Diche Bach

A great post! Love the humor I think you've pretty much hit the nail on the head. Politics and fickle public opinion probably had more to do with the death of the Apollo-Saturn legacy more than anything NASA did itself. Still, I think the humorous tone you strike in suggesting that NASA is having to reinvent the wheel is perhaps a bit exaggerated relative to reality. I had not even realized until getting into this game and having a couple weeks of free time to browse wiki that, there were a lot of important things happening in space travel during the post-Apollo era _besides_ the Shuttle. Many of these developments received little or no public attention; certainly nothing like the obsessive international attention paid to the Apollo program (or at least until the viewing public got bored of Apollo). For one thing, Space Lab, Mir and the ISS. By as early as 1975 the US and Russia were already working together (perhaps only to some symbolic extent) on a Shuttle Mir program. Mir was in the sky for a VERY long time and some incredible worlds records were set on that station. For example the longest single space flight and I would imagine the longest total amount of time I space for a human. I know the former was set by a cosmonaut in Mir (Polyakev I think was his name) and I suspect a substantial portion of the latter. While simply "leaving a guy up there for a long time" doesn't sound as dramatic or exciting as "one small step" it is in some respects equally or more important. Based on the sum total of all those human hours spent in microgravity above Earth, I think they now have a pretty good idea of what long space journeys (e.g., to Mars, or on a Lunar base) will really be like for the people that endure them. While I'm sure most of us KSP gamer geeks imagine that being an astronaut would be very, VERY cool (oh believe me, I dreamed of it myself!) the fact is: to spend many months in space is probably one of the most tedious, unpleasant and unhealthy things (not to mention dangerous) that anyone could ever do. Certainly not like time in prison, but not the bed of roses that it might superficially seem to be. Insomnia, bone loss, muscle atrophy, loneliness, mood disturbances, distorted perceptions, and if memory serves weakened immune function and for some individuals, dysfunction of metabolic and cardiovascular functions. Probably the only reason the cosmonauts and astronauts who are now retirees are not known for dying early is because they were already chosen from a highly select group of near supermen/women to begin with, were intensively monitored and trained while in space, and to some extent since then too. The simple fact is: long-term space habitation (or at least long-term micro-gravity habitation) may never actually be something that becomes commonplace, and I don't know why we would be surprised if the truth is anything different than that. The world highup from our own sea level is quite in hospitable, to say nothing of that beyond our atmosphere. I think a number of things have happened here in the past 50 or 60 years that have left a bit of prevailing confusion in most of our minds. First of all, the incredibly quick and relatively untroubled success of the Apollo program made it all seem so easy. But the fact is, the U.S. (and I suspect in large part the entire "Western world") were largely supportive of that program. I doubt that there was much quibbling about a few extra hundreds of millions for the Apollo program, given the important ideological meaning that it represented to people. It is ironic that an ideological conflict could be the source of such a dramatic revolution in science and engineering, with such far reaching societal implications. But it was and we should be thankful for that. Instead of global thermonuclear war, we got Apollo, and Shuttle-Mir, and Soyuz, and ISS. Perhaps a little international competition between rival Superpowers wasn't such a bad thing after all . . . In the absence of that sort of 'motivation' for a people to be solidary behind a cause, and thus for the administrators to be able to requisition the brainpower, the money and the other resources needed, something like Apollo is probably never gonna happen in a democracy, or for that matter in an autocracy either. The Apollo program, in terms of the sheer magnitude of the accomplishment, and the incalculable impact it has had on life, is probably the single most important scientific movement in the history of humanity. Look around you right now, count up how many items in your immediate surroundings you are _SURE_ were not influenced (in their current form) by developments, inventions, prototypes, or accomplishments from the Apollo program or Space Race more broadly. I have read the experts lists of all the modern technologies that have become completely day-to-day commonplace and it is mind boggling how far reaching were the impacts of this program and the space race more generally. The second way we are perhaps a bit misguided about what Apollo was and what 'should/could/would' have been is that, it is unlikely that a society can maintain that kind of "Golden Age" pace for very long at a stretch. Moreover, its not like there was a hard stop to space travel immediately following Apollo. Lastly, while I agree with you in grieving that the sorts of things in the moon base pics have yet to come to pass, I have to be honest that . . . well, maybe that sort of thing just isn't realistic . . . yet. As I said above, space is harsh, not a nice place for people to live and work. An amazing place with all sorts of promise, true. But also harsh, dangerous, inhospitable, unforgiving, and expensive. Even if somehow the 'momentum' of Apollo had not been 'lost' and the Saturn thing had not 'died' as you put it, we may nonetheless have been no closer to the science fiction imagery that we grew up on, i.e., living on moon bases, working in space stations, and putting on your space suit to go out for a days work fixing the antennaes and such.

