KerikBalm

I often hear criticism of KSP's realism here, but I think that is unjustified. Compared to any other space game out there (except Orbiter), KSP is leaps and bounds ahead in terms of realism. Just because the astronauts are cartoonish, and there are jokes about snacks, doesnt make the game unrealistic. To me, its realism is a large part of its attractiveness. So what, if they scale some things down to roughly 1/10th... or that we don't have a dozen different types of fuel, and hundreds of different engines to choose from. Its a simulation, and simplification is required in those. So the atmosphere is like soup... its in development, and I remain confident that something like NEAR will be incorporated in the future. Making it RL scale (as in the RSS mod) would result in too much load for people's computers, or the terrain being too borng and low res when one actually lands. Its a computer game, and we don't have computers powerful enough to simulate the entire earth - to me KSP is nearly as realistic as is prealistically possible.

In the same vein as the arsenic life paper, NASA published a study with shoddy controls, and the media wet their pants over it. At least this time the actual paper itself doesn't make unfounded claims (those unfounded claims are only peripheral or alluded to in the paper, not explicitely stated). The test was not performed in a vacuum, thuse heating of air is a potential source of the thrust. The test was performed on a device expected to be non-functional (ie, a negative control), but the same thrust was reported. This means the study lacked proper controls, and any effect should therefore be really small if it is there at all. Others may claim that the negative control was in fact still equally functional, and that the device still may work - but as I said, they lack controls. So, the deal is that there is a lot of jumping to conclusions and media hype, and that this thing still probably doesn't work.

The body doesnt need to... a dead man lying in the ground expends no energy, yet doesn't sink to the Earth's core.. wonder why? A harrier produces force by moving air, a relatively small amount, really fast. The KE imparted to the air is how much energy it needs to keep hovering. Because KE= 1/2 mv^2, a helicopter which moves a larger volume of air at a slower speed, expends less energy to hover. In the case of a person doing squats, there is considerable movement at the molecular level, manifesting as heat production. Basically, the less you need to move things to generate the force, the less energy you need to expend. A rock lying on the floor doesn't need to move anything to generate the force to counter gravity, and thus needs no energy expenditure.

I'm curious what journal he tried sending that paper to. There are some interesting ideas in that, but #1) They are not new, and thus not really publishable #2) The ideas are not rigoruously developed and sufficiently explained for publication even if they were new. Publishing is a hard task, even for PhDs, a lucky undergrad might get in on a paper with lots of authors (and won't be first author, that's a near certainty), but in your case, you may have been too ambitious.

Indeed, you don't subtract that. The time spend and distance covered accelerating is the same as that which you spend decelerating. d = (v0t + 0.5*a*ta²) + (vt * tt) + (vtt + 0.5*(-a)*ta²) v0 = 0, so get rid of that d = 1/2(a*t²) + 1/2(a*t²) +(v*t) ----- sorry that I lost the subscripts d = (a*t²) +(v*t) v=1.49896229*108 m/s (just going to call it 0.5c) for acceleration, t= 0.5c/a d = (a*(0.5c/a)²) +(0.5c*t) = 0.25c^2/a + 0.5c*t d is fixed, so t just varies with a. Note that you get negative values for t if a is insufficient to allow for acceleration to 0.5c before reaching the halfway point.

I've never been to: Gilly Ike (in the SOI, never landed or even orbited) Dres Jool (In the SOI, never in direct orbit or the atmosphere) Tylo, Bop, Pol Val (in the SOI, never orbited) Eeloo An asteroid Which means I've visited (all with manned return) Moho, Eve, Mun, Munmus, Duna, and Laythe. I guess I should really visit Eeloo (it is a challenge after all, even if it shouldn't be harder than Eve or maybe Moho) and Tylo for the challenge, and Gilly or Pol for the low grav fun... and do an asteroid redirect.

