RuBisCO

Just build asteroid colonies then, you can find all the same elements often in concentrations several times higher then any terrestrial mine.

No matter what we would need titanic amounts of hydrogen, either as water or hydrogen it self. Enough to make oceans on venus, best by converting all of its existing supply of CO2 into water and carbon. Just a negligible fraction of Venus's CO2 converted into oxgyen would be enough to make an atmosphere with breathable oxgyen partial pressure (roughly 1/400th venus's CO2), so the rest would need to be converted into water. Venus's atmosphere weighes 4.8*10^20 kg and is 96.5% CO2, that would mean we would need to import at least 4.2*10^19 kg of hydrogen to turn all that into water (and coal). This would make 3.4*10^20 kg of water, or about 23% of the water in earth's oceans, and probably two to three order of magnitude less then all the water on earth and inside earth. So even if we converted almost all of venus's CO2 to water venus would still be a dry planet with at least 1/5 the surface water of earth and probably less as it is slowly absorbed into venus's extremely parched regolith. Mind you much of venus would then be covered in several hundred meters of carbon soot, which I would hope is compacted under the water and does not absorb much of it like a sponge. How would we get all the hydrogen there? We would need to extract it from one of the gas giants, likely need something really crazy advanced like antigravity tractor beam atmosphere suckers or wormhole atmosphere pumps. Fun question, what happens to potential and kinetic energy when you have a wormhole on jupiter hosing out hydrogen gas on to Venus? I would assume to prevent violation of physics and making portal like proportional motion machines possible the wormhole would need to make up the energy difference, either that or the hydrogen comes spraying out at 22 km/s! Perhaps it could be done by thousands of titanic ships that skim the atmosphere of say Uranus (the smallest gas giant) harvest cubic kilometers of hydrogen, cool and compressed it into a liquid, and then fly over to Venus where it is dumped into the atmosphere somehow and the cycle repeated. The propulsion system would at the very least need to be nuclear fusion. One thousand of these ships reaching venus a year, each moving a cubic kilometer of liquid hydrogen would take 20,441 years to move the required amount of hydrogen. How would hydrogen make water? That part is simple thermochemistry: venus's own superheat atmosphere would do the job, converting CO2 to Methane and water via its own heat and pressure near the surface, bio-engineered microbes inoculated into venus's clouds could then back converted the methane into carbon (soot) and hydrogen. Eventually the clouds would become made of water (rather then sulfates and sulfuric acid). The clouds would start to rain down once the surface temperature got low enough. Depending on how thick venus's very thin crust is, and thus how well it convects heat, it could take decades to thousands of year to bring venus's surface temperature down even close to liviable, not assuming the time it takes the bring all that hydrogen of course. As the surface termpature drops on venus more and more of the conversion of CO2 and hydrogen to water would need to be taken up by cloud microbes. At first this process would consist of organisms utilizing CO2 and hydrogen to make water and biomass, then eventually dying or getting too heavy and falling to the surface where the heat and pressure pyrolysis the biomass into coal and the hydrogen floats back up. But once the temperature drops, organisms would need to be designed to produce pure carbon, either that or the surface would be covered in hundreds of meters of biomass, taking a good percentage of hydrogen with it, I would say roughly doubling the hydrogen requirement. And making venue's surface truly alien covered by a gigantic living “thing†hundreds of meters thick and covering all the low lands of the planet! Mind you it can be dead biomass or it would rot, oxidize and suck up all the oxgen and covert it back into CO2. All that assumes that eventually an orbital sunshade is made, For what will be left of venus's atmosphere consisting of 3 times the amount of nitrogen as on earth (three times the final air pressure of earth roughly) and with venus's closer proximity to the sun, bring down venus's surface temp will eventual require cutting down the sunlight reaching venus. A sunshade 4 times wider then venus at a point out at Venus's L1 would eclipse the sun completely, how to deal with solar pressure and the like I don't know, perhaps a stable point beyond L2 where solar pressure, the sun's gravity and venus's gravity cancel each other out can exist. Assuming all that, the at least 4.2*10^19 kg of hydrogen, the at most 50,000 km wide sunshade with light controlling apature. holes or vairable diameter. All of that Life on venus would be very different from earth (besides the the planet size bioroid or coal producing microbes). Venus's gravity is 90.4% that of earth's so gravity would be nearly the same, unlike on mars, but that residual atmosphere would be roughly 3 times as thick as the earth. Scuba diver's experience that pressure at roughly 30 meters under water, that pressure is were nitrogen necrosis starts to become noticeable, via scuba's divers "Martini's law" that pressure is equal to one martini, so everyone on terraformed Venus would be the roughly physiologically equivalent of drunk (mildly high on Nitrous oxide would be a closer analogy) Hopefully, probably human neural chemistry will adapt to the increase in nitrogen's partial pressure, so that they won't be 'inebriated' for the rest of their lives. Once one adapts to the drunken phase of life settling on venus, and setting up settlement need the few places of open water (or drinking off the gigantic teets of the planet size superorganism) the next thing to get use-to will be the day, for venus's day is ¼ of a year long! Venus's has a solar day that is 116.75 earth days long, with daylight for 58 earth days or 2 earth months, and nighttime for another 2 earth months. Noon, dawn, dusk and midnight would replace summer, spring, fall and winter as seasons. Venus's atmosphere will hopefully, even at just 3-4% its present thickness, still superotate, and thus bring heat from the daylight side to the nighttime side, keeping the winter-night bearable and the summer-day from baking hot. Animal and plant life on venus's would need to be heavily engineered to handle 2 months of daylight and 2 months of nightime. A very different kind of ecosystem would need to exist, for example migratory animals that stay in the daylight, all they have to do is keep moving east at an average speed of 6.5 km/h. Perhaps flying migratory plantimals that keep in the sun for photosynthesis, Hyper-evolved from the first cloud seeding organism used in the initial transformation. Besides that all the same strategies on earth for dealing with summer and winter might work on venus: hibernation, seasonal transformation, etc, except in just 4 earth month long cycles instead of 12. Growing cycles for plants would need to be short, at most 2 months, or they curl up for the winter-night to open up again for the daylight. So add all that together and terraforming venus is a tall order, and after all that work the resulting world maybe livable by human standards but nothing like life on earth, it would be... well... Alien. Terraforming Mars is frankly a much easier task, sure you would likely need orbital mirrors or sulfur hexfloride factories at maybe a few thousand kilometer wide comets made of alot of methane and ammonia, but that peanuts compared to the material needs of terraforming venus. I would say if you really want to be cheap just use the asteriods as material source for building huge orbital colonies, gigantics space stations kilometers wide that produce "gravity" by rotating, have climate controlled enviorments, and use artifcal magnetosphere and asteriod minned slag for radiation protection. Screw mars and venus and the moon altogether.

