monophonic

Why not, all you need is a vacuum tube circling the planet underground. It does not have to be perfectly circular since obstacle course was mentioned. To be honest though I thought the OP meant underground in the figurative sense. But racing around in an abandoned worldwide hyperloop network sounds exactly what an underground vintage space ship drifting scene should be all about. Otherwise, dye/chemical dispensers to make your exhaust plumes glitter in all the colors of a rainbow.

I thought I had seen that one before. In fact I though I had seen the entire thread before, except the post time stamps don't agree with that. (Hey, was that a statue of an angel?) I do feel that the shape of the canopy looks better, more streamlined that way.

That "hot" label has never been as appropriate.

Because the VAB vehicles naively follow preset animation curves without paying any attention things like physics. You can see them occasionally drive right through the VAB crew too. They have skidded like that ever since they were first introduced in zero dot twenty something and no wheel issues whatsoever.

I don't know how symmetrically Apollo capsules' heat shields ablated, but those capsules did have an offset center of mass to re-enter at a slight angle. The reason was to use a bit of body lift to lessen the g forces during the re-entry. As of today Soyuz and I presume Shenzhou too do the same thing. Varying the thickness of the ablative layer won't be a problem for most materials, if there is need to do so. Pretty much anything in production today uses variable thickness parts if only because it saves the tiniest bit of material and thus cost. Personally I don't think bringing finished goods down from deep space will ever be really competitive. By the time we are extracting enough resources from space to support whole production chains we will have plenty of low g settlements to consume those products without the need to bring them into a gravity well raising the cost.

I am not getting the logic behind step 3, but that's probably because I don't understand what the numbers in step 1 are. Other than that my only concern is that it does not provide correct result for a planet that only partially eclipses its star. That case probably cannot be detected from the data though. It could be assumed that with multiple planets detected the system's planetary plane is probably very edge on to us and thus especially the inner planets are very unlikely to just partially obscure the star.

Landing (not really returning when the stuff is mined off-world) dense stuff. I am imagining something that can provide decent lift at atmospheric entry to give sufficient time to slow down but is aerodynamically stable so it stays in the correct attitude without active control. Maybe something like a flat capsule or a fat lifting body, basically a blend between the two. It might not even need an ablative heat shield, the cargo probably isn't terribly picky about the temperature and provides plenty of mass for sinking heat into. This does feel like one of the simpler problems in asteroid mining.

Cheapest in the near future? We build the re-entry vehicles from the most common elements found in those asteroids. The rarer elements are the payload that pays for the enterprise. Most critical parts, like guidance computers, RCS motors and/or parachutes might be brought from Earth as long as they constitute only a small fraction of the full mass. Even a perfectly reusable launcher cannot match the cost of mass you don't have to launch in the first place.

Do you get overheat bars before the explosion? 1.2 decreased the drag of pointy things, which means they go faster, which in turn means they heat more and faster. It is fully possible to overheat a high thrust rocket on ascent.

The mass has changed to accommodate. From the horses mouth:

I meant ordinary as in "not needing antimatter or any even more exotic shenanigans." When talking nuclear fission, 235 is the isotope you want. A 238 target needs twice the neutrons for the same number of fissions, and this assumes no unwanted reactions occur. As to where the weapon aspect came along, fissile materials are highly controlled under various treaties. Mainly the nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty. From that aspect antimatter might even be easier to work with than U or Pu. Namely no bimonthly ispections or tamper-sealed cameras filming absolutely everything in the lab courtesy of the IAEA.

I read somewhere it had a radar altimeter, but that was not the most technical of sources for sure.

Having finally actually read how it is supposed to work one question came to my mind: Why is antimatter needed at all for that propulsion mode? Wouldn't making the "sail" out of ordinary U235 and shooting regular neutrons at it work the same? Or are they trying to sidestep the issue of needing large amounts of a weaponisable isotope?

Remember there isn't a strict sequel-and-prequel thing going on here, but the two stories overlap some. Events from Shadows have been told to us, even witnessed by Val herself. So of course the Kraken is still going strong, but may not feel so good for much longer. Depends on what exactly @CatastrophicFailure has in mind for Val's storyline.

Memoirs of the Kraken: An autobiography?

Answers.

Or just disable gravity in/on/at/?? the target planet and watch it break itself apart with rotational forces. Would make a beautiful if explosionally deficient end of a world. The planet, on the other hand, would certainly notice the sudden appearance of a hole running throug it. The radius of which would uncannily match the Schwarzschild radius of the black hole in question.

What about the 4% of not-CO2 in the atmosphere and all the not-H2O in the ice? How do you purify your inputs so the impurities won't clog your processes? Or stuff doesn't get into the end product and ruin your ISP so you just almost got home? These things are easy in a lab or text book, but in the field you must know everything will work 100% or you might just as well not have come at all.

Name: New Armstrong. That's it, everything else is conjecture I think.

Perfectly sums the state of professional journalism this side of the pond.

Let me guess: you sent the poor thing out with "record everything" as its only mission, some mechanoid race found it and better equipped it to actually record everything.

Exo-dolphins could be colonists from Earth so they wouldn't technically count as aliens. Right?

Does not work like that with finnish keyboard. One needs to use AltGr+8/9, which are the combinations for [ and ] respectively.

That's my pet hypothesis. But then I am a random dude on the Internet, so don't forget the grain of salt with that.

0.20.something... but very few mods.