KSK

Begin, the flame wars must not.

I see a flaw. They’re building a rocket in what is quite clearly a space plane hangar. Which means their symmetry settings will be all borked. And on a serious note, I don’t have anything much more than woaaaaah. Said in a very small voice.

Yeah me too (flying off the handle that is). Apology more than accepted and thanks in return for de-escalating this. Cheers for the link too - I think 'the Swiss Cheese model' rolls off the tongue far more easily than 'the cumulative act effect'. Also thanks to @mikegarrison and @DDE for stepping in with the serious answers.

Okay, I can get that. Genuine question then, to somebody who's opinion I respect - how do you gauge that? I'm working on the (possibly naive) assumption that if a company is putting out a good product, which meets the requisite safety standards, then that implies a good working culture behind that product. Or, at least a fault tolerant working culture. Maybe that company does have a long hours culture for example but if it's putting out a good product then surely it's also got procedures in place to mitigate any adverse effects of those long hours? Especially in aerospace where I can well imagine that those safety standards are rigorous. And - I may as well say it - especially with SpaceX, where they do have a decent track record in launching, recovering and relaunching, boosters. Enough of a track record where it's no longer looking like a one-off or a fluke but something with decent procedures and working practices behind it. Educate me here. I'm being reactionary for sure but I'd prefer not to be reactionary and flat-wrong with it. Edit. Never mind. The Shuttle was a quality product - right up to the point where it wasn't. I need more sleep.

Not entirely sure how CRM fits into the conversation but okay. I'm well aware of both of your other links and you'll note from my post that I had no problems with contractors products being scrutinized for safety testing and quality assurance. And yes - if workplace culture is affecting either of those, then that's a legitimate concern and the contractors should be called out on it. This review though, at least from that Seattle Times article, looks like a crock. "NASA spokesman Bob Jacobs declined to comment on what prompted the review. But in a statement, he said it would “ensure the companies are meeting NASA’s requirements for workplace safety, including the adherence to a drug-free environment.” " Ignoring the 'drug-free environment' bit, because that could just be media spin, if you're going public with a review then you should go public on the reasons for that review. Transparency should work both ways. "Gerstenmaier said the review would focus not on the technical details of developing rockets and spacecraft, but rather the companies’ safety culture — encompassing everything from the number of hours employees work to drug policies, leadership and management styles and whether employees’ safety concerns are taken seriously. “Is the culture reflective of an environment that builds quality spacecraft,” Gerstenmaier said." Pray tell, how does one define a culture that builds quality spacecraft? If said spacecraft are meeting NASA's man-rating requirements then, by definition, they have to be quality spacecraft, unless said man-rating requirements are just a load of hooey. “As an agency we’re not just leading ourselves, but our contractors as well." And there's the problem right there. As I understand it, the whole point of Commercial Crew was to try and get away from that mindset. Give your contractors a clear specification and set of safety requirements to work to and let them get on with it. Edit: The article is also very SpaceX-centric. For the avoidance of doubt, I'm not defending SpaceX here - this is a crock whichever company you're talking about.

Scrutinise the product - yes. Scrutinise the contract to make sure the taxpayer isn’t being stiffed - totally. Scrutinise processes for testing and quality assurance to make sure those tax dollars are buying a safe (within the boundaries of sanity) rocketship - absotively posilutely. Scrutinise ‘workplace culture’ - that’s a total waste of time and money that frankly smacks of ‘we can’t hobble them with technical hoops to jump through so let’s throw this mulch at them and see if *that* sticks. And if their restrooms aren’t spit-shined to military specifications or their works canteen is painted an unpatriotic shade of beige, well so help them.’ It shows a distinct lack of trust in, and very poor relationship management with, contractors in my opinion. If Jimbob on No 2 welding rig at Boeing has a couple of beers at lunch and sticks a hole through the fuel tank that afternoon - that’s for Boeing to sort out. Oh - and isn’t it nice that the taxpayer ain’t picking up the tab for Jimbob’s stupidity? Likewise if Frank on No 4 pipe bender at SpaceX partakes of a Camberwell Carrot one evening, comes to work the next day and makes a pretzel out of the LOX plumbing on the first three Merlins of his shift. Provided those pretzelled engines never make it anywhere near a finished product then, so far as NASA is concerned, that should be that.

