on thursday they're trapping my mind in a Matrioshka brain to be tortured in a virtual hell for a trillion years, with every photon emitted by the smoldering red dwarf below being converted into pure suffering, and every fusion of atomic nuclei spilling more digital blood. a star that radiates agony

This artwork depicts personifications of Jupiter, Saturn, Caelus (Uranus), and Neptune, from right to left. Each is accompanied by a box containing their name and symbol, bordered by the planet's colour. The name box is flanked by "GIANT" to the right, and either "Gas" or "Ice" to the left, indicating the type of the planet in question. Jupiter (gas giant) is standing straight in a confident manner. Their legs apart, their right hand pointing at the viewer, while the left hand is on their hip. They are winking their right eye. Their clothes are noticeably wrinkly, unlike others'. Saturn (gas giant) is doing a playful pose. Their body is turned away from the viewer and bent forwards slightly. Their hands are folded at the back. They are looking at the viewer. Their rings, located around their hips is prominently visible. Caelus (ice giant)'s pose is more reserved. Their arms are folded, and their body turned to face the viewer. Caelus wears a voluminous skirt and is the only one with a hat. Neptune (ice giant)'s pose is relaxed. Their right foot is placed in front of their left foot. They are looking at their bright white cloud armbands.

The four giant planets of the Solar System, those massive enough to retain primary atmospheres of hydrogen-helium. Their mere presences write the rules of our entire planetary system.

#ACelestialJournal #art #astronomy #space #SolarSystem #planet #Jupiter #Saturn #Uranus #Neptune

if you assume that 1 unit of electric charge per second is equal to 1 kW (all the near future mods subscribe to this assumption), then the electric engines in ksp and nfp are roughly 1,000x thrustier than irl electric engines (varies quite a bit from engine to engine, though)

forum.kerbalspaceprogram.com/topic/228989... also here's a link to the forum post for Background Thrust, which is a really awesome mod especially if you like using low thrust engines

playing with really low thrust does change a lot of how you approach orbital manuevers and think about ways of getting to places, i think if there was a mod that made manuever nodes take acceleration into account it could really open up like a whole new area of gameplay.

electricity consumption quite a lot which lets you bring along a much smaller and lighter power source. though this feels a little overpowered/cheaty to me so i think in my next playthrough i might go into the configs and cut the thrust of all electrical engines down by like a factor of 10.

even without the asteroid the ship got about 10x the acceleration (so, still about 0.4 m/s²). when long burn times aren't a concern i've found it quite handy to take really high isp electric engines and reduce their thrust limiter a bunch, which doesn't affect their isp but does reduce their

KSP screenshot of an uncrewed spacecraft with large solar panels and a PIT thruster in low Kerbin orbit just as the sun rises.

Another KSP screenshot of the same craft approaching an asteroid engine-first.

The ship now docked to the asteroid which is a few times larger than it.

Now the ship and the asteroid are in low Kerbin orbit. The ship's engine glows faintly as it outputs a whisper of thrust.

the other day in ksp i did a mission where i went and grabbed an asteroid and moved it into low kerbin orbit. this ship had a TWR of about 0.0038 (~0.0375 m/s²) once docked with the asteroid. thankfully with the mod Background Thrust i could easily timewarp through all the hours of burning

WORK-IN-PROGRESS

Presenting our favourite ice giants! Neptune works to keep the TNOs in line and Caelus does interesting poses in their extra big skirt.

#ACelestialJournal #art #astronomy #space #SolarSystem #planet #Neptune #Uranus

potion of greebling

if you're unfamiliar with the q-drive concept then read this paper tauzero.aero/wp-content/u... and check out this google doc, which also explains some other related concepts docs.google.com/document/d/1...

specific power, burns in interstellar contexts really struggle to get more than a few Mm/s of delta-v over timescales of a decade or less. going from 0.05 c to 0.2 c in only just a few years seems to require infeasibly high specific power, and a windmill able to harvest absurd amounts of power.

also, in the original paper (linked below) it's proposed that by using the tether connecting two plasma magnets as a particle accelerator you could achieve a specific power in the range of 10s of kW/kg (as opposed to the ~100 W/kg other electric engines get). but it seems that even with this kind of

in all the literature about q-drives/WEP they always set exhaust velocity to exactly match the windspeed, though it turns out you can actually trade exhaust velocity for extra thrust at the cost of isp, which comes in handy for a lot of cases actually. at maximum isp the burn usually takes *ages*...

