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Yeah but I've seen them get burnt out from feedback voltage spikes when dropping current on inductors... so who knows, I'm assuming worst case. Though the computers would still be dead so you'd be looking for a pre-90s vintage diesel vehicle. And often they'll pull 150-200amps @12v-14v during a start. However its not the amperage that I'm afraid would kill the batteries, its the 30kv spike they could see that may last for some amount of time. Had a relay 1 time on a test jig, that blew out from the voltage spike of taking a 5v/.5a current off of a transformer, later testing showed that at the moment of cutting power, the coil the relay was hooked to would shoot up to over 50kv for a fraction of a second. After blowing up 3 relays testing like 10 parts, we later built in a bleed off circuit to protect against that spike because before then as an intern I had never known that these voltage spikes could happen from that. Its a major problem with controlling relays with microcontrollers, often its countered with capacitor setups or feedback protection diode circuits. Theres a bit about it if you look up "arduino" and relay circuits.

yeah I used to have this problem with Win 7 installs too.

Well pull starting a diesel vehicle is all well and good... what about the power for the fuel pump? Yes you could jury rig up a new system, gravity feeding fuel or such, but most vehicles with remote fuel pumps running off power will be worthless. EMP kills battery, starter doesnt work without power, alternator voltage regulators would probably be burnt out by the EMP so you can't get the voltage for the pump there. Also a great many newer trucks have electronic fuel injection running off the computer, so well, those are out.

Just 1 of those things, though most are really "battle rifles" not "assault rifles" assault rifle is just a media sensationalism term. Although there are special licenses that allow fully automatic weapons (why waste the ammo, when hunting you generally want to try and get them with the first shot, none of this spray and pray BS) Yes but given the rampant hunting for the first months, that would severely deplete the populations. Given a few years go by, yes pops could explode, but thats a few years down the road, the hardest part would be the time immediately after the boom, whatever the boom may be. Actually what you said jsut reminded me of another point. Perhaps farming might not be your thing, and you may go and try for trapping. But what about live capture? I don't know the whole list of wildlife that you have around in the UK, I know where I live theres a few rabbits, small birds and rodents, deer, occasional moose, and lots and LOTs of turkeys. I know that there are guneafowl in the wild in the UK, don't knwo how catchable they are. But say I go out with a group to hunt/trap some things. Our group of 4-6 people come across a flock of 8-12 wild turkeys (everywhere in new hampshire) do we A, kill them and eat them now? B, catch them and attempt to raise them for a time? Most I'm sure would go straight for the kill and eat, afterall we are possibly starving here. But I'd personally be more for the attempted capture. Oak leaves are edible, and you can make boil acorns and eat them just fine. And given that we forgo eating good for a day or 2. We raise them, months or a year goes by, now we have more birds (also could always catch them all, and eat a couple but save the rest for trying to raise) You mentioned rabbits, they're another point, they're much harder to catch than turkeys. But if you found one in a snare, and evidence that there are others around. Do you go for the fast money or the long dollar? Or if you had a group of them frequently hanging around your field. Rig up some snares that aren't quite so lethal. After all, even if you do catch them and keep them alive, you'll have them around to eat later as needed. Larger animals though would be much more difficult, though being smart about these things could pay off. Perhaps a group could catch themselves and try to semi-domesticate some deer (I know they've done it in some areas) or other critters. I say go for the birds and small critters first because they're the easiest to catch and feed.

Actually we had done some figuring back at the tech. Assuming a smaller mech, and you built the legs/feet oversized, you might not have as much of a ground contract problem as you think. Yes avoiding muddy and soft terrains would be important, but well tanks can fight there. Mechs are for the rocky terrains that tanks couldn't navigate, but thats assuming you an make a mech that could navigate those terrains. Though in a space future, on planets with lower gravity, a mech like design might have some use... who knows.

