KerikBalm

I vote for sterile due to an extremem lack of smaller MW molecules in the atmosphere

I assume you just copied and pasted from the wiki, which needs to be changed. http://wiki.kerbalspaceprogram.com/wiki/Laythe#Atmosphere "Laythe's atmosphere begins at 55,262 meters and is slightly thicker than Kerbin's. It is the only moon in the game which has an atmosphere." Note also: http://wiki.kerbalspaceprogram.com/wiki/Kerbin#Atmosphere Laythe vs Kerbin: Pressure at elevation 0: 0.8 vs 1.0 ->Kerbin's atmosphere is thicker at sea level Scale height: 4,000 vs 5,000 -> Laythe's atmosphere gets thinner faster as you increase in altitude Maximum height: 55.3 km vs 69.1 -> Kerbin's atmosphere extends higher Laythe's atmosphere is 20% *thinner* than Kerbin's. However, its gravity is also 20% thinner, so in the end, terminal velocity near sea level should be nearly identical. If your parachutes work on Kerbin, they'll work on Laythe.

I'm unsure of what the most efficient way to do plane changes and orbit reversals (ie change a retrograde orbit to a prograde). Initially I'd just think "oberth effect" and do everything at perapsis... but... then I think in a very eccentric orbit, suppose at perapsis my velocity is 2,000 m/s and at apoapsis, it is 200, then to reverse the direction, perapsis burns would require 4,000 dV, but apoapsis burns would require only 400. Plane changes would work similarly I would think, so then I start to wonder if the most efficient way to make these changes from a low orbit is to burn prograde (not retrograde) at perapsis to put the apoapsis way out there, then change the plane/direction at apoapsis, and then a retrograde burn at perapsis to circularize again. but then I wonder if the dV needed to make the orbit highly eccentric, and then circular again would result in more total dV use. Later today I may have time to experiment, but if I could get an answer now, it would save me some time

Takeoff wiht a jet, fly north? If you can't land your jet well, stick parachutes and a decoupler on your pod?

My 1st 2 person lander used a large size lander can, and carried 9 tons of fuel+tanks, it was designed to be asparagus staged, 3 aerospikes, 2 on the outer FL-T400s, 1 on the inner... I forgot decouplers, and very soon was running only 1 aerospike, it had plenty of TWR, and fuel. The next iteration was for it to be a reusable lander, left in duna orbit, the central aerospike removed, and a docking port added to allow it to sling rovers underneath and such. I preer the aerospike to the lv-t45 for landers, you often have enough torque, its the same weight, has plenty of thrust, and higher ISP (its atmospheric ISP is pretty much irrelevant on duna, I basically just use it as a bigger LV-909), and importantly, it is short, a very good thing for landers. Then I got more efficient, using 2x 1 person lander cans and 2x FL-T400 tanks with a LV-909 underneath (5 tons of fuel+tanks, 1 ton of engine, 1.2 tons of command pod, about 8-9 tons total with chutes and panels, legs and such) I think I also tried an iteration with a central FL-T100 tank underneath and 2x FL-T200s, carrying 1 LV-909, and two 48-7s. The 48s fired on liftoff, and then I shut them down and used only the higher ISP 909, IIRC, that was also capable of reaching orbit I think the biggest problem you had, is you didn't set up a close flyby of duna. You save a ***LOT*** of dV if you set your Duna perapsis to 12km just as you leave Kerbin, instead of waiting until you enter Duna's SOI. And of course, if you don't set up that perapsis upon entering Duna's SOI, you must spend a ***LOT*** more dV to do an orbital insertion. Lastly, despite the greater efficiency of the LV-Ns, if you find your ship is low on fuel, don't try to bring it back on the nukes - instead transfer all the fuel into the lander, and send the much lighter lander back (or transfer all the fuel into the lander, burn the remaining fuel in the nukes, then undock and burn with the lander. That lander, if it can get back to orbit, has at least 1,300 dV, which is more than enough to get back to Kerbin when fully fueled. Sure, your ISP in the '45 is about 46% that of the tug, but with 4 nukes, that tug's dry mass is more than a proper landers empty mass. I also overbuild my rockets, but I build them so that I can dump a tank as a fuel depot in orbit -> so at the start of the mission, I've got a large margin, I see how much fuel is used in the burn to get to Duna - towards the end of the mission, when its just the one final burn to come back, I take that same amount of fuel in my tug, and leave the rest in orbit as a fuel depot (being much lighter, I still come back with a large margin, if I also leave my lander in orbit around Duna for the next mission, I will guesstimate how much lighter I am and take less fuel, future missions use that same lander I left from the previous mission, and thus its only a consideration once)