How is the delta-V greater from L2 and back then for LEO and back? Would not that 1.65 km/s be in the re-entry velocity? The re-entry velocity seems alright to me, falling from the edge of earth space to earth would impart a maxium velocity of 11.2 km/s, since instead of hitting the earth I'm flying right past it and back up the gravity well, thus most of that velocity is sucked off as potential energy, all I need now is to add the delta-v needed to go from escape velocity to L2, which according to wiki is 0.14 km/s, so there for it would be re-entry velocity - 11.2 + 0.14 which is pretty close to your 10.5 estimate. Likewise going form LEO to escape is 3.22 km/s going form L2 to escape is only 0.14 so there for I save 3.08 km/s leaving from L2. On my return I would save all of escape velocity except the 0.14 to get to L2. So by this rule of thumb: injection to Didymos (I assume somehow this includes delta-v to leave earth and delta-v to match orbit with didymos) LEO = 4.68 L2 = 4.68 - 3.22 + 0.14 = 1.6 Return from Didymos Earth = 1.65 L2 = 14.22 - 11.2 + 0.14 = 3.16 Total from L2 and back would be 4.76 km/s, if we assume none of 1.65 return velocity is in the re-entry velocity it would be 6.41 km/s There is also the option of using the moon to suck velocity when coming it, via a 2-body capture. That could take off at most 2.2 km/s, so my return delta-V could be as low as 0.96 km/s. There is also the problem of L2 point not being optimally placed for flying off to an asteriod, alternatively I could fly into a really high earth orbit beyond the moon, I will assume this is equal to L4/5, so that would add 0.33 (L2->L4/5) and 0.43 (L4/5 to C3) or 0.76 km/s total. There is of course your idea of flying around the moon and back towards earth and around the earth as well.