Yes I have fired several thousand rounds through AR-15s, also through an M-14, M1 garand, AR-10, few hundred down a cheap Mosin Nagant bought off a pawn shop for $80, complete with 2ft bayonet, and a few hundred more through a Remington 700 patterned .25-06 rifle. Thats not including all my time shooting .22lr, 9mm, .45, and misc other rifles, pistols or shotguns that I really shouldn't need to get into explanation of. Still the argument stands though. Why scrap it when you could barter it for another weapon or use it until it breaks. In the average summer of shooting at ranges I probably put 2500 rounds through my 15, and i dismantle it and lube it twice a year, Spring before I go out and start hitting the ranges, and then usually somewhere in sept or oct when I put most of them away for the winter. Never had any problems in the 4 years I've had it, and I think if it were the only gun I had, my little can of oil would last me 40 years at the rate I'm going. Coincidentally, between myself, the 3 friends who are into guns with me, my father, and all his old man friends. When we all get together in spring or fall to go over our guns, we'll go through like 5 of the little cans bringing everyone's stuff up to snuff. Of course, I'm not dragging the AR through the mud or anything, it gets shot and then goes back into its case until the next weekend or whatever. So yes, AR-15s suck, we have established that, countless other semi-auto rifles that will serve you just fine. Now lets move onto the next problem. Yes you can brag about how you'd WANT a bolt action when the apocalypse comes. But you might not have one, or be able to get your hands on one, or the one you have now might get stolen, you'll have to make do with what you have. I'd love to own a semi-auto AK74 IRL myself, but those are expensive as .... and I HIGHLY doubt I'd be able to find 1 around after the apoc. And "people who can't fend for themselves," well, those are the ones who either starve, or group on with people who can fend for themselves. Its not hard to survive, really. Ever gone camping, it'll be like 1 of those trips... but forever, get used to it. And even more, yall are so bent on this "hunting" gig. How long do you think the wild game supply would last trying to feed even 10% of the people from your area assuming that 90% were killed off in the first 2 weeks? Dunno where yall live, I'm from hampshire right up the road from several towns of around 50k, with some larger towns here and there. We'd maybe be able to make due assuming lots of those people took off and headed north to spread out. But just the hunting areas within 50-60mi of me now wouldn't be able to support that population for long. Also theres no refrigeration, all that meat would need to be smoked or dried, and stored somewhere safe. How will you haul it back to an area useful. Cars might be out, you might drag it with an ATV that has a pull start engine and thus immune to EMP kinds of apocs, but thats assuming you can get 1 of them. Odds are you'd have to drag all that stuff by had or wheelbarrow back. Farming is a much better route, cause even if you could make do for the first year on hunting, the areas would be heavily depleted, are starving people going to... not shoot females and young? Even fishing wouldn't be able to support my area for long outside of spawning season.

Why scrap it, I'm sure you'd be better foraging around for scrap springs (perhaps out of the hood mechanism of a car) to use in the construction of your traps. Honestly can't think of any part of an M-16 or any gun that would be good for building any kind of snare. Now trading the gun is something you could do just fine, you might not want it, but someone else will. And you can certainly take down deer and elk with .223, I've seen people come back with deer when all they brought with them was .22lr. Also we've never clarified the rules of "how many people die". surely the deathtoll for citydwellers would be in the upper percents, well over 80%, just because they wouldn't be able to find enough food, and theres too many others around to kill them. In the midwest, and rural areas away from major cities though, yeah there would be some violence, but starvation would be more likely the killer. Deathtolls would be far lower in these regions.

And... what about the fact that you wouldn't have realtime control of your drones at range due to the vast distances involved? Mechanized infantry? Is this supposed to mean battlemechs (yep never gonna happen, tanks are simply mroe efficient, when the only bebefit a battlemech would have is the ability to sidestep... assuming it can react fast enough to incoming fire, and no just because you can dodge shots in Steel Battalion, it doesn't mean that it would happen IRL, bullets move a hell of a lot faster here than in videya games.), powered armor (might be doable) or just tanks, because well, we've had that form of mechanized warfare for years.

