magnemoe

Problem is that photons don't carry much momentum for their energy. Orion pulse nuclear planned to use plastic to convert the x-rays to heat and an tungsten plate to transfer momentum to ship. This has an historical parallel, The preferred historical weapon does cutting or stabbing, swords and spears. The problem is that you can not cut trough chain mail, not to talk about plate. You can stab trough chain with an sharp point but not plate unless you have an sharp point on something like an halberd. But you still feel an mace to your helmet so blunt weapons become popular fighting armored enemies. So momentum carrying charges is an option, you can mount the shield generator flexible but you can overcome this.

This note this is an patrol craft, you could get much larger missiles on an smaller ship at the expense of range and seaworthiness. I assume spaceships would be heavier because they need to carry more fuel and reaction mass. Now you could escape lots of the problems is the shield generator could move relatively to the ship. Just have it suspended from all directions around the center of mass, probably with an focus on front or aft. None thought of this like The Mote in God's Eye or the follow up who had massive battles with shields and nukes, including fighting inside an red giant star But no thought of the momentum from the blasts. Read one book with an sort of stasis field bubble who was used as an orion drive.

Gas turbines like helicopter motors don't produce much trust but they are very high trust to weight, add this to an hybrid drive train. https://www.koenigsegg.com/technical-specifications-gemera-2023 something like this but build stronger think Hummer, note that this thing has +2000 HP then combining IC and electric.

Who is kind of cheating. Kind of having two docking ports in KSP 1 who is half an meter apart facing each other inside an box. Set the magnetic of one and the other to max. You now have an reactionless drive who don't require power. You can scale this up using more ports.

Remember you also have to carry the fuel so your starting weight is much higher The rocket equation is very true for planes and ships. Long haul flights is fuel limited also even transatlantic flights can not land with the fuel they carry so they need to burn it or dump it before landing. Its also an limit on the size of motor ships who can cross oceans, sail boats don't have this limit. Carriers and battleships was often set up to refuel their destroyers. This was even part of their armor setup as layers of liquid and air kills the effect of mines and torpedoes.

I say don't go oxygen rich, yes Soviet did it but they went full flow so they did not need to run it very hot, same with the space shuttle using hydrogen but its not practical with RP1. Raptor does this on both lines who is insane. Else using hydrogen you want to go hydrogen rich if the trust is not critical as the hot hydrogen gives lots of ISP.

Its some benefit to have an rocket engine who can be test fired then fitted to an disposable rocket. Who is most rockets with a few exceptions. This was an problem with the N1 as the engines could not be test fired. Its true for solid fuel rockets but they are much simpler than an high performance liquid fueled one.

Using balloons and KAS winches I was able to enter Jool atmosphere and get an stable attitude above the crunch depth, i then lowered Jeb down to the ground but he was just jumping around unable to plant an flag. Jeb then went into the accent stage, I dropped the decent and exploration module and then staged then the balloons had done their job, This was before reentry heating, submitted an bug report on it. Next version you could not longer land on Jool but it was now transparent at some kilometers above the crunch depth depth who was way weirder.

The sterile environment get you allergies is at least an generation old. It makes some sense think bored soldiers in an war zone or an cat playing with an mouse. Now your grandmother having lots of allergies who sounds very weird, but I'm 55 and my mother was old then she got me so my grandmother was born in 1905. She would not live in an sterile environment even if an princess before WW 1. But your grandmother might grew up in the 60's or later. The Berlin war fell 35 years ago after all,

I think the initial gas cloud is huge think an light year or more in diameter. So any sideways movements would be magnified many order of magnitude. And you would have movements because of tidal forces and light on the cloud. Something made it collapse after all. Now the planetary formation we don't understand well I think. The old theory was that the inner planets are of rock as the light elements did not stay as it was to hot but they stayed outside the asteroid belt so the got the giant planets. This makes some sense but then we found the hot Jupiter's

True but an engine who is not redlined is more reliable, its risk math I don't thing we know enough of but guess BO had done plenty of work on. An benefit of going for 9 engines is that you can drop the second stage earlier this is not so important for an ship landing but very important for boost back. Yes they are not planning on it but its tempting with lighter cargo.

Detecting life is much easier than civilizations until it has significant structures in space, a bit below Kardashev 1 below would be minimum. The reflected light from an planet is many order of magnitude stronger than any radio signal we can create, not even sure how strong an focused beam would be after many light years, benefit of radio is that its easy to filter out the no signal parts. Pollution is kind of an iffy techno signature, they tend to be short lived as technology moves on, its also something alien life often could create naturally and you know that the planet has life if you have so good atmospheric readings, 10-30% oxygen and an nice temperature and you are pretty sure. Think you need to get out to 550 AU to use the sun gravitational lensing not sure how good an telescope you need but don't think you need an very large one as its the secondary mirror. Its something to do after we find the first planet with clear life signatures. As I understand you would get an 100x100 pixel view of an exoplanet. You can get life without oxygen but it would probably be pretty primitive as oxidation is an excellent way to get energy. You can get oxygen without life but its mostly based on water breaking into oxygen and hydrogen, the hydrogen escapes. probably that happened on Venus, It also happen on Earth but at an low rate.