Another big code output. The full thing reads like so: Wind-electric propulsion / q-drive calculator, by triplchii Doing burn... Values are formatted as [start-of-burn value] \ [end-of-burn value]. Constants default to the first column. [Windspeed, velocity, delta-v] Windspeed: 0 km/s, 0 AU/day Wind velocity: 15000.0 \ 18725.5 km/s, 8.66322 \ 10.8149 AU/day, 0.0500346 \ 0.0624616 c Ship velocity: 15000.0 \ 18725.5 km/s, 8.66322 \ 10.8149 AU/day, 0.0500346 \ 0.0624616 c Wind gamma: 1.00125 \ 1.00196 Ship gamma: 1.00125 \ 1.00196 Delta-v: 3725.52 km/s, 0.012427 c Velocity difference: 1.24837 [Plasma magnet & windmill] Drag: 50000.0 N Drag power: 750000 \ 936276 MW Plasma magnet gain: 10000.0 Excitation power: 75000.0 \ 93627.6 kW Efficiency: 0.9 Waste power: 75000.0 \ 93627.6 MW [Plasma magnet field] Medium density: 0.1 particles/cm³ Medium mass: 1.2995 u Effective density: 2.16058e-22 \ 2.16209e-22 kg/m³ Dynamic pressure: 24.3065 \ 37.9063 nPa Field area: 2057064 \ 1319041 km² Field radius: 809.187 \ 647.969 km [Engine] Ve multiplier: 0.14 Thrust power: 675000 \ 842648 MW Exhaust velocity: 1890.0 \ 2359.42 km/s Specific impulse: 1757.7 \ 2194.26 km/s Isp/g0: 179236 \ 223752 sec Thrust: 714286 N Net thrust: 664286 N Mass flow rate: 377.929 \ 302.738 grams/s [Miscellaneous] Mass ratio: 6.7 Dry mass: 20000.0 tons Wet mass: 134000 tons Propellant mass: 114000 tons Specific power: 33750.0 \ 42132.4 W/kg Acceleration: 0.00495736 \ 0.0332135 m/s², 0.50551 \ 3.38683 milli-gees World acceleration: 0.00493875 \ 0.0330193 m/s², 0.503613 \ 3.36703 milli-gees Time (ship \ world): 326603272 \ 327088870 sec, 3780.13 \ 3785.75 days, 124.278 \ 124.463 months, 10.3494 \ 10.3648 years Time difference: 485598 sec, 5.62035 days, 0.184779 months, 0.0153877 years Displacement: 5331397545502336 meters, 35638.2 AU, 0.563529 lightyears

More graphs in Excel. This time the x axis is instead measured in years. All the lines end a little after 10 years. Top left: ship velocity (c), starting at 0.05 c and rising to a smidge over 0.062 c. Top right: acceleration (m/s²), starting at 0.005 and rising to around 0.0325. Middle left: Displacement (lightyears), starts at 0 and rises almost linearly to ~0.56. Middle right: Isp/g0 (seconds), start at just under 180,000 and rises to just over 220,000. Bottom left: Ship mass (tons), starts at around 130,000 and decreases steadily to 20,000. Bottom right: Plasma magnet field radius (km), starts at just over 800 and decreases to 650.

here's another example with far more optimistic stats doing a burn in an interstellar context

Screenshot of some code showing various manual inputs including ship velocity, windspeed, drag, efficiency, exhaust velocity multiplier, dry mass, mass ratio, gain, medium density and medium mass. Unfortunately the full text is far too long to fit in the alt-text character limit.

i'm not good enough at python though to know how to make an interface and stuff, so to change the starting values i just open the code and manually change it