Well some additional thoughts to throw out there. many have argued the difficulty of fletching as a skill. Well honestly thats 1 of those that I gave a try to in my life before too, and to get good quality arrows is a rather notable skill. But if you're good enough to get within 100-200ft of your target, even crappily fletched arrows would work (from experience, although I wasn't the hunter shooting them) Instead of arrows though, the difficult to make thing would be bows themselves. Modern nylon bowstrings can last for several years, but when they break, where are you gonna get new 1s? Also most of the wood around is garbage for bows. It would take a good bit of work to find a good sapling that can be used as even a 40lb bow. Although there are guides out there about using a few PVC pipes to make a bow, and they do work kinda well, but they don't last long. Also lacking the ability to fletch a good arrow, why not crossbows? A good Cbow can be made easily of wood and scrap metal, and sprigns if they can be found. And nominally, their bolts are just highly straightened sharpened pieces of wood with a notch at the back. Also there are always high quality steel and aluminum arrows we have now that can be shot thousands of times without them getting damaged. And remember, arrows are retrievable, unlike bullets. But forgoing all that jazz, its not like fletching or bows would be important for the first several years because there are guns and bullets everywhere. Hunting would probably be big the first couple years as agriculture needs time to expandand ramp up (I'm from New Hampshire. We probably couldn't survive on existing farmland, and clearing out forests to make farmland woudl take time. Assumign you don't try to level towns because well, there would be so much more time spent jsut trying to break up foundations, although everyone could help out by throwing a garden in their yard). Looking at an iowa website, tells me that 1 acre of corn turns out ~150bushels (without the husks, thats just kernals) and 1 of those bushels is ~56 lbs. Japan has a unit of a "koku" back in the day, which was about the amount of rice needed to feed 1 person for 1 year, and I believe it was about 300-350lbs of rice. Ofcourse you couldn't live on jsut corn or rice, but assuming the numbers balance out somewhat similar. 1 acre would turn out ~8400lbs of corn (perhaps more considering if youre starving, those husks start looking plenty edible) so 1 acre in a good harvest could provide baseline food for ~30 people a year. AN acre is only about the size of a football field. Other info, glancing around, in Vermont a site claims that 1/8th acre of winter wheat, planting 30 lbs of it, netted them 250lbs of grain at the end of its growth somewhere in July. Ofcourse, vary your crops and have something growing throughout the whole year. I guess what can be taken away from that, Surviving off of some subsistence farming, is actually kinda legit. Assuming my area, houses around in New Hampshire are usually built on ~1.5 acres, farming that (which could be handled by running out there with hand tools. And really wouldn't be a hard job aside from during the planting and harvesting times. I mean, when my mom decided she wanted a garden, it ended up being ~ 1/8th acre, and we tilled that out with just myself and my friend Steve over the course of a morning) Yeah we might see an influx of people storming up here from areas around Boston. But if the situation was known, and a nice town meeting laid down the fact that if you don't work, you're gonna die. I'm sure that given some time, and hard work, at least the food could be gotten back on track.