Currently, their only uses are for gathering science when one lands near the intersection of multiple biomes, and moving around on the surface if you want to land 2 craft, but didn't land precise enough. I just did a duna mission with a science rover (anticipating multiple biomes) that lacked rocket engines of any sort- just parachuted down, and fixed the wheels (would have worked the same with struts) after impact. I then landed (I fly manual, no mechjeb) a probe controlled 2 person lander as close as I could, it was still off by over 2.5 km. The rover certainly helped save RL time getting the kerbals and science data back to the mothership. I do the same for Eve - my eve ascent vehicle thus doesn't need to be designed to carry science instruments (and ideally, jettison them before ascent), and can land at a high elevation - let the rover-lander carry the science and get the landed/splashed down science data - sure, you could just "take data" and walk your kerbals up a mountain, but using a rover saves time. I also find them useful for getting science from hard to reach biomes - like canyons (although its not that hard to land in them) or the slopes of minmus (which pose a tipping over hazard, although the eva and surface samples are easy enough to get)

I cannot follow your reasoning as to why that would be. Heated gas expands, even if it starts at 1 atm, or 5 atm, and the gas in a jet engine after going through a compressor is much higher than 5 atm anyway.

Well, Ion gliders are pretty useless IRL, its kind of silly that we use them in KSP, I'd much rather see an electric fan. An engine that reduces the prevelance of ion gliders is a good thing IMO. As for the challenge, you can still use ions, perhaps for circularization - and you can use other engines, perhaps to get your craft up to speed so that the air augmented engine can produce more thrust. I'd say your submission doesn't need to use the engine at all, but as already noted, its quite impossible with the stock parts, so... I can't imagine such a submission would be competitive What I'm worried about, as far as gameplay considerations, is making the aerospike obsolete. Sure, the vacuum ISP is worse, and the TWR and dry weight is worse, but I'm not sure that is enough. "although isn't the atmospheric pressure on Eve enough to cancel the compressing effects of the high airspeed?" Ummm I'm not sure where you are going with this. Do you mean: 1) the compressing effects of a ram scoop are not needed, and it should be "air augmented" and producing full thrust from a standstill? or 2) do you think it will not work with a very dense atmosphere? 1) If there is air there, it can be heated to expand and produce more thrust. 5 atmospheres is not all that much, the pressure in a jet/rocket engine/airscoop easily exceeds that by large amounts, and except for the very first moments when the rocket is fired, there shouldn't be enough air entering to provide any noticable air augmentation 2) as long as it can be further heated to cause expansion, it can be used to augment thrust. In theory, this should be like a "super aerospike", producing equal vacuum ISP and better atmospheric ISP to conventional rocket engines, with the downside of a much higher weight - making it good in theory for escaping the atmosphere, but poorly suited for interplanetary journeys due to the high dry weight. If the mixture is run fuel rich in an oxygen containing atmosphere, it is essentially a jet engine, very similar to the Sarbe. However, you can still run such an engine - with added oxidizer, in an atmosphere that has no oxgen. Its not as good, since you need to bring your own oxidizer - but its stil better. If we can have LV-Ns, why can't we have these rockets? They've been in intermittent use in missiles since the late 60's (although typically running fuel rich and also exploiting atmospheric oxygen, and also typically using solid fuel)