"When I try to make larger SSTO planes, I hit a wall right around 23,000m and about 1400 m/s" Moar Fuel? That is plenty high and fast enough to make it into orbit with a rather large payload. I don't part clip (and as a result, I don't really air hog either, since it's hard to find non part clipping places to put intakes) or use mods (well, not many mods), I get about the numbers you get. All stock, no part clipping, less than 2 ram air intakes per jet, 2 radial intakes per jet: It uses the new liquid fuel boosters (I was trying to keep part count down), hauled a ~53-54 ton payload into orbit, with 45 tons of rocket fuel left over (so it used less than 3 orange tanks to hauul about 100 tons to orbit, I should be able to increase the payload by 45 tons, and lead 45 tons of rocket fuel less into the SSTO/put empty tanks into the payload and top them off with the 45 remaining tons in the SSTO) This earlier one I made pre-23.5 is a bit more air hoggy (and a lot higher part count), with a smaller size payload bay Its nearly stock, the intakes were modded to have intakes for both "IntakeAir" and IntakeAtmosphere" - but the intake atmosphere intakes were closed, its a resource for an electric fan engine that was not on the craft (i've since split those into two modules, because its annoying to have to go close all the atmo intakes to reduce drag) So, I think if you just carry extra rocket fuel, your performance on jets is fine. But I'd add a few things: you have your outer jet pair running last, you should make it the inner pair so if a flameout happens, there is less torque It seems a waste to run rockets at low throttle because you have to keep your jets at low throttle - although this is hard to avoid with jets... maybe you can be running your outer jets, and set the thrust limter on the inner jets, then activate the inner jets and shut down the outer jets, so you can run your rockets at higher throttle without flaming out your jets. I also find LV-Ns to suck for getting your apoapsis out into space, their TWR is too low. I'm somewhat skeptical even on the aerospikes (390 vs 370 isn't a big change), maybe have just 1 centrally mounted where your two aerospikes are, and then where the LV-Ns were, add LV-T30s? Fire the LV-T30s to get your apoapsis up, then just use the LV-N to counteract drag and circularize? I don't use LV-Ns at all in the atmosphere, but thats more for RP reasons If it gets to orbit, why do you care how much fuel it has left? what is it used for? crew transfer? or do you want this to be a Single stage to Duna? I don't get the obsession with SSTOs with high deltaV's, all I care about now is the payload for a SSTO I've abandoned my single stage to anywhere but orbit designs in favor of orbital rendevous. If I want "fully reusable to Duna", I have a SSTO lifter that launches the interplanetary ship to orbit, and hten lands back at Kerbin. The interplanetary stage drops a lander to Duna, which is SSTO on duna, refuels the lander when it comes back up, and leaves it at duna, returns to kerbin orbit for refueling by another SSTO.

"That's slightly out of date now since you can Focus on your target in the Map screen and get much the same information." Really? I can go set my conics mode back to default? It will display the trajectory around the planet, not where the planet will be (which you couldn't focus on, making precise burns extremely difficult to set up)? As to the conic patch limit, it determines how many SOI transitions it will show... increasing that number could be very usefull for navigating the Jool system

Spectrophotometers rely on reflected/transmitted light, if its underground, a spectrophotometer won't see it.