First question... whats the scale of this war. We talking interstellar, interplanetary. Or some gundam level fight where most of it happens withing a few 1000km from earth within roughly known orbital paths? Also I'm just gonna put this out there right now. Any and all "fighters" in space, would probably be drones. Perhaps drones might head out with a small control craft to command them locally, but it would probably all be drones (unless there was crazy Ewar). I can only really argue for the gundam level one having any validity because in that case, some forms of stealth could work. The assumption is that there already is enough debris around, and other things to interfere with the sensors of fightercraft. But well, at that point I might as well get into the base reason for the mechs in gundam. If you're gonna be fighting in space, you're gonna be spending lots and lots of fuel maneuvering. Yeah many argue that you wouldn't be able to put the delta-V needed to maneuver into a fighter or such, but I don't really think so. As long as it and its target were already on roughly similar orbits (moved there by a carrier craft) the deltaV requirements drop off drastically. The main purpose why the mechs in Gundam lore became a thing was in that story, initially there were some space fighters tested out (and even still used later on), and as they progressed, they literally started adding arms to them to swing out and throw the COM off center to spin the craft around quickly using its main engines rather than smaller RCS thrusters. As time went on they developed more and more "limbs" and eventually turned into humanoid machines. Much of the rotational maneuvering within the gundam universe is done more by adjusting heavy limbs as a form of SAS wheel, rather than burning fuel to maneuver. Also there were added bonuses of they had basically all the handwork abilities of a human, when doing work in and around the space colonies, so truly multipurpose machines. Though the only reason why the fights happened like that in gundam were mainly because guided missiles wouldn't work (magical scifi jamming particles, forget the name for them, M something.) IRL, space fighters probably would never really work. Actually even now fighters are becoming more and more useless as missile interception systems on ships become more and more advanced. Although who knows. Naval fighters really started out as cheap weapons carriers meant to try and put fire on enemy ships without letting your own ships into firing range. What you consider "effective firing range" for a large "warship" in space, is really kind-of the major argument in any of these discussions. Missiles right now are great because they get a lock, and they fly to their targets, usually masked a large part of the way by the curvature of the earth. Its only when they get within horizonal-range that CIWS can respond, and CIWS includes both guns and missiles of its own. They would be visible in space (mostly when they were burning, but probably on radars and such also) so a ship could begin firing/maneuvering to defend itself. This would mean that the missiles woul dhave to be either A, fired from close range relying on accelration and maneuvering to score a hit, or B, armored to survive defensive fire, adn probably quite slow to maneuver ad requiring lots of fuel, in the case of a longer ranged weapon. Also a long range missile would probably require its own forms of Ewar to help throw off the defense. Fighters could be deployed around a ship as added defense providing extra points of triangulation to defend against these long range missiles, be they just providing better firing solutions for the ships CIWS, or them physically shooting down missiles with their own guns/missiles. If you're close enough to try for those fast acceleration missiles though, why not just use a kinetic weapons (conventional chemical cannon, mass driver, particle beams / blasters). Well, mass drivers, particle beams, and blasters all require large power generation systems (nuclear probably), but their ammuntion is concevably lighter than a conventional weapon. Projectiles could range from solid AP rounds, to HE shells, to shaped charge projectiles that explode in a shotgun blast (oh yeah, missiles could do that too, but probably not the AP role, due to the weight requirements) However drivers, blasters and beams all have a deltaV problem that needs to be made up for (a ship firing some big guns could probably throw itself off intended course) Conventional cannons would too, however they don't have the need for huge powerplants. The ammo is also heavy, and the ship would have a big volatile magazine of some explosive to use as the propellent (actually why not figure out how to use the sips regular propellent as the weapon propellent?) A more conventional propellent cannon though could pull some recoil-less solutions (LAAWs, Bazooka's and many other shoulder fired weapons would fall into this category, although they are often called "rocket launchers" many just fire a high explosive shell with all the propellent burned up before the shell leaves the tube.) Problems? Well, dumb projectiles, can't maneuver to hit the target, have to hope they aren't too far away and that they burned a little to evade. Or you could just put some propellent, and a computer and burn a bit to change the bullets trajectory... but well you might as well be shooting a missile at that point, just a missile that accomplishes part of its acceleration before it leaves its launching ship. Lasers.... they aren't really practical now, and assuming we hit the point where they become major weapons of war... I'm sure we'll have some up with some effective armors to them also. Though assuming they were effective. They''d still take a large powerplant, but would be by far the best space weapon for fighting at sub-relativistic ranges. However when you start talking firing at hundreds of thousands of Km, in the range of planet to planet... well then its again, missiles can be effective (just burn to get an intercept orbit, get close and burn to hit the target, assuming they haven't evaded or shot it down.) Lasers... well they'd hit a lot sooner than the missiles... but would they hit? Remember, even if shooting from earth orbit at a ship in martian orbit, not onyl are your sensors seeing the target as it was ~15 mins to more than an hour ago. The shot of the laser will be getting there, 15mins to an hour later. Whoever is detected first would be the 1 to probably get attacked... but can you pick up a ship, 50-100m long, trying to remain unseen, while its being backed by a planet, at ranges like that? And effectively fire at where it will be, more than 2 hours later? Hell, can you even point a turret... or your whole ship, at a target at ranges like that. Yeah they point the hubble at points in the universe, but the hubble and other space telescopes are rather small. We're talking a ship or weapons platform large enough to mount this weapon, and a power source to fire it (we'll assume its getting target info from another source), aiming at a target, with... well Wolfram alpha spits out a number of 1.5*10^-6 rads assuming a 100m target at 55million km (a close distance between earth and mars) but you know, we could probably do that... the detecting the target though maybe not. And then, say it was happening at even longer ranges, shooting at someone from earth to jupiters moons, or out farther. The only real time when you'd have good shots on people in this sense woudl be when they are traversing large open spaces moving from planet to planet. Also you'd need a lense on that laser able to get a good focal point at those ranges, each shot would basically need a lense specifically designed for it. Ya know, before arguing if space fighters are possible. Maybe we should try just the waging war in space as a whole first?

I dunno bro, I've made charcoal for my own little forging projects before (its pretty easy, you just burn wood without it getting oxygen, its easy to do by just filling a paintcan or something, with wood and baking it in a fire. Done it several times before when we have bonfires (gonna have the fire anyways), and buying coal where I live is kinda expensive, so I make do with what I got. (Also, NEVER use charcoal briquets) Could I melt steel with the assets at my immediate disposal... maybe, but why would I want to. Some charcoal and some hammering and someone who listens cranking the blower, and I can shape/forgeweld any scrap into a stock material, and back into something useful. Actually my own forging work was on a whim during highschool, made several knives and such from old files and the spring steel from old automotive springs. Though if I were to be making say... a horse drawn farming plow, I think I might need to expand the size of my forge, but even that would be trivial, Could take the brick to make it larger from any of hundreds of houses. Although I will state, I'm a horrible smith, it was just something to do in the summer with a couple friends, though we did get several good knives out of that, tried a couple swords... they didn't come out so great, really should have had 2 people hammering for them because they take FOREVER. PS. want a good hobby that'll get you a lot of exercise in a short time, and you'll always have a nice tan, try smithing. Yeah the argument is there that most of what we know comes from the internet, and after the apoc, that'll be gone. But what, is every library in the country going to burn down at the same time too? Maybe its just more to point that people should have some hobbys of varying discipline such that they learn about many different things. (me, well, I'm just a nerd who can't sit still for long) Also most all the basic of creating and working steel could be gotten out of an old tech school materials course/book. Also, who says that everything would cease to exist. Again I reiterate as I did in an earlier post. Its not like you'll be blasted back to the stone age. You'll be in the stone age with countless books of knowledge and derelict machines, and perhaps, others around who are intelligent about different things than yourself. Theres no "reinvention" it'll just be, rebuilding. Yeah rebuilding would take time, but hey, all those machines I was talking about. Can probably get them running again. Just a little additional info cause well, I'm bored, and you guys might need to know this in the future if theres and apocalypse. Lackign a paint can to make your charcoal, what they did back in the day (medieval) to make charcoal, they would split up logs much liek you would for firewood, stack it up several feet, and cover the wood with dirt to keep the air from getting to it. Then they would stack more wood around that mound and over it and ignite it, then keep the fire burning for a couple days. Then leaving the mound untouched for a few more days to cool, (if you were to dig it out while its still hot, it may ignite) then dig out your charcoal, and use it. Other things you may consider looking into because they're interesting reads is wood gas generators (basically making charcoal, while burning it and releasing flammable gasses that can be trapped, and perhaps stored for later usage, IE allowing the running of propane powered equipment)

