Apexazimuth

This mod looks absolutely amazing. However, I'm a Realism Overhaul/RP-0 addict, and no amount of awesome modding can make the stock game bearable to me, for I have been forever spoiled by RO. I've searched this thread for compatibility with RO, but there doesn't appear to be much of a conclusion. Has anyone given Kerbalism+RO/RP-0 a real go? How's it play? Does it play?

Interesting hypothesis. However I think the energy requirement for the nucleosynthesis of heavy radioactive elements is many orders of magnitude greater than a ~10 solar mass collapse can produce, so for sure any fusion of those elements would occur during the supernova itself, and the energy absorbed from that nucleosynthesis would hugely outweigh the output of the fission of those elements into less massive atoms. I'm just making a guess though, I'm no physicist.

If we don't discover life on Europa first. I think we'll find exotic biochemistry on Titan. I think it's just as possible that we could discover exotic aerial lifeforms on (in?) any of the gas giants. It would be far more difficult to identify exotic micro organisms in the atmosphere of gas giants due to the technical/engineering challenges of deploying a floating probe that can do useful science, but not impossible. We may even find that life is actually common in the universe among the atmospheres of gas giants, and that terrestrial life is what should be termed "Exotic". Maybe we've been looking in all the wrong places all along. We know so little about the compositions of our gas giant overlords, so It's really hard for me to rule out the likelihood of exotic life within them. Jupiter is a great example of how difficult a planet can be to explore because of its incredible gravity and radiation belt.

http://xkcd.com/1356/ For most people, their graph of this would see a sharp drop every time they saw a Hollywood "sci-if" like Elysium. Its movies like that that lead people to believe that going to space just involves going up, where gravity magically disappears. The same reason that laypersons actually think that blue origin's new Shepard can compare to spacex's falcon9. Shameful.

I was curious about this before I became an ROholic (Realism Overhaul). Now it's clear as day. Kerbin is ridiculously tiny, with a disproportionately voluminous atmosphere. There really isn't any point to a gravity turn for launching to orbit from kerbin. It's most efficient to get out of the atmosphere quickly, gaining a bit of horizontal velocity on the way, then do a short burn to circularize. On earth, that horizontal burn takes MUCH longer, and the rocket will fall back to the Earth unless the upper stage is ridiculously powerful (thrust wise), or if the first/second stages take care of most of the horizontal velocity on the way up, which is what real rockets do. My whole concept of "throttling" was squished once I started playing with RO to see how real rockets work. MOST rocket engines aren't throttle-able, even new ones. The RS-25 (Space Shuttle Main Engine) is often quoted because it is seen as a "common" engine, since it's on the space shuttle, but there's nothing common about the RS-25 at all. It's extremely high tech, extremely expensive, and extremely complicated. Not at all a model example of a typical rocket engine. Reducing G-load and dynamic pressure on a rocket without throttling requires simply starting off with a bunch of engines and shutting them off as the acceleration increases, balancing load across the whole flight. The Saturn V actually shut off some of it's powerful engines in mid flight to do just this. Booster rockets that are separated mid-flight serve this purpose as well.

Which is why hopefully it would be something you already have, because without infrastructure, you're a sitting duck. Beyond that, you need to be a type 2 civilization e.g. Star trek's federation of planets, or you need handwavium made from unobtainium.

Assuming your're a type 1 civilization, realistic planetary defense would be a gigantic project involving many layers of early-detection systems throughout the solar system, and a constellation of probes with big-ass mirrors in low solar orbit. The easiest way to destroy a planet's surface is to throw a rock at it, really. If I were determined to wipe out a civilization's habitat, then I'd grab a few dense, trans-neptunian or Oort cloud objects and accelerate them toward the planet(s). Given enough time and/or acceleration with a massive enough object, there would be no defenses within that target planet's orbit that could deflect the object soon enough, so early intercept would be necessary. To do that, you need a network of autonomous probes that monitor deep space in a wide sphere around the solar system so you can react quickly. Stick a bunch of thin, deploy-able reflective surfaces onto probes in low solar orbit, which are networked and capable of directing sunlight at a point in space in unison. A few hundred of these with a reflector about a kilometer wide would make a solar beam that would easily vaporize most small objects. It'd be the solar-system scale version of the ole' "ant under a magnifying lens". The sun beam is luminous so it wouldn't be detectable until it's too late. They'd just see a brilliant flash coming from our star before they're snuffed out. Any object they'd try to throw at us would easily be deflected by the solar beam, which would superheat the surface of the comet/asteroid and effectively turn that superheated surface into a rocket engine that deflects the object. The heliocentric mirror probes and early detection network would be all you'd need for planetary defense, or system-wide defense for that matter.

I think a VASIMR based spacecraft could be a long term goal for an international reuseable space transit system. I'm thinking an international cooperative spacecraft like the ISS, but with a state-of-the-art propulsion system and provisions for interplanetary ejection, injection, and return. But I want to see people walk on Mars in my lifetime, and to do that we need to use what we know and put mastery into practice. Chemical rockets are probably the way to go for the first or at least the first few manned extra-planetary missions. Simply because we already have the know-how. I'd love to see nuclear thermal propulsion for interplanetary missions, but once you've brought a nuclear reactor into space, why not use it for an electrical generator to power a far, FAR more efficient electric rocket? The biggest challenge seems to me to be getting the nuclear reactor up there in the first place. Political hell. Electric propulsion comes with it too many new parts that need to be designed, built, tested, redesigned, rebuilt, and retested. I'm sure that some form of electric propulsion with be the ride of choice for astronauts of 2050 and beyond. Until then, we've got some pretty amazing engineers designing fantastically effective cryogenic rockets.