Ahhh - so that's what the delightfully counterintuitive change to BFR was all about. They're rejigging it to use hybrid motors powered by recycled red tape (RT-1?) and nitrous oxide.

Excellent question! I can’t speak for the other writers on the forum but I have to admit that when it comes to emotional responses I treat Kerbal physiology much like human physiology, simply to provide a convenient reference point for my readers. I guess my one concession is that I tend to place quite a bit of emphasis on gestures connected to heads and eyes when describing Kerbal body language. Would love to hear your ideas here because it’s a bit of worldbuilding that I haven’t given much thought to myself!

Where do you think they get the RP-1? Mining your fuel from the runway... #ItWorksInKSP.

I think that second point is slightly unfair. The three films that the OP referenced were hardly remakes of remakes. Sure, calling two of them hard sci-fi might be a bit of a stretch but they were all a bit different and, speaking personally, I enjoyed them all. Similarly, Arrival was very different and, again in my opinion, very well done. Good enough that I bought the book after seeing the film in fact. Even some of the endless stream of superhero films (and there, I do agree that that's become a seriously overused genre lately) were pretty good films, with decent characters and character interaction even if the stories were (necessarily) far-fetched. The third point - well you've got the big weasel words right there: if done right. Some stories just don't translate well to the big screen, or at least not intact. I thought Arrival was quite a good example of that. The central conceit of the story was fascinating but it was - wisely in my opinion - somewhat skipped over in the film. Trying to convey that conceit on screen without breaking the flow of the film with excess exposition would have been extremely hard and probably not worth the effort (artistically or financially), given that the film was already somewhat off the beaten track. And that, I think, is one of the fundamental problems with hard sci-fi films. If you're basing the story primarily around the science then, unless you can fit in a lot of seamless exposition (and remember that exposition takes time, which is a valuable commodity in a film), you're basing it on something that most of your audience won't get, or care about. That still applies even if you can assume that most of your audiences are at least somewhat scientifically literate. How many cell biologists (for example) are going to know, or care about the finer details of orbital mechanics. Story comes first. If you can tell the story without taking too many liberties with the science then great but mostly that's a bonus. Because science for science's sake makes for lots of exposition and a dull story. The consequences of that science, the social changes that that science enables, how the story characters react to those consequences and changes - now there you've got some serious scope for storytelling. Whether or not the science is presented absolutely correctly, isn't so important, especially on the big screen. Jurassic Park is a prime example here. Even in the book the 'science' is pretty laughable and, even if you don't know the first thing about genetics, its not hard to see some serious logical flaws in it. That doesn't stop Jurassic Park from being a great read - in fact I'd say that throwing in just enough plausible technobabble to tell the story, was one of Crichton's strengths. Regarding hard sci-fi films about space - they also suffer from a couple of other problems. Pacing is one, spaceflight being generally about short periods of high drama and/or complicated maths, interspersed with lots of journey time. Tension is another. I've found this in my own writing - it's surprisingly hard to have something go wrong with a near-to-current-technology spacecraft, that the crew can plausibly recover from. It's even harder if you're not re-writing Apollo 13. Out of fuel - astronauts are dead. Booster explodes on launch - astronauts are dead. Major system malfunction that can't be repaired - astronauts are dead. Wrong shape of CO2 scrubbers that can't be rejigged with a checklist cover, duck tape and an old sock - astronauts are dead. Makes it kind of hard to inject suspense into the story.

