CaptainArchmage

You buy the game on steam or on the store, or on both places. You can't have both with a single purchase, but don't worry about it too much. The store copy, which you have, allows you to get previous versions which is nice. If you want to launch from Steam, I think you can add your copy as a non-steam game.

We just have Liquid Fuel and Oxidiser in KSP. The density combination is more like Kerbal equivalent of N2O4 and Aerozine for the record, but lore tends to go for Liquid Oxygen and Kerosene. The following statement is 100% valid only if actual volume calculations are carried out by the mods, given the tank volume. It appears this is the case. Hydrogen and then nuclear rockets are essential IRL due to the square cube rule combined with the efficiency. Starting with liquid hydrogen and oxygen, the square cube rule says, essentially if you go for a small system hydrocarbon fuel is cheaper than hydrogen to work with, and that's mostly to do with tank costs (the structure is more expensive than fuel). Going to a modern heavy-lifter the sizing gets to the point you're either spending on mass to support the dense kerosene, or on insulation for otherwise less dense hydrogen, and not only is the insulation lighter, but the volume-to-surface-area is higher due to the square cube rule. Additionally, the insulation needs will drop as the area through which heat gets, per unit volume in is smaller (so the tank stays cold for longer). This means that the cost of the tank for the hydrocarbon fuel, including insulation, will eventually outstrip the cost for the liquid hydrogen tank and the cost of hydrogen doesn't make a difference because the tank is about a hundred times the price of the fuel it holds, unless you're sitting just on the margin. The emphasis is big tanks. Think SLS and Energia scale, or bigger. This is particularly about minimising surface area and support mass. Probably you should run a graph for this. I think there might be an issue of balancing. The nuclear engine will provide a lot more specific impulse, but the TWR is poor, including IRL. These are used in orbit. To be honest the ISP should be something like 800-1600s for a hydrogen nuclear rocket.

I need to check other situations, but outside of reentry, on 100% heating, I think the problems will be close to the sun or running a lot of clustered engines for a long time. Use the small radiators that are directional, the biggest arrays appear bugged (source: people who tried them, please confirm) compared to the medium and small ones. Liquid fuel only = use a liquid fuel spaceplane and attach nukes as a switchover from the turbojet engines. I had a 0.90 spaceplane to Jool powered by those, probably would have gone further in 1.0.4.

The best way is to be going as close to zero m/s as you leave Kerbin's SOI. If you have the upgraded tracking centre just get the parabola out of the SOI barely, else accelerate until you see "escaping" on the map view status instead of "orbit" or "sub orbit". Leave, do science, and thrust back towards Kerbin. Probably been ninja'd a few times now.

In my current save? Eating snacks on the surface of the Mun while the Skyloft (a Skylab lookalike) gets launched into orbit around Kerbin. If things go really well, he might be staying there for a while, even.

Do you know if there there an after party for squad for today though? I see one scheduled for 9:30PM EDT.

These two may be some of the indicators: 1) You have difficulty ending up in a circular orbit around Kerbin, most orbits end up highly elliptical. 2) You have difficulty killing your horizontal velocity landing on the Mun.

I think this is about correct. Jet engines don't use an internal oxidiser supply, so an "effective ISP" seems to be used for some of them. In other news, you could use other methods to get the fuel as well from ISRU. Technically an electrolysis system with enough power to back it up could use the water present to make liquid hydrogen and liquid oxygen, or liquid methane and liquid oxygen (using the Mars atmosphere).

The process will both produce oxygen and food. Or, this, though plants use respiration during the night and during germination, which is why there is an initial supply of O2 around; after the plant begins photosynthesis it should be able to produce enough oxygen to keep that covered. The scaled up version of this system, as a farm, will probably need to cover the colonist's oxygen needs as well. Regarding algae: you can use that, but complex plants are more appetising, and algae require a specific process for freezing that isn't such an issue with plants (multiple seeds are brought along for backup). It is important to test this technology works on Mars; there will be results on the environmental conditions inside, how CO2, O2, and nitrogen levels fluctuate, and the general health of the plant. Edit: And Happy New Year to the KSP forums!

The greenhouse is pressurised, including a buffer gas of nitrogen.

Thanks! Growing edible food in space using extraterrestrial resources is going to be really important for sustaining colonies out there.

