KSK

Sort of. Around nickel and iron (elements 28 and 26 respectively) the nuclear binding energy per nucleon reaches a maximum. After that it would take more energy to fuse nuclei than is released by the fusion process, so fusing beyond iron or nickel isn't seen in stars - and even then, nickel is only produced, literally, in the final days of a large (7-11 solar masses) star's life. Or so Wikipedia tells me in about 10 minutes of reading. I haven't taken to time to chase down the references and check the details, although you certainly can if you wish. Any elements heavier than that are only naturally produced in supernovae. I think you can produce most isotopes synthetically as per @Terwin's reply but obviously that's not particularly efficient for making isotopes in useful quantities.

It wasn't until fairly recently that we found good evidence for water (away from the polar caps) on Mars and evidence that water has played a significant part in Mars' geological past. Mars appears to be dead - but we've barely started looking for life there. And if we did find life, I'd be hard pressed to think of a greater discovery. Nonsense. We think this is plausible. We have numerous theories on what those conditions might be and how abiogenesis got started on Earth. We don't know what those conditions were, still less that 'life will just find a way to exist via random chance.' Which is why finding life on Mars would be such a discovery - apart from answering the question of whether we are alone in the universe - it could teach us about those early conditions on Earth. Potentially at any rate. What do those Martian microbes use as genetic material? Terran DNA? Peptide nucleic acids? Some other double helix but with alternative bases? Something completely different? Similarly, how does the Martian genetic code work? Does it use the same set of amino acids as Terran life. How are those amino acids encoded in Martian genetic material (whatever it might be) Do Martians use amino acids at all? What about biochemistry? Does Martian metabolism use a similar set of reactions to Terran metabolism? How are those reactions catalysed? So many questions. Maybe Martian life is identical to Terran life (in which case, step 1 should be to check very thoroughly for contamination!). Maybe its recognisably Terran (DNA, RNA, similar proteins) but with some evolutionary divergences? Maybe it's totally different - which doesn't help us learn much about Terran abiogenesis but would be a fascinating result in its own right. Or maybe it lends evidence to one of our models for abiogenesis. Maybe Mars is an RNA world, for example. This is all highly conjectural of course. So far as we know at the moment, Mars is indeed dead. But the point is - we won't know until we go looking. And we sure as heck won't find out by fiddling around with Terran extremophiles in a simulated Martian test environment.

And/or a bunch of really frustrated women. Assuming that your spaceship isn’t able to accommodate them anyway, I would argue that babies are only an indirect problem. If an astronaut’s personal beliefs preclude them from using contraception or having sex other than for procreation, then a long duration spaceflight will most likely entail an equally long period of enforced celibacy in the company of other people who may not share your beliefs and will probably be taking a partner off to a quiet corner of the hab module at some point during the journey. That sounds pretty tough to me. Not insurmountable but tough. Apart from that, there are many options for not having babies. One of the most pragmatic would be to have every male crew member make a sperm donation and then have a vasectomy before the journey. Almost foolproof contraception plus non-radiation damaged sperm for starting a family afterwards. So no, it’s not nearly as big a problem as you’re making out and, depending on the crew involved, could conceivably be a total non-problem.

Well there's a pile of cliched tripe if ever I saw one. There are no 'ideal jobs' for any gender. Each would be as capable as any other aboard a starship. About the only situation I can think of where physical strength might provide an advantage (and thus men would, on average, have an edge) is EVA work in current generation spacesuits. Even then, there are no shortage of examples of female spacewalkers. They're vastly outnumbered by their male colleagues but they are there. Your medical concern is a total non-issue. Male nurses are a thing, for that matter (flipping the situation around) male gynaecologists are a thing - and you don't get much more 'up close and personal' than gynaecology. Absolute worst case scenario, have a mixed medical team and include a chaperone if the patient requests one. Your security example is equally lame. Women serve in a number of military organisations, women serve in police forces, historically women have served on the front in various support roles. For that matter, women have volunteered to be shot into space aboard controlled explosions. I think they're entirely capable of dealing with situations where 'the danger level is high.' I would have to dig out the relevant links but long duration crew dynamics have been studied and I've read that mixed crews functioned best, followed by all-male crews, with all-female crews coming in last. Assuming that's correct and hasn't been superseded by later research, that means that a mixed crew is the pragmatic choice for any long distance, long duration missions. Oh - and unless you're talking about a SpaceX 'Starship' (i.e. a starship in name only), a 'realistic starship' is a total oxymoron and likely to remain so for the foreseeable future. So trying to disguise this nonsense under a flimsy appeal to 'realism' is a non-starter too.

It sure is. Thanks @bigyihsuan! I had a look at the page this morning and I'll be intrigued to see any new additions as and when they appear. If you don't mind though, I'll not be contributing myself until the story is done. Mostly because I'd like to get the story done.