What couldn't you add to a KSP 2? There's are no shortage of suggestions, personal wish-lists and perennial pet peeves on these forums. I agree with @Bill Phil - if KSP 2 is ever greenlit, it would be better to rebuild it from scratch and then use that rebuilt foundation to improve on KSP. Be bold, do something different, even if the resulting game doesn't resemble KSP 1 much at all. It might be different but that doesn't necessarily mean it's also going to be worse. Heck, it might even be better. A KSP 2 with minor tweaks and performance improvement would be a mistake in my opinion. It would be competing with KSP 1 from the outset, not to mention SimpleRockets 2, any other KSP-clones that appear in the meantime, or HarvesteR's new Balsa game. KSP was a brilliant concept - but that concept is now old. It also remains a niche concept, albeit one with a very passionate following. If KSP 2 simply rehashes the same mechanics 10 years on, I'm willing to bet that most of the reviews will be variations on a theme of 'meh - I can get this for free with KSP 1 plus mods'.

I believe it's the TACCATA repeat motif found on the Y chromosome. So-called because when you read it out loud, over and over, it sounds like the soothing sound of rolling stock over railroad lines.

This is legit. Can confirm. Truly a great chieftain of all puddings that e'en the wing of a Converter would be challenged to cleave. Ahhh but would that be the gentle Naln of the Gednalnan lowlands? Redolent of honey, heather and the warming goodness of the sun o'er the loch. Or is it the fiery and unquenchable Naln distilled only on Eye-la. (Which is never, never to be confused with the neighboring isle of Islay.) That Naln is truly fit for a warrior, if only because its raw blend of salt and peat smoke laced with the medicinal tang of iodine makes for a handy disinfectant in times of need. Also - inquiring minds would like to know - have the Gedalnan's discovered the delights of cranachan? A soothing yet nourishing blend of cream, fruit, oatmeal (because, by royal decree, all Gedalnan cuisine must contain oatmeal somewhere) and just enough Naln to put a gleam in your eye. And I'm quite partial to the Music of the People myself. When heard from a safe distance it fair lifts the hair on your chest and makes you proud to be Gedalnan. Edit. One Song of the People, albeit one of dubious historical accuracy which tends to be sung at Gednalnan sporting events or by Gednalnan's who have perhaps enjoyed just a touch more Naln than is typically deemed wise, goes something like this:

Nice! Guess they got there a little too early to find a Santa Claus.

Not quite out of fuel - and the gas station is in sight. Three weeks to go and I'll have served my notice on my current job, then I get a two week break before starting the next one. Not sure when the house will be sold though so we'll probably need to be keeping that in good saleable condition for a while yet. Basically, life is stressful and busy at the moment and I'm not finding the 2-3 hours at a time that I need to take a solid run at the next chapter. But that's going to change.

@Bill Phil - I like it! Definite vibes of HAL's last message in 2001 and very spooky. @Kerbalstar D'awwww. That's not spooky... yet. "Puff the Magic Kraken. Lived by the Explodium Sea..."

In that case I'm going to take 'smoother than a kerbling's bottom' for $100.

Well don’t keep us in suspense! Is it or issn’t it?

Shipping trinkets to orbit - $10,000 per kilogram Keeping your astronauts from going stir crazy in their collection of tin cans - priceless.

I’ve been dipping into a mix of games lately: Battletech, Baldur’s Gate enhanced edition and lately, Surviving Mars.

