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ZooNamedGames

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Posts posted by ZooNamedGames

  1. 2 hours ago, k00b said:

    building rockets to test on space simulation game".

    Yeah and it’s a lot more accurate with real engine designs. What I’m suggesting isn’t witchcraft.

    https://space.stackexchange.com/questions/29753/are-side-boosters-sometimes-angled-even-if-they-are-symmetrically-arranged

    Hg9ii.jpg

    bu3jy.jpg

    Real rockets have solid rocket motors that can gimbal (note- Solid rocket motor is the correct term in this instance). Not to mention offset angled SRMs are completely normal in aerospace. It’s how the Atlas V gets away with only 1 SRB (something you can’t do in KSP without spamming SAS, using RCS or using the vector rocket engine to compensate for the angled thrust- all while keeping the single SRB vertical). 

    Yes- maybe you don’t want to be bothered with angling your rocket nozzles- but with them set to face towards 0° (down), you won’t need to. This simply solves a lacking area of KSP. 

    2 hours ago, k00b said:

    If you want "more accurate launches" - then how about building a better rocket or downloading an autopilot mod ???.

    This literally makes replica builds far more accurate- not to mention offers a vastly wider range of uses. So this definitely would do nothing but expand the game. Also an autopilot has nothing to do with this.

  2. 12 minutes ago, tater said:

    The trouble is not the reality of SLS, the trouble is that it's not really ideal for anything.

    At billions per launch (if they manage 2 a year at some point it might only cost 2.something billion per launch), the fact that a concurrent, 2-launch mission (not counting Gateway, lol) might be possible to get to the lunar surface and back doesn't demonstrate that SLS makes sense for that mission. If the mission goal is long stays on the Moon, the vehicles (SLS and Orion) should have been designed to accomplish that goal. So a comanifested lander (a la Apollo) in 1 flight, or something that entirely escapes me...

    What's the throw weight to TLI for the full Block 2 version?

    But you don’t need a second SLS to launch the lander. Use an expendable FH.

  3. 22 hours ago, klesh said:

    For me, external tank has to be 5m, so the 2.5m SRBs are just right.  Now, I just need orange variants of the 5m parts. 

    2.5m External tank is way too small.

    Ha, you should see the Gemini adaptor section. Gemini replicas (at least for me) are a disaster since I have to make the Titan stage a 2.5m part rather than use the nice and sleek new 1.875m engines and fuel tanks since they're the same size as the Gemini and the Titan is wider in diameter than the Gemini requiring that conic adaptor section to be included in replicas. 

  4. 1 hour ago, k00b said:

    it would take the fun out of having risky launches ?

    That's not really a good reason. A lot of things shouldn't be added if you just want iffy rocket launches. But some people want more realism or more accurate launches (myself included), so that kind of stuff gets added. Otherwise we'd be stuck with 1 or 2 SRBs and no Vector engine, no radial engines, no xenon engine- you get the point. 

  5. 15 minutes ago, tater said:

    Um, no.

    So she's saying that she thinks that the fact that the majority of launches are commercial is somehow less efficient. She's delusional. Minus commercial launches Artemis reaches the Moon, let's see, multiply by.... add... carry the 2...

    Never.

     

    I may be team anti-SpaceX but I’m not stupid. Commercial is essential to us going back. NASA is only launching crew. NASA only has one rocket and it’s niche is solely crewed launch capability to lunar orbit. They can’t (ignoring shouldn’t) use SLS for such simple cargo as LOP-G. Even at the peak of SLS proposed production pace- it’d be 2030 or later before we even have the same amount of hardware as we would after 5 years using commercial. Falcon Heavy, Ariane 5 and the Atlas V are all trusted vehicles capable of doing the job cheaper, faster and on time.

  6. 10 hours ago, KSK said:

    Apollo 13 says hi.

    PC+2 burn to expedite return journey to Earth performed by lunar module descent engine, putting out around 45,000N. That was also the 'shaved to within an inch of it's life to save weight' spacecraft pushing the substantially heavier CSM through its docking port, without crumpling like a beer can in the process. 

