Jonfliesgoats

There are surprising advances being made in locating and controlling the genetic factors behind human aging, cancer, etc.. If, in the future we see human lifespans range up to 200 year, it is entirely possible that fifty to one hundred year journeys at .1 to .2c become a possibility. Freeze-drying or hibernating a crew becomes less important than having a room full of plants and animals, a room full of music and shag carpet, etc. An interstellar, multi-decade flight to a nearby star with a long-lived waking crew may require the skills of great architects and artists as much as engineers and aviators. My ideas are recycled from others, of course. the point is the future is odd and we rarely predict things accurately. Next time we are drinking scotch and discussing flight, space flight and the near-religious commitment we have to these things, let's shift our attention away from propulsion for a night. Some of the sillier ideas for soaceflight may be closer to fruition than "serious" spaceflight ideas. Also, snacks.

I am in the U.K. around that time. Hrrrmmmmm?

In the future, children space colonists will all have strange senses of humor. Some will laugh at particularly awkward light bulbs. Others, having profoundly different formative experiences from their Terrestrial brethren, will have biting insight into things. Comedy clubs will be dominated by the strange children of space and those seeking to capitalize on their awkwardness. In rural Tennessee it will be generally acknowledged that people raised on the moon are easily frightened and have poor work ethics. I have seen the future, and it is dumb!

Good idea! I don't have 1.2 in Xbox yet, but it's nice seeing more practical applications for creative orbiting.

I typed a lot. I got really excited there.

So I ran the numbers on my graphing calculator for a pair of swept wing type B. I assumed the lift value for those wings was the Clmax. These are theoretically determined stall speeds and are the slowest speeds possible for touchdown since KSP doesn't simulate ground effect. Ran the lift equation using 2.26 for cl max and checked myself against the stall speed equation. These numbers are valid at sea level on Kerbin. A few thousand meters up, your true airspeed will be higher due to lower freestream air density. 10t 26m/s 20t 36m/s 41.5t 50m/s Anyway, assuming my math is correct a theoretical 20t rocket would be right around the mass where you could either use a few parachutes and a retro burn or horizontally land at sea. What gets interesting is for a 30 something ton lifter, you actually save a lot of mass by horizontally landing at sea! These are returning, dry masses, the actual weight of our craft on the pad could be much higher. Landing a heavy rocket, say after capturing a payload may present some interesting engineering and operational challenges. What we have here, gents is what corporate hacks call a paradigm shift! I love it!

Exactly where I am heading, rune. Glide angle is determined by lift/drag, not lift itself. All things in equilibrium it usually pays to fly at the angle of attack and associated airspeed that gives you either the best angle of glide or a little more slowly for minimum sink rate. Higher performance aircraft don't just look at glide performance, however. Margins above various controllability limits need to be maintained and adequate speed maintained for maneuvering and gusts. One of the practical reasons for flying high performance aircraft at speeds above Vld is soyou have enough total force available due to maneuver the aircraft into a satisfactory flare. This is why reference approach speed is not always 1.3 or 1.23 approach speeds. Flight testing and engineering may determine a given airframe's reference approach speed should be much higher so, as Rune as described, you can flare! You're doing Boeing's work for them, Rune! Anyway Rune is more concise than I am, but a low performance glider, like the Space Shuttle (in equilibrium) can maneuver into a nice flare given enough speed (dynamic pressure for nerds). The rub is how fast you can go before a fast landing turns into a slow crash. If you land so fast your tires break, gear detaches and aircraft balls up, the landing doesn't do you much good. So there is a minimum wing area (we won't go into airfoil design and lift devices) required for a given brick to flare and touch the ground at a survaveble speed. Since we don't have any control over the airfoils in KSP, we only have a couple variables to play with. We know Cl max for our modular wings and those wing s should stall around an alpha of ten to twelve degrees (seems that's what I have observed). So we can't really benefit from vortex generation as we would in real life, but the upshot is our math gets easier! This is great stuff! Thanks all!

What are thoughts regarding a vertical launch and horizontal landing at sea? You don't have to carry any fuel or parachutes, but you have to carry enough wing area to land at sea at a surviveable speed (50m/s) horizontally. Has anyone determined whether it takes more mass to lug wings for a seaplane landing? Right now, 20tons dry rocket only needs two or three parachutes followed by a very small amount of fuel to arrest the descent before splashdown.

So far it looks like my rockets have been in line with most of your designs, and this thread has been handy in convincing me to try a combined parachute-powered landing to minimize the amount of recovery mass I have to lug. I ran some quick numbers and see room for improvement.

Sim Kerbal. You run a bunch of research programs and focus on economic development of Kerbin while managing accident prone albeit devoted Kerbals.

Happy to share what I run across!

Look at this, fellow space nerds!

I guess Pronus makes a point.

How are you budgeting your delta v? Perhaps a little bit of adjustment in your design and mission plan could relieve you from lugging so much mass skywards?

They are nice looking to be sure.

I mean to say a lot of people share your view on this.

I have a reliable fifty ton lifter, but it's earlyish tech. It has a cost to orbit of 3000/ton before you add in the cost of your payload itself. what parts do you have available and what troubles are you having with your rocket?

I love it!

There has been a lot of suggestion for this.

Perhaps this is an idea for Oort Cloud objects?

This is one of my biggest desires on console. MJ, KER and other mods can be replaced with online tools and some quick work with a calculator. Precisenode is irreplaceable.

What ratchet said.

Do Kerbals even reproduce sexually? They have sexes but no children, like Eldar. This leads me to think they don't age and only very occasionally give birth. Perhaps they need large impacts or high levels of raditiation to trigger their planetary fertility festival?

I asked a similar thing about blisters. It's doable. It can be useful for things beyond antennae.

There are some pretty good ideas here. Really we need to ask, what is the practical motivation to explore? In human history it's usually tied with survival directly or indirectly (Polynesian clans forced to sea by conflict, searching for new fishing/hunting opportunities, new trade routes to out compete power monopolizing established routes, establishing plantations, avoiding some nasty naval encounters, etc.). KSP doesn't have these geopolitical and social aspects, so the science, exploration and tech nodes don't feel organic to the game experience. This is why I get more and more interested in divorcing techndevelopment from science and making science and contracts sources of funds. Funds get spent how the player wants on tech, infrastructure, personnel, failed launches, etc. With regard to science from Minmus or Mun, having decreasing science simulates us running out of things to learn on a celestial body. In reality, the reverse seems to occur. We find more things that illicit more questions and offer more opportunities. Subsurface, polar water on the moon, for example. If our discoveries make us money or give us more opportunity to make more discoveries, perhaps things will feel better?