Author Topic: Kerbal Space Program  (Read 19931 times)

Mistress Urd

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Re: Kerbal Space Program
« Reply #20 on: April 19, 2013, 09:46:50 PM »
I think the question there is why does the government have to be in charge of such missions? I'm hoping at some point more privatized type spacecrafts will be able to take over the job, and we can start mining out astroids and other planets/moons for resources, colonizing elsewhere in our solar system, advance our space faring technology to a more practical interstellar level, and explore out there to find out if we truly are alone in the universe or not.

Besides, I personally think it's foolhardy for the majority of people who object to spending on space programs to do so, because that's akin to insisting on putting all of our eggs in one basket. Any number of major cataclysms, catastrophes, or natural disasters could wipe out all of life on earth, or at least enough of it that it'd be centuries before whatever survived could fully recover, and yet we insist on staying here... Of course, this line of thought assumes that the majority of people actually think farther ahead in time than their next paycheck or meal, which I doubt is the case...

Edit: By the way, didn't know you could get out and push your rocket with an EVA in this game. Nifty! ;D

I wish I was this optimistic about it.  :) However, you are looking at a long mission what will take 2 1/2 years and there are no rescues in space. While there are plenty of people who would jump at the chance to be on the first manned mission to Mars, the risk is enormous and it will take quite a few resources to get a crew into space and get them back alive. So many possibilities for failure. Just the craft that would fly to Mars will probably require 10 Saturn V rockets to build it in space. You would need to first send the return craft to Mars maybe sending two of them. The return craft would be about Apollo sized for a 6+ month return trip.

Some of the problems we have in space travel is solar radiation, gravity and weight. We can work on ways to better shield from the sun's solar radiation but we need ways to make the spacecraft faster to reduce the time it takes to get to Mars. Every pound we save on the spacecraft matters. Mars does not offer much protection from solar radiation so we will have to plan for that too.

The worst problem will be the tiny but simple overlooked one that we should have thought of before we left.

downix

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Re: Kerbal Space Program
« Reply #21 on: April 19, 2013, 10:55:53 PM »
I wish I was this optimistic about it.  :) However, you are looking at a long mission what will take 2 1/2 years and there are no rescues in space. While there are plenty of people who would jump at the chance to be on the first manned mission to Mars, the risk is enormous and it will take quite a few resources to get a crew into space and get them back alive. So many possibilities for failure. Just the craft that would fly to Mars will probably require 10 Saturn V rockets to build it in space. You would need to first send the return craft to Mars maybe sending two of them. The return craft would be about Apollo sized for a 6+ month return trip.

Some of the problems we have in space travel is solar radiation, gravity and weight. We can work on ways to better shield from the sun's solar radiation but we need ways to make the spacecraft faster to reduce the time it takes to get to Mars. Every pound we save on the spacecraft matters. Mars does not offer much protection from solar radiation so we will have to plan for that too.

The worst problem will be the tiny but simple overlooked one that we should have thought of before we left.
Actually the current mission model has only 6 launches. The return craft is actually about the size of two ISS modules + the Orion capsule.

Mistress Urd

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Re: Kerbal Space Program
« Reply #22 on: April 22, 2013, 01:50:24 AM »
Good, that wouldn't be so bad. Now we just have to actually get the ball rolling.

downix

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Re: Kerbal Space Program
« Reply #23 on: April 22, 2013, 02:30:26 AM »
Good, that wouldn't be so bad. Now we just have to actually get the ball rolling.
They're ahead of schedule.

houtex

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Re: Kerbal Space Program
« Reply #24 on: April 22, 2013, 04:55:06 AM »
Magnetic rail launcher.  Why is this not a thing yet?  Seems to be the way to go, ya ask me.  They got EMALS working, looks like, and are putting it on the carriers now.  Only a matter of time until some private corp uses it to launch things from the Mojave or something.

Oh, sure there's the 2000 Gs they say it needs to be effective, but... that's just a design issue.  I would think it's because they're not digging deep enough to launch it right.  You don't need G's unless you have a short time to get to escape velocity.