Yes, Eve SSTO is impossible with stock parts, but if we had access to parts like an air augmented rocket engine, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Air-augmented_rocket I think Eve would become much more accessible. So this challenge is to use a specified modded rocket engine to acheive fully reusable SSTO flight from Eve's surface. Mods allowed: FAR/NEAR, mechjeb, and the specified rocket engine*. *detailed .cfg at bottom, but important parts are as follows: Better efficiency than nukes in an atmosphere. Somewhat similar to the stock turbojet, its TWR is poor at very high, and very low speed. quick stat summary: Mass: 2.4 Atmophere ISP curve: 1 atm= 1200 ISP 0.3 atm= 1000 ISP Vacuum ISP= 360 Velocity curve: 0 m/s = 50% thrust / 175 kN 200 - 800 m/s = 100% thrust / 350kN 2250 m/s and above = 50% thrust / 175 kN (Ideally, thrust would be 175 kN in a vacuum, and could increase when the engine has more air available, but for now, I'm going with this) Scoring is simple, highest payload fraction to orbit from "sea" level. If no entries accomplish that, then lowest altitude takeoff that acheives orbit, and if no-one acheives that, highest perapsis. Rules: * No infinigliders, avoid use of control surfaces (lets say less than 1 control surface per 5 tons of craft) -thrust vectoring should be sufficient * No ladder/kraken drives/ other exploits * The craft must be fully re-usable - it must be ready to go again after docking with an orbital fuel depot, meaning; - No solid rocket boosters - The craft must be capable of landing on eve, and then attaining orbit after landing, so include parachutes and struts and fuel for retro burns as neccessary. * No other mods other than specified, of course, you may hyper edit your craft to orbit around eve to try the descent and then SSTO Lets see what you can do There are of course limitations to the KSP engine, but for my simple "simulation" of an air augmented rocket, I'm using the following: -Duplicated the rapier engine folder, renamed it "AirAugmentEngine" edited the config file to be as follows: PART { name = AirAugmentEngine module = Part author = C. Jenkins and KerikBalm mesh = rapier.mu rescaleFactor = 1.5 node_stack_top = 0.0,0.741545,0.0 , 0.0, 1.0, 0.0 node_stack_bottom = 0.0,-0.2048244, 0.0, 0.0, 1.0, 0.0 mass = 2.4 dragModelType = default maximum_drag = 0.2 minimum_drag = 0.2 angularDrag = 2 crashTolerance = 20 maxTemp = 3600 TechRequired = hypersonicFlight entryCost = 35000 cost = 3600 category = Propulsion subcategory = 0 title = Air-Augmented Rocket Engine manufacturer = C7 Aerospace Division and Rockomax Conglomerate description = Air-Augmented Rocket Engine is a joint venture between C7 Aerospace and the Rockomax Conglomerate. Designed to fill a gap in the design requirements for extra-kerestrial atmospheric operation, this engine uses extra-kerestrial atmosphere as reaction mass, heating it using standard rocket fuel, to produce more thrust per unit fuel. attachRules = 1,0,1,1,0 EFFECTS { running_closed { AUDIO { channel = Ship clip = sound_rocket_spurts volume = 0.0 0.0 volume = 1.0 1.0 pitch = 0.0 0.2 pitch = 1.0 1.0 loop = true } PREFAB_PARTICLE { prefabName = fx_smokeTrail_aeroSpike transformName = smokePoint emission = 0.0 0.0 emission = 0.05 0.0 emission = 0.075 0.25 emission = 1.0 1.25 speed = 0.0 0.25 speed = 1.0 1.0 localOffset = 0, 0, 1 } MODEL_MULTI_PARTICLE { modelName = Squad/FX/shockExhaust_blue_small transformName = thrustTransform emission = 0.0 0.0 emission = 0.05 0.0 emission = 0.075 0.25 emission = 1.0 1.25 speed = 0.0 0.5 speed = 1.0 1.2 } } engage { AUDIO { channel = Ship clip = sound_vent_soft volume = 1.0 pitch = 2.0 loop = false } } } MODULE { name = ModuleEnginesFX engineID = ClosedCycle runningEffectName = running_closed thrustVectorTransformName = thrustTransform exhaustDamage = True ignitionThreshold = 0.1 minThrust = 0 maxThrust = 350 heatProduction = 650 useVelocityCurve = True fxOffset = 0, 0, 0.25 PROPELLANT { name = LiquidFuel ratio = 0.9 DrawGauge = True } PROPELLANT { name = Oxidizer ratio = 1.1 } velocityCurve { key = 2250 0.5 0 0 key = 800 1 0 0 key = 200 1 0 0 key = 0 0.5 0 0 } atmosphereCurve { key = 0 360 key = 0.3 1000 key = 1 1200 } } MODULE { name = ModuleAnimateHeat ThermalAnim = HeatAnimationEmissiveRapier } MODULE { name = ModuleGimbal gimbalTransformName = obj_gimbal gimbalRange = 3 } MODULE { name = ModuleTestSubject // nowhere: 0, srf: 1, ocean: 2, atmo: 4, space: 8 environments = 15 useStaging = True useEvent = True } }

No, because its NASA, we expect proper controls, and the scientific method, not leaping to unfounded conclusions. Extraordinary claims with extraordinarily bad evidence.

It reminds me of the "Arsenic Life" paper - it sounds amazing and like it comes from a reliable source, then once you look carefully at it, you see really shoddy work and no good evidence of the claim.

Not tested in a vacuum, wtf? they put it in a vacuum chamber, but left it at ambient pressure? wtf then there's the possibilty of magnetic field interactions... Better tests are needed before spending ~10,000 m/s of dV to get it into orbit

I like your mouse over idea, combined with a total at the top

I think it depends on the capsule, and the use of the degree rotation buttons - although that may only get you "close enough"

You sound like a creationist that doesn't understand thermodynaics. Theremodynamics in no way says we cannot exist, entropy in no way says that this is impossible - that you claim it does shows that you do not really understand it.