Freefall mentioned the use of mainsails: I don't see any mainsails, tbh, I don't recognize half the parts, he's using mods, some parts I recognize as mod parts even though I don't use that mod.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/10_Hygiea Well, this one's pretty big, so its density is probably a bit higher, but its basically twice as dense as water... 2 grams per CC instead of 1 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/16_Psyche This one should be denser than normal Its estimates are between 3.3 -> 6.5 gm/cm^3 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/243_Ida This one is much closer in size to what you're talking about, and it seems to be 2.6 gm/cm^3 So.... it depends on the composition of course, but 2 gm/cm^3 should be in the ballpark for most of them

On titan perhaps? Beyond that. There is no stealth in space, if its warm enough for people to live on it, it will shine like a torch in the IR spectrum across the cool background of space (CBR being about what.... 3-4K?). So, you need to camoflauge it, make it look like just another part of a celestial body. Underground, or some place with a thick atmosphere. Any of the gas giants are too thick - though I wonder how low your orbit could get before it will degrade rapidly, if you were in a very tight orbit around... lets say Uranus, you might not be noticed. How you would get it anywhere without being noticed.... I don't know. And you can't travel back and forth without being noticed... so....

I've often wondered about using the Mun for interplanetary launches... with an orbital period of 1 day 14 hours, most transfer windows (lets say all except Moho?) are sufficiently "wide" that you should be able to use the Mun during Kerbin escape. Of course, the farther from the optimal time, the more dV needed... so I've heard the Mun is sort of barely worth it in most cases.

Hmmm, so here's how I perceive your joke: Ridiculing vegetarians for being arrogant and self- righteous. Then you come with "I will simply say you aren't looking at it close enough. Think it through, to the logical and and you'll see it." When what you posted was complete and utter garbage, I could vomit a better argument than that. How hypocritical of you. But since you insist on looking closely at it, prepare for defeat in detail: I present to you two biological traits we share with all terrestrial predators: 1) A sleep cycle, you don't need to sleep to eat plants 2) A sense of smell, you don't need to smell to eat plants Of course, you find both of these traits in herbivores as well.... just like you find canines and binocular vision in herbivores. Here is basic logic for you: If P then Q does not mean if Q then P Additionally: There are many terrestrial predators without canines, and without binocular vision. So, in summary: Both the statements you made were false. Even if the statements were true, your conclusion does not even logically follow.

That is not true, but a common ad hominem argument devoid of any logical argument. Your earlier post (#14) was completely devoid of sound logic. That said: We evolved eating meat as part of our diet. Why do we need vitamin C? many other animals can synthesize it. However, animals that have a high-fruit diet get plenty of vitamin C, if you eat alot of fruit, the vitamin C synthesis pathway can become mutated or shut off, or completely deleted with no ill effects. We clearly did not evolve from hypercarnivores. But in addition to needing stuff like vitamin C, we also require 8 essential amino acide - many other things can synthesize all 20 standard amino acids from any of the other 19. We cannot, we can only synthesize 12 of them, therefore it seems we evolved with an ample supply of those 8 - suggesting carnivory*. Then there are the ethical arguments.... either tied to sentience, or tied to genetic distance. I sometime do regret the way animals are killed for my meat.... but it is so tasty! I have reduced my meat intake, but I won't stop completely. Then there is the environmental/economic/population pressure argument: You can feed more people if everyone eats a vegetarian diet. * It is possible to have a vegetarian diet supply those 8 essential amino acids. An appropriate mixture of beans, nuts, and legumes should do. You certainly won't get it only from eating lettuce, or even lettuce+fruit. And IIRC, you need beans and nuts, not beans or nuts... Of course, you can also supplement with cheese, which is relatively efficient as far as production of food, and that way you don't kill the animals (but what do you do with the excess males?! yea, sell veal.... oh well) Along those lines, there are some that argue we should switch to an insect based protein supply. I don't empathize much with insects, and it is more efficient at feeding people.... but... eww..... I'd rather go straight from eating only chickens (more efficient than beef) to eating beans and nuts... because I won't be chowing down on cockroaches...

Why would you have orbital factories? The raw material is down on the surface of a celestial body, why would you lift all the crude ore and such to orbit, when the refined and finished product is so much lighter?