I think they need to go back and watch Salvage 1 for the correct theory on how to get places, amirite?
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MykpNI8ABU4&t=15m4s

JetFlash

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Re: Kerbal Space Program
« Reply #25 on: April 22, 2013, 06:25:59 PM »
The whole idea for asteroid mining is not to bring it down to Earth, but to use that material to build stuff in space.  That way, your Mars mission doesn't require many launches from Earth for everything; most of it can be found out there already.

It will be a significant investment to get those capabilities in space, but once we have it the solar system is ours.

TimtheEnchanter

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Re: Kerbal Space Program
« Reply #26 on: April 22, 2013, 07:50:15 PM »
The whole idea for asteroid mining is not to bring it down to Earth, but to use that material to build stuff in space.  That way, your Mars mission doesn't require many launches from Earth for everything; most of it can be found out there already.

It will be a significant investment to get those capabilities in space, but once we have it the solar system is ours.

That's a sweet idea.

It'll be even better if we can find some asteroids with ice in them (that we can convert into drinkable water and air).

With this Mars orbiter they're talking about, I sincerely hope they're really planning ahead with it and not JUST making a ship that can make a single trip to Mars.

We need to start thinking like Star Trek, and have a ship that is ALWAYS up there, like a mobile space station. Something that can be sent to the Moon, Mars, or whatever else we decide to do. Resupplied in Earth orbit by launch & dock missions (if we really worked on it, we wouldn't even need those flights to be manned, and the docking procedures could be handled remotely by the crew on the orbiter.

Mistress Urd

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Re: Kerbal Space Program
« Reply #27 on: April 22, 2013, 10:00:38 PM »
Ceres would be interesting. Launch windows would come up more frequently and launches from the surface would only take a fraction of what would be needed to leave Mars.

TimtheEnchanter

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Re: Kerbal Space Program
« Reply #28 on: May 17, 2013, 06:31:33 PM »
Ceres would be interesting. Launch windows would come up more frequently and launches from the surface would only take a fraction of what would be needed to leave Mars.

What we would get back in easy launches though, we'd probably lose in achieving orbit. It would take a lot of fuel to decelerate into a stable orbit, since Ceres's gravity isn't going to be much help.

JaguarX

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Re: Kerbal Space Program
« Reply #29 on: May 17, 2013, 06:55:05 PM »
looks interesting for a space game.

TimtheEnchanter

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Re: Kerbal Space Program
« Reply #30 on: May 19, 2013, 09:35:39 PM »
Fiddled with the demo for a little while until I built something capable of achieving orbit with enough fuel left for re-entry.

Maybe I'm just horridly inefficient, or the SRB's that come with the demo are crap, or both... but I couldn't reach orbit without 7 of them. 4 in the first stage, 3 in the second. After that the ME had just enough fuel to reach a stable orbit. It works consistently, but 7 SRB's seems really excessive to me.

I originally tried it with just one stage of 3 SRB's, but once they were spent, the ME didn't stand a chance at maintaining the upward momentum.

Codewalker

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Re: Kerbal Space Program
« Reply #31 on: May 19, 2013, 09:57:52 PM »
The SRBs are really crappy. Much worse than real life SRBs, though they do have a few niche uses. They have horrible efficiency; the only thing they're good for is that they have a high Thrust/Weight ratio, so they're useful for helping get a heavy first stage off the ground and then ditching as soon as they're empty. Never, ever put one in the second stage or higher -- that's a lot of dead weight to carry and you'd always be better off carrying liquid fuel or more engines that can fire the whole time.

But if 7 SRBs couldn't lift it... that must be a really heavy rocket. For a simple probe or a capsule return, you shouldn't need anything more than one of the long skinny fuel tanks and an LVT-45. Smaller and lighter is exponentially better.

TimtheEnchanter

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Re: Kerbal Space Program
« Reply #32 on: May 20, 2013, 10:49:19 PM »
Heh, yep, I definitely didn't need that. And it was a technique issue as well. I was waiting far too long to pitch towards the horizon. I later used that SRB-heavy rocket to reach the moon.