ScallopPotato

I'm REALLY preferring the geoengineering options over genocide and stripping humanity of its humanity. Proposals and fears of such proposals is part of the reason why there's so much popular resistance in the U.S. to anything involving sustainability, or even acknowledging climate change's existence. For the natural end-of-sun sceriano, I've heard of at least one scientist propose the idea of throwing astroriods into earth orbit to transfer gravitational energy and thus increase the SMA of Earth's orbit around the sun. I wish I had an article to share about that. It's beyond our current level of technology, but we don't have to worry about that for a long time. Mirrors are my favorite option. Greenhouse gases absorb solar energy, so reducing the amount of solar energy would reduce the amount of thermal energy in the atmosphere. Cutting the amount of energy coming in to Earth works for any sort of climate change, be it AGW, NGW, runaway greenhouse, etc. Unlike cutting carbon emissions, reducing solar energy can cut out atmospheric energy much faster than waiting for the carbon dioxide levels to settle down. A large, cheap, bulk-carrier rocket like the Falcon Heavy can deliver the mirrors to LEO where they are picked up by a solar electric tug (ie VASIMR tug) and delivered to Earth-Sun L1. There are ways to reach ESL1 using minimal energy by exploiting chaotic regions and Lagrange points and the moon's gravity. It's called the Interplanetary Transport Network, and there are whole papers about it. ESL1 is a stable location and it massively reduces the amount of surface area needed to reduce solar energy. What sort of materials can be used for mirrors that are light, strong, and fairly cheap? How much surface area is needed to lower the global mean temperature by 1 degree C?

I really don't recommend spaceplanes to players that aren't able to land their planes in one piece. How is a spaceplane "reusable" if it ends up in a hundred pieces on the runway each time it lands? I do believe some players have been able to use drogues + parachutes to arrest the plane's movement and bring it floating down. If it works, it provides the easiness of a capsule with the gentler descent and landing site selection of a spaceplane.

I don't want to be rude to anyone, but my question hasn't been convincingly answered. Let's say I'm congress, you're NASA, and I'm reviewing your budget to reduce costs/risks. I need to know WHY we have to go to the moon to do XYZ stuff. Others have pointed out that things like long duration stays, radiation exposure testing, or artificial gravity environments can be done in LEO or EML2. Mars society explain the apples to oranges-ness between the Moon and Mars. A polar moon base could be a good place to practice for missions to icy vacuum bodies like Ceres and Callisto, but that probably would happen AFTER a manned mars mission. I'm thinking of the 2040s/2050s or so. A lot of people mention Helium-3, but I've become a bit skeptical of it recently. For one, it's a 2nd generation fusion fuel, and we haven't even achieved 1st generation fusion with d-t. Also, while Helium-3 is apparently less rare on the moon, it's still mixed with all the other rocks. So it'd require plenty of extraction and refining of rocks. And that means bringing heavy equipment and a power supply. At some point, it could be profitable do these things, but I don't see that happening until the 2nd half of the 21st century. It is very true that there's lots of survey work needing to be done, but how much of that requires a surface visit versus remote sensing in orbit? What sort of geologic field work has to be done in the 2020s/2030s? My favorite reason to return to the moon is to study apparent subsurface water and sinkholes and private lunar tourism. I'm thinking of a circumlunar race broadcasted to people around the world. One thing to consider is that the pressing scientific questions may be tackled by developing space agencies that want to land robots on the moon to demonstrate their spaceflight capabilities.

Opposition class Mars missions involve short stays in the vicinity of Mars and (usually) a venus fly-by on the outbound or returning legs of the journey. They take less time than the conjunction class missions, but require more dV. Examples of opposition class missions include the from the novel Voyage. The 2021 inspiration mars fly-by is like an opposition class mission but doesn't involve orbiting mars.I'm just wondering if anyone has been able to do any sort of Duna missions that involve a fly-by of Eve on the way there or back. One issue I've found is that the planets don't line up as frequently to create the gravity assists. I like the idea of doing an opposition class mission to Duna in career mode to reduce the time waiting around in Duna orbit and get extra SCIENCE from an Eve fly-by. Plus I want to make an inspiration Mars style mission in the game.

