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[10ebbor10]

Polonium 86, you mean. Plutonium has more protons than that. And it's artificial, so if they actually ran out they could just make more.

Even an unshielded reactor wouldn't be much danger, honestly. Unless it actually melted down, it would still be emitting mostly fast particle and electromagnetic radiation, both of which aren't really that deadly and tend to go away quickly anyway.

Meant Plutonium 238 . Which can also be made, but there are currently no reprocessing plants making it in operation.

[Putnam]

We are fine with useing it for power. Just cant power weapons with it.

Good rockets have failure rates between 1%-5%.  You sure you want to put radioactive material in there?

They decided that we aren't allowed to use them in the atmosphere over 50 years ago. It's really not a big problem.

[mainiac]

All these safeguards are applicable to very small amounts of materails used in a slow fissile manner.  It's a lot less easy to put a safety envelope around your second or third stage engines, especially considering the sheer size that a nuclear engine would require.

Yes there isn't any danger of a fissile chain reaction leading to an explosion.  There is however a pretty significant concern that you might detonate a dirty bomb over florida and lead to massive economic fallout.

The technological hurdles to do this safetly aren't insurmountable but they won't be solved anytime soon.  There are much more promising avenues of exploration for high velocity propulsion methods.

[TheBronzePickle]

Meant Plutonium 238 . Which can also be made, but there are currently no reprocessing plants making it in operation.

I was talking about the plutonium when I said it could be made. I'm not sure polonium is transmutable.

All these safeguards are applicable to very small amounts of materails used in a slow fissile manner.  It's a lot less easy to put a safety envelope around your second or third stage engines, especially considering the sheer size that a nuclear engine would require.

Yes there isn't any danger of a fissile chain reaction leading to an explosion.  There is however a pretty significant concern that you might detonate a dirty bomb over florida and lead to massive economic fallout.

The technological hurdles to do this safetly aren't insurmountable but they won't be solved anytime soon.  There are much more promising avenues of exploration for high velocity propulsion methods.

I don't think a NERVA engine could actually melt down. It's supposed to spend all its heat on the propellant. Even if it did, it would do so in space, since it doesn't even get used in the atmosphere.

[Leonon]

A nuclear meltdown in space would be awesome. A sphere of molten metal throwing out neutrons like they're going out of style.

[BFEL]

A nuclear meltdown in space would be awesome. A sphere of molten metal throwing out neutrons like they're going out of style.

We'll be sure to do it over your house

[Putnam]

A nuclear meltdown in space would be awesome. A sphere of molten metal throwing out neutrons like they're going out of style.

[Leyic]

A variant of the "launch-rockets-with-nuclear-explosions" technology is actually on NASA's roadmap. Go here, access TA01, go to pages 18 and 27 of the .pdf, and look for "External Pulsed Plasma". Readiness for limited flight testing is anticipated for the early 2020's. However, the report later dismisses nuclear (launch) propulsion as being "non-credible", and it was written by scientists and engineers, so it's not reflective of policy or budgetary limitations.

I wouldn't expect the later to be a problem for the Kerbals.

Fake edit: Stars don't have containment vessels to melt through, hence they're not in a state of meltdown. They're also mostly not metal.

[Descan]

Hydrogen can be metallic!

Also stars are always in a constant state of meltdown. Just look at Miley Cyrus!

[Putnam]

Probably some decompiling nonsense or something.

[TheDarkStar]

Velocities are given if you mouse over the planet, and SMA can be calculated.

[BigD145]

Vroom vroom

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

It can flip over, quite easily in a turn, but cannot drive upside down. I can't get it to wheelie, but that's intentional. There's extra weight up front. It goes about 22 m/s on Kerbal.

I was going for something kind of like this.

It certainly wouldn't hurt to narrow the back wheel base.

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

Do you dare kiss these lips

or face the lantern-carrying dragon?

[Eric Blank]

As a matter of fact, I do not dare to kiss those lips. However, have you considered using a landing strut or two to flip it back upright in the event of a roll?

[BigD145]

When it flips something blows up. If it's still controllable it could easily flip itself back over in low G. Just don't turn it too quickly and it's fine.

I kinda started fiddling with build a dinosaur, but the way parts connect and where they connect is making it very difficult. The only way I can see doing it is using oodles of the tiny box frames as contact points. Even then a Mecha Gojira would be a nightmare to build.

[LoSboccacc]

Out of curiosity, are the velocities of the planets or the length of their semimajor axis given anywhere in the game, or do people just fiddle with what is given to you (at least in career mode) to get values?

When you select a planet two small icon appears on the left side of the screen, center height, with miscellaneous information. I remember some numbers here but cannot remember what because I navigate with nodes and not math.

Also, wiki.