    Oh - and the descent engine, or DPS, was indeed used at full throttle. From the flight journal on NASA's own history site.

    077:55:24 Brand: Okay. This is P30, LM maneuver PAD, PC plus 2 hours, starting with Noun 33, 079:27:38.30; plus 0833.0, minus 0050.9, minus 0213.9; N/A, plus 0020.5; 0861.5, 4:24; 272, 081; and the rest is N/A except for comments as follows. Ullage, two jets, 10 seconds; CSM weight, 62480; LM weight, 33452 and the DPS throttle profile is the same as before, 5 seconds at minimum, 21 seconds at 40 percent, and the remainder of the time at Max. Over.
    077:56:02 Haise: Okay, Vance. [Garble] 079:27:38.30; plus 0833.0, minus 0050.9, minus 0213.9; N/A, plus 0020.5; 0861.5, 4:24, 272, 081; and the rest N/A. Ullage, two jets, 10 seconds; CSM weight, 62480; LM weight, 33452. DPS throttle profile same as before, 5 seconds, 40 percent for 21 seconds, 40 percent, and the remainder at Max throttle [garble]. [Long pause.]
    Emphasis added.
    Edit the 2nd. The 'LM lifeboat' concept had also been tested on Apollo 9, including the use of the LM to push the CSM. So this was something that had been prepared and planned for beforehand - it wasn't a last ditch manoeuvre to get the Apollo 13 crew home.

    Apollo- inline thrust. 

    Copernicus- asymmetric thrust. 

  7. 3 hours ago, tater said:

    Altair was supposed to do the LOI burn with Orion (called MPCV at the time) attached.

    NASA left a lot up to the post concept phase. I’m still wondering how they intended to side-heft a X-15 in those early concepts for an orbital X-15 using the Navajo missile. So something tells me they don’t do all the math and sometime just design things to do what they think will work based on back of the envelope calculations. Which is likely the case for NASA concepts like Altair and Copernicus and any asymmetric builds joined together but docking ports. 

  8. 5 minutes ago, tater said:

    Pre-attached makes it stronger, not weaker. No reason not to dock something like Orion to the lander/upper stage stack, then send the whole thing to TLI.

    NASA was considering a tug/ferry architecture in the 1960s. The idea that this is somehow super hard is goofy. It's an engineering problem, you design the docking rings to deal with it, and you're done.

    (course changing Orion's docking system would likely take 20 years and cost at least that many billions (change orders are expensive!))

    It’s only weaker with larger builds due to the increased stresses involved- and its not that we can’t but that we aren’t prepared for what we don’t know with such scales. Could we make a massive multijoint vessel with 8 modules to speed off to Mars? Yes, we have the vehicles and the technology to do so- what we don’t have is the knowledge of how those vehicles will behave under the circumstances of acceleration, deep space flight or anything else since we haven’t made something to those scales. We don’t know what could happen- not that those make it impossible to do- just irresponsible to take risks and to wave potential unknowns just because we’ve done something far smaller and simpler than such a larger task as I described.

  9. 42 minutes ago, tater said:

    Yeah, Dunno what speed they dump the BE-4s at, but yeah, SLS would need a huge, deployable heat shield, and it likely harms margin, which it doesn't really have for Orion ops (none at all for block 1, and a small amount meant for comanifested payload on 1b).

    This is silly. ISS gets boosted all the time. Apollo docked 3 times every mission. Everything in LEO is traveling, 100% of the time, the difference between traveling and not traveling is reference frame, nothing more. There is nothing magic about leaving LEO.

    You're basically fine with docking AND "traveling" when it's around the Moon, but not safely in LEO. For reasons. Artemis landing ops require a possible docking en route to the moon (B1b modules), docking at Gateway automatically by multiple parts. Docking near Gateway (or in LEO?) by lander elements. Docking of a tug, possibly with the lander, THEN to the gateway, or more likely with the lander after the crew boards. The another docking coming back to Gateway from the Moon. The docked tug "travels" with the also docked together 2 stage lander. If you have any issue with docking, you have to scrap the entire notion of an Artemis lunar landing. Docking is fine, or it isn't, pick one.

