78stonewobble

Yeah, it gets you nowhere in practicality. I was thinking more along the lines of variations of existing concepts. Gathering the reaction mass and fuel as you go (ramscoop) and beamed energy concept (solar, laser, microwave whatever). To the point of having the ship itself consist of nothing more than payload and a structure that gets energized in such a way that it uses interstellar matter as it's reaction mass. A sort of antaenna that receives/absorbs directed energy and uses it to create a magenetic field to gather fuel and accelerate it. Offcourse subject to the same problems as any other project of beamed energy (dispersion at distance) and ramscoops (drag).

Sooooo wouldn't the "optimal" approach be to somehow create our reaction mass along the way? Think star trek replicator. Offcourse the fuel to make the energy to make the reaction mass (fuel) and all the inefficiencies in doing that will probably render the point moot, but still...

Well you are right about that, however it's still based on the following assumptions: 1. There is intelligent life other than our "noble" selves (I actually believe this to be quite possible). 2. Abovementioned intelligent life has the capacity to cross interstellar distances (less likely, but not wholly impossible). 3. Abovementioned intelligent life decides to visit our solar system (1 star out of a 100 billion stars in a 100 billion galaxies (quite quite remote, unless life and interstellar travel is a common occurrance in the universe). 4. Abovementioned intelligent life is very similar to us. Wants to stay hidden for arbitrary reasons and being forgetfull (seems unlikely as well). Well, personally there is quite a few more earthly explanations I'd find much more likely than the above mentioned list of assumptions and big leaps of faith. Occams razor PS: I find the chance of life and intelligent life elsewhere in the universe quite high. I even think interplanetary travel is possible (didn't say it was gonna be fast or cheap). I just find it very unlikely that we are that much of an attraction or that life is that widespread. And offcourse there are Unidentified Flying Objects, so far I just haven't found it likely it meant little green men or jesus or ... whatever ...

o.O And an alien race possessing the intelligence and ability to cross interplanetary distances, ability to render their craft completely invisible to radar, infrared and optical wavelengths and wants to stay hidden (for whatever arbitrary reasons) decides to randomly cloak uncloak their craft in plain view of passenger jets with potentially hundreds of witnesses? Yeah, that makes complete sense. I've just never understood why unidentified lights should be supposed intelligent creatures wanting to remain undetected... If they were the least bit intelligent the first step to stay undetected would be to turn the lights off... Makes no logical sense.

I think this debate kinda illustrates, how we probably know more about the physics of the universe, than we understand how the human brain works. I just found that kind of ironic. PS: I believe that pretty much everyone with a certain bare minimum of skills and the proper (for this individual) education can become pretty much everything, but that it takes certain special "ephemereal" qualities to become truely exceptional at doing something. PPS: By "ephemereal" I don't mean magic or "godgiven... I mean that how or why we think what we do, is not very well understood and that some people make better intuitive leaps and connections than others.

@nibb31: I don't quite agree... But because I tend to count "because we should try and see if we can" as a reason all in itself. It's not really an economically tenable argument though.

Sorry, if this is a stupid question. I'm still new at the game. Wouldn't that rocket have worked just as well without any separators at all? Or with the separators mounted on, say, the noses on the boosters (so as just to push them down and away faster)? The ordinary explosive separators seem to have worked just fine for my rockets, but I haven't gone with too many boosters in any of my rockets yet.

To clarify my yes. I'd love some more incentive to better design my rockets better and make sure they are aerodynamically effective. I haven't spend a minute in the spaceplane hangar yet (still new), so for the effect / need there... I'll leave that up to others. Though I do believe that we could go into infinite detail on "aerodynamics", so it shouldn't be needlessly complicated or "overcomplicated". It should add just an appropriate amount of challenge and realism, but not be a chore that takes away too much fun.

Nice pictures, even the blurry ones... I've only gotten a glimpse of jupiter through a pair of handheld binoculars once, maaaybe even a glimps of one of the moons, but I have terribly unsteady hands for that sort of thing. So that will have to wait for a telescope.

As most have pointed out it would be nigh impossible, but on the question on whether we should do it, IF we could? Yes, we should. Obviously not to release them into the wild or the streets of a typical american city, but the opportunity to observe a live dinosaur and to be able to look at the non fossilized parts better is a huge thing towards understanding the animals better.

That just proves that us humans are sometimes wrong. The laws of physics presumably stayed the same no matter what Einstein or anyone else said about them. But I agree on being weary of exclamations of "absolute certainties" like: "This ship can't sink or tsunami waves at nuclear powerplants will obviously only have a wave height of maximum xx meters". In some ways it's better to know that you can be wrong than to think you're right. ... Personally I don't think that "we" ... "need" ... technological leaps to make major inroads in our stellar neighbourhood. We could go extremely far with things that are technologically achievable today. Just imagine what we could do with ie. 6-12 scheduled heavy lift launches a year every year (nigh mass produced). 100 tonnes plus to LEO per each one. A fully developed nuclear powered electric rocket (the reactors have been compact and zipping around the worlds oceans for 4 decades for crying out loud). ... It's more a question of priorities and will. ... PS: Well if we have to go "reusable", I'd try with something akin to: Take a saturn 5 analogue, make the first stages reuseable (parachutes and reinforcement), make the re-entrying parts reuseable (cept for stuff like lunar lander payloads offcourse) by applying a 1 time use heatshield on those parts. Replace capsule with something akin to the dynasoar thing. A small space plane... But with 1 time use heatshields. The question being whether the reuseability will offset the lower efficiency of bringing anything up due to the added weight.

Living in general entails the risk of death. Trying to live as full as possible and reach out to do even more ... entails more risk... but it's what makes life worth it. The only existance that is risk free ... is to be dead. PS: That said I'm gonna obey my social anxiety and stay home and play kerbal space program instead.

Amazing video and work *in awe*

I just wanted to say thumbs up for the idea of a nuclear powered bi plane. I certainly wouldn't have thought of it