Somehow this makes me imagine the scale of human perception as nothing more than a multiplication of that of a microorganism, aware through its simple chemo and light receptors of its immediate surroundings, but functionally incapable of actually comprehending any higher (or lower) scale of reality.

Okay, so perhaps not so farfetched after all Fascinating stuff!

One other thing occurred to me. I think there are lots of reasons to assume that the total required Dv to "take control" of these things might actually be quite a bit higher because of factors they have not taken into account. Just a naïve guess . . . This occurred to me when I noticed the little animation of 433 Eros in the Asteroid wiki page. That thing is wobblying and spinning around like a cat with its tail on fire. I would think that matching that crazy kind of gyration would (a) use a lot of Dv and ( be quite risky to execute a soft rendezvou with; not to mention © might be nearly impossible? I'm glad that scientists like these guys are able to make a living addressing such things, and I love what they discover. But I tend to think that a lot of these things foretell things to come in one or two generations, if not hundreds of years, and not impending revolutions as the mass media reports often seem to suggest.

Very interesting. However, the real value still seems kinda speculative. Would a space rock that was only 7meters across really be worth all that effort and expense (and risk?)? I suppose if you got lucky and found a rock that was half gold or half platinum or even better half metallic hydrogen, whoo hoo! But what if it is 99.99% 'useless' iron/silica/etc.? Does seem to show that it is very much worthwhile to use low-cost unmanned probes to try to examine these rocks more closely and see if any of them appear to be 'gold mines.' Some interesting international relations implications if for example, a future survey probe sends back data indicating that one of these babies has a virtually in calculable wealth of some particular mineral in it. And of course, this is to say nothing of the pure science value of getting our hands on them.

Banned for being "famous soon enough."

Banned for sax.

If you find the Oberth Effect unsettling then check this out I particularly like the sound of "Quantum Chaos"; good name for a Super-Villain, eh? This page seems to have changed (expanded) a great deal since the last time I looked at it; so I cannot actually find the tidbit that I remembered, and do not recall exactly which one of these unsolved problems it reflected on. However, if memory serves, some of these unsolved problems have realworld significance and/or were recognized as an unsolved riddle because of incongruous realworld observations. The one I'm remembering is that, a couple times space craft that have been sent on flybys of Earth had slightly different final velocities after the maneuver than was expected. I want to say that this was being interpreted as bearing on dark matter, but not sure. Anyway, it ties back into the Oberth Effect. ADDIT: and of course, how can we go any longer without mentioning that golden exemplar of science: the Journal of Irreproducible Results. Not sure if the following is irony, paradox or just plain funny as heck

I'd find #1 or #2 edifying!

Ah, true . . . true . . . And yet, still worse yet . . . still You literally couldn't make this stuff up . . .

Won't break.

But actually it gets much worse F. Boas 1887

Does this Oberth effect apply to animals, cars, bicycles?

So here is a question for you physics folks. I was under the impression that one of the implications of the general theory of relativity was that, as a body approaches the speed of light the amount of energy needed to accelerate it closer to the speed of light begins to increases exponentially. At some point, accelerating one more meter per second is projected to require nearly infinite energy or something like that? That seems to be directly opposite to this Oberth effect. So does the Oberth Effect explain things at one end of the space-time continuum (the relatively slow end) and relativity explains things at the other end?

It is my understanding that a burn in KSP, right at the periapsis of a flyby produces more acceleration than an identical burn that is not at a flyby periapsis. It seems that is one of the main applications of this effect, so in that sense yes; it seems it does simulate it. Whether the Oberth Effect has any other real-life applications and whether the game simulates the effect in those other situations I do not know.

Agree pretty much with OP, but I still fly my ascent's 'semi-manual.' Used Mechjeb a couple times and while it is lovely in how precise it is, I find it uses a lot of fuel. I use the Flight Computer on RemoteTech to ascent by re-entering the pitch repeatedly to get it to tilt. This adds something a bit new and gives me a chance to try different curves. Also it keeps me engaged with the thing, trying to keep an intuitive sense for (am I going too fast, or too slow) and adjusting the pitch and tapering down the throttle accordingly. Goal is to get perfect ascent optimization 'instinct.' Using atypical rockets can mix it up too. I misunderstood one of the mission parameters in Sandworms' Military Mission pack and thought it required a fully SRB rocket. Pretty difficult to get those into orbit!

Thanx much japa !