You do know that babies don't drop out under gravity right? Provided that your crewmember has something to brace against, I don't see an unassisted delivery being any more problematic than usual, although yes, keeping the various fluids contained might be more challenging. Check that - unsure if getting rid of amniotic fluid once her waters have broken would be an issue but suction devices exist for various medical and dental procedures so I imagine something could be worked out. If an intervention is required (breech birth or whatever), that could get tricky in zero-g but tricky in the sense of 'executing a complex task in freefall' rather than freefall making the condition requiring intervention any more complex. Edit: As for your first question, I would say no. The angular velocity you'd need to spin that 10 foot tube up to, to simulate 1g, would be high, most probably too high for comfort. If you want to play around with suitable values, have a look at SpinCalc. I'm sure other such calculators exist too.

What @VincentS said. The Enterprise was intended for multi-year voyages to multiple star systems. During that time it needs to be prepared for almost anything. Even with super-advanced Treknology, you still plan for the worst - if the far point of your journey is a couple of years away at Warp 5 then popping back to the nearest Starbase for a quick baryon sweep, window clean and top up of the graviton fluid in the inertial dampers, isn’t really an option. So you assume things will break. Taking along a starship worth of spare parts seems unlikely, so you need some way of fabricating parts, installing those parts and sourcing the raw materials to make them. Even with 23rd Century automation that still needs an engineering crew and probably quite a lot of it to cover all the needed specialisations. Then there’s the science crew. Given that we’re exploring strange new worlds and seeking out new life and new civilisations, the science crew is likely to be huge given that almost any scientist from an atomic physicist to a xenobotanist could probably make a case for a place on a starship crew. Then you need a medical staff to keep all your scientists and engineers healthy. Not to mention keeping the dermal closers away from the grad students - those things are just made for pranks. Then you need a diplomatic and linguistics team. Also a security team - even if you’re on a peaceful mission of science and exploration it’s probably better to have the guns and not need them than vice versa. And finally you need a couple of folks to actually fly the thing and someone to sit in the Big Chair where the Buck Stops. Most of this you never get to see on the TV show of course. There’s a limited amount of drama to be had from most day to day science and having the Enterprise spend a week or so at impulse speed searching for a suitable asteroid to pull up alongside and mine for raw materials pretty much kills the pacing. Much better to have Scotty pull another miracle out of his Jefferies tube and move on with the story.

May I render some assistance with these puns? I trust such will not cause mortarl offence?

And nary a water tower in sight. It’s like they’re not even trying. Next you’ll be telling me they make their rockets out of aluminininum alloys and such.

Age shall not weary him, nor the years condemn. At the going down of the sun and in the morning. We will remember. And your post works the other way around too. Quite a few fanfics here with an element of Mission Report. And some more-or-less ignore the Mission Report altogether.

Ahhh, Nature my old nemesis. You humble the soaring vaults of imagination once again. Seriously, that sounds (and looks) like a dead ringer for a proto-Kerm. Hope they seed a little more often though!

That is an excellent question. Hmmm. Kerm leaves have been consistently described as a being a glossy green or dark glossy green colour. That's more reminiscent of an evergreen. On the other hand, Kerm do have leaves and not needles. We've also seen that agriculture does peter out towards the northern reaches of Kerbin, suggesting that there is a limit to where Kerm can successfully grow. As you say, frozen ground would make things difficult for Kerm fibres. Biochemically, some degree of cold resistance isn't a particular problem. Various Terran species have evolved natural antifreezes, to prevent cell disruption due to ice crystal growth so I see no problem in, in principle, with Kerm having a similar ability. The antifreezes could even be a serendipitous byproduct of different metabolic processes in Kerban species. Kerm neural activity is also (as discussed earlier) based on some kind of electrical signalling, which wouldn't be overly affected by the cold. Best guess? They're evergreen and somewhat cold resistant although that resistance does have an upper limit. They don't go dormant but (and I rather like this so thanks for bringing this up!), fibre growth is probably inhibited by the cold, for self-protection. That implies, that if you're planting a new Kerm for Awakening, you're probably best to do it in summer so that Knitting of the individual trees can proceed as quickly as possible. In turn, that means that each tree is as young as possible (with fewer memories and life experience to integrate) when they cross the sapience threshold, thus not making the Awakening process any harder than it needs to be. We haven't seen this yet because all the Kerm we've met so far have been growing in equatorial climes or not too far removed from them. Does that sound vaguely plausible?

Wow - thanks to @LordOfTheNorth and @KerbMav for the blizzard of 'likes'! Cautiously optimistic that I'll have the next chapter done by tomorrow but it depends how late I stay at my mate's housewarming party today. Next week however, is looking like a bust for writing. House improvements are happening, as is a family funeral on Friday, and then I'll be spending the weekend in London visiting friends and godchildren. The following week though, I've I'm on leave with the explicit aim of bashing on with First Flight.

I think we've been through most of these comparisons before Falcon Heavy flew.

Thank you!

Yep - congratulations all!