Alright, this project aims to grow lettuce on Mars using CO2 from the Martian atmosphere: http://www.lettuceonmars.com/ The design uses an open cycle system with a pressurised greenhouse and grows an edible plant which has been subject to good deal of research. The lander is intended to go to Mars in 2018 and is funded by MarsOne, but the design should be valid on any landing Mars mission (example: NASA or ESA) that makes a soft landing. There happens to be a public vote on it, too; it is one of the ten finalists for the university payload. If you want to see this happen, you need to vote for it now! Voting closes at midnight tonight. Voting instructions are on the project page, if you want to see this fly vote for it now! Here's the project page on the mars one community website: https://community.mars-one.com/projects/mars-micro-greenhouse An AMA about the mission was also done on Reddit: http://www.reddit.com/r/IAmA/comments/2qp7yx/we_are_a_student_team_that_will_grow_lettuce_on/ (There's also a KSP mod I've done based on the designs. The Curse site is http://www.curse.com/ksp-mods/kerbal/226547-lettuceonmars-micro-greenhouse-mod-plant-science and on these forums at http://forum.kerbalspaceprogram.com/threads/105064-LettuceOnMars-Micro-Greenhouse-Plant-science-in-space-using-extra-kerbinian-resources%21 - plant or other life-oriented science in space is something we could do with in KSP as well!)

Merry Christmas (belated) everyone! Presenting my first mod here. This adds a module to grow plants using other planets' atmospheric resources and get science out of it. You'll be able to run this experiment on Kerbin, Duna, Eve, Laythe, and Jool, and any modded planets where there is atmosphere present (if it doesn't work with the modded planet you're trying, and it does have an atmosphere, mention it!). The design is based on that of the #LettuceOnMars team's submission for Mars One 2018 lander university payload competition. You can read more about them and how their project works here (yes, the project, in real life, passed a technical review): http://www.lettuceonmars.com/ https://community.mars-one.com/projects/mars-micro-greenhouse This mod has been slightly KSPified in certain cases; you'll know when they happen. The modded experiment takes considerably shorter time to run than a few weeks, for example. Curse page: http://kerbal.curseforge.com/ksp-mods/226547-lettuceonmars-micro-greenhouse-mod-plant-science Curse download: http://kerbal.curseforge.com/ksp-mods/226547-lettuceonmars-micro-greenhouse-mod-plant-science/files Download Links - I put the file (with license and credits) on MEGA since it isn't uploading to Curse. When Curse is working for me I'll replace the link. You can download the mod here! To install: Drag the LettuceOnMars folder to the GameData folder. Little Q&A for those interested in the technical details: Don't plants need oxygen to start germination? > The design this is based on carries its own water, and either uses electrolysis or decomposes nitrous oxide to produce oxygen. The carbon dioxide is is obtained from the atmospheres of other planets, and so can the nitrogen or buffer gas. On certain large and gaseous planets, however, there is no carbon dioxide or buffer gas and the "explodium vapour" present might result in an energetic redox reaction with the oxygen produced. Here in KSP you can still put the experiment or two on a Jool descent probe and see what happens. Where does the buffer gas come from: > In real life, there's an open design choice between supplying a buffer gas (inert gas like nitrogen or argon) from chemical decomposition or extracting it from a planet's atmosphere. On a planet like Mars, the nitrogen content can be enriched using membrane filters, which are light, cheap, safe, and are in-real-life used in just about all but the most massive nitrogen production plants. For this mod, the buffer gas (Squad hasn't elaborated on what this gas is called) system uses the one best suited to the planet. What about air pressure? > A compressor is carried along to build up the pressure. That said Duna has a lot thicker atmosphere than Mars. Screenshot:

I decided to try out Kerbin Real Size System (10x) and got into orbit, and the ion engines how have enough propellant to take me to the Mun and back, and probably to Minmus as well. I did not use FAR or Kerbal Engineer.

