GregoryNeal

The notion of relativistic mass has fallen out of favor with the physics community. When physicists talk about mass, they are talking about the rest mass. I have a couple of links for you to read up on if you want to find out more, as I have no great knowledge of GR. However, I do know that you cannot just replace the mass from Newtonian Mechanics with the relativistic mass when talking about an objects gravitational field. http://www.physicsforums.com/showthread.php?t=144817 http://www.physics.adelaide.edu.au/~dkoks/Faq/Relativity/BlackHoles/black_fast.html http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mass_in_special_relativity#Transverse_and_longitudinal_mass

Have you played Space Engine? I'm pretty sure they have accurate representations of a lot of the planetary systems in our galaxy, as well as a beautiful procedural planet/solar system generator. And the reason we have been finding more large planets is because of our technology, it's very hard to notice the subtle variations in a stars radial velocity, or notice a small planets transit, with our current technology. However, spacecraft like the Kepler telescope make it more reasonable to find Earth sized planets. It's search volume is actually quite large if the Wikipedia page is to be believed.

Awesome, I'll be sure to try and implement these ideas in a little bit. I totally botched my Minmus intercept, ended up orbiting Kerbin a couple of times before I decided to use my remaining dv to crash into Kerbin. However, right as I passed my Kerbin apoapsis, my trajectory said that I was going to figure 8 around the Mun and Kerbin, and was heading for a Kerbin escape trajectory. This gave me the idea to try and land her on the Mun instead of killing Jeb. So I did. I'm going to retry my mission to Minmus with a Beastagon mk3, I'll make it a fair bit heavier to keep it on the ground, I'll add ASAS for flipping control (I flipped a lot during this drive, but survived them all), and a larger wheel base. I'll just take this landing as practice, and eventually set up a Kethane outpost in Munar orbit since I've already landed the damn rover. Thanks for all the advice, I think I have enough suggestions from everyone to successfully get to Minmus! here are some pics of my excursion.

Oh wow nice. No thanks on the dl link I like to learn as I go. I'm fairly positive my current attempt will fail due to the fact that I think I'll run out of dv before landing. Any tips on how to get to Minmus orbit efficiently from Kerbin?

Okay, I'm in the middle of the flight. The first thing I did was fiddle with the CoM, it mostly just required me to move the drills back some, but I also did some more testing. I decided that it needs a roll cage of sorts. So I built one out of the structural plates. Once I got the CoM where I wanted it. I strapped some rockets and RCS on the side. Then I attached the orange tanker with a smaller fuel tank underneath some mainsails. Here are a couple of pics I've snapped so far. I'll get more when I've gotten closer. Here is one of the actual redesigned rover. Sorry it's kind of hard to see D:

Nah, that specific one didn't blow up, however, I used this design with my kethane rover and it blew up. I don't know why this one didn't, the only reason I made it was because I was frustrated with the rest of my designs and just threw it together in a fit of rage. I must try that more often

Kind of like this? The fuel lines run from the outside to the inside so that the outer 4 rockets get jettisoned when they run out of fuel. Then it's just left with the payload on top and a transfer stage.

Haha, thanks for all of the replies everyone, I've tried a couple of designs, one of which blew up almost immediately. I'll post some pics when I actually get one to work. One question though? What's onion staging? I do asparagus staging on all my rockets, but I've never heard of onion staging.

Okay, the sun does indeed have an atmosphere, so you can hear sounds near the sun. Remember that sound is a compression wave, it requires a medium to travel. I'm not a real physicist (yet) so I couldn't tell you how loud it would be. Though I suspect it would be pretty intense since the Sun is just humongous.