Well the point is that not all fuels and oxidants can necessarily be produced with ISRU at a given location. Duna is pretty generous in that regard, giving you access to hydrogen, hydrocarbons and LOX but (again, assuming it's a decent Mars analogue) it doesn't have easy access to nitrogen, so making hypergolics would be more difficult to flat out impossible to make, depending on how you implement it. So, at least for propulsion systems, you'd have subsets of your Lego blocks that would be quite flexible to use around a given planet because you can generate the required propellant using ISRU. Using the rest of your propulsion systems would require you to bring the propellant with you from Kerbin, or somewhere else where you can manufacture it using ISRU. In this case, perhaps Ike has some locations which are rich in ammonia ice and can be mined to produce nitrogen based propellants. My feeling is that to make this work well, it would really need to be properly baked into the game design from the outset and would require a little less abstraction. As an illustrative, off-the-top-of-my-head example (so I fully expect one could poke holes in it), I would go with three propellant classes: kerolox (aka LFO), hydrolox (no direct KSP1 analogy) and hypergolics (functionally equivalent to monoprop in KSP 1). Each fuel has matching engines and tank types and each propellant type has distinct advantages and disadvantages in terms of cost, tank capacity, engine weight, thrust, ISP and ISRU requirements. So it's a wee bit more involved than KSP1 but hopefully a bit more logical too because you're not trying to make some mysterious LFO run everything from SSME analogues to F1 analogues to tiny probe engines. E.g. Hydrolox. Good ISP, reasonable thrust, reasonable engine weight, poor tank capacity, expensive. Simplest ISRU with the raw material (water) available almost anywhere. Kerolox. Reasonable ISP, reasonable thrust, good engine weight, reasonable tank capacity, reasonably priced. Moderately complex* ISRU with the raw materials in shorter supply than hydrolox, due to the need for water and carbon dioxide. Hypergolics. Poor ISP, relatively poor thrust, good tank capacity. Price and weight are inversely correlated, reflecting the fact that you can have pressure fed engines which are mechanically simple but heavier, or turbopump driven engines that are lighter but more complex, although this level of detail isn't directly exposed to the player. ISRU here is interesting and very situational. Icy moons have a decent chance of containing accessible ammonia ice (raw material for hypergolics), rocky planets and atmosphere-less bodies have almost no chance. * complex in this context could refer to price, energy consumption or location in the tech tree. Yes, that's a bit more fiddly than stock KSP1 but I don't think it's ridiculously over-fiddly either. Ideally it should mean that there's no 'obviously right' choice of engine for a given situation, so your designs don't feel too railroaded but some engines might need a bit of creative design work in the rest of the craft, or need more infrastructure in place to really shine. Ultimately, I think whether you enjoy this sort of thing depends where you find your creativity. If, as I think it is for you (although please correct me if I'm putting words in your mouth here) , the 'Lego' aspect of KSP is really important and you want the maximum flexibility to use any engine for any purpose - then the kind of system I'm describing above probably won't be as appealing. However, if you're the kind of player that likes Career Mode because of the imposed design choices at different stages of the game (and I'm not being contrary here I don't think - I've seen that sentiment expressed plenty of times on this forum), then maybe that it would appeal. Me - I'd find it to be a deeper and more engaging version of Career Mode that I'd find more fun than the current offering but reasonable players may reasonably disagree!

Assuming that you have access to carbon dioxide and water, then you certainly can make kerosene in-situ. Electrolyse water to generate hydrogen and oxygen. Reverse water gas shift reaction (carbon dioxide plus hydrogen gives you water plus carbon monoxide), gives you carbon monoxide, carbon monoxide mixed with hydrogen is syngas (short for synthesis gas) which can be converted to a whole bunch of things including kerosene. Or, if you want to run a methalox engine, electrolyse water to generate hydrogen, use a Sabatier reactor to convert carbon dioxide and hydrogen to methane and water. So, assuming that Duna is at least a rough Mars analogue with water ice and atmospheric carbon dioxide available, you could totally make hydrocarbons there. Eve *shrug* - who the heck knows what Eve is supposed to be. Edit. All of the above works on paper. In practice, the engineering would probably be quite challenging but fortunately KSP lets us abstract that away.

The ground scatter is a bit lacking and they really need to fix the textures on that big triangular building. Sci-fi rocket looks great though. What do you mean ‘not a KSP 2 screenshot?’

Quick update - I'm about 2,000 words into the next chapter. In which our intrepid kerbonauts address a slight problem of lubrication and come face to face with the Hot Pickle Heresy* - which is something that no Kerm-fearing Wakiran should have to deal with before breakfast. * may not actually be heretical

If it looks like a rocket and flies like a rocket - I'm calling it a rocket. A rocket cunningly disguised as a water tower if you absolutely insist.

Because at the moment it’s a (very pretty) steel sculpture. When it actually reaches space NASA will start paying attention. I’m as excited to see the finished shell as the next SpaceX fan but let’s not get ahead of ourselves here.

Double thumbs up - one for each chapter!

Thanks! I’ve sketched out a rough outline for the rest of the story and I reckon there’s about another 13 updates to go, including the last chapter and epilogue which are already done but may need a bit of tweaking to make them fit - the story has grown somewhat since they were written. That’s an extremely rough estimate and very much depends on how things go - I don’t want to force the story into an arbitrary chapter count. If I can, I would very much like to get First Flight finished before KSP II comes out. On past record that might be an ambitious schedule for another ~11 updates but we shall see...

Thanks! That's really good to hear. It was (by intent) a bit of an 'and time passes' chapter, so I'm glad it was still enjoyable!