Riven

There are a lot of challenges to the laser comm approach such as the narrow cone as you point out. There's also atmospheric scattering and interference form the Sun, but those will eventually be overcome in the coming years through robust error correction. Right, while you want to send a signal only as strong as you need, other factors have to be considered. Though power output isn't necessarily correlated to bandwidth - you can design high power resonators (e.g. TWTAs for space applications) that have a narrow bandwidth. The DSN transceiver package can transmit whatever bandwidth they want at tens of kilowatts, at a high price, of course. This provides a great visualization of the DSN's capabilities in real time. When you look at the data from it, you start to wonder if any alien out there can pick out our RF signals if they try - it's an argument against the OP's topic: the power we receive from spacecraft like Voyagers 1 and 2 is just so minuscule: That's about 700k times weaker than what your typical WiFi radio is capable of receiving. (Every 3db you double your power.) But, as you said, we can forget RF and do that with transits, direct imaging (oh please pls JWST... pls launch successfully), and spectrometers to find those biosignatures.

But what if the life that is almost statistically certain to be out there is so advanced that they don't use anything in the electromagnetic spectrum? And who knows what that might be? Something utilizing an aspect of quantum physics we haven't discovered perhaps? Or if they do use a form of EM, perhaps their encoding is so advanced and data rate is so fast that we wouldn't be able to tell there was a message sent. And like DDE said, When SETI beamed their famous message to M13 from Arciebo in 1974 (as a test of their system, not really for the intent of communicating with aliens), they were assuming that it was in a decipherable form. Just like the point that has been brought up a few times in this thread already, would aliens even care to look? Because of the absurdly low chance of finding something they (and we) can understand at an acceptable signal to noise ratio, is it even worth looking for life this way? Would they even know what to look for in terms of radio frequency? Maybe the best way of looking for sentient life in EM is in the visible regime where you widely distribute an array of telescopes that point in the same direction kind of like ALMA, except larger? (Then you have to consider light delay, stationkeeping, so on and so forth.) It's literally anyone's guess. I'm not saying we should stop looking for life, my point is that we should search for sentient life in a more feasible manner, which may not involve RF.

Okay, understood, because there are other bodies influencing the osculating elements of the craft. Just a rough estimate to the nearest degree in GEO and lower is all I need where I can refine from there, which I can do as an exercise as pointed out by @Delay. I desperately need to review orbital dynamics from the basics anyways. Amazing propagator and keep up the work here and in astrophysics.

First post in a looong time - never really had the time to play KSP at all for the last couple years, and I demand as much realism as possible so when I ran into issues and mod conflicts, I kinda... gave up several times as the 20m+ load times were just too much. Anyways, I did a cursory search of this thread for a way to display predicted orbital parameters such as inclination, and I couldn't find anything immediately. Should I pull out an orbital dynamics textbook to hand calculate approximate plane change burns in two-body? I'm willing to do it to brush up on orbital dynamics, but am I overlooking an obvious setting or option that will display a patched conic approximation of a maneuver as in stock to check my work (or if I become lazy which is more likely)? I understand that it's an n-body propagator (amazing at that) but still.

I'm trying to install the RO suite of mods plus Principia on 1.2.2, and every time I attempt to start the game, it crashes at the end of MM config. For a split second before the game crashes, it shows the following in the window: ModuleManager: 11465 patches applied, encountered 2 exceptions 1 error related to GameData/DeadlyReentry/DeadlyReentry.cfg 1 error related to GameData/RealismOverhaul/RealismOverhaul_Global_Config.cfg When I look through the logs, I can't find anything relevant to these errors. Also, I've tried browsing through the forums for a similar error, and I found something that was related to RealFuels configs being horribly broken. I tried most of the 1.2.2 versions of RealFuels to no avail. I am running this in a separate folder from the Steam install. Log: https://drive.google.com/open?id=0B0IgJepV2oR-LVNzZDVRbkYxMzA

Zero guidance systems allowed, otherwise we would be violating ITAR. As long as the center of pressure is below the center of mass, it'll fly straight given our fins are installed straight and the launch rail is straight. But for altitude control, we're gonna throttle the engine (won't give specifics on how until competition is over), which doesn't fall under guidance systems. And yes we're working with roughly 500m/s. For 45kFt ASL, that's the altitude we're trying to achieve - it has to be launched from the ground. Due to FAA restrictions on the site for that day, we can't fly above 50kFt and we have to achieve at least 30kFt to qualify. Thank you! Thanks! I attend SJSU, and I'm interested in electrical propulsion, specifically gridded ion thrusters and MPDTs.

