NGTOne

Man, I wish there were more people who actually think about these things. I don't know if your theory holds water or not (will give a more careful reading tomorrow), but damn is it good to see someone thinking seriously about the nature of the universe, especially when they're not being paid for it. Faith in human race restored, and keep up the good work! +rep

I think what he's referring to is a larger battery, something meant to store mains power. That being said, you'd need a crystal that wouldn't shatter, even at a high amplitude. I don't know of any material like this. Any chemists/physicists care to step into the ring?

In my view, no - there aren't any paradoxes that are strictly mathematical/logical. So far as I'm aware, all paradoxes arise from constructions of language, which by its nature is an imprecise and illogical thing (hence the paradox). Any purely logical processing entity (i.e. a computer or robot) would eventually reach a mathematical contradiction (this is a formal-logic term, with a precise meaning - think 2=3 to get the general idea). How it dealt with this contradiction would dictate its response (whether it crashes, freezes, or simply ignores it). Any halfway sane programmer would tell it to simply ignore the contradiction, as opposed to having it freeze or crash (it's like a divide-by-zero - a ridiculously basic condition that is dealt with trivially in ALL modern computer systems at a very low level).

Ditto. (10char)

Personally, I'm of the view that my body is a tool like any other - if it's damaged or obsolete, I replace/upgrade.

I saw one a while back (seems to be gone now) that took people's messages and tweeted them from LEO. And then there's this. Ambitious? Yes. Is their cost estimate off? Most probably. Interesting? Hell yes.

Not sure - the effect sounds more like how lightsabers in SW are described than anything else. Man, welcome to the future, eh?

Hell, it's already started - I've seen successful Kickstarters for small CubeSat missions.

The problem with NASA is that it's a US government agency - it has a massive bureaucracy, part of which only exists to serve the needs of the bureaucracy. This also means it has the US government's typical culture - i.e. "it's not my job". Somewhere among all the buck-passing related to Challenger (and there was A LOT of buck-passing), the launch date ticked closer, and everyone made the lowest-impact decision (at that juncture) - to launch. The same thing happened with Columbia - they could SEE the damage, the analysts on the ground UNDERSTOOD that it was an issue, but the information got distorted so badly by the time it got to the decision makers that it didn't seem so bad. The rest is history. Kicker is, the same exact sequence of events happened once before - on another Shuttle flight (I can't remember which), they lost a tile or two on the way up. They took some pictures, came back down, and the people on the runway c***** bricks.

I usually build 3-stage rockets - stage 1 gets dropped during vertical ascent, stage 2 part-way into the gravity turn, and stage 3 after my apoapsis has reached the desired height. Stages 1 and 2 tend to have TWRs in the 1.5-2 range, whereas stage 3 tends to be about 0.7-0.9. Tends to be more efficient. My usual ascent time, between liftoff and MECO, is about 4:30. I tend to use my transfer stages to circularize, to cut down on debris (stage 3 falls back down).

From the sound of it, there was some sort of RF transmission going on, and possibly some sort of signal interference.

What are those inflatable hab parts? I've never seen them in the HOME pack...

Not entirely. Semiconductor fabrication is ALREADY very capital-intensive (the CHEAPEST new semicon plants cost on the order of a billion dollars, with the biggest ongoing project being in the realm of 12 billion), so, given the right environment, it might be possible to build an orbital facility of some nature for not much more than an existing ground-side facility. The upshot is, the cost of RUNNING a semicon plant is rather small. Downside is, the yield (actual amount of finished product they get for a given input) tends to hover around 30-40% (the exact figure is closely guarded). In space, even in a "dirty" environment like that surrounding the ISS, I estimate that yields would increase significantly, because two of the major factors in semiconductor rejection (airborne particulates and gravity) would no longer be present. In addition, the microgravity environment would allow for the fabrication of significantly larger wafers (on the order of meters across, something which is impossible on Earth because they would bend and crack due to gravity, ruining the batch), which would drive down process costs and allow greater innovation. In short: the entire semicon production process, from beginning to end, would benefit from a 0G vacuum environment, with (with correct design) a capital cost not much more significant than that of building a terrestrial plant. Naturally, a high level of automation (something the semicon industry already does) is a must. The latest plants are even completely automated (the so-called "lights-out fab" concept).

TygSpace? (10char)

Fair enough. Problem is, not all fusion reactors have commercial potential - i.e. it's possible to achieve fusion reactions in all of them (duh), but you can't hit energy breakeven all of them. Besides, Polywells are actually seeing a resurgence of interest, from somewhat unexpected sources - US navy, anyone?

What game is that?

The problem is, that doesn't work - fusion research is complex enough without the added factor of scaling it down. Technologies have, historically speaking, started large, and then iteratively worked their way into a smaller and more efficient form (or greater punch for a given form factor). See: steam power, internal combustion, jet engines, etc. Building a breakeven reactor is hard enough - good luck building a miniaturized inertial confinement setup, for instance.

There haven't been any experiments in part because there was no suitable platform for experiments. Take semiconductor manufacturing, for example: In order to experiment with semicon manufacturing in space, you have to put the whole infrastructure in space. Wafers are too fragile to launch in a rocket. So, basically, in order to build an experimentation infrastructure, you need to build a factory. Hence, no good platform for it.

No, tokamaks are still a few years off.

I think part of it is that nobody's actually PROPOSED any sort of space manufacturing system, even as a blue-sky thing - I did a cursory literature search on the topic through my university's publications database, and nothing came up.

OK, the question this time around is simple: of all the industrial/manufacturing sectors, which do you think would benefit most from a presence in space? i.e. for which sectors would space factories be most beneficial? Personally, I'm of the view that the semiconductor industry will pioneer space manufacturing, possibly even without space mining concerns providing raw materials - semiconductor products have a high value/kg, the resources cost pennies on the dollar, and semiconductor manufacturing is already very capital-intensive. In addition, the 0G vacuum of space lends itself well to semicon fabrication, as a single mote of dust or a gravitationally-induced sag of a few µm on the ground can ruin a batch of product. What do you all think?

I can't argue with that - then again, there will always be turnover, especially in 3 years' time, DOUBLY especially on an indie game where there may be differences of creative vision. I wouldn't mind seeing a new "who's who", though.

Why can a Kerbal survive for centuries in deep space clinging to the outside of a rocket on a rickety chair? And then, the next day, climb into the Mk2 and do it over again?

I'm wagering he changed the root part over and over again

The big tanks/engines are the 7.5m set from Gaby's Quick and Dirty Miscellania. The upper stages are KW Rocketry (I'm currently designing a Mk2 version that uses NovaPunch instead of KW, with the goal of being able to reach all corners of the Kerbol system - still going to use GQDM as a booster, though). Thrust on the big ones is 15000, and their Isp is 265 at sea level and 340 in vacuum. Not terribly efficient, but puts out a lot of brute force (perfect for launching those large, ridiculous payloads).