KerikBalm

2-3 * 16 times the ISP it should be. Intake air should either be treated as massless for the ISP equations (like electric charge), or the ISP rating should be nerfed to 1/16th its value, due to the 15:1 mass ratio of intake air to jetfuel being consumed as reaction mass

What a waste of precious helium

Interesting, so the thrust scalar effectively scales ISP as well, I did not know that! I had begun to suspect something like that with my fuel consumption rates in NEAR/FAR, when my jets produce very little thrust at ~1,500 m/s, but I thought it was specific to the mod. I think that *1000 is to convery kN to N Can you do the calculations as to when a 390 ISP engine is more efficient that Turbojets in FAR? when the LV-N is more efficient in NEAR/FAR? Assuming 16x1200 ISP (the rated ISP for Turbos at very high altitude, ISP won't change much between 30km and 60km) for the turbos, and 800 ISP for the LV-N (again, I'm assuming one gets nearly vacuum numbers at 30km) or 390 for the aerospike. Jets get 19200 ISP at their peak thrust levels. (1000 m/s stock, 900 for FAR, 1100 on the rapier) 390/19200= 0.02 800/1920= 0.042 So... at what speed will turbotjets or rapiers give 2% or 4% thrust , given these velocity curves: Turbojet key = 900 1 0 0 key = 1800 0 0 0 Rapier key = 1100 1 0 0 key = 1700 0 0 0 Do I do linear interpolation, or is it logarithmic or something?

Well, the question is to reach, not return, and if a burn becomes too long, you don't simply wit for it to complete, you have to break it up. If you have a very low TWR, and a 1 hour burn... considering that the prograde direction becomes retrograde in ~15 minutes in LKO, you can easily end up with scenarios where you need to perapsiss kick. .Once in orbit, you can return from anywhere with an ion thruster. Dres is very similar to Mun, and ion thrusters are generally insufficient for use on the Mun. Duna's atmosphere is so thin, that it is hardly a concern on ascent, and LV-Ns will operate at very high ISP, and have plenty of TWR I was referring to the rare (not rate, sorry for the spelling mistake) window where you don't have to make a plane change, where you arrive as dres crosses the ecleptic. Interplanetary plane changes are an additional complication for new people, which makes it harder.

I feel like some of the contracts could be "story mode" in a fashion similar to storyline missions in GTA. Sure... you can go put out fires, or drive people around in a taxi, or do some other side branch missions, but there is a set of more or less linear storyline missions as well. Right now we have random contracts... and we have fixed contracts that are offered based on progress - which already begins to form a storyline for your spaceprogram (Lanch a vessel, 5000m altitude, orbit, then Mun, then minmus, then eve and duna and ike... and so on) Altitude records (Add speed acheivement too? 1,500 m/s for example, not just the 5,000 meters then orbit) Orbit Explore Mun/Minmus (side contract/mission, search for unusual features? ie mun arches, monoliths?) Acheive orbital rendedvous Explore Duna... Fine print style predetermined missions... like establishing surface habitats on duna/laythe and fuel depots. Locate surface anomolies, bring a science lab near them... etc. The problem is the conclusion of the story.... I don't find Nova's old plan to have a good ending (teleported dead planet way off in the far reaches of the kerbin system? meh... I would add 1 easter egg as a destination... like... vallhenge or something, and call it complete. maybe you find vallhenge, and it tells you to search a specific continent of laythe... and you can find pyramid/henge ruins and a kerbal face there... I'd say make duna the dead planet of the precursors (add a pyramid complex near the face?), and laythe a failed colony. Find their last outpost -> the end

What do rocket engines have to do with terrestrial biotechnology Are you hoping to engineer some microbes to make rocket fuel or something?

