dharak1

Could you build walls out of them then or even the hull of the ship? Seems insanely useful but if it's reactionless how do you direct the thrust to get where you want to go.

My guess is that the "moonquake" would last longer because the energy wouldn't be able to leave through an atmosphere. The moon also has a lower density so the energy wouldn't be able to move through the ground as easily. Just a guess though.

Looked at that, didn't see death star. Scrolled down, no other pictures. Scrolled back up. Holy crap there it is.

Would the AMD R9 270x be something I could pull out of my current PC in 4-5 months and put in my new build and still have it be decent and relatively up to date with other mid price range stuff? It would be nice if that was a possibility.

So I've been looking at saving up for a new PC for a while now but I'll have to wait. In the meantime I can settle for just a graphics card update. I have a prebuilt Gateway DX4860 but I've made a few changes such as putting in 8 more gb of ram bringing the total up to 16 GB. Mine also appears to have a 2 TB hard drive unlike the models they sell now with just 1 TB. I'm looking to upgrade from my current graphics card, a Radeon HD 6750 to something a bit better. Preferably an Nvidia card as from what I've seen they run cooler and have less compatibility issues with games. From newegg it seems my graphics card uses PCI Express 2.1 x16 meaning the slot on the Mobo is the same so the graphics card would need to be PCI 2.1 x16. Any help or Suggestions are appreciated. I also have no solid price range but preferably under $200.

This actually made me realize planets are much bigger than I thought. Whats the radius of Jupiter again?

What are we looking at for current capability? Is it just launch or something else like probes? Having a few active Mars probes along with a Saturn probe, two Interstellar probes and a huge orbital telescope gives the US a great capability to actively gather data.

I would put China ahead of the US but behind Russia then ESA and JAXA and then India. In terms of history it's hard to ignore the US and Russia. China comes in second IMHO because of manned launch capability and having rovers on the moon. The US and China are both developing heavy lift rockets though so it's a close call. ESA comes in fourth because of Ariane rockets and the probes they currently have out of Earth orbit. 5th is Japan because they have some comet probes. Something we really should know more about. India comes in 6th due to its recent Mars mission. Everything past this has no launch capabilities as far as I know (Except DPRK). DPRK comes in at 7th because of the satellite they launched not that long ago on their own. They kind of are put down by others but they seem to be moving forward although behind. The rest is just Cut and paste from the list above on the end of this one.

You can always build your own. I've only built 2 and replaced parts in 3 but it's pretty easy. For 450-600 USD you can build something that can run KSP for sure. Maybe not on max settings but depending on whether or not you have stuff running in the background all the time you could run quite a few mods.

Is this because of the KSP panel in it?

I would recommend an Oppo find 7 or 7a. A nice big removable battery with 16 or 32 gigs of storage with 2 or 3 gigs of ram. Also the Find 7 has a 1440p 541 PPI display. It also looks really nice. I would recommend the 7a if you don't care about the screen or onboard storage. Expandable storage of course. You can charge them both in an houre from completely dead to 100%. I've had my find 7 for more than a week now and it's awesome.

I put it as closely as I could to Edmonton from memory.

Don't the people working on high voltage power lines wear some kind of faraday cage? You could always sleep in that.

There is also a chance for batteries to be punctured and ignite. Lets outlaw batteries and jail the owners and factory workers who make them. I'm sure that more than 10 Li-po batteries are punctured every day. Have you seen one break open? Sure as heck a lot more power than a laser pointer. I don't think people should be jailed for pointing lasers at planes, maybe a small fine or something but not 10 years in prison. But that's just my opinion.

I agree that we need a new thread. Plenty of new people come here confused and a new thread would allow us to direct them there where they could get up to date using page one.

Probably just regular life getting in the way. Happens all the time. I think a stripped webcam would be our best option because we can add our own thermal control to it much more easily than something in a case like a go pro.

My guess is mission planning. If they launched later they may need more Dv to make orbit on the spot they wanted. They might also then have to make an extra orbit for the sat to get ahead or behind in its orbit before being locked into geo with a burn. It would probably also a matter of doing it in one burn with no engine restarts to lower risk.

That design wouldn't work. The varying distances from the center of the rotation near the edges of the petri dish would cause massive gravitational differences. We aren't using a rasp pi either, K^2 posted the micro controller earlier and it had a rad hard version but I can't quite recall the model number. The magnetorquers would have to occupy at lest 3 sides so they would have 3 dimensional control. The ones you showed would only control one axis and have double torque on that axis. The cubesat probably won't have any moving parts unless they are passive I.E. solar panel arrays pulled out by centrifugal force. The way I imagined it was a petri dish beside a window on one half of the cubesat with the side against our electronics. That way the torque would leave the axis of rotation perpendicular to the sun and let light in for all 45 minutes of sunlight, and the specimen would be able to have its "bottom" as though it was being pulled down by gravity. Something like the cylinder ship from Rendezvous with Rama with windows on one of the circular faces and the plants being grown on the rectangular faces. The electronics would take up the other circular face and that would fill the cubesat. Obviously much much smaller but a similar concept. Edit: That sounded really harsh. I didn't mean for it to sound like that. I lust think the drawings need more improvements and it's probably too early for them at this point. We don't know our components or how much space they'll take up.

I agree that we should stick to lunar. Less power needed to get the cubesat up to speed and it's much more likely to actually have useful data because the Moon is so much closer than Mars and is more likely to be used as a trial run for food growth.

maybe not two years. depends on what you mean by surpassed. two years ago you could have made a quad or maybe 6 core pc with 64 gb of ddr3 ram and two or four gtx 590s in SLI and it would still be above average today. you could probably get a pretty good clock speed too.

If you have a spare 10000 - 20000 dollars laying around you could build a PC with 128 gb of ddr4 ram and an 8 core processor with 4 titans running in SLI.

We aren't using reaction wheels. magnetorquers to spin the craft presumably with the open end facing the sun to let light in. The algae has enough air to survive 2-3 weeks about the lifetime of the cubesat. No thrusters needed

I don't think you have to click on them.

Science "documentaries" are usually unreliable sources of information. Especially ones on Discovery or any other major cable "science " networks .

Anyone else think that the lighter area closer to the north(?) kind of looks like north america scaled up? Mostly the more southern looking part that would be Mexico and it's missing Hudson bay.