PakledHostage

Unrelated to the B747, but there was a DC8 back in the early 60's that was intentionally flown to Mach 1.012 in flight testing. The aircraft was later delivered to (and operated in commercial service by) Canadian Pacific Air Lines.

Ignoring the absurdity of this discussion, the maximum gross takeoff weight of a B747-400 is 875 000 pounds, but you wouldn't need to boost that much into orbit. The operating empty weight (i.e. the weight of the airplane) is about 395 000 pounds and as much as ~375 000 pounds of the gross takeoff weight can be fuel. Useful payload is whatever's left over. If you want to carry more than 100 000 pounds of payload, you've got to load less fuel. The maximum zero fuel weight (MZFW) is 542 000 pounds however. The MZFW is the heaviest the aircraft can be without fuel, meaning that the maximum payload is about 150 000 pounds. Presumably you wouldn't need fuel up there, so at most you'd need to lift the MZFW into orbit.

They'll keep us as pets.

I fully agree that it probably would survive about as long in space as a motorcycle would underwater, but they do have both positive pressure and negative pressure relief valves in the fuselage.

Very. The outflow valves near the tail are almost always a little bit open. They're about the size of a dinner tray. The pressurisation system regulates pressure in the cabin by modulating those valves. So much air flows through that the cabin air refresh rate is about 15 times an hour.

Just thought I'd point out that this is the same guy who started the How does zero-G work in planes thread and then concluded it with this: Once bitten, twice shy...

The late, great, Carl Sagan describing how Eratosthenes calculated the size of the Earth in about 200 BC. Just how accurate his estimate was is a topic of debate, but it was certainly better than Ptolomy's later estimate of about 29000 km.

Agreed. Time of useful consciousness is already surprisingly low at typical airliner cruising altitudes. Figure 16-1 on page 16-3 of this FAA reference gives some numbers. This, incidentally, is why they tell you to put your own mask on first before assisting others. You do yours while you can still think straight, and then help anyone beside you who needs it once the oxygen is flowing. Another interesting factor is the partial pressure of oxygen. At sea level, partial pressure of oxygen is roughly 21 kPa because air is 21% oxygen. 100% oxygen at 21 kPa also has a partial pressure of 21 kPa. It isn't enough to just maintain an equivalent partial pressure, however. I've read in a book about high altitude physiology by Dr. Charles Houston that low pressures also affect the way in which haemoglobin behaves, the permeability of the alveoli walls to O2 and C02, among other things. Spacecraft are sometimes designed to use a low pressure, high oxygen percentage atmospheres to maximise oxygen partial pressure while minimising structural weight. This was a factor in the Apollo 1 fire.

At the rate some of you people kill the poor little guys off, maybe the new recruits should have red shirts?

Not to mention that, even if the debris were in an orbit with the same perigee, apogee and inclination, it could be crossing the ISS' orbit by as much as 90 degrees (assuming both are prograde). That'd give the debris a relative velocity of roughly 11 km/s. Edit: Ninja'd by yourself... Or was it myself? Or am I loosing my mind?

Sad thing is that you'll be 40 before you know it... Someone once told me that people's perception of time changes as they get older because their frame of reference changes along with their age. When you're 10, 5 years is an extremely long time because it's half your life. When you're 30, 5 years isn't nearly as long. When you're 50, 25 years seems as long as as 5 years did when you were 10. If that is true, then the objective middle of our lives is somewhere around 18... You're just about over the hill, kid.

Congratulations on making the effort! I'm glad to hear that you figured it the source of your bug. An article you might be interested in is "Lies my Calculator and Computer Told Me". It is a bit old, but it still relevant to the issue you experienced.

Something about your analysis didn't quite sit right with me... Maybe the problem is with your description? If I understand you correctly, you're planning on using a Munar gravitational assist to enter an orbit with Kerbin Pe of 11400 km and speed at Pe of 619 m/s (relative to Kerbin). Trouble is that 619 m/s at Kerbin Pe of 11400 km is only enough to get you out to an Ap of ~22000 km. That's only 1/2 way to Minmus. On the other hand, boosting by an ADDITIONAL 619 m/s from an initial 542 m/s circular starting orbit at 11400 km would get you into the right ballpark for a transfer to Duna. Did you make an oversight in your calculations? The rest of your numbers are consistent with such an oversight. Even though 757 m/s at a 10 km Munar periapsis is still an elliptical orbit, it is enough to escape the Mun's SOI. It isn't enough to also escape Kerbin's SOI, however.

I had read elsewhere that the ISS actually reorients its solar arrays to minimise aerodynamic drag while on the night side of the Earth. A quick bit of online research (a.k.a. Google search) reveals that the procedure is called "Night Glider Mode". Supposedly this reduces the average drag on the station's solar arrays by 30% and saves about 1,000 kg of orbital-maintenance propellant per year.