A very low one, because there aren't that many particles. The Earth has a whole lot of particles, so many that there's no straight line through without hitting one. That is the same principle as to why it doesn't take much lead to stop most radiation. When you ave less than a gram of subatomic particles flying at less than a gram of sub atomic particles, if the collision rate is low, that doesn't mean you can expect to travel through the entire earth without having a collision. Anyway, the point is, that at .99c, these forces are applied fast enough, you can't outrun the interactions.

:/ .... it also seems my Jool probe is going to reach Jool before I get any contract to go there.... so I'm going to have to stay out of the SOI of the moons if I want to get any explore contracts for those too? *sigh* I guess I will plant flags and repeatedly transmit science data for money.

3 meters... wow... For the same speed "The impact depth equation no longer applies, since the atoms are literally passing through each other." I think a more correct term is the atoms (nuclei, or subatomic particle) are going past each other. Lets say the impact depth equation is like on bullet hitting a block of lead, and this scenario is like a shotgun blast going through a lead screen (or two shotgun blasts passing each other in mid air). XKCD is generally pretty reliable, but you shouldn't take it as the verbatim "bible truth" (as you shouldn't really take anything as such) Again, we have ample evidence that two subatomic particles going at .99c will collide.

I guess moons count too. I've got Eve, Duna, and Ike contracts... I want a Moho contract, because my ship is already on the way, and it will get there before my ion probes to duna and eve. Will I not get the explore contract if I get some science data, but don't do the landing?

I was wondering how I can edit contracts, ie, which ones are available, under what circumstances they get offered, etc. I was looking through my install for a file that might contain this, but I couldn't find any. Can anyone help?

You don't have any theories of "verteron space" you have uninformed speculation. They aren't in development, and there is nothing to test. The interactions are instantaneous, or at least the same speed C. When one nuclei hits another, you can't just pass through because of C (given the speeds of the nuceli in many fusion events, if this were the case, we'd never have any heavy elements). You can see how often a stuff gets hit at the atomic level in just a small section of mass with xray scattering for instance. Also, we have plenty of high energy particle beams... the LHC has no problems getting sub atomic particles to interact with each other at relativistic speeds. Photons have no problems interacting with things, and they go the speed of light! I can't comprehend how you can't comprenhend: when you smash things together very fast, they go boom, they don't just pass through each other.

I don't think the thrust loss results in a lower ISP. I thought it was just a thrust scaler, and then ISP considers how much fuel is needed to produce that thrust. Can anyone confirm? And yes, the extreme OP'dness of the jets in game is well known. They should either be given an ISP of ~150, and use air:fuel in a 16:1 ratio, or have intake air be massless (like electric charge), and keep the rest as is.

I too use it on my spaceplanes, even without my personal buff of the thrust to equal the LV-T45 thrust... but I don't use it for its "aerospike" properties. I use it simply because I want 390 vacuum ISP, and a LV-909 is too weak, and a poodle's dimensions are impractical. (also, RP reasons, or I'd design the craft to use a nuke engine, but I don't want my orbital shuttles that routinely go to and from destinations in kerbin's SOI and back to the surface of kerbin to be running engines that would release a lot of radioactive material if there is an accident) I wouldn't call it 200 m/s of usable speed. A turbojet may produce thrust up to 2,400 m/s, but you won't reach 2,400 surface velocity. That is over 2,500 orbital velocity... you won't stay in the atmosphere long enough to use it up. A rapier's 2,200 max (though you won't reach the max due to drag and very weak thrust) won't get you out of the atmosphere much I think it actually comes out to 100 m/s or less of "useful" velocity. At any rate, I use NEAR, and they cap out at 1,700 m/s (and most of my designs reach only 1,600m/s or less, due to drag and 0.01 kN of force at 1,699 m/s not being sufficient to maintain velocity), so my designs need more oomph from the rockets. I basically use it as if it were a 1.25m poodle. For that matter, the constant atmospheric ISP isn't very realistic. You can't make atmospheric ISP equal vacuum ISP for a pure rocket. Suppose you have something like the poodle optimized for vacuum: 270 to 390 ISP (or even more so, the LV-N, 220 to 800) You can redesign the nozzle to give you a better atmospheric ISP at the cost of a lower vacuum ISP, like the ks 25x4/mainsail/Rapier 320 to 360 ISP Then you could do an aerospike, and get both the low end ISP, and the high end ISP 320-390 But it won't get you a better ISP at 1 atm than a rocket nozzle designed for use at 1 atm, which won't get as good of an ISP as a rocket nozzle designed for use at 0 atm. IRL, we'd have isp ranges something more like 1) 330-350 2) 300-370 3) 220-420 Where in a staged rocket, you'd use nozzle design 1 on the lower stage, 2) on the middle, and 3 on the upper But with an aerospike, you'd get something like 330-420

