TomKerbal

Great work, I really like it. I always liked the Japanese space program as well. Great enthusiasm. Getting the maximum with very limited budgets. I often work(ed) with Japanese engineers and I really enjoyed their competence and their enthusiasm (and their politeness of course). If I am allowed to say so.

May I ask: is this fantastic work supported by Mitsubishi ? I have some contacts to the Japanese automotive industry, so I am interested

That is so amazing !!!

Congratulation to your graduation !

I also came from PS4 (where I originally found this jewel KSP). So I think it's a good idea for KSP2 to be published on consoles again (marketing!) . And the main reason I changed to PC version was that *!**!*!*# SAVE bug on Playstation. Oh no, it was the Real Solar System mod... o.k., but also this game breaking bug on PS4. So no, I don't think we will see a well developed KSP2 for consoles.

So no, with today and near future technology there is no way of getting a spaceship in relativistic speed regions. But in theory it's funny to think about it again. The question of physical realism in the stock game is a very big one (that is why I only play with RO mods by the way). I absolutely understand the reasons. But for example thinking about the Kerbol star system and its super dense planets (which are by a factor of 3 or more more dense then every known material) made me think about an old idea: Since there is the theory of "island of stability" in nuclear physics there could be material with a much higher density than we have in our planet system. Well, that's SciFi, but a good one, since it is not fully fantasy nonsense (like space lifts - must be ;-) ). https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Island_of_stability

Apropos pedantic : If you dive in a (initially) vacuum chamber filled with water the pressure above the water surface becomes 23.39 mbar (given 20 degC, or ? Fahrenheit+-7.39292%.. today (approx., with a good glass of wine)) and the pressure in 40m depth is (ideally speaking) 4.02339bar then . And the imperial units are more and more becoming impressive for me. You can even dive in it !

Great ! Very interesting, I like it. Ball lightning... (the Germans again :-) ). Make it so ! Engage!

This is really amazing exiting topic. Do you have some references ? You mean: Cooling down an anti hydrogen gas with additional positrons ? How on earth should that work ? Well, perhaps generating anti-protons and positrons in parallel with a (huge) particle accelerator, cooling it down instantly.... no. I can not imagine. I do not know a electromagnetic trap (stable or not) that can hold a macroscopic amount of (anti-)matter for a long time. Even under perfect conditions, due to the Coulomb scattering I already mentioned. It's just pure happy fantasy for me yet, but if I am wrong, I would be very excited. Perhaps this could be interesting: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bose–Einstein_condensate . Storing some antimatter near absolute zero Kelvin. Hard to achieve. Not many particles. How about storing solid anti matter by the way ? Just have a big anti matter - permanent magnet which just hovers above a superconductor like it is shown here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Superconductivity ? But because of sublimation (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sublimation_(phase_transition) there will be always atoms leaving the material leading to *BAMM* . At nearly zero Kelvin ? Who knows. Perhaps. We should try :-D ClF3 ? Brutal combination of chlorine and fluorine. Comparing to that substance from hell C-Cl4 (Tetra Chlormethane) is nearly harmless, it's only extremely carcinogenic. I know it personally. I once had an accident with that substance (flowing over my hand). Happy, that I am still alive decades later :-)

But isn't a black hole a singularity ? Do you mean a black hole with a 2D surface ? Is this possible ? Universe is full of wonder...

From my (very restricted) understanding of wormholes no material structure can "survive" the transition through a wormhole, because everything except from masspoints is torn into pieces because of the gravitational gradient there. So they can never ever be used for something material. So this is pure SciFi for me. Perhaps we can send information through them for talking with friends in Andromeda galaxy ? I recently read an article in Scientific American concerning this, and I think they wrote that this is not possible. Not even that... bad times for wormhole traveling I think...

Sorry to disappoint you: It is not possible to generate significant amounts of anti-matter (>1µg) and it is not possible to store it without disastrous losses (yet). All particle accelerators on earth did not generate even a µg together yet (correct me if I am wrong). These nice little traps are only capable of storing single (or a few) particles: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Penning_trap https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quadrupole_ion_trap If you are trying to confine a macroscopic amount of particles (well, not 1t, but perhaps 10^9 particles of s.th., is it already a femto Gramm?) you are running into Coulomb scattering which is a big problem for particle confinement (since there is always a small part of particles you can not confine anymore, whatever you do). So in magnetic traps some plasma parts have loosen so much of their magnetic momentum that they will travel along magnetic fieldlines leaving the confinement cell. Cooling down everthing helps of course. With matter it's often not that problem, because it does not hurt much (except a little bit of Bremsstrahlung) if electrons bang to the confinement walls. With antimatter... you know... Since I left university many years ago their might be new achievements in the meantime (esp. in fusion research), and I would be very happy if someone has more promising and up-to-date information.

I just measured it: 1cm is pretty much the length of the fingernail of my little finger (nail cut short, but not quite short, just normal short, or something). :-) How about that ? I mean, an inch is nice, but combine it with a centimeter ! Wuaa

Yes, 1m is easily to measure. Normally I use a folding ruler for it. Try using weight scales for measuring weights as well. I think it's much more precise than "measuring" a distance in inches with your finger. That's medieval. And that's o.k. But nor for science and engineering. I think that has become clear. I also like units you can easily imagine, like inch now (thanks for explaining! I will use it more often from now on!). But if you start calculating something more complex you suddenly know what we SI-people are talking about. You just don't have to care about units at all (!) when transforming equations in SI-System! And that is because it is a so called "consistent" unit system. And, as you can already imagine, the imperial unit system is not a consistent unit system. No, it's not. From my point of view as a scientist that's the by far the most important difference between SI and imperial units. So I like a mixture of SI and imperial units. Use the units you and people around can imagine but only use SI for (complex) calculation and switch to common units when talking about SI based calculations (like 1000bar pressure instead of 100000000 Pa). And be careful when using mass based units for forces (like kg.f). A "tonne" is a mass and not a force. When using it for a force it's meant to be the gravitational force of 1t at technical standard gravitational acceleration (9,80665m/s^2). So when being at moon I always multiply it by the factor of 6 for my lander designing :-) Not exact but nice for good and quick estimations ( I really like them; and imperial units could perhaps be helpful for that purpose.. I really have to think about that). And last not least: 1bar for every 10m water depth you are diving (well, approximately, since water is not fully incompressible).