There was supposed to be a reusable upgrade, so the rest of the rocket would fly back. It would still be a large cost, but once off. It wouldn’t necessarily have to fly that often unless they needed to fly a large number of very heavy satellites or bulk shipments. I’ve seen a more recent attempt by the Russians to design a flyback booster for a smaller rocket, which would be quite helpful, and would preferably come first. Technically the Russians had more excuses to stop running the Energia project than the US had to stop the Saturn V, because of the situation in their country. They seem more willing to take equipment out of storage when the time is right, too. The engines from the N1 worked very well after being in storage for about 40 years, and while that project was cancelled, they had worked out and fixed the design flaws. The engines from the N1 - NK-33 - were taken out of storage and were exported to the USA, where they now power the Antares rocket, which launches the Cygnus spacecraft. For reference the NK-33 engines have performance close to that of the Mainsail in KSP, from 0.17 to 0.23.5 (except the NK-33 produced more thrust in vacuum, and has 1/5th the mass of the Mainsail). There is also this news: http://rt.com/news/russia-booster-rocket-energia-817/

The Buran shuttle design worked once, so it could definitely work again. The Buran that flew was heavily damaged because of a hanger collapse more recently, though one other shuttle remains, unfinished. The Buran isn’t actually required for launches though, because the main engines were attached to the Energia rocket rather than the shuttle. The Energia rocket could launch on its own and bring up a payload equivalent of the shuttle and more. There were many designs for alternative configurations to the Space Shuttle as well, but on Energia both the shuttle and the alternative were tested. The Energia rocket would not circularise the orbit though, and the non-Buran test spacecraft apparently did not orient itself properly for this orbital insertion. However, that was a failure on the part of the spacecraft launched, not the Energia rocket. It would be better than anything we’ve had since the Saturn V in terms of payload, at least until stage 2 of SLS flies. I think the Russians have begun work on another heavy-lift system though.

Empty space....... you do know that people like to have personal space, right? SpaceX said on the first Dragon flight that it could have been given a few simple modifications and would have carried crew. That would have been an acceptable replacement for NASA at the time, but they had more time for scheduling reasons. They have used this not just to make the Dragon V2 capable of a precision landing on solid ground, but also increase the number of creature comforts on board.

This article just screams “make it go awayâ€Â! The quantum virtual particle pairs are a reasonably well-understood phenomenon. Arguing about the naming of the drive is more of a technicality, too. It wouldn’t be surprising if it could be utilised to produce thrust. This is the point. If the device continues to show results, given that some people should understand the quantum vacuum reasonably well, it should be possible to either confirm how the device works with the existing theory, unless new physics is required. From an engineering perspective, if multiple devices can be shown to function safely, and in space, then it works. It may be time for our education systems to consider teaching quantum field theory to more people. Which will be hard.

Yes, I have done enough testing to trust them.

(Sorry for the multiple posts) The reason why this needs to be a little different from the Kraken drive in KSP is....... To use the device properly, you need to quantifiably control this. Besides turning it on and off, the thrust needs to be controllable properly, so one could run multiple Quantum Vacuum thrusters not necessarily aligned with the center of mass. My experience with a Kraken Drive in KSP featured an uncontrollable acceleration, which I was unable to stop, except for using timewarp, or SOI changes.

They did test it in a vacuum chamber according to the paper: http://ntrs.nasa.gov/search.jsp?R=20140006052 However, they tested it at ambient pressure - without removing the air. Not sure why, it seems though it was a preliminary test. The system required manual control, and they want to upgrade that to an automatic one. My guess is vacuum testing is one of the next steps. It may have been that the “null test device†was hermetically sealed, which could cause problems with testing it in a vacuum chamber, or modifying it as such. They may have already made changes and tested the device. It seems to take an awfully long time for the results to come out - it has been almost a year since they did the tests. Edit: Actually, the device could be useful at ambient atmospheric pressure, so there’s no reason not to run those tests as well.

If this is not just going to be a once-off mission, then I think that will be acceptable. We can then drop propulsion and maybe go for reaction wheel stabilisation? Here’s an example: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9PiAdesZe5I

There is conservation of energy and there is conservation of momentum. In the Quantum Vacuum Plasma Thruster, momentum is conserved as well as energy - it pushes against virtual particle pairs predicted to exist in quantum mechanics.

CaptainArchmage <- NINJA'D Again, the principle using quantum mechanics isn’t reactionless - it pushes on virtual particle pairs (antiparticle-particle) that appear and annihilate. This is an engineering exercise.

This, exactly. NASA’s testing shows resulted, we need more testing. This might even be a “test your own†possibility. It isn’t an energy-less thruster, it is just propellant-less in that no propellant is carried on board. It still requires energy to run. For a start it would simplify satellite design.