Some people can't tell a shooting star from an orbiting object? What I like to do is try to figure out what sort of orbit the sat is in.... its fun spotting ones in more or less polar orbits. My dad, who did classified satellite related stuff in the 70's used to tell me that the ones going north-south were probably military, and the ones going west-East were probably civilian communication sats. Although I think that has changed now, as there are quite a few civilian sats giving us images used for things like google earth.

Those follow on targets are not asteroids.

Same here, and I started using SPP in 0.24 when I heard it would be in 0.25. So... its just strategies - which I don't need (though the project where you get increased recover % so you don't need to put a part down right on the runway does seem nice) Destructible buildings is "meh" to me (and given that the drop of large spaceplanes often destroys the runway... meh). Also in the 0.25 install, I put FAR instead of NEAR, and that added some headaches at high mach flight. It in general ran slower, so, yea, I'm still playing 0.24 for now

Hmm, Jool diving may indeed be a good use, its atmosphere is even thicker, but it has less than half the "surface gravity" of Eve- the TWR issue isn't so bad. Huh, rapiers and turbojets have the same airbreathing ISP This is the curve for both of them: atmosphereCurve { key = 0 1200 key = 0.3 2500 key = 1 800 }

They don't obviously. I was simply using them as an example of not-low profile engines being usable on a lander. Of course, the engine has to make sense. The LV-N at1atm or greater is a 220 ISP engine with a 2.7 TWR - Terribad. That depends entirely on the rest of the craft. A single 48-7s has a TWR of 30, while a single aerospike has a TWR of 14.9. Well there are other options, taking advantage of Eve stock aero... just use a cluster of smaller tanks, more attachment nodes, same weight. It also allows for more asparagus staging. Its simply a gameplay limitation that we can't attach more than one thing to the bottom, and there is no part adaptor for tiny engines, so you're forced to use small ones. Therefore I don't consider cubic struts to be cheating (only when used to build massless structural elements and such, not when used to simply add an attachment node. FWIW, I also modded my game so that many adaptors function as 9:1 mass ratio fuel tanks. IRL engine clusters are more mass efficient than single engines)

48-7s clusters have a very low profile as well.... and if one or two hits and is destroyed... well, if its a cluster with many 48-7s, you may still be able to ascend. And also with stock aero, its easy to mak pancake rockets with low profiles. I don't find Eve to be any more lumpy than Duna or the Mun, and I land on Duna and the Mun with LV-Ns... so... A LV-T30 can also give you that lower atmosphere afterburner effect... for that matter, so can a 48-7s cluster. Sure, they burn a bit more fuel, but you can get a lot more thrust, because their TWR is much higher, and you were just talking about performance, not efficiency.... so... They are an engine with almost the same TWR as LV-909s and poodles, and the same vacuum ISP as them.... yawn.