Are there any other planetary systems available, aka, has anyone made other planetary system via PlanetFactory CE that we can used in place of the standard Krags planets? I'm looking for someone to make a good asteroid mod, just a few asteroids maybe a "comet"

Thanks for the link. I'm aware of that, for my example of Didymos it has an orbital period of 2.1 years so launch windows would be available roughly every 2 years, as the earth will pass it by every ~2 years. 2006 RH120, the lowest delta-v asteroid on the list has an orbital period of just 1.05 years, so the earth would pas it by roughly ever 20 years, so a launch window for near minimum delta V would be every 20 years! Of course for the Didymos the delta-V to get to it would be variable depending on how far it is (between Aphelion and Perihelion and inclination) it is from the earth every time earth passes it by and a transfer could take place. The 5.091 is probably the lowest delta-v possible. If it was at aphelion then a space craft launched from earth would need to put in alot of detla-v just to get up to it, then match orbit, if it was at Perihelion very little delta-v would be needed to get to it as it would pass frightening close to earth, but then delta-V would need to be spent to match orbit. I would suspect matching orbit at aphelion would take much less delta-v then matching at perihelion and this would equalize things out somewhat. Your app was very helpful, my assumption about 2 years windows was right as well as variable delta-V, the best window for the next 30 years is 2022, with a 144 day stay time and 2.1 years flight time total, total delta-V would be 6.33. Using your assumptions though injection from L2 would be 1.78 km/s and return would be 3.72 km/s for a total of 5.5 km/s... that does not seem right.

The earth-moon L2 is a good staging point (assuming lunar mining and fuel production first) because it removes most of the delta V needed to get out of the earth system, for getting to a NEA the difference is HUGE, the nearest NEA would require just ~200 m/s from L2 (according to the nice cartoon above), but 3300 m/s from LEO (The delta-V to reach earth escape velocity plus a little more). Now here is my question to you, would it be a good rough bet then to subtract these delta-v figures here by 2.7 km/s (rule of thumb from mars and venus) to get a good rough estimate (say within 20% of actual) of what the delta-v from L2 would be to enter a matching orbit with any particular NEA on that list. Say for example it says the asteroid Didymos (1996 GT) would require 5.098 km/s to reach from LEO (I assume LEO) so it should require just ~2.3 km/s to reach from EML2, right? The list does say some inconsistent things though, it say 6.0 km/s is needed to "rendezvous" with the moon, but this is how much delta-v is needed to go from LEO and land on the moon (5.7 according the this cartoon, 5.93 according the Wikipedia but it is only 3.05 - 3.25 km/s to reach trans-lunar injection orbit, which would get you to "rendezvous" you would just fly around it and back, fly past it or crash into it without further delta-v spent once reaching moon space. So I'm a little confused if the table means it takes that much delta-V to just pass close by an asteroid or to match orbits with the asteroid. I'm assuming the later And now on the return trip if I was to leave an NEA it should require the same Delt-V to return if conditions were right. So no aerobrake but instead swing around the earth entering into a lunar transfer orbit, spend a little delta-V slowing down and back into L2. Of course more delta-v could be taken off by using the moons gravity to provide capture into HEO as well. In short I can use L2 to avoid having to "go down" most of the gravity well of the earth, just fly through it without having to spend energy to stay, most of my escape velocity and asteroid to earth transfer orbit velocity would be sucked up by passing the earth and flying all the way back up to lunar space to enter EML2 with minimal delta-v spent. So to get back from Didymos would require a delta-V ~2.3 km/s, via my rough estimate. Total from EML2 to Didymos and back would be 4.6 km/s. Is there anything wrong with this logic?

I think it ballzy as heck, I would not be so daring, but if spaceX gets it to work it will be incredible! Fly back reusably as traditionally proposed used wings to glide a booster back, such as the early fully reusable shuttle proposal of a booster shuttle and and orbital shuttle, the booster shuttle would glide back and land on a runway. SpaceX idea forgoes the need to wings (or a runway) hypothetially it could land right back at it luanch tower!

Institute a multi-decade plan and can't be changed or budget cut by the president or legislator without 2/3 house and senate and presidential approval... but that legally impossible. NASA achieve great things because (the moon landings) because it has two presidents (Kennedy and Johnson) backing its goal and all of the legislator, once the legislator change against it in 1968 with massive budget cuts and Nixon changed the goal (space shuttle) NASA was doom, Ever since then with practically every president the goals have been changed and the legislator has been relatively consistently against NASA.

All of this could be fixed with a time warp mode between physics time warp and non-physics time warp that allows very low level thrusting and limited spacecraft attitude control. Then we could have realistic ion engines and the like with spiral orbits and not wait days.

Question: does LH2 and LO2 still boil-off, and is there a part like a 'cryocooler' that stops boil-off with use of electrical power?

I circumnavigated Gilly for this thread (found a crack)

Fun fact, you can get the squid mod and squid most of the wheels, makes driving a lot easier in low gravity.