Meh, its not so bad, Laythe's thinner atmosphere makes the nukes not so bad relative to chemical rockets as far as ISP is concerned (whereas with the very thin atmosphere of Duna, you can just ignore that the atmosphere is there for ISP consideration). I'm guessing you had TWR problems though? Did you not know that you can use jets on laythe? thats sort of the whole point of visiting (to me anyway, aside from a beach vacation I guess)? Meh, not knowing mod related things like interstellar doesn't make you a noob. And visiting eve is fun - in the kerbal way of fun where massive explosions during launch are also fun. Regarding the many mentions of checking staging: thats being lazy or careless, not noobish And those that try to use parachutes on the mun.. really? i mean... really? For me, stock KSP, the most noobish thing I think I was doing, was constant full throttle ascents at way over terminal velocity... it took so much just to get to orbit, I was wondering in amazement about how people managed to get to other planets. Also, when I read about asparagus staging, and decided to try it, my fuel lines were all screwed up, I thought, based on what I read, that it would automatically drain from the outermost tanks first - my fuel lines weren't all going the same way, I had massive problems with imbalanced thrust and staging orders.

sussually take a couple hundred m/s extra, I try not to do more - well, for return trips and landers, I'm in the habit of setting up fuel depots and always use orbital rendevous.

I don't know about you, but unmanned missions can still be inspirational for me. I'm excitied about the mars rovers, rosetta, and would very much like to send probes to the martian gesers and sink holes, the ancient inverted relief river formations (fossil biofilms causing those perhaps?), and down the geyseres of enceledus and Europa.

FWIW, IRL small moons may not be visible either until you get a close look, I'm thinking of gilly and pol here. already, there is some "kerbalness" to going without getting a close look with a probe, and that is that you don't really know what the surface terrain is like- its hard to get a good idea of how uneven it is just by zooming in on the planet. A tall unstable lander may work for the flats of minmus, and you might thing the dark maria in the Munar craters will be similar... but then you get there and find... no, its not, its really uneven - in most places, and likely you'd actually visit the mun first, not Minmus, but the point is there that you don't quite know what you are facing. Already, unless you use various plugins, there are a lot of unknowns - you don't really know what your terminal velocity will be when you pop chutes, or what altitude your chutes will open - again, the wiki helps. Its easy to have a doomed Duna mission if you are relying on chutes to slow down, and your landing site is too high - I don't think the game displayes scale height in the map mode. This just extends the unknowns so you can ge yourself into even more trouble - but as I said, there is the wiki, and of course, past experience, and the novelty would only be there for the first visit or two

note you can tweak the thrust of the sepratron in he VAB, jut not in flight, if it gives too much thrust, lower it in the VAB, this also gives you a longer "cushion" time. But for very low velocities, the drag is very small, there isn't much difference in drag between 7 m/s down or 3 m/s up, and I think it will be quite hard to do without a throttleable engine

Its criminal how underfunded fusion research is. To be honest, there's not much more we can do with manned spaceflight as long as we rely on chemical rockets. Without Nerva, or various electric propulsion methods powered by nuclear reactors, we're not going anywhere. A fusion reactor would be a quantum leap for space travel. http://www.sciencemag.org/content/345/6195/370.full http://www.sciencemag.org/content/345/6195/370.summary?rss=1