Well theres the trick though, some electronics would perhaps survive simply by being in basement parking garages. But the severe majority would stop working. Also unlike other apocalypse scenarios like asteroids which could be detected years ahead of time, a cme can happen and hit the earth withing 3-5 days. Abother bad thing to think about. All them nuclear missile subs chilling out down 100m under the surface would probably all work just fine, protected from damage by the water (though i dont know, would the water protect against a cme?)

Well back at the tech, our "technical writing/public speaking" teacher gave us the project of "Assume ____ apocalyptic scenario, what assumptions can you and your group come up with about the survivability of humanity." I remember the asteroid group, the general concensus was that as long as people could survive the initial blast/firestorm, they probably wouldn't have to much trouble springing back. Remember, even though we might be "back in the stone age" there are countless machines around that the survivors could use to their advantage. No reason why cars and such would stop working aside from physical damage. Yeah fuel would become scarse, but with rationing, they could probably make do with the fuel left in their immediate area, for a few years actually. Also they wouldn't have many other people around competing with them for resources. My group had drawn the "Coronal Mass Ejection, Disaster", basically a huge EMP effect, although there would be some serious sunburns, and crops may be destroyed if this went on for a long time. Most all computers, things that operate off semiconductors, batteries and such were destroyed. Now THERE would be a pretty terrible apocalypse. Especially for any living near major cities. The 3rd world, would probably survive just fine. 1st world though. Just think of New York City. Usually theres over 3 million people on Manhattan island every day. Suddenly, every car is broken down (most can't run without their computer), power goes out because no computers or control systems at power plants continue working. Sewage breaks down, Water pumping stations go down. Even most backup generator systems go down because they rely on computerized engine controllers/ semiconductor power rectifier/inverters. Also I don't think that all the food in the city could support that population for more than a few days. Few cars to transport people away. Police can't control the population by any amount. Looting, violence. But thats just the beginning. Soon these people would start leaving the city. No food to be had, theres no choice but to leave. Assuming they all grab some food, they might make it a few days down the interstates outside the city. Most would probably head south/west towards the farming country, that would be their only chance of survival. But could the farming country of Pennsylvania/NewYork sustain that number of people? Remember, that 3mil is just what Manhattan sees, theres millions more in the surrounding cities/suburbs. Dead bodies would litter the streets of NY and NJ, bodies of those whos starved before making it. Even the mid-west what with all its farming would be hard pressed to survive. Most of that land is really terrible farmland, and never sees enough rain to support growing on the scale that we do it now. All that land has to be irrigated... by rotary sprinkler systems that run on computers, high power water pumping systems that can't run now since the power plants are for the most part, defunct. Even if the crops weren't destroyed during the CME, most would probably dry up in the fields. And what if it happened during winter? We had a 35min presentation about it in class... yeah I won't get into the whole thing, it got pretty morbid around the first 5-10 minutes, but it would be survivable. Simple engines that don't need electronics would still work. Yeah you'd be screwed on batteries (though there are places that sell batteries with no fluid in them, we had argued that some of those might survive, and could be filled and used later) But pull start engines would work fine, so there would be some transport ability. Much farming equipment (tractors and such) would become useless, but with the huge population explosion, there would be plenty of hands to work the land manually. Also anyone who has restored/collected old pre-depression era tractors and such would be in business. Also machinery to construct new machinery (mills/lathes, plug in power tools) would still be viable, if only a suitable power source could be found/made. But man those first 2 years would be brutal.