1. Get the late Mechjeb 2. Land rover somewhere 3. Set speed to something safe (like 5 m/s) 4. Go to map mode open "Rover Autopilot", open "waypoints", set up where you want the rover to go across the face of the planet its on 5. Hit "follow" 6. Leave, go to work, etc, etc 7. Come home and rover is where you told it to go.

I've landed there easy, manually even, what the deal? The problem is Delta V needed just to get to Moho. I done it by using KSPX ion engines or huge nuclear engine powered mother ship assembled in Kerbin orbit with fuel tanks and nuclear engines sheded on the way to moho, and a small lander and orbital docking. Also a Kethane refueling station on Gilly helps because getting to Gilly by way of Eve is like 1000 m/s less then getting directly back to Kerbin.

Question: does "better" aerodynamics translate into a need for shrouds and heatsheilds?

no they arn't pumping fuel, rather fuel is being drained from the side tanks into the center engines, this requires a system that can switch from outertanks to center tank once the out tank is drained instantaneously (without stopping the center engines), that never been done before.

If they manage cross feeding with 3 cores, they could strap on 2 more non-cross fed cores to make a 5 core rocket with 3 stage separations events. One for the cross-fed cores, another for the non-cross fed cores and one for the actual second stage. I would guess they might be able to get 80 tons to LEO on that, just a guess though. But lets not get ahead of our selves: they need to launch a Falcon 9 heavy first, and have cross-fed in operation, all this talk on a super heavy is just day dreaming until then.

I would have never built the space shuttle to begin with. After having spent billions building the Saturn V in the 1960's I would have stay with that for a few decades, upgrading it and having commercial contractors first build several reusable mini-space shuttle launched by Saturn I, Saturn 2/3 to bring personal and small amounts of cargo to a Skylab type spacestation. The mini-shuttle could have been used to work out technological kinks before having companies compete by the 1990's or 2000's for a system that could that could lift 20-30 tons to LEO with 1-2 fully resuables fly back stages, once that working then and only then finally shut down production of the Saturn V and its downgrades.

I would vote neither at this time. Certifiably SLS should have been pursued from day one (not Constellation) because a cheaper direct derivative of the space shuttle would have had great chances of making it to operational status, Constellation was simply too expensive. Another problem is companies like ULA and their lobbyist have learn over the decades how to game the system and drain every dollar they can out of a projects like this. A rocket designed by legislator would be grossly inferior and overpriced: the space shuttle is prime example. At this point the best hope is to have private companies compete directly in designing, building and launching rockets. It is my hope that SLS will hobble along for a few more years until it too is cancelled and then SpaceX and ULA compete directly for a heavy life booster. Now I'm not a SpaceX fanboy, I have hope but no confidence they will pull through, heck they got to do 10 launches this next year in order to stay profitable, good luck! Even so the Falcon 9 heavy ~50 tons to LEO is only 2/3 to 1/3 SLS capacity but this is not the 1960's we have the experience and technology for some degree of space assembly and even refueling as well as high ISP orbital propulsion options, in short if and when the Falcon 9 heavy is in operation the SLS may become useless or at least not worth the money for more development. At which point it should be dropped as a goverment project and ULA and ATK could pick up the pieces and make it a commercial rocket if it can compete against the Falcon 9 heavy.

Has anyone tried to fly a kerbal over a pole? Every time I get a kerbal to hit 90*60'60'' exactly it suffer a kraken attack, it think the problem is virtual gimbal lock in which as a kerbal crosses over the pole the camera whips around and the kerbal does as well.

I use it for things I have gotten board of doing manually. There was a time I used it to dock because docking manually caused me traumatic drenching sweat stress but ever since Docking Port Alignment Indicator and then Navball docking alignment indicator that has become a relaxing enjoyable experience for me. The latest build supposedly works in 0.23: http://jenkins.mumech.com/job/MechJeb2/lastStableBuild/artifact/jenkins-MechJeb2-136/MechJeb2-2.1.0.0-136.zip

Oh please, you don't know what never ending torture is, THIS IS NEVER ENDING TORTURE: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Sm368W0OsHo

Oh 0.23 is coming out, great now I have to wait like the rest of yous, if you had not told me i would have learn it about it after it came out and not needed to wait. Curse you all! Kansas: smack dab in the middle of nowhere.

That would be the most realistic unreal plot ever thought up, 5 internet points to you good sir.

Question: does it come with heat shield (deadly re-entry compatible)?