given sea, etc.

my mistake!

I was staring out the window, watching some continent and I wondered, can we use the Moon as a television? Imagine a very powerful, visible light laser on geosynchronous orbit over the US. Firms could hire the space laser to project a laser light show onto the moon with their company logo, message and sales information. With improved mapping of the lunar surface, distortion would be minimal. Big companies would pay well to have the Golden Arches, etc. on the moon. The US government could use this and, with billion dollar elections becoming the norm, political parties could beam whatever slogan onto the lunar surface. Other geosynch satellites could target other markets by aiming at the moon. How much energy would this require? I suppose it would only be effective during new and crescent moons since there is no way a laser can compete with the luminance of the lunar surface under sunlight. Animated laser light shows, too. http://worldbuilding.stackexchange.com/questions/877/is-it-possible-to-advertise-on-the-moon

Wouldn't it be cool if you could recruit Kerbal scientific or engineering Interns, just to make the low wages and high risk more hilarious? Perhaps give them blue suits? They would function just like level 0 Kerbals now,but seem more confused.

I am still wondering what could provide terminal guidance or any communication to a veihcle enveloped by plasma. Could the right type of laser do it?

When I discuss flechettes, I am talking about relatively heavy things rather than the metal arrows experimented with in WW1 or in artillery. I suppose the smallest device would be in the .5 ton range for mass. A big flechette? I am not sure what word really describes a 500-10000kg doomsday lawn-dart. I agree about plasma effects, but I wonder if there is a way around this. I suspect there is. RF is going to have trouble penetrating any layer of ionization, but layers of plasma don't block all frequencies on the EM spectrum equally. A relay of sufficient power at sufficiently high energy could, theoretically, provide terminal guidance to our projectile. Of course, the feasibility of this is dubious, but who's to say what the future holds? Strategy and Strategic Bombardment: I agree, and I foam at the mouth! I deleted my rant about the uselessness of strategic bombardment and my experience in various capacities. I have another long-wined rant about airlifts and relief operations too, but I'll spare your eyes. Strangely, I think the air superiority fighter and space superiority vehicle, along with the submarine, have and will do more for strategic balance of power than anything.

When I was a kid there were proposals to launch objects into orbit with powerful guns. Has anyone tried this in KSP?

This really disturbs me. It shouldn't. These are fake Kerbals after all. Still, we are just killing Kerbals like they mean nothing to us?!?! I know it's a game, but....I mean, launchanother mission to rescue your Kerbal Scientist. Call it a long duration solo expedition. Just leaving a brace volunteer to die? That's not what spaceflight is about! Maybe for Stalin, but not for us! We bring our Kerbals back or make every attempt to do so! I can shoot innocent bystanders in other games, level cities and kill children, but not Kerbals. We don't abandon Kerbals! Wait, in 1.2 you don't have to return to Kerbin to gain experience?

Yay, nerds! Seriously, though, I look forward to the discoveries this new telescope will being to mankind.