Okay, I've got one. Now edited for length. "And they found it the next morning...inside his locker." There was a long pause and then a chuckle. "Nice. You almost scared Wernher with that one!" "Thought it would," replied Bob, ignoring the muffled protests from the radio. "Hey, Jeb - you want that pumpkin juice?" "Yep." Jeb snagged the bright orange squeezebulb drifting across the cabin, and took a long swallow. "Time for another one, Flight?" "As long as it's not a Jebediah special." Jeb affected a wounded expression. "I don't know what you mean." He put his drink within easy reach. "Anyhow - did you ever wonder why you can always hear birdsong around the KSC - but you never, ever see any birds?" "Can't say I have." "Well, neither had I until last Hallogreen. Bill and I were driving back from Kerbin City that night, when suddenly we were surrounded by lights and the noise of thousands of birds. Bill put his foot down, the car shot forward and then - just like that - the lights vanished and everything went quiet. Now that seemed a bit odd so we backed up a way and - snap! Noise and lights. Drive forward again - nothing. We tried it two or three times and..." "Very scientific," said Gene dryly. "And spooky of course." "That's not the spooky part," said Jeb. "We went back out there in the morning and - as near as we could work out - the lights had appeared just as we drove past the ruins of the old burned down propellant research complex. "So all the birdsong around KSC is made by ghost birds," Gene yawned. He leaned over his console to retrieve his coffee when he caught a glimpse of something on the main monitor. Frowning, he took a second look. "Oh very good, Jeb." "Huh?" "That was pretty good but you can put your props away now." "Gene - I have no idea what on Kerbin you're talking about." "On the couches, Jeb. Get rid of them!" "Get rid of what?" "I'm not seeing anything either, " Bob chimed in. He unstowed the TV camera from its bracket on the cabin wall and pointed it at their acceleration couches. "The camera never lies, Flight." Gene's jaw dropped open. On one screen, he could see a shaky image of three empty couches. On the other, tucked into the webbing of each of the pilot's and engineer's couches was a single, charred feather...

We have plenty of carbon for processing. We use millions of tons of impure carbon slurry per year to make paper, cardboard and such like materials. Japan alone gets through around 10 million tons per year. Why Japan? First easy to read site that I came across. Granted, wood pulp is nowhere near pure carbon but using @magnemoe's 100,000 ton figure, I'm pretty confident that we have enough carbon and some to spare. Turning that carbon into space elevator grade fibre and launching that fibre to orbit, is somewhat more challenging.

Munstones and Mystery Goo would count I think. From the last chapter, the Empress touched her munstone before creating that water globe, so I’m thinking it’s something like an angreal or sa’angreal from the Wheel of Time series. As for the Goo, we’ve already seen that it warns and protects against the Shadow. I expect that the Seals to the Shadowell are magical too. There are probably other examples. Sometimes it’s a bit hard to distinguish between magic, sufficiently advanced technology and humorous artistic license in the Kraken Trilogy.

Throwing some numbers out here for comparison. The Timberwind 45 design was specced as: Diameter: 13.94 ft (4.25 m) Vacuum thrust: 99208 lbf (441.3 kN) Sea level thrust: 88305 lbf (392.8 kN) Vacuum specific impulse: 1000 s Sea level specific impulse: 890 s Engine mass: 3300 lb (1500 kg) Thrust to Weight Ratio: 30 Burn time: 449 s Propellants: Nuclear/LH2 That's apparently substantially higher performance than any NERVA NTR, although I'm not sure if it was ever anything more than a CAD file. The specs for the Timberwind 75 and 250 (which is a real beast) have better sea level thrust but both still have that T/W of 30. For comparison, the Merlin 1c has a sea level thrust of 420kN but a T/W of 96. Admittedly, that's a generous comparison, since the Merlin is supposed to be about the highest T/W kerolox engine going at the moment but even so: 30 vs 96 is quite a difference. Plus the Merlin isn't throwing out mildly radioactive exhaust. As to why NTRs have relatively low thrust to weight, I'm guessing (and it really is a guess) that you can't have too high of a mass flow rate through them. Couple of reasons I can think of: 1. With an NTR your propellant is also your coolant and (for hydrogen at least) a moderator for the reactor. Throw too much propellant out the back and you cool your reactor down far enough that you start losing that lovely ISP that was the point of you using an NTR in the first place. 2. Physically throwing a lot of propellant through a solid reactor core isn't easy. 3. Related to 1, throwing too much coolant through your reactor gives you some really nasty (well nastier) thermal gradients to have to deal with inside your reactor. If any actual engineers want to chip in, I'd be really interested to hear what you've got to say!