Ultimate Steve

Hi Alex, unless you are doing something incredibly specific that requires old mods, 1.12.5 (the latest version) should be what you use. There haven't been any updates in a year and a half and there hasn't been anything beyond bugfixes and minor tweaks in three years. Modding is centered around 1.12.5 and will be unless something really weird happens. Mods are a matter of taste, but I believe the ones you have listed are still compatible.

Was this a recent development or was this that thing they were talking about doing in May 2023?

They were kind enough to give us all of the info, I forget where, but presumably at the presentation they did. 30 tons wet, 16 tons of fuel. At least at the last time they gave us the numbers, Draco has 300s of isp. 2.24km/s. Falcon Heavy expendable would leave this in lko with about 30 tons of propellant left in s2. That would be roughly 2350m/s. Allowing for slop, this craft could reach a Moon flyby with 1440m/s remaining. That's comparable to Orion. Granted you can't just straight up put crew on this as it would probably not have a functional abort system due to the trunk depending on how it is attached. But this could very well be an audition to replace Orion.

How dare you wake me from my slumber? @LittleBitMore

NSP Log #2, through Y1 D87

The Notebook Space Program has joined the space race! I very slightly trimmed the mod list for now as I don't need that many space station parts, at least for now, and RAM is a precious resource! Science is on 60% like instructed on the Discord. Default BARIS settings. Quickloads and reverts are on but I will attempt to only use them for glitches and perhaps monumentally stupid moments like accidentally leaving the game unpaused. NSP Log #1, through Y1 D29: The adventures of the NSP will continue! Some particularly severe weather is rolling in though and I might drop off the face of the Earth for a few days if the power goes out.

If super heavy is 200 tons with 200 tons of propellant, the TWR would be about 19.

I would really love to join, it has been a while since I've done a space race, however pretty much every time I have tried to use BARIS it has broken on me... Parts (and consistently the same ones) will break in the VAB, limiting me to a few command pods. If I can get KCT and EVA Repairs working, what would be the best settings to emulate BARIS? If not viable as an official entry I can at least do something vaguely parallel.

Chapter 60 - Even More Space Piracy

Well then you get into the gray area as to where Amos 6 stands in the failure spectrum. I personally count it as a full failure even though it occurred during prelaunch testing. CRS-7 was indeed 2015 though.

After some anomalous looking icing and venting and possibly leaking during the first second stage burn, Falcon 9 S2 experienced a RUD during a perigee raise burn. Starlinks may not survive. Full flight replay here: https://x.com/i/broadcasts/1gqGvNkwZPgGB I don't think we have video of the RUD. First Falcon failure or partial failure (to be determined, deciding factor is probably if the Starlinks survive) since 2016 I think. It has been 325 missions since the last Falcon 9 failure. I'm not sure what rocket comes in second place for success streak, but wow, that is quite a streak that may not be beaten for some time.

This looks really cool! Currently working through stock. I have zero additional propulsion and science pieces until the 90 science nodes but after that I have very quick access to nuclear engines, the whiplash, and rhe aerospike. Could you post the code somewhere by chance? I want to see if I can get it working with other tech trees. Like community tech tree or rp1 tech tree.

Neither Discord nor Reddit seem like a good place for mission report and story type stuff. If the forums die down I wonder where people will post that sort of stuff.

Well, looks like the next few days of free time will be spent copying my mission reports into google docs. Serves me right for not writing everything in drive to begin with. But it isn't my fault that pasting from imgur to drive and then drive to the forums will make the images tiny! @Brotoro What did you use to make your mission report hosting site? Any services or is it completely self hosted and made? I've been thinking about something like that, a place to keep my stuff in the event of a forumpocalypse.

Good point. And upon closer inspection, the account that posted the image doesn't seem like the most reliable source.

At least 3 reasonable explanations spring to mind: 1. Intentional FTS activation to reduce methane emissions and avoid another "oops the booster survived, how do we sink it?" situation 2. Natural consequence of something that tall tipping over 3. Something broke on splashdown, went boom. Not designed to or required to take those forces anyway so no big deal. Of course it could also be some in flight failure that manifested itself later on. I don't doubt that some parties will be quick to note that it could have been that Raptor explosion on the way down poking a hole in the tank and causing it to go boom moments after splashdown. I doubt it though when there are so many simpler things that could explain it. Update, disregard possibility 1, I have been told that the FTS is safed during descent.