Indeed, sometimes when I hear of quantum effects, and how things seem to behave differently on different scales, and this "waveform collapse" upon observation, makes me wonder if the universe is a simulation... like how KSP physics doesn't actually fully simulate a ship until you make it active, or it is within 2.5km of another ship. This would also be how I would explain the existence of a god able to defy naturals laws, if there were good evidence that such a god exists

Well, a mule may not be able to reproduce, but its cells can. Its pretty easy to culture any animal's cells Henrietta Lacks may be dead, but her cells live on in labs all around the world (hela cells). If something is made of living things, is it then by definition alive? Is a nation alive? Is an ant colony alive, or only the ants themselves? only the queen? only the ant cells? Of course, humans can't reproduce without glucose, or essential amino acids and vitamins... whereas other organisms can survive on just CO2, N2, light, and some minerals... Then you have some species of mycoplasma, which are obligate intracellular parasites.... pretty darn close to viruses... and a plausible example of an intermediate of a living cell could evolve into a virus. You can have bacteria growing on minimal media. You can have mammal cells growing, but they require addition of growth factors and "complex" media. You can have intracellular parasites growing in very complex media. You can grow some viruses in cell lysate. In some ways, you might say its simply a matter of the complexity of the "nutrients" needed to make it grow. I would say it is any self propogating organization of matter with the capacity to evolve (as opposed to simple crystal structures). In that sense, viruses are life. From a cell/molecular biology point of view (which is what I study) no line is drawn between "living things" and "viruses". At the molecular level, they are pretty much the same, its simply a matter of complexity. You could view the infected cell as the "living virus" and the virus particle as something akin to sperm. You don't often study a pathogen by itself, but the host-pathogen interactions. And infected cell has a certain organization, certain pathways and such, and that infected cell can propogate that organizatiosl scheme. Personally, I consider viruses to be a form of life... just shift your focus from the infection particle to the infected cell, and you've got something that looks pretty much like life. Its really just a philisophical question that serious science doesn't really address. For the purposes of exo-biology, its sort of a "we'll know it when we see it" -and yes, there is plenty of sci-fi where we initially don't know it when we see it -the same goes for sentience -and it goes both ways, with aliens not recognizing us as alive or sentient (typically until our resistance makes them take note, such as in Ender's Game, for example)

Why do people keep bringing up this "Earth like atmosphere" requirement as if that was ever a seriously held "requirement"? Yes, Earth's atmosphere changed over time. No, nobody is saying there can't be life on mars because it lacks Oxygen. Also FWIW, the nitrogen content of Earth's atmosphere has been pretty much stable. As Rathalon said" And also as I previously said: you need to consider the cosmic abundance of elements in the Universe. Its no accident that life here mainly uses the first rows (after hydrogen) in the periodic table. Carbon is more common than Silicon, carbon's bonds are more stable than silicon. It seems rather unlikely that silicon based life would arise unless carbon had somehow been locally depleted. Carbon containing compounds would be more abundant and diverse, and would thus outcompete silicon compounds almost(?) everytime during abiogenesis. I'd wager that the vast majority of life in the universe is Carbon based, simply based on the abundance of carbon relative to other potentially suitable atoms. Water based... I'm not so sold on. I'll concede that amonia based life seems quite plausible (in place of water, Ie, carbon based life with NH3 as a solvent, not OH2) Methane as a solvent: I'll conceed its plausible too, but that is still carbon based life

yes, you get science from them.

I think the science Juniors are stupid... what is the materials bay anyway? IMO, they should function a bit like the lab-> you get a transmission boost. Then the manned mobile lab is what you need to clean experiments, and returning data to the mobile lab give you a huge science boost... to something like 90%. It is a bit pointless now. Every instrument except the goo and science jr is fully reusable. The goo + materials bay adds up to 1/10th the mass of a processing lab. I have started using it around the mun and minmus with a lander that I keep refueling and cleaning out, but then I tried just stacking on a bunch of goo+ mat bay packages, and that worked just as well (discarding each one after use, picking up a new one upon docking) - but then its limited to 9 such pacakges before the mobile lab becomes more attractive... except using disposable science Jrs and goo canisters means that you can discard them before ascent+rendevous, whereas to use the lab requires hauling them to orbit... Opps given the mass ratios of the craft, this often means you'd need to visit 20 or so biomes to break even (less on gilly or minmus, many more on tylo or especially eve) I suppose the transmission boost is nice for places farther away than kerbin orbit... more science you can use "now" as opposed to many months later when the ship returns. As long as other planets only have 1 biome, there isn't much point in taking it. I really think we need an unmanned version that you could leave, for example, on the surface of Eve or Tylo (granted, returns from Tylo aren't so hard)

yea... cold gas has a terrible, terrible ISP... I suppose you might be able to do a burn when outside of weapons range, and then fire a supercooled gass thruster, or even use a solar sail to alter your trajectory sufficiently, that when the enemy opens fires on where they expect you to be, they'll miss, but I wouldn't count on it working, and once you fire any weapons, your heat signature will likely be too big to hide. And the gas would be detectable anyway... It may not be stealth so much as camoflauge. It may be hard to tell an enemy ship from a space rock that has something subliming, but it will be detectable, but perhaps not identifiable. But during war, if there is something drfiting close to your planet, better to be safe than sorry, and zap it with a pulse of a few gigajoules from a terawatt laser.