Agreed, EM radiation (ie, light) is the only thing that propagates in a vacuum. They will be sensing it, if not organically, then with technology (I suppose they might not have eyes, but they will have something like telescopes and cameras, that is for sure). So, first question: Did they know we were here when they left? They'd likely be able to sense that there was something funny going on based on our oxygen atmosphere, and a prominant green pigment from a long way away - farther than our radio waves would be discernable. If they didn't know we were here when they departed, they'd know before they arrived. One scenario: Its just a survey ship passing by, maybe looking to do some in situ resource utilization before going on the next leg of its journey - it may stick around for longer observation, or it may just transmit its findings and leave quickly Another Scenario: They came to study what was producing the oxygen atmosphere - they may or may not make contact, if its obvious we've detected them, they probably would. Another scenario: They came to colonize the system. Assuming they have fusion drives or better and have adapted to life in space (they may colonize systems with no terrestrial planets) such, they may prefer to start with small gravity wells - it start mining the asteroid belt and Kuiper belt, Earth, with all of its biohazards and its nearly 10 km/s dV requirments, and resources hidden deep underground, may not be attractive to them. However, its industrial output may be of interest to them. If we build stuff for them, they can grow their colony faster. I don't foresee direct enslavement - more like they give us technology, and we have to build stuff for them, perhaps this is arranged via "gunboat diplomacy" - accept, or they bombard us from beyond earth orbit (likely only delivered to governments in secret). Your enslavement is the amount of labor you do that goes towards paying taxes to fund the construction of stuff for the aliens. Or they just acknowledge our claim to earth, but then claim everything in the system beyond earth orbit for themselves - maybe they'll be nice and let us have the moon too. I wonder how humanity would react if we saw our potential future (expansion into space) robbed from us? I don't see a relativistic kill weapon as likely. They are only good against civilizations that are limited to one system with a handful of planets. Civilizations spread across multiple start systems, with self sufficient industry on various asteroids/small moons/etc, could not be readily wiped out by 1 KE weapon. Earth would not pose an existntial threat to them if they're already expanding across start systems. If they're here, they're long past their single inhabited planet stage. A simple warning would suffice, and I think they'd want to study us (a technological space faring civilization wouldn't form if there wasn't some desire for knowledge, don't you think?). Also, I'm assuming no warp drive. Sorry but I'd still wager that alcubierre drives are impossible, even if they don't strictly violate relativity and haven't been strictly proven to be. They come, they study, they may or may not colonize the rest of the system, they may or may not seek to use Earth's industrial capacity for their benefit. We are so small and insiginficant at this point, that we don't pose a threat, and the planet isn't worth much to them - mars would probabl be better suited for their needs anyway

"I think properties such as size, orbit, surface gravity, atmosphere properties, should be always known because they are important for planning missions." Hence a gameplay reason to send tiny scout probes first, like RL with the mariner probes to mars. But then people will just look on the wiki for the info anyway

"not to forget that 10 goo canisters and Science jrs. have the additional costs of requiring more engines and fuel." Huh? it requires the same amount of fuel and engines to haul 10x .35 tons, as 1x .35 tons. Also, the break even is at 11, because you take 3.5 for the lab, but then you still need to take the modules, ie 1 lab +1 goo + 1 mat bay vs 11 goo and 11 mat. Maybe you thought I meant each mat+ goo module would have its own engine - Nope, I'm talking about adding a stack with 1 docking port jr on them, the lander docks to the end of the stack (attaching one to it), the docking port from the next in the stack decouples, setting the lander+ 1 science module free. Yes, the docking port adds a little weight (0.02), but then you get to just leave them at the surface, with a lab, you need to haul them back up if you're goig to re-use them. At the moment, only the Mun has more than 11 biomes - Minmus only has 9. Do we really want a module that is only useful for farming munar science? Its what I use it for, certainly, but it feels a bit silly - something a few hours away by space travel -> send a mobile lab for onsite science processing, something that requires a multi year journey: meh, no point in taking a mobile lab. "whereas using single missions to Mun would require 15 Spaceship + Lander missions in order to visit each Biome once ... something which (according to my calculations from last KSP versions) would cost you 4 times the money that you would require to use the Spacestation + a single Spaceship + Lander to visit all Biomes" Again, you can still do the station thing without the lab, just include a stack of mat bay+ goo with 1 small docking port each. "Using a science lab in a station will become even more useful as soon as Squad begin with the long needed step of putting multiple Biomes to other Planets (like Duna)" Only if they add more than ~9 biomes (as you also want high and low orbit)- since even with the small weight of docking ports, its more efficient since you don't have to haul the science modules up from orbit again for re use (note you can make 1 module with 2 mat bays and 2 goo with 1 docking port, for the high and low orbit, to save a little cost) If the lab had its own unique science experiment that it can perform, that would be an idea - it also wouldn't hurt to have it incorporate its own goo and materials bay, but that would be redundant if you have a separate lander that will ahve those. Maybe if it incorporated all science instruments so you could reduce part count?