Do it all the time in KSP with interplanetary craft. (actually now that I look at it, I kinda want to do an X-37 design for the lulz. Though no clue about the offset engine)

I think mars1 wants to be legit, but they can't possibly be. It would be great, maybe later. But you gotta shoot for the moon before going for the stars man. Even if everything went great, people would be there, till they die. Its not even like you could call home (delay ranges from a few mins to dozens, hope you like texting with long delays) or that there would be much to do there. Yeah they say they'd have some work to do, but most of it would be sitting around waiting for more people to get dropped off. At least on the moon its a short 3-4 day jaunt over there. The whole thing that mars1 wants to spend years putting up could be managed in 1 year with the moon (remember, each part takes a couple years jsut to get to mars). And if .... goes wrong, they can actually come back. Psychological problems would be very limited. Heck you could rotate people out every few months with a moon one. Almost all teh stuff that could be done on mars could be tested out on the moon. The hydroponic food, the solar power systems, the longterm effects of people living in pods. it would give us a 3rd data point in teh "gravity vs no-gravity" on health effects. Only major problem is that the moon has markedly less water to work with and no carbon (most of the hardware Ive read from mars1 would be to extracting water and carbon from the martian soil) Heck they could even experiment on a lot of other crap with a moonbase. I'm sure every kerbal engineer has turned out a spacetug, ship that never sees any surface again after it launches the first time. Theres always that radio telescope on the opposite side of the moon shielded from all the interference from earth. Mars is just too far away, and too big of a step.

Well as part of my argument, you don't NEED to land at full orbital speed. 1.7km/s is a LOT of fuel needed to slow down. landing something in the ballpark of 250m/s wouldn't be anywhere near as unreasonable (I think it translates to ~500mph) Just need a long long landing strip. Although, magentizing the thing could always help slow it down and keep it from bouncing off back into space. And ya know, I wouldn't be too surprised if we could manage some wheels that could travel at 1000m/s or so, cause remember theres only going to be ~1/6th the force on them as if it were on earth. Yeah you can't just scale the numbers and assume that if tires can land on earth at 100m/s they could do 600m/s on the moon, but hey, we've done stuff crazier than that before. In other news, what was I smoking when I spelt the title of this thread

[rant] Xcorps, how are satellites communications not an amazing thing thats come out of space exploration? Or you know GPS. The GPS chip in your phone must be the devil or something. Never been any market for knowing where you are. Also how bout all them hirez satellite pictures that people use all the time. Sure is nice for me in my job where I have to track down cell tower sites in the middle of nowhere, I can just throw some coordinates into google and get dropped exactly where I need to go so I can follow the unmarked mountain roads that even GPSes don't know about, up to these places. Yeap, space program certainly doesn't help me out with MY job every day. Also lets not forget many of the extreme advances in radio equipment worked on for satellites and such, I'm sure some of that stuff has found its way into the tower sites I'm working on. Also clearly dish network and direct TV aint doing too good, no more live sporting events / news from the other side of the world within seconds of it happening. Oh right, most people don't care what happens outside of the road between their house, their work, and the bar they go to every night. How about all them satellite phones people have on ships so they can stay in communications, report if the pirates are coming down on them, or if teh engine just blew the hell up. And lets not forget those comfy tempur foam mattresses. I got 1 of their pillows (im too cheap to spend that much money on a mattress for a bed I only see for a few weeks out of the year) AND WHAT ABOUT TANG. I'm sure many of you don't remember tang, I do, that stuff was great. But hey, no public money should go to them experimenting with solar power generation, medical stuff, or the advancement of spacecraft design, cause you know, an asteroid could come by at any minute and kill us all. Yeah, lets just wait until a ground based telescope picks that thing up when we've only got a couple months to do something about it. THEN we'll start thinking about space again. Nope, instead lets spend it all on a broken healthcare system (Not obamacare. Lets just talk about the prosthetic leg my cousin had that cost $35,000 for something he discarded weeks later for one he threw together in his machine whop that fits better, and he probably only spent like $150 on. Or the powered wheelchair that my grandmother bought through her insurance that cost over 10k, when after it broke down we went to the manufacturer and bought the same one for ~$600) Or lets go start another war. Or lets go mess up social security some more (why it's even considered part of the federal buudget is beyond me, as I recall it was supposed to be a self supporting system that had NOTHING to do with the general fund, and was untouchable.) Nope, its so horrible that when you pay your taxes, less than a half a percent goes to giving me a reason to dream about something other than naked ladies and airsoft FYI, last year when I paid taxes, NASA got LESS than $10 from me. Serves them right for making rockets go fwoosh and making me have more of a reason to quit my job and go back to finish my degree. I could have spent that money buying MYSELF, like... 3 model rockets maybe, I dunno, the motors are getting pretty expensive. In 15 years or so they might be able to buy an RC plane with my funding. Hell, is there like a place where they accept donations or some crap? Oh well, the fact of the matter stands. The whole argument is that, we do get stuff out of space related expeditions in science. And we WILL continue to see more in the future. And when you start arguing "COST", trust me, NASA is the LEAST of our worries when it comes to wasting money, at least here in America, I don't know about other country's views of their own programs. [/rant]