Who was saying that molecular oxygen was one of the main requirements? Its not even a requirement for animal life... You do need the element oxygen though

400 f is like the inside of an oven, you'd suffer from "burns" (like putting your finger on a hot plate, and gettign a blister, not combustion) pretty fast. I guess it is like asking how long you'd last inside an oven - probably over a minute. The denser atmosphere will speed up the heat transfer

Fortunatelt, they are easy to mod. I took the old .18 basic jet engine (it is slightly different, I think it is just the texture), and made it into a "ducted electric fan" These stats feel "balanced" to me (note, I had to add "atmosphere" intakes and an atmosphere resource): mass = 0.4 dragModelType = default maximum_drag = 0.2 minimum_drag = 0.2 angularDrag = 2 crashTolerance = 7 maxTemp = 3600 MODULE { name = ModuleEngines thrustVectorTransformName = thrustTransform exhaustDamage = True ignitionThreshold = 0.1 minThrust = 0 maxThrust = 30 heatProduction = 50 useEngineResponseTime = True engineAccelerationSpeed = 0.5 engineDecelerationSpeed = 0.75 useVelocityCurve = True fxOffset = 0, 0, 0.74 PROPELLANT { name = ElectricCharge ratio = 45 DrawGauge = True } PROPELLANT { name = IntakeAtmosphere ratio = 1 } atmosphereCurve { key = 0 1000 key = 0.3 1800 key = 1 2000 } velocityCurve { key = 275 0 0 0 key = 250 0.3 0 0 key = 175 0.7 0 0 key = 0 1 0 0 } } It really struggles to fly in Duna's thin atmosphere, but it can, it actually seems to work better on Eve. It consumers quite a bit of power, especially when the ISP starts to drop at high altitudes (or anywhere on duna)

(sorry for the very late reply) Yes, you could, I've thought about this as well as a counter argument to the "no stealth in space" arguments... But if stealth depends on knowing where the enemy is, then the enemny and you can't both have stealth at the same time, or it becomes just a roll of the dice. Note that the narrower your radiation cone(s), the less heat you can radiate, and you'll need to radiate a lot to cool the sides you're presenting to the enemy to about 3K/cosmic background radiation temperatures. I suppose the first side to get an observation array with full 360 degree coverage along every axis (well, assuming a radiation cone is not less than... say 30 degrees) wins the conflict. It can destroy any opposing IR observatories that are launched, while remaining hidden. Unless, both sides get such an observation array up before the war commences... then there's no stealth. Knocking down the observation arrays is like knocking out sam radars to allow non stealth planes to operate safely. But for current purposes, pretty much everything is orbiting in the same plane, you could just have a supercooled ring in the same plane as the planets orbit, and radiate "north" and "south"... But once you start having military activity in space, those will likely cease to be safe directions to radiate. And I suppose you could deploy an observation network even if the opponent has one up already using mass drivers firing supercooled, dormant payloads, they could get quite far out before warming up to detectable levels. And any fusion reactor powering lasers firing terajoul -> petajoule pulses is going to make so much heat that any heat sink will be quickly overwhelmed, a "stealthy" rate of fire would be pretty low. Of course, this all breaks down once your ship has to move. While you can do directional radiation for your ship.. it has to expell reaction mass... and unless you propell your ship with a mass driver firing out little probes that also have that directional radiation system, your hot exhaust will give you away. The maneuvering thrusters on the shuttle would be visible from the asteroid belt... when you try to move a ship, the exhaust will give it away, and then its simply a matter of plotting its course, and firing at the right place in the darkness at the right time. If you tracked it accurately enough from its initial burn, you'll fire, and not even see the thing until it explodes