Okay, the rover is 7.98 tons, 68 parts. Here are the available nodes: Sorry about the wait, I was trying to dock my lander

Hello everyone, I'm not that great at designing rockets, seeing as how I'm still fairly new to the game. However, I have the Kethane mod and am trying to start a mining base on Minmus. My first attempt at creating a Kethane miner resulted in various types of explosions, mostly due to me not being good at moving my lander once it's already landed. So I've decided to switch to a rover that mines the Kethane, then I will send a lander to land in the rough vicinity, drive the rover up, dock to it, and transfer fuel to the lander. In the future I will set up a refueling station around Minmus. The problem is not docking, I can do that so long as I raise the landing gear on my lander: I just can't think of a way to get my rover to Minmus, I've tried various rocket designs, including this thing (my rover was attached instead of the tank): This launcher works up until about 10km, where it folds up like a lawnchair, each rocket crashing into its opposite. It's quite a spectacle. Anyway, I just want to hear about any payload delivery systems anyone would find useful for this particular craft. I've been trying to get it up for about 3 days to no avail. Here are some picture, I do not want to modify the actual rover in anyway, however, I don't mind attaching things to it as long as they are decoupled before or after touch down. I look forward to any ideas you guys may have!

This thread has taken a huge turn from what the OP originally posted.

Well said, you beat me to it

If you were sitting in a reference frame where you could observe A and B traveling in opposite directions at .5c, then the gap between them would expand at c, that part is feasible. However, when you are standing on A or B, things get a little more complicated. A would not see B as traveling at the speed of light, nothing (with mass) can reach the speed of light You need to use the Lorentz Velocity Transformations to find out how fast B will be going in A's frame. It turns out that when A looks at B, it seems as though B is traveling at exactly .8c, and since they are traveling at the same speed (in opposite directions) with respect to you, then B sees A as going .8c as well. Velocities do not add up the way you would expect when you get to high speeds, this is because the speed of light is constant for everyone, and because there is no preferred frame of reference from which you take your measurements.

Gentlement, this is a very simple question to answer, based on Einsteins two postulates (which led to the development of Special Relativity: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Postulates_of_special_relativity). There is no preferred frame of reference, there is no "non-moving" frame. We can only move relative to other frames, be it the Sun, Earth, or the can of Dr. Pepper sitting in front of me. As for the speed of light, it's speed is relative to everything, because in all frames light travels at c.

Okay, I'll give it a go: Imagine a photon hitting a wall of area A and the wall absorbing the photon. According to Einsteins relativistic invariant E2= (pc)2 + (mc2)2 Where E is the energy of an object, c is the speed of light (299,792,458m/s) and p is the momentum. For a photon, whose rest mass m = 0, you get E2 = (pc)2 or more simply, E = pc A good thing to know is that in relativity, the total energy and total momentum of an inelastic collision (ie, the two objects stick together after they collide) is conserved. This lets us write the following equation psystem,initial = psystem,final when the photon is absorbed by the wall, the total momentum is just the initial momentum of the wall plus the photons momentum. The net change in momentum is 0 since we are not considering any other actions (we are in space, remember?) acting on the system. So the net change in momentum of the wall is just what was added to it after the collision, namely, the photons momentum. ÃŽâ€pwall = pphoton = Ephoton/c Now we get to step 3 of solving inelastic relativistic collision problems, my professor calls it Algebraic Wizardry, I agree. From regular mechanics, you know that power is energy per unit time, or ÃŽâ€Power = E/ÃŽâ€t, so E = ÃŽâ€(Power)ÃŽâ€t now we can say that ÃŽâ€pwall = (power)ÃŽâ€t/c well, you could now solve for ÃŽâ€p/ÃŽâ€t ÃŽâ€p/ÃŽâ€t = Power/c And since the change in momentum over time is just the force on that object (Newtons Second Law), F = Power/c since pressure is just force per unit area, Pressure = F/A ---> F = (Pressure)A = Power/c now we solve for the pressure exerted by the photon, it's just Pressure = Power/(Ac) Incidentally, for light, the power per unit area is the intensity I, so the pressure exerted on the wall by the photon is just Pressure = I/c Now if you have a reflecting source, the pressure is doubled because the change in momentum is doubled because now after the collision, the light is traveling away from the wall at speed -c, so the momentum of the light had to double in the opposite direction, this causes the force to be doubled, which causes the pressure to be doubled. Now to answer you question, why? Because energy does not only depend on the mass of a particle, but rather its momentum, for a photon, that comes from it's frequency and wavelength. If I'm wrong someone please correct me so I don't act like an idiot on more than one forum . Oh, by the way, hello everyone, this is my first post