I have to throw the whole starkiller base into fantasy-suspension-of-disbelief land in order to enjoy the movie. There are countless ways that the whole project is just silly and shouldn't even exist. How did construction on this project continue without being identified and stopped? In the time it would take to build such a weapon, you could have used your hyperspace windows and big rocks to utterly obliterate all enemies anyway. IF You could build the base fast enough that it wouldn't be stopped, then you have an army of von neuman probes that may as well be used as a weapon themselves.. Just tell them that all the other planets are raw materials. The movie's fun to watch, but kinda silly to try and think of as practical or realistic.

Hi, my name is Apex and i'm an RO-holic. I've been playing KSP since 0.22. I started an RO/RP-0 career a few months ago and it's changed the way I look at spaceflight and rocketry, and forever spoiled stock-KSP for me. I tried going back to stock-KSP recently after I accidentally saved my game after unknowingly updating to 1.0.5 (Damn you Steeeaam!). Since RO/RP-0 was on hiatus for a while, I tried stock KSP with some graphics overhauls because eyecandy. I found myself watching my orbital velocity climb to 2400 m/s and instinctively, passively thinking; "Ok, still have a ways to go, looking good". Then I'm interrupted by a "world first orbit" contract only mere seconds later. "This... Is like a baby's toy.." I thought to myself. Now I can't go back to stock-KSP and take any accomplishment seriously because landing on the Mun isn't even as hard as reaching orbit around Earth. And landing on the REAL moon?! Apollo was always spectacularly impressive to me, but after doing it in RO/RP-0, I have a wholly different understanding of the miraculous achievement humanity undertook with Apollo. Then I have to realize that RO is as much a simplistic caricature of real life as stock KSP is to RO, and I'm even more impressed. Since playing with RO, I've found myself obsessively indulging my curiosity about the chemistry of different rocket fuels, the physics of supersonic flow, and even the electrical and computer systems of 1960's era spacecraft. I'm ever more interested and curious about spaceflight. RO has realized the educational magic of KSP for me. Stock KSP is like the pre-school version of rocket science, but it got me familiar and interested in the basics. RO is training wheels off, where we learn what the REAL challenges of rocketry and spaceflight are. I hope one day RO gets integrated into the base game as sort of a "Manley" mode that users can unlock after a certain point of progression in the stock career mode. TLDR: I LOVE this mod! This is a game of its own. THANK YOU THANK YOU to all of you hard-working modders that have brought this magic to life.

This mod has stabilized my RO/RP-0 career save significantly. I'm on Win32 with OpenGL. Usually I get a crash after about 2 hours of play, but yesterday with this mod, I played for almost 5 straight hours without a crash. Thanks!

If one assumes downward causation via consciousness, then the force could be a name given to a person who's somehow learned to actively influence the collapse of probability waves on the quantum level to such an organized level of detail that they can do the things that force users do. However, if you could alter things even slightly in the way they do, there's nothing stopping them from just blinking the universe out of existence altogether.

I think you're referring to commsats in geostationary orbit. The majority of satellite ISPs use relays in geostationary orbit, which is why latency sucks. The future of satellite ISP's are not through satellites in GEO, though. There are constellations of satellites in MEO and even LEO, that can provide broadband connections with latencies under 10ms. With the combination of cellular and low-orbit relay constellations, broadband internet could be provided globally with no geographical limitation. Doing this requires dozens of small relays in orbit, which is why bringing the cost of launches down is key to making this happen.

I have no doubt that if SpaceX continues being successful, they'll be doing expeditions to Mars and possibly beyond, I just don't think they'll do it first. That said, I still have a good hunch that the first manned mission to Mars will involve SpaceX hardware, be it the Dragon capsule, the Falcon Heavy, or even just SpaceX's rocket engines. The CH4/LOX based Raptor looks really promising both in performance and cost. I can't wait to see that one in action. On a different topic, I think there needs to be some policy change and/or political shift regarding nuclear power in space. In order to make long term colonization of Mars economically feasible, we need to stop relying on conventional chemical rockets. Plasma rockets (VASIMR, Nuclear Electric Rockets) show the most promise in terms of performance and efficiency, but in order to realize them for an interplanetary ferry ship, we need to be able to produce nuclear power in space. On the other hand, if 3D printing technology, and ISRU techniques improve such that space travel, and colonization hardware can be produced on mars and/or in space, we may be able to continue using chemical rockets as long as we can find a way to collect and manufacture propellants somewhere other than Earth's surface.

I'm a fan of SpaceX but I have to strongly disagree with the idea that they will be planting their flag on any planetary body first. SpaceX makes awesome rockets, but that's it. There's a HUGE effort that must go into planning, training, preparation, and design of a mission that lands humans anywhere but earth. This is an effort that SpaceX hasn't even begun, but something NASA already has experince doing. Making a good vehicle is just half the battle. Unless SpaceX comes up with a few Billion USD in loose change, I think they'll continue making awesome rockets and leave the the epic mission planning of the first Manned Mars landing to the national space agencies of the world. Seems most likely that it will be NASA but I'd love to be surprised by JAXA, Roscosmos, CNSA, ISRO, or even a newcomer like UAE. Anything other than armed conflict that lights a fire under USA's ass and starts another space race is a good thing.