@Azivegu: I don't think your idea is a tall order at all... I've actually been thinking about implementing something similar. It would make it easier to integrate Figaro GNSS hardware and hardware from other mods into a single satellite. I'd even thought about adding an advanced mode where your satellites would have to pass within view of KSC's tracking station every so often to "update their orbital elements". The big hurdle, as always for me, is that I'm not a 3D modeller. I'd need the help of someone in the mod community to make a part that could be mounted on a satellite. From what I can see in online images, the business end of real-world GPS satellites is an array of helical antennas. Maybe a part like that, sized for a cube sat body, would be good?

I don't remember the skylab scare but I do remember the whole school gathering in the school gymnasium to watch shuttle launches. Later, when they became more routine, we'd only get to watch if our teacher shared our interest in watching the launch and made the effort to bring a TV into the classroom. I also remember walking out of class to go watch the news in the school library when the Challenger accident happened. The teacher didn't protest. I just left.

Yes, please tell us why climate science should be any different? If it is true that all scientific funding decisions are political, then why do you advocate ignoring the warnings of climate science and not everything else? If such biases exist, then it should be possible to find them in every decision that we make in society. Maybe we shouldn’t make any decisions because they’re all biased? Could it be, instead, that you have a misguided sense of the relative risks/rewards and possibly even the morality of doing nothing? As NASA argued in response to critics who complained about its having spent over $2 billion on the Curiosity mission: They didn't load those $2 billion onto a spacecraft and send it to Mars. They spent that $2 billion here on Earth. That money stimulated the economy. Likewise, any money that we spend developing new energy technologies will also stimulate the economy. We're not putting a trillion dollars (your number) into a pile and burning it, dusting off our hands and saying "that'll solve global warming"... There will be new engineering, manufacturing and all of the spin-off jobs that go with them. There will inevitably be declines in some areas, but new opportunities will emerge to replace them. You've also got to contrast the expense of dealing with the problem against the cost of doing nothing. Not only in terms of the possible damage to the environment and ecosystems that we depend on, but in terms of using up a finite resource that has other uses. Oil, after all, is used for more than just fuel. Pharmaceuticals, plastics and many other products are made from it. Where will we get those from if we burn all the oil in our SUVs and 4x4 F350s?

The plugin calculates the position (lat, lon, altitude) of your Figaro receiver, referenced off the distance between the receiver and satellites in known positions in orbit. You need a good constellation to get an accurate position fix. The Figaro receiver also calculates distance and heading to a waypoint you specify. The point is that navigation information is not "free". It is only possible to accurately know where you are in real time because of technology and infrastructure. Most players ignore that for the sake of game play. Some, however, enjoy the challenge of launching a working GNSS constellation.

It's a flash-back to high school... B787 and A350: The two pretty girls that kind of look the same B747 and A380: The pretty girl and her DUFF.

I think we all agree, no matter which side of the argument we're on, that there's room for improvement in the climate models. You might be onto something here though! Maybe if climate scientists incorporated thermodynamics into their climate models, they'd make better predictions! I'll leave it to you to suggest it; it’s your idea. Dr Sheperd's Facebook and twitter accounts both show up when you Google his name. Thanks… Now I’ve got that Eagles song stuck in my head

While I wouldn't call it my favourite star, Gliese 710 is an interesting one. The best current estimates give it an over 80% chance of passing through our Sun's Oort cloud in 1.3 million years. It is only about 60% of the Sun's mass so presumably it's own Oort cloud wouldn't extend as far as out our Sun's, but I've often wondered if any of its own cloud of debris will pass through our inner solar system?

In the sport of rock climbing, the ratio of arm span to height is known as Ape Index. There's some debate about whether or not having a higher ape index predisposes someone to being a better climber. If it is true that a higher ape index makes us better climbers then it stands to reason that we'd have long arms. After all, climbing (trees) was certainly important to our ancestors. Maybe something like running, on the other hand, selects for shorter arms and the balance between the two contradictory pressures is that we have arm spans somewhere close to our height? Just my WAG...

Sure, but how do you transmit your data back to the ice's surface? Radio waves don't penetrate that far through ice, it will be almost impossible to keep the ice from refreezing behind your probe, and carrying 60 km of cable with you over which to transmit data to the surface is probably impractical. Clearly there are some major technical challenges to that type of mission. We might be limited to looking for evidence of life in surface ice on regions of the surface where there have been recent "eruptions" of sub surface water.

For anyone who's interested reading a reasonable summary of the mothballed TSSM mission to Titan: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Titan_Saturn_System_Mission The mission was originally planned for launch in 2020 and would include a balloon phase and possibly even the Titan Mare Explorer. While the Europa Jupiter System Mission was given priority for funding (although I think it too has been mothballed), lets hope that the TSSM mission eventually does go ahead.

@KhaosCorp: It is an interesting idea. I'd need the help of an artist to create the 3D models though. I have no such skills. MrPwner did the 3D model for the Figaro Receiver part that is distributed with this mod. Maybe if someone wants to volunteer? Also, in at least some of the satellites that make up real-world GNSS systems, the GNSS hardware is only one of many payloads flying aboard a given satellite. For example, the EGNOS, WAAS and GAGAN systems are/will be payloads on geosnchronous satellites that carry other payloads as well.