Hi ladies and gents. I didn't really know which forum I should ask about this in, though it has some bearing on the real world so I figured it might get some discussion in here. So, what are your thoughts on landing spacecraft horizontally (perhaps with aid of an aircraftcarrier style arrestor system) on the moon (or other atmosphereless body)? Sorry may be a bit confusing. Heres where the question comes from though, might shed some light. Last night, playing some kerbals, I was messing around with putting a network of satellites around minmus (I have KSP interstellar, RemoteTech, TAC LifeSupport, and Kethane, among a few other mods). For my comm satellite network I was using a SSTO I threw together previously for placing some in KSO (refueled it in space a bit, made for minmus) Arriving at minmus and completing most of the mission I came to the realization that, oh snap, I don't have fuel to get back to kerbin, OR enough to make a proper landing. (The craft has VTOL rockets and retros cause it should land normally, but well, we all waste fuel from time to time) So I was struck with an idea. Right on the surface of one of the frozen lake sits the largest kethane refinery I have. So for my landing approach, I lined up my orbit ahead of the lakebed so I would be landing on a very smooth surface. And I burned retrograde until my orbit would have brought me ~50m above the surface of minmus, however at still quite high velocity, if I had let the craft go on it would have either smashed into the mountains, or just flown back off into orbit a few 100 km and came back around. After biding time, and spending a little more fuel lifting myself up to not smash a hill. I get just above the lakebed, burned retro for a few seconds so I'd just touch the surface, and then when about to touch I killed the vertical I had down to ~5m/s. Note I was still way over 300m/s horizontal. From there, I just applied brakes and after a time, I came to a stop, with about 70 delta-V of fuel left. (some downward thrust was used from RCS to help keep the craft on the ground, but precious little delta-V was used during the actual landing. I made a few different attempts, mixing in the retro rockets to help slow down, but on the 4th attempt I managed it without any liquid fuel past the part for the orbital maneuver.) Brought a rover with some more fuel in it over (long trip), then vtol hopped over to the base and fully fueled the craft, went and put the rest of the satellites in orbit and all was good. Now, how unreasonable would it be to do this kind of procedure in the real world? In many chats talking about lunar bases in particular, the problem comes of it takes fuel to get down, and fuel to get back up (then some banter of ALOX rockets, and other things). Now I was able to bring a craft down on minmus in this manner, when I certainly wouldn't have had the fuel to land it by killing all horizontal, and then suicide burning before hitting the ground (I know, because I tried it with quicksaves about a half dozen times before being stupid, even my horizontal landing didn't work a couple times due to minmus's low gravity, the craft would bounce off the ground and head back out into orbit) I have tried to do it on the Mun, but I can't find an area suitably flat to do it. IRL that could be solved, lunar crust could be smoothed into a form of landing strip like I used the lakebed for. And perhaps some form of arrestor cable setup could be included. Going to experiment later with a more, focused craft design (including some upwards facing rockets, the little rockomax ones, trim the throttle just enough to stay on the ground. And a few extra sets of wheels so more braking potential.) I just want to know if any other players have any thoughts on this type of landing. If I was able to save some fuel, I could probably save a hell of a lot more with more practice (going to try it out later but, work trips, my laptop can't play KSP). And if perfected, for example. IRL a craft could say, ferry stuff into lunar orbit with less fuel need (less fuel being brought up for the eventual landing means it can bring more materials too). The craft also doesnt need to land with a thrust to weight ratio greater than 1 (if the ferry was picking things up in orbit then bringing them down. Though this would probably never be done that close, they'd always keep a greater thrust to weight, incase of accidents)

Whoever said simple and cheap means less reliability. In some cases simpler stuff is more reliable because theres less stuff to go wrong with it We are talking about the future correct? And countrys have settled on standards for stuff before. But yeah as it is now, outside of the commercial market thats slowly cropping up (and likely to get much much bigger) government space programs have often had a limited number of lifters. Now, theres actually several statements in here so. So many rockets because I was just throwing numbers out there, they could easily have them in 50 ton increments if they wanted. and the 10 ton vs 20 ton argument makes me lol. Remember, you may be able to put 2 payloads into orbit at once with the larger rocket, but that would in turn require more engineering on the payload so they can correct orbit themselves. Your 20ton lifter might not be able to put 2 payloads on their projected orbits as reliably as 2 separate launches. At the same time, the 2 ton launcher was again, just me throwing out numbers. But thats about the size to LKO that I use for most of my deep space probe replication projects (most recent, and ISEE3, but well, theres no halo orbits in this game).