It would be at least in the high six figures, seven if you're going bipropellant with turbopumps. Be prepared to ask executives of companies in person to sponsor you. Source: VP of operations for a space exploration org at my university. Our current flagship project is for the FAR-Mars competition. TL;DR for competition description: you fly an unguided liquid methane fueled rocket with 1 kilo payload to as close to 45,000 feet as possible, and we have until May 2018 to put something together that flies. We've done a lot of the theoretical calculations so far, and we have designed the engine already, but guess why we can't do testing and manufacturing yet? Money. We estimated that this rocket - including GSE, ground station electronics, custom fabricated test stands, test equipment - will cost us upwards of $60k. The engine itself would cost $15k to 3D print out of Inconel 716. It would be 3D printed because drilling extremely long and thin regenerative cooling channels into the thin, curved walls of a small methane fueled engine is probably impossible. While most of our efforts are focused on continuing to design, the president and I are organizing business majors to go to companies in person to attempt to get funding (or even spare rocket parts). We had limited success with Cryoquip, Inc. when we talked to them in person over the summer for example - they were extremely excited to design high pressure composite cryogenic tanks for us - but they got some LNG deal in South Korea recently and they dropped our project. I skimmed through this thread and saw something about using turbopumps. If you can shell out tons of money for the manufacturing of it, then sure. We considered turbopumps over our helium pressure-fed system for a week, but after realizing the engineering required for the complexity of designing and manufacturing one, we elected to use a helium pressure fed system pressurized to 15Mpa. We intend to apply what we learn building (and hopefully launching) this rocket to design an orbital cubesat launcher over the span of a few years because we need research, experience, and money/sponsors with operating something like this, and who knows, another university with extremely deep pockets (cough Purdue, USC, etc) could beat us to it by then. 1U cubesats - 10x10x10 cm. These can be as light as 1 kilo. If you have a highly directional VHF/UHF antenna and the right radio equipment, you can communicate with one in LEO.

Well, it's partly hyperbole. Still, I'd think it defies some logic at first glance because it's asymmetric design is forward-swept in general (the middle span isn't even the same sweep as the starboard wing) which is inherently unstable as forward-swept wings have a greater tendency to pitch up - how many general aviation aircraft have you seen or know of that have forward-swept wings; the two different sized fuselages at first glance would seem to make the plane less stable because of asymmetric drag, yet there's no problem with it since it's flying in that picture; and the seemingly asymmetric thrust because of the offset engines.

My most favorite - Burt Rutan's Boomerang. It simply defies logic. I like almost all of Rutan's aircraft, but this one is the best.

