Jump to content

Red Iron Crown

Members
  • Posts

    15,119
  • Joined

Everything posted by Red Iron Crown

  1. You're right, poor word choice on my part. It's something that should be added, IMO. EVA transfers shouldn't be necessary for directly connected modules or docked modules.
  2. That 1000 ton fuel tank would crumple like it was made of tissue paper. The structure that was adequate for the one ton tank would be entirely too weak for a 1000 ton one, because of the square-cube law. We would need to rework the structure to support the far greater mass, and we would be lucky if it scaled linearly with mass. Eventually we reach the limits of our materials, setting an upper limit on lifter size. It's a bit counter intuitive, sort of a reversal of economies of scale. A good example is quadcopters. You can make a small electric copter that is efficient, controllable and has a decent range. Why can't we just scale it up to man-sized? Shouldn't a larger copter be more efficient?
  3. We need to compare apples to apples here. Yes, STS was inefficient and expensive. But a version that could lift a 500t station in one launch would be even more expensive and inefficient. If the hypothetical 500t disposable lifter existed, it would be less efficient than 5 100t disposable lifters or 10 50t disposable lifters. I agree with you about using man-rated systems for bulk lifting, the only advantage I see is there was crew there to oversee the linking of modules and testing. I suppose it would've been better to use Soyuz to get that crew there separate from the module.
  4. 0.5, 1, and 2 are all multiples of 1/8, too. Not really sure how that applies to radial spacing, though. Can you give an example?
  5. It makes it uneconomical, which is the same as invalidating it. We can't just scale up smaller boosters to larger ones because of the square-cube law. Smaller boosters will always be more efficient than larger ones. How is ISS an example? There is no booster that could lift it in one piece, nor is it a shape that could be made aerodynamic at all. There is no way that it could be lifted into space in one piece, certainly not at anywhere near the cost of lifting individual modules.
  6. Just for clarification, what sci-fi movie have you watched that wasn't ridiculous? The science wasn't perfect in it, but it was far, far better than almost any other sci-fi movie. I think maybe 2001: A Space Odyssey was a bit more realistic if you ignore all the monoliths and the hallucinogenic ending sequence, but I can't think offhand of another mainstream movie that handled spaceflight as well.
  7. From here: http://qi.com/infocloud/knees Sorry to burst your bubble.
  8. Sadly, crew transfer even between directly attached parts without EVA is not possible in the stock game. So, decoupler or not, you won't be able to transfer them. This is something that really needs to be fixed, IMO.
  9. That's not so. Every achievement by man in space was done first by automated spacecraft, except docking (and that lagged behind manned flight by only a year). The NASA rocket scientists didn't want pilots to have any manual control, as they were worried that the test pilots training to be astronauts would screw things up. It was only by leveraging their popularity in the media that the Original Seven got any sort of manual controls included. Even then, mission control on the ground was firmly in control of what the astronauts did. The Russians were more pragmatic and had no qualms about having the whole show be automated. I'm fairly sure that's not so. MJ will happily let you burn your Hohmann transfer before matching planes. What it won't do is let you do a Hohmann transfer to something in another SOI.
  10. Ouch. I once deleted a save without realizing that all the saved craft would be lost, too.
  11. In a fuel injected car, this maneuver actually consumes delta-V.I accelerate at the bottom of the hill and allow the car to coast up it, thereby harnessing the Oberth effect.
  12. Isn't that an 11 Kerbal design? Two Hitchhikers plus the Mk3 Cockpit?
  13. I don't know how MJ calculates it, I'm just going by the information on the wiki. Why quote a scale height for each body if it's not implemented? And why give a table of terminal velocities that vary by height below 10km? I can't see the advantage in having a logarithmic scale atmosphere above 10km but a linear one below. If anything, I would expect either all logarithmic or a stepwise approximation, not both. Frankly, the aerodynamic model in KSP is bad enough that I don't think aircraft experiments demonstrate much of anything. I'd be interested in your parachute results, though.
  14. I think your cruising altitude goal of 30km is unrealistic. That's almost 100,000 feet, well beyond the service ceiling of even high performance fighter aircraft and into exotic rocket plane territory. The air is really too thin for sustainable aerodynamic flight at that altitude.
  15. The square-cube law would like to have a word with you...
  16. Some real world designs have used a bunch of small rockets instead of fewer large ones, the N1 is a good example, and Soyuz is close (many nozzles sharing fewer turbopumps). The 48-7S is overpowered in its current form. I fully expect it to be nerfed at some point to make the other engines more appealing.
  17. Repairs. Reparations are compensation for wrongs, for example, slavery reparations were payments made to freed slaves, war reparations are payments from one country to another for war damages.
  18. I just put a probe core and a battery on my lifters and leave a little bit of fuel in it after circularization. After circularizing, I separate, switch to the lifter, point retrograde and burn to deorbit. It requires very little fuel to do so, and I jealously hoard the fuel in my orbital craft so I don't want to burn them to achieve orbit.
  19. A note on this: This is only true in KSP for game balance reasons. In the real world, thrust and Isp are orthogonal. It is entirely possible to make engines that are both high Isp and high thrust. In particular, the LV-N is a nerfed version of the real NERVA, which had excellent TWR and high Isp, both in atmosphere and vacuum. But if the LV-N was like that it would quickly displace all the other engines. Real nuclear rockets are just plain superior to chemical ones in every respect other than public acceptance.
  20. The icons in the staging list should give some description or an image when moused over. Highlighting the part is less useful if it's buried within radially attached parts. I'd also like to be able to specify which stage new parts go to. The default staging gets thoroughly confused by asparagus or reverse vertical staging.
  21. I thought KSP's atmospheric model used proper scale heights. The wiki certainly indicates that it does, and it seems to be borne out by the fact that terminal velocity changes continuously as altitude increases.
  22. "Reparations" doesn't mean what you think it means...
  23. My struts always end up looking horribly asymmetrical. I wish the second attachment point could be made to snap to angles as well.
×
×
  • Create New...