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Post by coaxjack on Feb 1, 2017 2:59:35 GMT
I'm sure there's a solution to all of the problems encountered in that environment-but things that are engineered to be that robust tend to be really heavy. Considering how much delta-v it takes to get to Venus in the first place, massive payload and large dV requirements usually also mean large amounts of money as well. There are probably JPL scientists with some ideas to do exactly what you're describing, but NASA's budget is pretty anemic right now unfortunately, excluding any sort of off-the wall kind of mission like this.
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Post by coaxjack on Jan 22, 2017 16:59:53 GMT
Ah! While the 1972 NERVA prototype never actually flew, it was flight-rated, and probably would have eventually ended up doing some lunar type missions if Apollo wasn't cancelled. In my opinion that was a huge setback, especially considering how beefy the INT-21 was. Imagine the payload you could get into a 30 foot diameter fairing!
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Post by coaxjack on Jan 19, 2017 0:24:22 GMT
I think with the molten composition being as heavy as it is, anything that could produce a damaging fluid hammer would have enough energy to pierce the whole armor layer anyway.
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Post by coaxjack on Jan 15, 2017 4:29:55 GMT
All the liquid in your body would flash into steam, making you explode with some decent force
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Post by coaxjack on Jan 13, 2017 22:39:47 GMT
I put a cheapo 5-shot launcher on there because the squadrons I was sending out were very frequently attracting missiles. I think it's because enemy missiles are flying along roughly the same vector I'm sending the drones out, so the AI will send available missiles to the nearest target.
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Post by coaxjack on Jan 13, 2017 22:20:55 GMT
I went with a conventional cannon for simplicity, because the game already calculates the mass of the electric motor running the reloading mechanism for you. Since I normally use drones in the sub-50 kilogram range it was weird having so much elbow room as far as dimensions and weight. That 20mm gun is pretty decent all things considered It's a determined little bastard. That damage is from the 4 60mm guns on the Missile Schooner
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Post by coaxjack on Jan 11, 2017 6:44:49 GMT
Come back with your Whipple shield, or on it.
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Post by coaxjack on Jan 10, 2017 23:16:48 GMT
Not only will you vaporize your enemy with coherent light, you can insult them by flashing your money at them at the same time.
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Post by coaxjack on Jan 10, 2017 23:15:25 GMT
That's the thing- unless you can get the hell out of there in a hurry, and even something ridiculous like 30 g's of acceleration might not be enough, they can wait 15 seconds to hit you again. They won't have to of course if the crew is in a highly compressed layer of chunky jelly at the aft end of the crew compartment.
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Post by coaxjack on Jan 10, 2017 21:41:57 GMT
That would imply hundreds of bulkheads to isolate different parts of the system. Plus mechanical doodads to move them around (actuators? think they're actuators). Exactly, the fluid is supposed to be in there anyway, so instead of mechanically isolating the breach, engineer the fluid so it crystallizes quickly and stiffly when flowing rapidly into vacuum. Even regular water would work with a thickening agent, as regular water would just turn into a tiny RCS jet with a throat diameter the size of the bullet hole, that has snow for exhaust.
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Post by coaxjack on Jan 10, 2017 18:23:01 GMT
That would imply hundreds of bulkheads to isolate different parts of the system.
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Post by coaxjack on Jan 10, 2017 4:16:24 GMT
I'm thinking the vacuum of space would suck the gas or smoke into such a thin mixture it would be like there was nothing there at all. However in the real world (with atmosphere) there are anti-laser smokes that vehicles use to defend themselves against laser-guided attacks. Though maybe a gigawatt laser could be powerful enough to damage things on the inside?? Specifically the smoke is to break the target lock of a sub-kilowatt designation spot for an incoming guided munition, not to attenuate a multi-megawatt kill laser.
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Post by coaxjack on Jan 8, 2017 3:04:16 GMT
The reaction wheels are boron due to the extremely high speed, but changing them to UMP...HPW...Ultra Plastic lightened the load a bit. Turns out the governing factor there as far as the cost of the wheels is the size of the entire gimbal assembly, not the RPM like the pumps. The pump could be made of lithium, which I went in and changed along with some other things. Cut down the amount of fissiles in the core and upped the enrichment which also allowed smaller control rods, and tightened the criticality range.
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Post by coaxjack on Jan 6, 2017 20:53:25 GMT
coaxjack , dragonkid11 CO2 is 1600kg/m3 dense and 1.48c/kg in price vs cubane which is 1300kg/m3 and 2.68c/kg, so probably something like that. Here's the rest of the things, let me know where the optimization differences lay. EDIT FYI, that railgun sux, I'm no good at designing either railguns or coilguns because my game gets too laggy to enjoy, just tried to mimic coaxjack 's drone, I should check what I can do with a conventional cannon instead. Anyone have any extremely small yet efficient & effective weapon? (Is there a word for efficient & effective??) The CO2 copy parts are relatively similar, the difference between the two drones really come down to minute design choices. I spent a few minutes upgrading the reactor and railgun to fit in the same form factor: And the Slugger engine for reference:
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Post by coaxjack on Jan 6, 2017 6:17:30 GMT
Yeah, that would allow disposable reactors for missiles. We can sort of do this now, but it still feels like a waste of a perfectly good Thermos reactor
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