3rd year at San José State studying aerospace engineering. I intend to go straight into a masters program at either SJSU or Stanford (SJSU's AE department has all Stanford-educated professors - extremely tough profs), and mid-professional career complete a doctorate at Stanford. My 2nd and 3rd years of college have gone extremely well; however, my first year didn't. My forum name, Riven, provides a hint. I trapped myself into a 10-12 hour routine of playing League of Legends (sometimes 16 if I felt like I was on a hot win streak) that first year, and eventually I lost track of what I was truly passionate about. At the end of the academic year I forced myself to quit because my grades were in the dumpster. Almost two years have passed after stopping, but there's one thing I won't let go from LoL: the lore. I love good lore, and the reason behind my forum name is because my favorite champion in lore is Riven. I have recently started playing KSP again - the last time I played was on 0.24. KSP is a game that I can quit/pause when I need to quit/pause it, unlike League where you're heavily penalized for quitting mid-game. Anyways... about my real interests. I can't quite decide between several specific fields in aeroastro, and I'm intensely interested an all of them: > Turbomachinery: Jet engines, liquid rocket fuel pumps. There are many aspects of jet engines that can be improved - reduction of noise (NASA's innovation on the GEnx turbofan used on the 747-8 and 787-x has dramatically reduced noise (the chevrons on the exhaust)), improving fuel efficiency through higher amounts of compression and hotter combustion (in turn requires better materials engineering), improving airfoils used in the fan and turbine stage to also increase efficiency, and even scrapping the turbofan and creating propfans that have even higher bypass ratios (but require hotter combustion temperatures and single-crystal superalloys that can withstand those higher combustion temperatures). Perhaps high-bypass engines can be made smaller as well because high-bypass turbofans such as the GE90-115B1 are nothing short of enormous. > Aerodynamics: the real meat of aerospace and the aspect that requires a lot of math. Take an airliner, for example. Wingtip vortices need to be reduced in the long run because as more and more people travel via air, landing separation needs to be reduced and wingtip vortices play a large part in determining minimum aircraft separation. If an aircraft is following too close behind another, the vortices from the leading aircraft might be severe enough to crash a plane; and if aircraft are too far apart, delays at airports would get longer and longer as airlines attempt to schedule more flights a day. Also, there is substantial room for improvement in fuselages: making them oval. Fuselages already act as lifting bodies (you've probably discovered that in KSP especially if you've used the FAR mod), so by widening the fuselage into an oval cross section, an aircraft can carry more passengers in a shorter plane, have shorter wings, and therefore reduce induced/parasitic drag (not sure which is which but I'm sure that those both types increase as speed increases) thereby increasing fuel efficiency. Wings and their airfoils are another point of improvement. Continuously varying the type of airfoil over the span of the wing and optimizing it for the unique conditions on each small section of the wing requires intense study and intense CFD (computational fluid dynamics). Therefore, improved computing power can further make aircraft more efficient for a certain regime of flight (usually cruising ;p). > Long-duration space travel and ISRU: In-situ resource utilization (again, RoverDude's mods, Majiir's Kethane mod from long ago, and some other new ones I've still yet to familiarize myself with) is paramount to sustaining a population off-planet. While the great big habitats from Interstellar (2014) and Elysium (2013) aren't on the surface of another celestial body and have the potential to be 100% closed loop (i.e. they can sustain themselves without any supplies from the outside), ISRU technology would still be necessary to construct these habitats. Raw asteroid or lunar material for example would need to be processed into useful materials like iron, nickel, hydrogen, oxygen, and more. Ideally, you'd want 100% of that material to be used in constructing habitats or bases. Unfortunately (in my opinion), the infant private space industry isn't focused on accomplishing these goals first - they're more concerned about providing methods of getting to other planets or celestial bodies and sustaining these colonies is so far a secondary objective (I'm looking at you, Elon Musk and Jeff Bezos). But I will definitely say that fantastic progress has been made in the private space industry in getting larger and larger payloads farther out there as well as making them reusable. True, my opinion might initially seem narrow-sighted, but I would think that if humans were to make a real effort in living in space, more R&D funding and efforts would be appropriated towards ISRU. > High speed interplanetary communication: In order to support the growing number of probes and missions out there, more dedicated communication modules or even spacecraft should be deployed. Not only that, but newer methods of communicating between endpoints should be developed, such as laser-based communication (was a brief experiment with the Messenger probe). Within a couple decades, I want someone to send a probe with a live (~20min delay) 4K/24fps video feed from the surface of Mars. But the only way for that to happen is if we expand our space-based communication infrastructure. I am aware that this turned into an opinion piece, but I am genuinely interested in all of these subjects and it's honestly difficult for me to choose what I want to focus on because I know so much about all these subjects. So, that's me. ~Riven

Because of how thin MBA's are, and because they only have 1 small fan, thermal management is quite poor. In my experience with a friend's 2012 MBA, a game/program that utilizes even 50% CPU load and all of the GPU will send the die temperature to above 100°C very quickly. After that the CPU will throttle back to attempt to keep the temps under control, and even then the temperature may still continue to climb. I did a simple test with Minecraft running max FPS on that computer and after 10 minutes the CPU die temp was 105°C, so I stopped. As MaxZhao said, you're probably gonna need to take your graphic settings all the way down. You could probably invest in one of those laptop coolers that you put under a laptop like this one for example https://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=9SIA6SY2Z13018&cm_re=usb_laptop_cooler-_-9SIA6SY2Z13018-_-Product

Thanks everyone! Looks like I've indeed missed a ton! 64-bit... oh boy. I'm probably gonna be one of those people with close to 100 mods Reminds me that I used to play FAR all the time so it shouldn't be too much of a problem but ooooh stock realism like aerodynamics and burning up in the atmosphere - KSP has come quite far in the time I've been gone. I think they had just released a career mode, but I wasn't too much of a fan (probably because it wasn't that great). I'll definitely give it a go after I assemble my addon/mod list :3

So League drew me in for a while but bored me to death as of late. Decided to make a forum account some time ago but I never got around to using it for real-world aerospace discussion in the Lounge. I haven't played since 0.24; I can vaguely remember playing with KSP Interstellar, MechJeb, some communications relay/delayed command mod, RSS on one save, FAR, various Soviet-era rockets and engines, and life support. I guess during that time people were asking for a stable 64-bit build for Windows and Mac, I think the former got it but how about the latter? Did a 64-bit Mac version ever materialize? If so then I'll be modding my game as far as my RAM and SSD swap space can take it.