The MJ wiki doesn't seem to provide any description of the meaning of Delta-V Stats. My specific questions: 1. Total Dv: If it says "3505, 4566" does that mean the vehicle will use up a total of 3505 Dv to get to 69.9km (launching from the KSC obviously), leaving 4566 left for use in vacuum? Does this assume a vertical full throttle ascent with no throttle tapering or gravity turn (meaning that an ascent with agravity turn and throttle tapering will actually use less Dv)? 2. Max TWR: I'm guessing this is the vehicles TWR immediately before the last ergs of fuel are expended in the stage? 3. Atmo Time: I'm guessing this is the time it takes the vehicle to reach 69.9km from KSC assuming a vertical full-throttle ascent (thus potentially slower if a gravity turn and backing off the throttle is used)? 4. Vac Time: Maximum duration of a full throttle burn in vacuum I would think?

Actually I thought it was billions as opposed to hundreds of billions in the full-sized ones.

The system used in Distant Worlds is to randomly generate galaxies. User gets to specify a bunch of parameter settings, then the galaxy generates (complete with lots of planets and moons, black holes, as well as alien homeworlds from whence they expand). Obviously hand making a galaxy of 1400 star systems would be prohibitive for even a very large and filthy rich studio. But defining the rules for randomly generating such galaxies that are fun to play in and include as much or more fine grained detail as does KSP has already been done. The game runs great on my machine. If the Distant World makers can do it, I'm sure Squad can do it; although whether it would work with their current solar system centric engine I don't know. Just to be clear; I'm not like some Distant Worlds fanboy. I bought the original game and played it a good bit, but set it aside for various reasons. I have not followed up with any of the several addons or expansions. But it is a good game, and I bet a lot of you guys would like it a lot. Plus, Squad should hear about it if they don't know about it. Always smart to learn from others. I would guess that even if you don't actually reverse engineer their code, just seeing what other spacey games can do is bound be edifying. Whaaa?? FREWARE? How? Why? The video with the Enya song is amazing, and I'd be very keen to check this out. But that little emblem about "100% safe and clean" actually worries me given it is "Free." Whats the catch? Why would anyone give away something that looks that awesome?

Good thread. Thanks for the comments guys; helpful to many of us. A related question: if you think your rig is running pretty good, any suggestions on 'souping it up?' I can generally run most games on relatively high settings. Even Skyrim not a problem. But sometimes some games seem to have slowish functions (load times in KSP for example).

No idea what this project of which you speak is/was Krag, but I wish you well in your retirement from KSP. Enjoy the fishing and hope to see you back in Kerbal space!

Its a very interesting question. I was in High School when the shuttle was just getting going. Certainly no expert on it. But if I reflect on my memories of the rhetoric at that time, and what has ultimately come of it . . . I think the opinion I'd arrive at if I had to arrive at one is that the shuttle must have been a failure or perhaps a nominal success at best. I suspect that is too harsh a conclusion, simply because they probably learned a great deal about space travel from all those years of it, and it certainly seems to have accomplished most of its missions. However, I can't shake the naïve 'non-expert' sense that, "Yes, it did not do its job. After all, it had those two disasters, and now they've just discontinued it and its successor doesn't seem to be using it as a foundation. In sum, it didn't work right, even though they kept trying for a long time, so they've finally gone back to the drawing board." Those ideas might be oversimplifications. But in order to realize that, one likely needs to be an insider to the Astronautics and Space Flight fields, so it shouldn't be surprising if a lot of people think like that. My recollection of what this thing was supposed to be was to revolutionize space travel and make it commonplace, easy, quick, efficient and mundane. It obviously did not achieve that. I don't specifically recall 'safe' as an expectation that was put into my head by the rhetoric during the shuttle's early days, but certainly the other standards would largely depend on safe. It seems to me that two catastrophic failures and the death of what? 15 people? Two catastrophic failures out of 135 missions, that is an averaged failure rate of 1.48% over less than 500 flights. That seems to be substantially higher than the rate of accidents for specific commercial airliner vehicles per millions of flights. If anything, it seems like Soyuz and/or whatever system the Soviets then Russians chose to adopt has proven to be more impactful, revolutionary and instrumental in making space travel cheap, easy and commonplace (although I seem to recall that their space program has a rather high rate of catastrophic failures overall?). NASA clearly did wonders with Apollo, but what came after seems to have been a bit less clear. I can tell you this, and I suspect some of the other older guys in this forum will concur; if you were a teen or juvenile in the late 1970s and 1980s, you probably expected that one day you would get to visit the small town-sized, and populated space station that we were being led to believe was just a matter of time.

Wow. You are off to a good start. I think I must've played 10 or 20 hours before I managed a stable orbit, much less a station up! Congrats, and welcome.

Destiny . . .