Duxwing

That's even worse: Virgin Galactic designed a craft whose flight tests are inherently fail-deadly. Your intuition is right: the surviving pilot did get gravely hurt. --- Reading this thread, I worry some write-off the crash as a necessary evil of the pursuit of space when the crew were pursuing no such thing. They were test pilots hired by Virgin Galactic to ensure its customers felt safe enough to pay huge sums for views and thrills. One man is paralyzed forever and another dead--his widow having "lost the love of [her] life"--so that rich people could have fun. Had this loss been for science, I might have wept bitterly, but I am just bitter: this company is like a theme park with a deadly ride. -Duxwing

This passage is disturbing: "SpaceShipTwo's fuel mixture from a rubber-based compound to a plastic-based mix  in hopes that the new formulation would boost the hybrid rocket engine's performance. Mickey said engines using the new type of fuel had been thoroughly tested on the ground. The final pre-flight qualification engine firing took place earlier this month. Friday's test marked the first time the new fuel was used in flight, but Mickey said 'we expected no anomalies with the motor today.'" In other words, one test pilot was paralyzed forever and another died because Virgin Galactic did not, like even the amateur group Copenhagen Suborbitals, first test their new propellant in unmanned flight. In contrast to the view that losing crew is inevitable and the public regulation-happy, I think that regulations should be passed and that the pilots' families should sue for enormous damages lest another such disaster as this one should occur. -Duxwing

Orbiting the Sun is OK: the treaty bans nuclear weapons orbiting only "the Earth". Now there's an idea! We could also avoid the issue by using antimatter--positrons alone should 'nuclear' include any weapon exploiting atomic nuclei. A gravity turn would be legal because the letter of the treaty forbids only "to place in orbit around the Earth" (italics mine) any nuclear weapons; whereas one would not "place" a planetary defense weapon but fire it at once. Moreover, the treaty's spirit would permit the weapon's launch were even gravity turning a deflector considered "in orbit": the treaty exists to protect Earth from such devastation as both extra-planetary nukes and impending asteroids would wreak. -Duxwing

Thrilling! And wow, I never knew that von Braun chose slave labor to build the V2s. I wonder why. EDIT: From what I read on Wikipedia I infer that he likely believed that even protesting the use of slave labor would have lead to his death. -Duxwing

Also consider the dry mass: 2.25 tons each, LV-Ns greatly reduce dV when excessively-many. -Duxwing PS I think you mean 50,000 Newtons or 5,000 Kilo-Newtons, which are KSP's thrust unit.

Obviously, missiles should be built now rather than when needed! I just think they should be kept in silos, where inspection and maintenance are easy and international legal issues few, and so launched as to never orbit Earth. I mentioned ICBMs because this treaty ignores them like it would ignore my proposed weapon, which would be super-orbital. Why would nations spend a fortune to maybe slag someone years from now when they can just push a button and nuke them today? We could approximate that government by making the UN a federation of nations. -Duxwing

Ah, but there is a loophole! The treaty bans, in letter and spirit, putting nuclear weapons in space for later use; whereas planetary defenders would use their nuclear weapon right away. This interpretation is evinced by ICBMs, which may carry nuclear warheads through space without legal hindrance. Clever-enough planetary defenders therefore could comply with the Outer Space Treaty--in letter and spirit--by having their weapon not stop once launched. -Duxwing

O_O Your engineering is awesome! -Duxwing

I want to see that mode in this film: may humanity defeat extinction with a unified, total effort of reason and resolve! -Duxwing

Foresight and judgment make long nights few. -Duxwing

If astronauts in cryosleep age like they would without it, then they thereby miss whatever time they spend cryosleeping. Saving ourselves headache and money by asking crews to surrender months of their lives seems unethical. Moreover, should space be man's destiny, a less-kerbal solution will ultimately be needed. -Duxwing

@TheSonicGalaxy Could a modpack containing all the dependencies be created? -Duxwing

Diet need not be adjusted for blood type: Dr. Adamo's hypothesis lacks "support by clinical trials" (Wikipedia). -Duxwing

My qualms about eating animals have increased with the years. I know that eating them serves no biological or chemical purpose, that my tastes would change if I stopped eating meat long enough, and that our descendants eventually might consider slaughtering and eating animals hideous and barbaric. Therefore, only one question remains: do I value animal life enough to endure a few weeks' discomfort and occasional embarrassment thereafter? I intuit an affirmative answer. -Duxwing

Reflective Ambient Light made KSP crash on my x64 build: would you like any crash files? -Duxwing

ERMAGHERD!!! *squeals and starts flopping like a fish* -Duxwing

Ok, I think we can agree uranium should be secured and would not devastate whatever lay downrange should the rocket fail. The next important questions are: 1) Who should launch uranium into orbit? Whoever does must be competent-enough to launch it correctly and neutral-enough not to weaponize an 'accident'. 2) How should public relations be managed? Funding and acceptance necessitate making the public understand that our operations are safe and benefit them. 3) How many launches should occur? Launching often makes launching usual and increases the number of failure points. -Duxwing

Wow! I had thought uranium was always radioactive. Its being usually-harmless better explains why unshielded workers can handle fuel rods and the Los Alamos team survived unless they were reckless. Of course, our descendants might, in their greater learning and wisdom, consider our orbital ambitions with the bespoke nuclear reactor absolutely Kerbal. -Duxwing

How would failure be managed? -Duxwing

We should go big or go home because pinching pennies never colonized a planet: build many big habitats, each with multiply-redundant systems, enough people to survive catastrophes, and transportation to each other habitat. -Duxwing

Why does the length matter? -Duxwing

Visiting my university for help picking classes last spring, I was invited to a quantum computing seminar. The lecturer presented the q-bit, a device wherein laser-emitted photons passing from one prolate spheroid* to another entangle a particle in the first with the particle of the next. Despite knowing almost nothing of quantum mechanics, not having slept the night before, and only having eaten a slice of leftover pizza that day, I was thrilled! I asked the lecturer, "How could we scale this up? I want to put this in boxes out the door!" When he answered that the state-of-the-art was sheets of chains of these pairs, I disappointedely resolved to at least imagine some way to improve this technology. Recalling reading about meta-materials in Kerbal Space Program, I vaguely remembered a Beyond Tomorrow episode wherein an opaque pane separating two cubicles clarified to aid conversation when both cubicle-dwellers faced it. Last I remembered that deactivating the laser disentangled the particles. The result seemed clear: separate the spheroids with a thin sheet of this material and control it with an electronic computer. These sheets could be arranged into cubes, their oblate spheroids extending from the faces, and the whole assembly replicated and connected to other assemblies with more cubes, the empty spaces filled with these spheroids to create a three-dimensional quantum computer. Its capabilities could be extended by inscribing another cube into the first, each corner of the inner cube touching the center of one face of the outer cube. The inner cube's sheets would transform from transparent to reflective, enabling photons not only to be stopped but arbitrarily redirected; obviously, the laser would have to be so narrow as not to go around the inner cube. The output of this hybrid machine could control the electronic 'substrate' of another, much-larger, three-dimensional array that would be faster than one directly-controlled by an electronic computer because, presumably, the hybrid machine would be faster. So... what do you guys think? -Duxwing *I cannot recall exactly what the spheroids were; I think they were of a gas so cold as not to collide with itself.

Why would people want to live in hollow halls beneath the fells? -Duxwing

Street wind, you seemingly assume the reactor must produce full power whether the engine is firing or not: do you, and why? If it need not produce power for twenty years, then could the reactor last longer by producing less or no power when the engine is not firing and full power only when the engine is? -Duxwing