How about inside Sagittarius A* ? Nice place to hide. Even if you find it there, you can not return with it ;-) I think it's hard to realize such an procedural launch tower because of the freedom of construction we have in KSC. But I think they should try despite.

I would everyone here kindly suggest to have a look to the NASA flight protocols of the Apollo missions (downloadable at nasa.org). Extremely interesting. Despite from that there are SI units and imperial units in the tables shown in parallel; first for calculating (and for the German rocket engineers probably), second for thinking. And that's what I often observe when working together with colleagues not used to SI units in their ambient. Well, US colleagues are the ones with the hardest dislike by the way I have the feeling ;-) In hole Asia it's normal for engineers and scientists to use SI and derived units (at least in my project experience).

Bulgaria ? Tervehdys Suomeen !

I also think that good looking graphics is very important even for a physics focused game. To show beauty of nature, to make the simulation look&feel realistic. For heart and soul.

I wonder if they were able to manage the huge particle confinement problems of such systems in the last decades. During my PHD thesis in the 90th we also researched on an alternative (to ITER) fusion generator based on cyclotron resonance acceleration. But we were not able to stabilize the plasma (too many particle losses / too less particle concentration for fusion processes / problems with diamagnetic effects). I also perform a simulation of an Ion source for the Berkeley Labs since they had similar problems with particle losses (electrons). Good old days... But since many years have passed they may have made great progress concerning these problems. And as far as I understood the Helion confinement is based on a pulsed magnetic field generation. That's different to our approach we had (continuous operation). We had a maximum of about 3T , the pulsed fields have a much higher maximum (12T or something). Well, interesting.

Exactly :-) That's what I meant. Otherwise it had perhaps been defined as 1/300 000 000 * c0 * 1s . Its origin is a handy unit afterwards taken into a very scientific system you are absolutely right.

Well, the SI system is now not only purely scientific origin, I would not say. A meter is about an arm's length, a second about a heartbeat and a kilogram (based originally on the original kilogram in Paris) should probably correspond pretty much to 1 liter (=1/1000 m^3) of water. One meter, about one step. That's probably where this originally came from and was then taken as the basis for a consistent system of units, the SI system. And exactly, man has 10 fingers, normally ;-) 24 hours each 60 minutes each 60s has the day, because it probably fits well integer with previously defined second (so well that only every 4 years is a leap year) I could imagine. One could have taken also 10 hours with 864 minutes per 10 seconds :-) But you can not count so well. Unfortunately, many non-SI units are also used in our country (felt more and more). For example, there are different "inch" units (screens, pipes), miles (nautical and whatever). Extremely confusing.

If you want to order a beer there's not an issue, you're right. It's only an issue if you want to calculate with formulas. And then it's a huge issue. Let's take Newtons F = m * a as example. In SI simply put your mass and the local gravitational acceleration in SI units in (kg and m/s^2), and you get the force in SI unit (N) which pulls you to the ground after the 5th beer when visiting Munichs Oktoberfest (I can tell). Easy as cake. When working with formulas you do not have to care about units at all. That's quite nice. What conversions factors (or even offsets) do you need in imperial units for even that simple (but magnificent) formula ? And more complex formulas quickly become a nightmare in Non-SI- units. And it's only a small number of units you have to know in the SI system. One can scale it easily with base 10 prefixes (as mm, cm, km and so on based on the meter e.g.) . Degree Celsius (no SI unit, but commonly used in Europe) is a little bit a special case, but its only an offset to the Kelvin scale. But nearly nobody knows the Kelvin as temperature unit in Europe ("Ah, do you mean Calvin and Hobbes?") . And a liter of beer (1l = 1/1000 m^3) is also nice. Cheers ! Tom

Very funny discussion :-) Btw, you could also check: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/International_System_of_Units https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SI_derived_unit What's written there is exactly how I learned it at school/university. Sometimes I really like Wikipedia. Best wishes for usage of "Rankine" temperature unit ! Tom (using the "i" for the imaginary unit.. and "j" for current density)

Yes neodymium magnets (NdFeB) are really strong. I once saw a big screwdriver hovering (nearly) horizontally in front of a vertical mounted big neodymium magnet. I mean perpendicular to the surface. Very impressive to watch. By the way these magnets are "magnetically hard" materials, so its remanence flux density does not change significant in external magnetic fields. But they are weak considering thermal stability due to its low Curie temperatures. Place them in an oven with 300 degC (what's that in Fahrenheits ? ;-) and they are good as babies :-) I would admit that you can not build materials with much higher remanence flux densities. Stronger fields require high electric currents (generated by superconductors without Ohmic losses). Have a great day, Tom

Hello together, does anybody know if there are plans to migrate this beautiful mod to KSP 2 ? Perhaps in KSP 2 there also will be the possibility of using the correct axial tilt for the moon ... that would be very nice but I dare not believe it. I know it's a little bit early to ask this :-) I am really looking forward to KSP 2 . This mod in combination with Realism Overhaul (and relatives) and the overwhelming MechJeb mod is simply great ! Thanks a lot for your work ! Tom