I believe in you, Maccollo. Although I'm sure any real space program would use blimps to get above the thick atmosphere of big-Eve or Venus. Also notice how it says ascending from Neptune or Uranus takes less dV than a Venus ascent. I'm doing an ascent from Eve with FAR in my career save. Downside of FAR = command chairs aren't any good anymore. Upside of FAR: Eve seems to be a little less pea-soupy, so a fairly aerodynamic craft can ascend through the lower atmosphere MUCH faster than in stock and thus use less dV to reach orbit. Overall, I think it's a good thing.

In a lot of discussions or proposals about returning humans to the moon or building a moon base, I fail to see people talk about what exact scientific work can be done while on the surface but can't be done elsewhere. This compares to the exploration of Mars, where the scientific objectives are frequently talked about (ie following the water, climbing stratified mountains, etc). In addition, many achievements that have been done on the moon, like sample return, haven't been done on Mars yet. IMO, the moon and mars really are apples to oranges, so it's really not much of a "proving ground" for Mars missions. I just hear that argument a lot and I don't think it really justify the costs of a moon base versus an artificial gravity station in cis-lunar space. I would like to know what big questions about the moon demand investigating on the surface, regardless if it's manned or unmanned, and which ones require the former.

The number of asteroids does seem to be realistic though. I'm actually now afraid to track the asteroids because there's a good chance it's on a collision course with Kerbin.

I did on my Moho Mission and I landed the lander with a command pod on top of it - in the ocean.

Apparently the scaled-downness started with Kerbin. The earliest versions of the game had no map view or time warp. In addition, LEO orbital velocity is about 3.14 times that of LKO orbital velocity. It takes about 9-10 km of dV to reach LEO, which is about 3 times what is needed to reach LKO with Ferram Aerospace and twice that of stock. However, reaching LEO with stock aerodynamics would've been even higher, perhaps 11-12+ km of dV. Remember that the atmosphere of early KSP was one consistent block that ended at around 32 km, although I'm not sure what the density was. I could go into more about what an early LEO in KSP would look like, but it'd be like creating a sun-diving rocket out of the early parts just to reach orbit. People have done this, but it's ludicrous. If I can find out how to make youtube videos of KSP, I'll try to make a rocket in RSS that uses early KSP parts and features. FOR THE CHALLENGE In addition, there are some technical aspects. The surface area of Kerbin is 4.52×10^6 km. The surface area of Earth is 5.1×10^8 km. That's two more orders of magnitude of surfaces that has to be created, stored, and rendered. And the same scaling up would apply to any other bodies, too. tl;dr: If Kerbin was the size of Earth, you'd need a Kerbol-diving rocket just to reach orbit using the early parts and no map view. In addition, each planet's textures would eat up so much RAM it wouldn't even be funny.

Considering the issues with requiring a whole SLS for a crew rotation at the station, it might be useful to combine any surface missions with a stay at the station. I'm thinking of this design.So the crew could arrive at an L2 station where the lander is waiting for them, take the lander down to LLO, land on the moon, do the surface SCIENCE for ~14 surface stay, launch again to LLO, then go back to the L2 station for station-y things. Or vice versa. The stays would probably be 6-12 months long.

Bill is sure to mess up a mission at some point (ie forget to lower the landing gear), while Jebidiah is the one that makes everyone survive the crash.

Chad told me about the potatoroid name back at SXSW while mentioning the idea of a giant potato as a moonlet around Jool. I dunno, I like the idea of a space potato entering the atmosphere of kerbin and being turned into a badly cooked baked potato.

Here's a map of Dawn's trajectory. It's continuously thrusting and coasting, like someone driving a car. Compared to our typical spacecraft where it's one big impluse then coast. There are people who get paid 5 and 6 figure salaries and comfy benefits to fly these spacecraft, we don't make such money thrusting things around. So it makes sense to buff the Ion drives for gameplay. What I think is silly are the ion powered planes, simply because such engines don't like atomsphere. For those who love the idea of solar electric planes, propellers could be a good realistic option.