Screenshot of code output featuring a large list of details and statistics, with various things like delta-v, specific impulse, burn duration, and displacement included. The full list goes as follows: Wind-electric propulsion / q-drive calculator, by triplchii Doing burn... Values are formatted as [start-of-burn value] \ [end-of-burn value]. Constants default to the first column. [Windspeed, velocity, delta-v] Windspeed: 450.0 km/s, 0.259897 AU/day Wind velocity: 450.0 \ 601.445 km/s, 0.259897 \ 0.347363 AU/day, 0.00150104 \ 0.0020062 c Ship velocity: 0 \ 151.445 km/s, 0 \ 0.0874666 AU/day, 0 \ 0.000505165 c Wind gamma: 1.0 \ 1.0 Ship gamma: 1.0 \ 1.0 Delta-v: 151.445 km/s, 0.000505165 c Velocity difference: 1.33654 [Plasma magnet & windmill] Drag: 800.0 N Drag power: 360.0 \ 481.156 MW Plasma magnet gain: 10000.0 Excitation power: 36.0 \ 48.1156 kW Efficiency: 0.4 Waste power: 216.0 \ 288.693 MW [Plasma magnet field] Medium density: 10.0 particles/cm³ Medium mass: 1.2995 u Effective density: 2.15787e-20 \ 2.15787e-20 kg/m³ Dynamic pressure: 2.18485 \ 3.9029 nPa Field area: 366158 \ 204976 km² Field radius: 341.397 \ 255.433 km [Engine] Ve multiplier: 0.45 Thrust power: 144.0 \ 192.462 MW Exhaust velocity: 81.0 \ 108.26 km/s Specific impulse: 62.775 \ 83.9015 km/s Isp/g0: 6401.27 \ 8555.57 sec Thrust: 3555.56 N Net thrust: 2755.56 N Mass flow rate: 43.8957 \ 32.8427 grams/s [Miscellaneous] Mass ratio: 8.0 Dry mass: 150.0 tons Wet mass: 1200.0 tons Propellant mass: 1050.0 tons Specific power: 960.0 \ 1283.08 W/kg Acceleration: 0.0022963 \ 0.0183704 m/s², 0.234157 \ 1.87326 milli-gees World acceleration: 0.0022963 \ 0.0183704 m/s², 0.234157 \ 1.87326 milli-gees Time (ship \ world): 26462001 \ 26462002 sec, 306.273 \ 306.273 days, 10.0693 \ 10.0693 months, 0.83853 \ 0.83853 years Time difference: 0.612934 sec, 7.09415e-06 days, 2.33232e-07 months, 1.94227e-08 years Displacement: 1344669238077 meters, 8.98856 AU, 0.000142132 lightyears

Screenshot from Excel showing various graphs with time (measured in days) along the x axis. Each graph's line starts at 0 days and ends just after 300 days. Top left graph: ship velocity (km/s), rising with a slight arc up to ~150 km/s. Top right: acceleration (m/s²), similarly rising although with a slightly sharper curve. Starts at 0.002 and ends at around 0.018. Middle left: Displacement (AU), rising in a curve almost identical to the first graph. Starts at 0 and rises to 9 AU. Middle right: Isp/g0 (seconds). Also rising, starts at just under 6,500 seconds and ends at just over 8,500. Bottom left: Ship mass (tons), decreases almost exactly linearly from 1,200 tons down to 150 tons. Bottom right: Plasma magnet field radius (km), decreases steadily from 340 km down to 255 km.

i wrote a simple python script for calculating statistics for manuevers done using a q-drive/wind-electric propulsion setup. it also outputs a csv file that i can turn into pretty graphs and stuff

The worst thing about any major space event nowadays is having to endure weeks of insanely terrible takes from fellow leftists who think they have to be Woke On Space (tm)

you don't hear much about string theory these days

there's a few others but i think they're dependancies of the mods i listed above so you'll get them anyway

i think that's all of the visual mods i'm using, at least

- Waterfall (engine plumes)
- Volumetric clouds (v3 is available for free, but v5 costs money. i'm using v3)
- Parallax Continued (ground scatter and terrain)
- TUFX (colour grading)
- Firefly (re-entry effects)
- Deferred rendering (makes lighting better, i think?)

KSP screenshot showing a lander docked to a transfer stage above a sea of clouds.

Another KSP screenshot showing the lander from the previous image now landed on the surface of Minmus. Rocks are scattered everywhere and a trio of Kerbals are gathered around a flag.

The same ship again, this time flying over Minmus' reflective flats. The lander is now just a capsule and a heatshield docked to the transfer stage.

The capsule re-entering the atmosphere of Kerbin.

visiting minmus

if anyone uses the mod Supplementary Electric Engines and has anything they wanna say wrt to balancing and stuff, i'd be curious to hear your opinion too

(balancing for the photon drive mod is a whole other can of worms that i'll worry about another time)

i've been actually playing with the parts i made for ksp, and i'm starting to think i should go back and tweak some of the balancing (on top of improving all the part models which i already had planned). feel like i might end up pissing some people off with some of the changes i have in mind, though

they should install a new kind of faucet in houses that dispenses some kind of thick nutritious fluid, so that you can quickly and easily feed yourself when you have no motivation to make actual food

A breakdown of nuclear photon rockets:
cds.cern.ch/record/54144...
Even with a 3 GW reactor crammed into a 20 ton spaceship, you'd get 0.05 milligee accelerations; Hohmann trajectories that requires tons of Uranium fuel, and capture burns lasting whole years.

i couldn't resist the urge

(reusable single-stage launch vehicle i made today)

procedurally generated girl

earth/luna