KSK

OK but I think we're definitely starting to get away from any advantages that a habitation ring provides, versus just spinning the ship as advocated by Nibb31. It strikes me that a ship would need to be pretty sturdy to support multiple ring hubs, let alone that counterweight ring. At which point you may as well make the whole ship spinnable and do away with a lot of complexity.

I would dispute that but it was certainly needed for a show like Star Trek.

Meh, we could argue about this all day, given that 'Science Fiction' as a genre covers everything from short stories exploring the consequences of actual physics all the way through to brick-thick space operas. However, for most of your examples, I would turn your question around. Where did the writers of those stories get their ideas from? I would argue that the answer is in the name. There's a reason why we call this genre science fiction after all. Before nuclear fission was developed as a scientific concept (let alone a practical reality), any story about 'nuclear power' may as well have been magic, or more kindly: 'a name attached to a plot device to make it sound good but which has absolutely no basis in reality.' Verne's From the Earth to the Moon certainly predated the actual Moon landings. But to write that book requires a certain cultural and scientific background to even conceive of getting to the Moon by shooting yourself out of a giant cannon. Electric submarines - kinda hard to write about them before the concept of electricity. As far as the original post is concerned (planetary defense based on a Star Wars model), 'Science Fiction = Magic' seems entirely appropriate given the number of get-outs and what-ifs you would need to make that model even vaguely plausible.

I read somewhere (goodness knows where so no link I'm afraid) that Roddenberry had enough of a science background to understand that starships powered by rocket engines wouldn't work, so used 'warp drive' instead. Not because it was remotely plausible or had any theoretical backing at the time, but because the alternatives would have looked even sillier.

This. In practice I think planetary defense would boil down to a question of 'can I blow enough incoming rocks into small enough pieces before they take out my important infrastructure and/or render my biosphere uninhabitable?' That Star Wars model makes sense in a universe with force-fields in which space battles revolve around wet-navy tactics. Anywhere else it makes no sense at all.

Hang on. If you spin up a habitation ring isn't the rest of the spacecraft is going to spin up in the opposite direction anyway? It might not end up spinning as fast depending on the mass ratio between the ring and the rest of the spacecraft but you'd still need to design the whole thing to cope with spin. I suppose you could counter that with thrusters during spin-up, which would reduce the slosh problem but you'd still be applying a torque across the spacecraft and it would still need to be sturdy enough to handle that. Or am I missing something?

Yeah, yeah. Of quartz somebody had to say it... Nice update! The plot definitely thickens. We got Thompberry, we got kids, we got a mysterious AWOL AI, a drunken bet with sinister overtones. We got a strange Rock Lady, a very cool Múnbase, we got knives, sharp sticks. We got memetic overload...

Agreed but even allowing for that, there's definitely room for improvement. There are quite a few mods which show the kind of graphical improvements that can be added to stock KSP, particularly Scatterer, which starts getting close to what you see in SE. Better graphics can also add to immersion which is surely a good thing? To use a much worn example, clouds add a (to my mind) much needed sense of physical depth and scale to Kerbin. Maybe it's just me but I don't really get a sense of altitude when I'm flying in KSP.

Done. Added to the Works in Progress section on the After Action Reports shelf.

I seem to remember labyrinth seals being useful for this kind of thing, although you'd probably need something else to go with them. And curse you, Peadar - now I have a vision of said hapless sea mammals trapped in a maze.

That's pretty heady stuff coming from K^2, given that he(?) tends to be our resident debunker! Colour me excited.

Wow. Space... so much space. And that's just inside the ship. I gotta see this on the launchpad!

Nice chapter - good blend of images and dialogue. I was wondering what Bob's Chariot was for. Very fitting and I did like that final image of the Chariot heading towards the Munar surface, cargo doors open. And Jeb, you old showman you. Definitely looking forward to seeing the reusable Munar transportation system in operation and that base going up!

Yep, that was my first thought. Closely followed by YAY MOAR! Fantastic way to round out Act 1. Bring on the jelly donuts!

Heh - Jeb's company reminds me of something but I can't quite put my finger on it... Nice designs for the Dynalifts and don't be too quick to lose the dialogue - I thought your intro read really well. Looking forward to seeing where this goes, or rather, how it goes, since we already know where StarEX are going in the short term!

Go, Chuck, you big softie. Enabling is what being an 'uncle' is all about. And yeah, I would say The Martian works better as a book but the film did do a very impressive job of translating what's essentially a diary, to the big screen.

Permission to groan, Ma'am?

D'awwww! Looks like you even found a way to melt Mort's heart!

But not essential. Given a choice between loading up with a couple of cubesats or extra safety measures on my flagship crewed spacecraft, I know which I'd go for.

New Graphic Novel shelves added to the Library. Stocking is in progress, this may take some time. If I could ask a favour of any authors out there working in whatever format - please could you flag up any finished tales, either with a forum tag or by revising the title a la Kuzzter? It just speeds things up if I can see whether to put your work in the finished or WIP sections of the Library without having to skim through the whole piece first. I do try and follow, or at least keep up to speed with newly emerging stories but keeping track of 'em all is a big job! Edit. I'm also taking the opportunity to have a bit of a clearout of the Work In Progress section. Any work that was last updated in 2014 or earlier has been moved to the Abandoned section but can easily be moved back at the author's request. Cheers, KSK.

If folks haven't already found it, then the Interstellar Missions of this Wikipedia page provides some interesting figures, complete with references. Interesting that one of the proposals is suspiciously similar to the Avatar starship, right down to mentioning (and linking to) a further page describing the (incorrectly named as it turns out) antimatter catalysed nuclear drive. However, to reply to magnemoe's last question, a fission based Orion ship could apparently reach around 0.03 to 0.05c, with reference figures provided for a 400,000 ton (fully laden) vessel, that would reach Alpha Centauri in 133 years, reaching a top speed of 0.033c

Ahhh, of course. I was thinking of 'seat of the pants' flying which I was why I was wondering about auto-miscorrections. 'Having a gut feeling' makes more sense and it's interesting that there's a very similar idiom in German.

Back of the envelope calculation: Falcon 9 can put a little over 13,000 kg into LEO. Dry mass of Dragon 2 is about 4,200 kg and it can carry a payload of just over 3,300 kg to ISS. Leaving SpaceX with 6,500 kg of spare capacity for fuel, consumables and redundant systems, assuming that they're not already factored into that dry mass. In other words, SpaceX's current workhorse booster, which they're cheaply mass producing (inasmuch as rockets are ever mass-produced or ever cheap) has more than enough performance for the job. It's not like they have to develop a new, higher performance booster just for Dragon 2.

Not sure if 'flying by belly' is an autocorrect snafu or just a phrase I've never heard of but I like it! It also sounds like something I should be really good at.

This is not my idea by any means - can't remember where I got it from I'm afraid so can't attribute. Anyhow - the Thud makes (or used to make) a spiffy rocket assist for very early recon planes. The early jet engines are rather altitude limited and sometimes you get a contract to take readings from above that altitude. What to do? Solution - go Kerbal and add rockets to everything! Build your normal early-game jet and strap a pair of Thuds to the back. Climb as high as you can on jets, zoom climb to altitude using the Thuds, grab yer science and hope you can glide back to somewhere suitably flat for a deadstick landing.