Makes some sense, kind of Delta heavy launch.

Cell signals is interesting they are very diffuse but also directional but direction is pretty horizontal so seeing the US from above you will not get much, you will get more signals if east or west coast is on the horizon then viewing earth from far away. The WOW signal was someone painting an asteroid or some unidentified space stuff with an powerful targeting radar.

The moon does tilt a bit relative to earth but its 10% something, having the sun move 30 degree would probably work but I guess you need an decent elliptical orbit to start with, or having an decent sized moon, probably closer but it could be smaller. If planet is pretty young it also helps.

Ok so it is known, was not sure they knew. And yes to not be dependent on it is nice but my guess is that you would operate out of an base or orbit. It would also make the logistic easier as its less parts who can fail and I assume an lower energy budget.

I say an drill rig would be an obvious cargo on the initial cargo mission. An satellite who could detect permafrost water would be even better but sure you still wanted an drill rig. I'm pretty sure permafrost water is say 3-10 meter under the surface pretty common on mars but we don't know where and how much. I would mine the ice the same way we often mine for salt, pump down steam to heat the area around the hole up and pump up the melted water and the condensed steam. Water would then need to be cleaned and some of it reused for more steam, pretty sure this would use much less energy than the electrolyte.

Agree, now I'm pretty sure they use an hydraulic driven drill heads, benefit is that it both cool and take away the cuttings

For oil drilling you use hydraulic powered drill heads, these tend to be 30-50 cm and you can control them to drill vertical. My apartment blocks is heated by ground water and heat pumps. Its an river nearby so we simply steal heat from the ground water flowing by. These drill rigs is much larger than the ones used for rock blasting. Its also horizontal drilling for pipes for getting under roads and housing but this tend to be in dirt not rock.

You don't want the roof to collapse, period. First an thin structure is much easier to make an large hole in by driving some heavy equipment into the balloon than steel, also if it collapses you have to dig up the hole again and replace it. Or its an leak because some drove an forklift into the wall, add some patches then you get an crew in to patch it.

Well pet monkeys has been a thing. An single species of intelligent animals makes much more sense than the sort of furry universe there all species is sentient. However note that none of the ducks wear pants, this one is old. Did not notice the moving ears until looking at it today. And the ears just in simple 3D is just look wrong. Some stuff don't age / translate well, with 320x200 resolution you needed an giant sword for it to be obvious the character was carrying an large sword. Translate it to HD and 3D it should not be something who is 3x15 cm in diameter. Just an long sword with an long handle for easier handling. China and Japan had the same thing. Sword is longer but not significantly thicker not even scaled up.

Think ice who sink only exist under very high pressure as in 5.000 bar as an starting point so you will get surface ice even in vacuum if cold enough. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phases_of_ice#/media/File:Phase_diagram_of_water.svg And if say the deep ocean trenches would freeze it would probably not matter that much but if ocean is deep its an problem, they believe some of Jupiter's moons like https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Callisto_(moon) has this issue while Europa's gravity is weak enough to avoid it. Note that an deep ocean world will still get this bottom ice with an +100 km deep ocean even if planet is in the habitable zone, here you can use photosynthesis but water will likely be mineral poor.

Think most bodies out past the ice belt will have lots of water, I would not call that in the temperate however. Its also pretty easy to get too much water as with very high pressure like over 10.000 bar who is easier on an high gravity planet than an icy moon you will get exotic ice types who is heavier than water and can handle high temperatures so if ocean is 200 km deep most of it would be bottom ice. So no thermal vents and little minerals in the ocean.

There seems to be something wrong with our bloody ships today This was an deep space transport who got some structural issue, Used for resupply to places like Moho. It was an class of ships, the Duna / Ike one had more larger crew spaces. Fuel tanks shifted quite a bit, the engines less, only this ship had this issue but the hinges shifted a lot so I stopped using them. Better view of the ship during aerobraking, the affect ship I managed to brake but did not attempted to aerobrake but got it into an ecliptic orbit, refueled and took off crew. It ended as an station and fuel depot around the Mun.

Not only that but they move around on the head Note how both ears has moved then seen from the side. Right ear is moved up and left is moved back. Don't think about it too hard it was to make it easier to draw. However then using 3D it looks like its more work. Here I say more standard ears would be much easier. Here you also see that the ears are not spheres but an dish who always point to the camera.