Ignoring funds, what you want to looke at is Thrust to weight ratio, and ISP. The poodle pre-0.24 was pretty bad despite being tied for 2nd best ISP, because it was simply too heavy -> it was always better to use aerospikes or LV-909s (if you needed thrust vectoring). The 48-7s, despite having relatively poor ISP, are one of the best engines in the game, because they produce so much thrust for so little weight. You can come out ahead using more thrust per unit fuel, if your mass is low enough that you need less thrust (and thus less fuel). The new NASA parts in .23.5 did manage to break the 48-7s stranglehold (which meant before you almost always wanted to use either a 48-7s cluster, of a LV-N, and nothing inbetween) It comes down to how much the engine weighs relative to the rest of your craft (if its pushing around a 100ton payload in orbit, a 2.25 ton vs 0.1 ton engine doesn't make a big difference, but 800 vs 350 ISP does) Basically, it coms down to a lot of math, and you should simply look at tavert's charts for now (I've made some crude graphs of my own to pick the fuel optimal engine for a reusable lander, tavert's charts are always for a mass optimal set up, which isn't what I want for reusable landers+ orbiting fuel depots)

Well, from my point of view, it didn't come across as very smart... more like you don't know what a planet is. However, it is sort of similar to a point that can be made: You can practice an interplanetary transfer from Kerbin to another planet, by practicing a transfer from the Mun to Minmus or vice versa. They are exactly analagous to interplanetary transfers, but the launch windows are much more frequent, and the dV needed to transfer is much lower (of course, that is not including the dV that you need to get to one of the moons in the first place- for a Kerbin->Mun->minmus trip, you could basically do a Kerbin-> Duna trip) Dres? You've got to be kidding me. #1) the Delta-V doesn't cease to be a problem - note there are many threads about long burn times with LV-Ns... so there's added complications of perapsis kicking, poor TWRs, more of a requirement for orbital rendevous if you intend to return, etc. FWIW, it takes ~4.5x the delta V to land on dres, than to land on Duna. 1034 for aerocapture at duna (from a 100km Kerbin orbit) vs 3989 m/s for a capture into a 12km orbit on dres - and another ~550 m/s to actually land for a total of about 4550 for Dres vs 1050 for Duna. #2)Airless bodies are harder to land on, IMO. Its pretty easy to pop chutes, and just control descent rate with a touch of throttle. Its why a landing on Tylo is much harder than a landing on Kerbin (or Laythe), despite the lower gravity. #3) Dres's orbit is highly inclined, and launch windows are more irregular as far as dV requirements (there is that rate launch window where you can arrive just at the AN/DN and ignore the inclination, all other launch windows require varying amounts of plane changing).

I don't find it very useful. For those that said spaceplanes: By the time you light your rockets in Space planes, you are so high up, it might as well be vacuum ISP For those that say Eve: Its poor TWR means you need so many engines, that your dry weight increases so much that other engines are more efficient (48-7s clusters, LFBs, probably the buffed mainsails, etc). It can't accept a stage below it, and its unique ISP properties are only useful deep in the atmosphere, that implies it should be used as part of a first stage- ie "Boosters" - but it has a pretty bad TWR, which is not what you want in boosters. As a result, I buffed it on my install to have a TWR equal to the LV-T45.

They had an idea about how this thing may produce a force. The point of the null was to test that idea. Comparing the slotted to the null tells them their idea was wrong. Therefore, they lack any test for an explanation of how the force is produced. And it carries zero weight with me... or do you still believe that NASA paper about life substituting Arsenic for Phosphorus in its DNA? Citation please No, the results are: a force was measured. Force and thrust are not the same thing. There are a number of explanations for the force that, if true, would mean that it would not be able to produce thrust in space, and that it would not be a working drive. There is a *force*, we don't know what causes the *force* Depending on the cause of the *force*, it may or may not be suitable for space propulsion. To claim that this proves the drive works is to make a false claim. Lockheed doesn't have a fusion plant. They have an idea for a research project that may lead to one. Their press release made no such claims. One media group made claims out of thin air, and others parroted them. If you read what Lockheed says now, compared to what it was saying in Feb 2013, you'd come to the conclusion that the project isn't working out like they expected - there has been no breakthrough.

Science, Reputation, Funding.... These things the Kerbals should be able to affect. Thrust... NO