Print

Please login or register.
1 Hour 1 Day 1 Week 1 Month Forever
Login with username, password and session length

[Amperzand]

The heat and pressure of a kiloton-range fission bomb is enough to ignite fusion in some isotopes, the fear was that it would do so in the atmosphere's nitrogen, causing a massive chain reaction and obliterating everything. As it turns out, a specialized nuclear-shaped-charge and a compressed slug of fairly specific fusionable isotopes is needed to accomplish such a thermonuclear reaction, but it was not a fear unbased in reality.

[10ebbor10]

Yeah, but orion space craft would be akin to propulsing yourself with a office chair and a ak47. Surely you can't go around and pass a ak47 as a simple propusion engine.

Orion has many flaws and reasons why it will never be utilized. The treaty is not what's stopping it.

[mainiac]

And I have personally heard the "we are going to pollute space if we nuke it too" stupid argument in person. That day I almost had a stroke.

And I have personally heard the argument that we aren't bombing ISIS because environmentalists are worried it will add to global warming.  People say stupid crap.  Just because someone says stupid crap doesn't mean multi-billion dollar projects are behoven to them.

[Amperzand]

On the one hand, strategic nuclear use wouldn't make climate change any better. On the other, there are better reasons not to nuke the middle east than a fractional and temporary increase in temperature.

[jaked122]

And I have personally heard the argument that we aren't bombing ISIS because environmentalists are worried it will add to global warming.  People say stupid crap.  Just because someone says stupid crap doesn't mean multi-billion dollar projects are behoven to them.

Fortunately as it turns out, the Military is known for not listening to protests. At least, not when they come from outside or the bottom of the hierarchy.

On the one hand, strategic nuclear use wouldn't make climate change any better. On the other, there are better reasons not to nuke the middle east than a fractional and temporary increase in temperature.

Mmm. Imagine a nuclear winter and global warming.


Though according to freeciv, you can cancel one out with the other. Not really an acceptable way of going about fixing the climate, but hey, if it works in freeciv then it has at least a 5 percent chance of working in real life.

[mainiac]

Can't we try devoting 90% of our gdp to science before we try that?

[Akura]

Though according to freeciv, you can cancel one out with the other. Not really an acceptable way of going about fixing the climate, but hey, if it works in freeciv then it has at least a 5 percent chance of working in real life.

I've tried that in Freeciv. It doesn't cancel. You just get mixed desert and tundra continents.

[Amperzand]

I'd rather it just be 60%. Specifically, the 60% the military's using.

[mainiac]

I'd rather it just be 60%. Specifically, the 60% the military's using.

60% of GDP?  You are posting from North Korea?

[Gentlefish]

Spoiler: To be fari, it's actually only 54% (click to show/hide)

But no, this is 'murrica.

[Graknorke]

Add on Veterans' Benefits too, since that is pretty much military.

[mainiac]

But no, this is 'murrica.

That is a chart of government discretionary spending, not gdp.

[Starver]

Though according to freeciv, you can cancel one out with the other. Not really an acceptable way of going about fixing the climate, but hey, if it works in freeciv then it has at least a 5 percent chance of working in real life.

I've tried that in Freeciv. It doesn't cancel. You just get mixed desert and tundra continents.

This is the Space Thread, not the Earth Thread.

Spoiler: You're using the wrong model (click to show/hide)

Spoiler: Although possibly (click to show/hide)

(Although I suppose we could compromise on with Sid Meier's Alpha Centauri.  Build a city by the shore, put a pressure dome on it quicker than your rival civilisations, make sure you've got something amphibious like the hovertank hull for all your units, then encourage sea level rises - hey presto, world inunddomination!)

[Reverie]

If I'm not mistaken, Kerbal Space Program doesn't model the gravitational pull of more than one stellar body at a time (or is it two?) Needless to say, that sort of discrepancy among other things kind of invalidates it as anything more than a broad learning tool.

[Starver]

If I'm not mistaken, Kerbal Space Program doesn't model the gravitational pull of more than one stellar body at a time (or is it two?) Needless to say, that sort of discrepancy among other things kind of invalidates it as anything more than a broad learning tool.

Just the one, yes.  Whichever "Sphere of most influence" you're in (so getting closer to a body orbiting a larger one suddenly switches you to that smaller one, carrying in your relative velocity from when you were 'just' influenced by the larger one).

Thus the second linked comic (entering a sphere of influence 'in front' or 'behind' suddenly gives you the sphere's core body's influence, whereas in reality you'd already be perturbed towards it whilst still travelling under the major influence of the more-distant-but-more-massive one... and every other planet in the system, to a tiny amount), and there's also no such thing as Lagrange Points in KSP (or weren't, when I last played with it...) and complex resonant orbits between co-orbiting worlds work only by dipping in close to each body with a lot of uncertainty from rounding errors, rather than 'simple' chaos.

But the first comic does apply when it comes to docking, manoeuvring and otherwise getting close to other items in orbit when there's only the one body involved for the vast majority of the time.  As in simply firing straight forward towards another object that you're lagging in orbit increases your orbital potential and causes you to rise above it (I'm looking at you, Gravity!  ...even ignoring the whole issue of space-stations likely being on dissimilar orbital inclinations!)), so you either to keep on thrusting and then adjust later (to slow down much more than you were originally moving and 'fall' back onto it) or use at least some thrust to send you Earthwards on a more elliptical path to shortcut the orbit and close the gap from below.

(Easier in the system-view model where it shows your path than when you're doing the "get your Kerman back to your ship" test of the EVA pack, in whatever version of KSP that exists in.)