It is the fourth of July, so there's a lot of competition, but this is easily the most American thing I've seen all day.

Yeah. As I understand it, the reason they are keeping it up as long as they are is because they don't understand the service module issues and coming home would destroy the evidence. I bet NASA is enjoying the extra two sets of hands up there. Given that there's only two of that type of docking port, though, that may be a downside. Unsure what was scheduled when, but might cause some scheduling issues.

China attempted to beat the static fire altitude record today: Tianlong 3 attempted a static fire but evidently someone didn't do their job properly. US still holds the record though, a 1952 Viking test at White Sands Missile Range accidentally took off during a static fire and ended up about 4 miles downrange after about 2 minutes of flight, so it was almost certainly higher than this.

It isn't really proper VR, but they sent up some 360 degree cameras a while back and there's a sort of VR/360 experience on the Quest. I assume you've probably seen the google maps ISS too. But yeah, it would be amazing to get a proper VR environment of the station. My hope now for returning the whole ISS is now all but gone, but maybe they can at least return the Cupola or something.

It is a long shot but that would be quite the story. KSP community so fed up with KSP 2 that they buy the rights to the game and fix it themselves.

Tldr: It would probably take too long. If the ISS is in direct sunlight it will generate 240kW. Average is a lot lower (84-120) but let's say 240 for the sake of a steel man. The NEXT ion thruster has 4170s of isp, consistent with 40 ish tons of prop. It consumes 6.9 kW for 237 millinewtons of thrust. If it's running nothing else (ISS power was expanded recently because what they had was barely enough for what they were doing), the ISS can power about 35 NEXT engines. This is about 8.3 Newtons of thrust. If the ISS is about 420 tons (it is heavier and with 40 tons of prop but steel man) it will accelerate at 0.00002 meters per second per second. About 1.7 meters per second per day. Putting it in GEO would take over six years not accounting for the losses from spiraling out, and drag. In reality it would take far longer. Night becomes less of an issue the higher the orbit gets but at best you're only getting 120kW for the first while. The station takes a lot of power. Let's say you can dedicate half (which is a lot, especially if the station is still in operation) to the cause. Now its 24 years. Idk how much they lose to drag per day but it might be close enough that they can't even counteract drag. And then you have to built 9-35 NEXT ion thrusters when only one has flown I think. I think ions are lifetime limited by erosion unless they've fixed that recently. Idk how long they can burn continuously but it surely isn't 24 years. The station also wasn't designed for that thermal and radiation environment. Also communications. Even assuming it's long been uninhibited by now you would still have to interface with the existing systems enough to steer the thing and point the solar panels.

Bonus, some v1.1 development outtakes:

Version 1.1 is now out on GitHub. The primary reason for this update is to fix Bop going invisible when approached. I got a bit sidetracked and revamped Bop a little (it is now even smaller) and added a submoon, Bop B flat (Bop-Bb) which is 5 meters in radius. Mostly because I always wondered what would happen if you did that. In the process, some theories about ring shape warp drives were verified. Basically you can orbit Bop Bb with a ringship, where the center of mass is inside the ring, and KSP will say "Ah yes, the center of mass is next to the singularity! I'll fling the ship out at 57 times the speed of light!" Full changelog: Bugfixes: Remade Bop-B from scratch to fix an issue where it wouldn't render properly if below 600 meters above the surface (not sure how I didn't catch that) (This was an issue in development but I thought I had fixed it) Fixed Duna-B being shown as Duna (displayName was misspelled as dispalyName) Fixed Bop-B being shown as Bop (displayName was written as name) Fixed Pol-B being shown as Pol (displayName was omitted) Changes: Bop-B is now smaller, 1800m radius vs around 2300m Bop-B gravity slightly increased (8G) Deleted a bunch of commented out configs to make things a bit cleaner Additions: Bop-Bb, a submoon of Bop-B with incredibly high gravity (14G) and incredibly tiny size (5m radius) as a remnant of a funny test I did. It is pretty buggy but I thought I'd keep it in because there's got to be at least one person who was also curious as to what would happen if you made a world that small. Known issues: Bop-Bb doesn't render properly unless you are inside its SOI, chalk this up to it being the Kraken's eyeball When in very low orbits around Bop-B and Bop-Bb the game thinks you are under acceleration and won't let you leave or time warp I don't think the anomalies are properly spawning on Bop-B