• cosecantphi [he/him]
    ·
    edit-2
    4 years ago

    Kessler syndrome is no joke folks. If we're unlucky enough, it's possible for the debris field to exponentially create more debris as it expands and impacts more satellites. Like having a little asteroid cloud surrounding the planet. Play some KSP for a while without cleaning up all the shit you leave in orbit, it's scary as hell watching a car sized rocket stage scream by you at over a dozen times the speed of sound.

    • Qelp [they/them,she/her]
      hexagon
      ·
      4 years ago

      Yeah lmao I always make sure to either make my rockets in ksp renter on launch or give my upper stages probe cores to de orbit them so I can be “environmentally friendly”

            • Qelp [they/them,she/her]
              hexagon
              ·
              4 years ago

              not saying that ur dumb, im just saying that its literally one of the hardest fields when it comes to actually applying math to the real world. if it makes u feel any better i can't even do interplanetary transfers by myself lmao

                • throwawaylemmy [none/use name]
                  ·
                  4 years ago

                  I just wanted LittleBigRockets. I didn't want a university course in rocket science.

                  Apparently KSP2 (made by a different studio) is gonna tutorialize everything out the ass, so that might be better for me doing "ROCKETS GO VROOOOOOOOOOOOOOM explode" sandboxing.

            • Frank [he/him, he/him]
              ·
              4 years ago

              Just add more solid rocket boosters and more struts and eventually you can either go straight up or summon the Space Kraken.

        • cosecantphi [he/him]
          ·
          4 years ago

          So ya just gotta go up, and slowly turn east until you reach horizontal. Standard recommendation is 45 degrees by 10-15km and 90 degrees once your time to peak trajectory (apoapsis) starts accelerating faster and faster beyond 45 seconds. Stop firing the engines once the apoapsis reaches above the atmosphere. Then once you reach your apoapsis, continue firing your engines horizontally until your orbit is circular. You may experience some problems with your rocket tumbling end over end once you initiate your turn, this can be mitigated by having fins, and encasing your payload in a fairing if it's not a command pod. Make sure there are no open nodes on top of your rocket, those create massive drag, so put nose cones on them.

          If that ain't too helpful, then try installing the mechjeb mod. It's an autopilot that can fly into orbit for you efficiently, watch how it does it a few times and see if you learn anything.

      • cosecantphi [he/him]
        ·
        4 years ago

        Putting probe cores on them is great once you get some airbrakes and drogue chutes. A lot of the times I launch small satellites into low Kerbin orbit, the payload is small enough that the upper stage has quite a bit of fuel left. I love to deorbit and land them in those cases to offset the cost of all the probe cores. It's pretty fun aiming them using body lift to try to get closer to the KSC.

        • Qelp [they/them,she/her]
          hexagon
          ·
          4 years ago

          my only problem is i have plasma blackout and probe control require for my career save so i need to be really careful about where i reenter stuff

          • cosecantphi [he/him]
            ·
            4 years ago

            I've tried the plasma blackout setting a few times, but it always struck me as unrealistic because in reality probes would be programmed to do a set routine even during the blackout. Like it would make unkerballed space planes impossible to reenter with. Perhaps there oughta be a probe core with more advanced reentry capabilities later on in the tech tree to make it a more viable gameplay option. You play on hard mode?

    • OgdenTO [he/him]
      ·
      4 years ago

      Can we balance the Kessler effect on purpose to reflect enough sunlight to counter global warming?

      • cosecantphi [he/him]
        ·
        4 years ago

        Nah, the debris cloud would be too disparate. It wouldn't even stop ICBMs because they don't spend enough time on their suborbital trajectory to have a high chance of getting hit. The risk of Kessler syndrome mainly comes in when you have a craft in a low Earth parking orbit for a long enough time to have significant risk of getting hit. So light would have no problem getting through.

        What you want is an orbital sunshade. Make a giant reflective thin sheet of material big enough to block the appropriate amount of light, and place it in the L1 lagrange point between the Earth and the Sun. I'm not sure if the effort it would take to do this is more or less than the effort it would take to stop emitting so much CO2, but I'd guess it's more. It does become an appealing option in the future once we are already way past the point of no return and need to urgently stop any sunlight we can.

        • VILenin [he/him]
          ·
          4 years ago

          Gonna be looking forward to living in eternal darkness because :capitalist: can stop this any time but won't because :stonks-down:

          • cosecantphi [he/him]
            ·
            edit-2
            4 years ago

            If we did it right now we'd only need to block 2 percent of sunlight to delay global warming enough to give us a chance of reducing emissions without significant changes to the capitalist mode of production. Two percent probably ain't too noticeable, but I'm sure it'd have some considerable side effects on ecosystems as plants need to deal with less light.

            Obviously the longer we do nothing about it, the more sunlight we'd need to block eventually, and that's the thought that gets pretty fucking grim. You ever see the animatrix?

            https://youtu.be/WlRMLZRBq6U?t=62

            "May there be mercy on man and machine for their sins."

      • kristina [she/her]
        ·
        4 years ago

        i feel like we'd have a better chance nuking our crust until we have a global nuclear winter