For all the players that ask for colonization or making it easier to do interplanetary things or even interstellar travel, the improved performance, stabler joints, and big parts help a lot in throwing big things into orbit. I've been using KW rocketry a lot, so seeing someone make blocks of mainsails and jumbos just seems silly to me. Also, the SLS engines aren't overpowered; the other engines are underpowered compared to real life engines.

The resupply issue can be addressed by using a VASMIR type space tug. It'd take a 6 month trip - so no fresh fruits or veggies - but it can be done much more efficiently than a chemical transfer craft. So the logistics module could go up on a cheap/reusable Falcon rocket (either Falcon 9 or Falcon Heavy), be picked up by the space tug, and 6 months later it's at EML1/2. Also, it'd be a good idea to learn how to grow food in space.

I could see NASA advising on making improved surface features and biomes for Duna, but most of the things already listed here can be done by modders.

I'm not starting over, as I have a major sandbox save going on and a career save that I still want to do things with.

So this is what I have planned for my game: Do a mission to Moho utilizing an Eve gravity assists for inbound and outbound legs. Do a manned mission to Eeloo (haven't done that yet) Do a mission to Dres, rover around the canyon (haven't done that either) In all three of the missions, I plan on using the same hitchhiker can for both the transit and the surface mission. Land a Kerbal on Eve, rover them around to the landed science packages, collect data, leave and go home to Kerbin. Make a 7-Kerbal ascent vehicle for your Laythe Base Make a mobile base for Eve and Tylo.

I found that by using part clipping and the small cubic struts, I can cluster 4 Griffon G8Ds from KW rocketry onto a 3.75m tank, giving me a trust of 7600 kN for my core stage. With the new 2.5m liquid boosters in the ARM pack, I can make a 8000 kN core. By comparison, the 3.75m Griffon XX has 4900 kN of thrust. I haven't found an optimal amount of fuel to use, but the 4 Griffons in a core of 2 and 1/4 KW 3.75m tanks can get a positive TWR on a 450 ton payload. All I'd have to do is add boosters until I reached my required delta-V. I did this as an exercise to see how much I could lift with 3.75m parts, but now I'm just thinking "What am I even going to launch with this?". The ISS itself weighs 370 tons right now. I have basically made an accidental NOVA rocket for Kerbin. So here's some ideas: 1) Over three full length 3.75m fuel tanks from KW rocketry. That's like 30 jumbo orange tanks. Something tells me gathering Kethane from Minmus will be easier. Refueling all those tanks would probably require all the Kethane in the Kerbin system :stick tongue: 2) Launch a giant Kethane rig that can drain an entire Kethane deposit in one go. 3) Launch a FAR compatible 7-Kerbal Eve Launch Vehicle. Yo dawg… 4) Launch an entire interplanetary base in one go 5) Launch a fully fueled mega-tug to deliver that base somewhere in the Kerbin system. 7) Launch a fully fueled mega-tug that can deliver a class E asteroid to LKO. Any other ideas?

Yeah, but supposedly Ares I was going to be safer than the Altas V. Of course, vibrations don't seem that safe. I think it's funny how the Ares-I and Ares-V basically follow the meme of "moar struts" and "moar boosters" because of design flaws.

NASA plans on using artificial gravity and BNTR rockets to the outer planets anyway.

Even I know to have my TLI/Capture/Descent stages separate because efficiency. Where can I find those reusable designs?

A comet like 67P could be reached with a Jupiter-capable ship. Get there when the comet is near Aphelion, land, do science when it goes around perihelion, leave after and do a retro burn to get an Earth intercept. Should take several years, but that's entirely capable for a ship that can reach the outer planets.

I'm thinking about doing a Jool ascent with Ferram at some point, sans hyper edit. Considering how FAR made my Eve ascent easier than expected, I imagine the delta-v requirements for a Jool ascent would be around 12-15 km, instead of the 32-40 km in stock.

Could the shuttle carry a small moon craft in the cargo bay and release it in LEO to reach the moon? I'm thinking of what Scott Manley did in Interstellar quest.