Makes me kinda chuckle cause in a lot of cases, thats about how I see it in KSP. From the start of the game until the end (with mods like KSP interstellar which often needs fairly heavy lifters, and other difficulty/realism mods) I have about 5 designs. Tier 1, A launcher for satellites and probes that can put ~10 tons into orbit every single time. Tier 2, A scaled up "KSO" version because I play with remote tech and KSPI and use those to launch relay networks, or i can use one to easily push 25 tons to LKO. 3rd can do 50 tons to LKO, and often a bit more, usually has about 30% fuel left before staging into the payload. Lots of these end up floating in interstellar space, though I do make an effort to recover them from time to time. (Also great for solar power > microwave stations that will later be moved to low kerbin orbit) 4th can do over 100 to LKO, rarely used, total lagfest on my laptop (I3 with 4gb ram and an "intel integrated" gfx chipset) 5th usually can be described as "Strap 8 orange tanks on, with 6 mainsails, and the 2 spares fueling the final stage craft's engines, turn off the mainsails gimbal, and hope for the best" which often works out just fine as long as your load is balanced and you throw a few struts on. (FAR can both help and kill this method tho) Usually the tier 2 launcher is my primary station refueling machine too (or a modified tier 1 for refueling off of kethane bases on the mun and such). Ofcourse I can easily get probes to eve or jool using the tier 3 aswell. Anything larger usually gets refueled in orbit before making its voyage, but in the grand scheme of things anything i do that requires more than 3 tier 3 launchers, is just me dicking around building stations or crazy capital ships. Anything even remotely legit (like a lot of the really REALLY basic, refueling stops) can be done with the t3 or lower. As far as IRL. It does make me wonder sometime why there has never been a settling on ~10 rocket designs good for different weights (gonna guesstimate the GSO transfer percentage, with the space shuttle it was ~ 15% of its LKO payload mass, so I'll jstu go with that, it should be understandable though) T1 = ~2.5t LEO, 750lb GTO T2 = ~5t LEO, 1500lb GTO T3 = ~10t LEO, 3000lb T4 = ~20t (The space shuttle was about this size, lifting ~53,000lb/26t to LEO, or 8300lb/4t to GTO) T5 = ~40t T6 = ~60 T7 = ~80 T8 = 100 t9 = 130 Saturn 5 was around 130 tons IIRC, or ~50 tons to the moon t10 = 160 Above that god only knows what we're building up there, I'm sure that by the t7-10 we'd probably be better off building it in orbit. Although one must remember, there have been plans to design rockets such that the upper stages are left in orbit to be used as things later. (I recall 1 plan to use the space shuttle fuel tanks as storage modules that could be attached to space stations with a bit of in orbit modification.) Just my tidbit

Managed 1 in deep space near kerbin last night. My craft was a bit oversized (tac life support. I brought way more life support than needed) but from a 450km intercept. Burning towards at 50m/s. Only ended up ~1700m off. Most of that was probably due to my own improperly aimed burn, and not orbital curvature.

Personally id say make another couple trips to the mun. I like to drop a flag in each of the craters before being done with it. A few shots at minmus and you should be well into tier 5 and 6 parts. Docking and nuclear engines are especially helpful for interplanetary stuff. Most people recommend duna. Im more of a fan of jool because then i start building my refueling stations (they can be simple. All you need is a couple solar panels, some batteries, and a fuel tank or 2. Docking port ofcourse, nothing fancy)

Kinda off topic. But what exactly is the technical term for a gravity assist that includes a burn? On another note in response to cantab above. I do believe that you can do an aerodynamic... maybe skip would be the right word. I have before had craft (particularly one that had large wing area on it) go blasting through Jools upper atmosphere. And shifted its apoapsis ~10° clockwise rather than just lowering it a lot like a normal aerobrake maneuver. Havent experienced that on any craft since (or maybe just havent noticed it happen to such an extent)

A little off topic to the OP. However on craft that spend a lot of time in deep space with low TWRs. Especially of ones made out of docked together modules. Its often more effective to build them in a pulling config because there will be less wobble than if the engines were pushing.

Do one about warp drive maneuvering into orbit. I know theres a handful of guys out there who are pretty good at it. But some of us could use a little help