     

    ISS gets a piddly boost of a few dozen meters per second- even considering it on the same level as injection/orbital insertion maneuvers is what’s truly silly- As to Apollo- 2/3 dockings didn’t lead to burns. There was only 1 burn which I’ll admit meets the criteria I set (the LO capture burn), though only Apollo 13 meets the criteria of using an engine not connected to the crew module at launch (by using the LM descent engine). 

    Whats magic is docking large spacecraft and making sure they don’t shear themselves apart due to the acceleration forces of a burn. The larger the vehicles the larger the forces at play- which goes from mildly denting thick metal frames and beams with something to the size of Apollo to tearing it like paper with bigger builds. It’s something we simply don’t have experience with. ACES honestly is the best way to get experience without being too overly ambitious. It’s smaller sized but can be used to have payloads flown to it. Slowly maybe we can see multisegmented payloads. A kickstage attached, then something else like an upper stage. Slowly growing to a more complex vehicle of your scale. Life isn’t KSP- we can’t just jump from one tier level to the other without consequences. We need to know what can happen when things change and scale a big part.

    The difference between Artemis and your plans is that Orion goes to a destination, Orion does not tug any payloads- not even a lander like Apollo did. All modules will be deployed commercially as will the lander. Orion will just be a ferry between the earth and LOP-G. No tugs involved. 

  10. 32 minutes ago, tater said:

    SLS dumps the core stage short of orbit entirely for disposal, so recovering the engines would require a LEO reentry, basically. Engine recovery makes more sense with a lower staging/entry velocity.

    The 2 B$ on RS-25 might have been better spent figuring out how to make a restartable version---then reuse the engine in space.

    Not sure how possible that is, however, and WRT SLS, once you're wed to a sustainer architecture you're hosed (unless you look into fly back boosters or something (like early Shuttle concepts)).

    I’d support literally any of your LEO construction projects if we had literally any experience building anything that actually traveled. So far we have a single multi piece space station that’s locked to earth orbit and a 50+ year old capsule-space probe combo that stands as the only vehicles to actually dock then boost their orbit with crew. Even without crew I can’t immediately think of any payloads that rocked and traveled- though admittedly if someone can cite a spacecraft that did so and traveled beyond LEO- I will wholly admit my fault here, and concede that my point is only true for manned spaceflight.

    1 minute ago, sh1pman said:

    I think the best mode of reusability for SLS would be SMART reuse like what ULA wanted for Vulcan. Take that engine section that was rotated today, add an inflatable heat shield+parachutes somewhere, decouple after upper stage separation. No need to reserve props, have fins or legs, or stage at lower velocity.

    It’s also lower risk in my opinion. Less to go wrong for the recovery to be botched and requires less development time.

  11. NASA could rush it's development and make an unsafe vehicle and an unready vehicle however NASA is methodical and precise in it's work. If you want to get frustrated, get frustrated with the politicians as NASA has been committed to the SLS since 2010. They've just been side tracked, and delayed by every possible hurdle politics could throw at NASA- and today, NASA has finally managed to overcome all of them to make SLS a real vehicle and soon it'll finally be fully built. Not too long after (around the same time as SpaceX is deploying LEO payloads with Starship), SLS will be sending the first crews to lunar orbit since the 70s. 

    Starship, is no where near the same degree of ready as SLS/Orion. Orion, though unmanned, is at least has all of the details of a crewed flight ready- merely sticking in the life support. Starship has no plans for crew space, what it will be designed like, the life support systems, life support capacity, life support testing, and a dozen other things that would prove Starship as remotely ready. Not to mention it's LEO only whereas Orion and SLS is going all the way to the moon. Despite it's 20km hop coming up- it's still a water tower. It has no re-entry systems (no thermal tiles or the now abandoned plan for metholox cooling ports), no payload space/capacity. At best it's comparable to New Shepard, seeing as they do much of the same thing (or at least will once it flies)- taking off,  going to altitude, and then coming back down to power land at a set destination. Only difference is New Shepard at least has gotten to the stage it's carried payloads. Starship has not and cannot unless a modification to the design is made to make payload support feasible. 

  12. 1 minute ago, .50calBMG said:

    I was excited for SLS back when I was in highschool (2011-2015), but it seems like almost no progress has been made on it compared to almost anything else, and I'm not just comparing them to SpaceX. Ariane 6, for example has, if you really think about it, a lot in common with Ariane 5, and it took less then 5 years to go from the announcement to component testing. SLS has been around in some form or another since the 80s iirc, and still hasn't been fully integrated. It just astounds me how long it has taken, and the pace that seemingly everyone else is taking, especially SpaceX, just exacerbates it further.

    Issue is it was a paper rocket up until 2013-2014. No hardware and a constantly shifting design (akin to a lot of rockets in development)- and a true need wasn't established until after the Shuttle was retired and NASA was left empty handed. NASA intended to smoothly transition into Constellation but after President Obama cancelled it, that wasn't feasible (and there's plenty of discussion on this thread that goes into the specifics as to why the programmed was delayed, but who, why and so forth so I won't retread those topics). Yes, progress has been slow- but that's the nature of bigger developments. I'm just happy to have what we have- and not at a breakneck pace as some companies do... or at least one of them.

  13. 2 minutes ago, .50calBMG said:

    Sorry zoo, but it's hard to get hyped about something that is moving at such a slow pace that turning a section of it can be considered newsworthy. How long until it's fully integrated?

    It's exciting for me since I've been reading the news feeds almost habitually since 2014. This is a huge leap in it's development. No longer is it a "piece of a rocket", just a "component". It will be a complete vehicle once these engines are attached. No longer a 'paper' rocket. Now a real vehicle. For me at least, it's massive.

    When will it complete? I'd expect by the end of the month. Maybe sooner. Aligning the engine section is the slowest part, since they have to connect electrical systems, plumbing, hydraulics, data relays and a whole smorgishboard of other things. x4 for multiple engines.

  14. Compared to when I joined this community- the merchandise offering is... well let's be clear- none existent.

    Yes, we've heard that they are working to rectifying the issue, but no real progress has (visibly) been made, and though initially the explanation was that they were experiencing growing pains from their partnership and joint work with T2, it's been 3 years (nearing 4) since, and no solutions have been made. Though I have no numbers in front of me, I'm guessing, that despite the communal request for merch- they haven't made it a priority since the original merch didn't bring in much profit. Providing no real incentive to relaunch the merch yet. 

    Yes, undoubtedly KSP2 has been the priority of Star Theory and T2- But that doesn't mean that non-game developer members of staff can't focus on it. Something that a community manager (like @St4rdust ) should be capable to do. Admittedly lawyers might be needed since we are working with the KSP IP, but with current online conferencing technology, having members of a team scattered all across the globe is no longer an actual limitation. 

    Though they may be intending to relaunch the store roughly around the same time as KSP2 releases, but that could be a year away, and I can't imagine drafting up T&Cs for a single IP- with a few manufacturers/distributors would be that costly in time (or actual funds).

    It also possible- seeing the recent expo which has been debuting KSP2 footage, that they already have stores ready and in the works. They had some substantial model replicas of Jeb, a rocket, flag and such- which takes planning, discussion and coordinated work with a manufacturer and production team to make them. Perhaps those teams are also hired to make regular consumer merch? Who knows.

    Point being- this is a sad day when my dirty KSP mousepad, holey KSP shirt, Jeb Plush, and single 3D model of my Saturn Shuttle build is the remains of a bygone era from when Squad/T2's interest into their brand expanded beyond the screen and allowed us to show our Kerbal love in real life. 

     

    Long live KSP Store. We miss you dearly. 

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