BillKerman1234

In my opinion it doesn’t look that bad, but I understand if you don’t share that opinion. Nevertheless though, it’s still better than having no IVA at all. As for the problems with thin meshes, well, don’t have thin meshes! I can’t think of any reason why we couldn’t just make the walls thick, unless it would be harder to model or something.

Am I the only one who actually liked that part of the Mk-2 Lander Can? I thought the blocked window looked like some sort of structural member embedded in the wall. And in any case it proves that such a thing can be done.

Couldn’t you just model the IVA with all of the windows open, and if the mesh is switched the windows disappear on the outside but not the inside? If your going to switch the mesh it will probably be because something is covering the windows anyway so won’t that problem take care of itself? And we know from parts like the MK-1 pod that you can switch the mesh of an object but keep the IVA the same, so I don’t see the problem there either.

The MOL diagram was the result of me seeing conflicting diagrams, basing half of it on written descriptions, and being lazy. I presumed that the MOL would share a common pressure vessel design with the Gemini Taxi (or more correctly the Gemini Ferry), and I also presumed that it would need a transtage for stationkeeping. The Electronic Warfare Gemini was me guessing the design based of, well nothing. I couldn’t find any diagrams of it. The rest of them should be accurate though. The Interceptor Gemini I drew was based of the Blue Gemini novels, but I think it had real-life considerations. I agree with everything else you said, except the bit about dependencies for the robotic arm. As far as I can tell just making it an animated docking port should suffice, since you would likely use the RCS to actually grab any satellites. Still, I understand if you want to do other stuff first. In other news; any thoughts on KSP 2?

So I hear you’re revamping the Gemini line of parts... Yeah, Gemini definitely needs to be redone - the capsule itself is fine, but basically everything else could use an update. For instance, the adapter section should be split into two sections - the adapter and the retro-module - and the MOL station parts need to be redone since currently they bulge out way more than the real one did (from what I can tell, although I may be wrong). I like the way you’re currently taking it, the LES and ferry modules look very good. I still think that the MOL station module you showed was a bit to wide, but that may just be me. And of course, you would still need to implement the actual ground-facing telescope array, maybe you could even rig up contacts to photo certain areas. Anyways, in preparation for the upcoming Gemini revamp I looked though as much of the stuff on it as I could find, and my god, there’s s lot. For starters: Gemini/MOL wasn’t just for optical Earth-observation. I found a few articles which referenced a version of MOL with a radio telescope to listen in on Russian transmissions (and potentially even electronic warfare?), so maybe that could be implemented but as a deep space observatory, with contracts to observe pulsars and such. (Imagine a contract to position a Gemini with a radio telescope behind the Mun to shield it from radio emissions and you get some science as a reward) There’s also all of the Gemini satellite inspectors/interceptors which had many different variants, the most basic of which was a regular Gemini with a robotic arm and grappler to grab onto satellites, and the most advanced of which was basically a mini space station, with a habitat module attached behind the adapter. Not to forget all of the rescue Gemini variants, which ranged from Earth orbit all the way to the Lunar surface, and were mostly just other Gemini configurations painted with red and white checkers. They did look cool though. And finally, there are the Lunar Gemini's. I would hold off on the bigger ones (aka direct ascent) until you revamp the Saturn’s, but what you’ve done so far with the smaller ones looks very good. It’s a shame you’re not working on the Lunar Recon Gemini yet because that one is my favourite, but as I said, I agree with you’re decision to revamp the Saturn’s first. Of all of these the ones you should probably focus on first (in my opinion) are: 1. Gemini EOR/LOR (would require the implementation of literally one part - the cargo bay for the lander) 2. Revamping the Gemini Service/Adapter Module (requires two, maybe three parts) 3. Implementing the Gemini taxi 4. Revamping the MOL parts 5. Adding the MOL optical and radio telescopes, and the satellite grabbing arm 6. Adding the Gemini paraglider 7. Revamping/adding Big Gemini and Lunar Recon Gemini (after the Saturn overhaul) 8. Adding Gemini Direct Ascent and Rescue Gemini I’ve taken the liberty to compile some to-scale diagrams of them (spacecraft on the right hand side of the second image are the same spacecraft as in the first image): Top to bottom: Gemini Taxi, MOL Gemini, Electronic Warfare Gemini, Interceptor Gemini, Lunar Recon Gemini, Circumlunar Gemini, Gemini-Agena, Classic Gemini.

Some people on reddit suggested that, but it probably wasn’t, due to the over-throttling on the SSMEs being in relation to the original variant, not the current one. I think it was supposed to be like https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/War_emergency_power

It wasn’t a true over-throttle system, just a light saying ‘OVR THR” that lit up, which was later replaced by the RCS indicator. I’m not too sure of any of the other mechanics around it, all I really have is that one photo and some YouTube videos from back then, none of which acknowledge it. From what I can tell, the feature wasn’t complete, and didn’t do much. It would still be nice if it was brought back though. Unfortunately I have no coding skills whatsoever, so I have no idea how much work it would be to implement something like that. Do you know how difficult it would be?

I was reading through ‘the missing manual’ (https://www.scribd.com/document/244400937/Kerbal-Space-Program-The-Missing-Manual-Volume-I-pdf) and noticed this: “On the left side of the navball (between 6:30 and 10 o’clock, if the navball were a clock face) is your throttle indicator. It has a little white arrow indicator that tells you where your throttle is positioned. The very bottom of the scale, your engines are off, the very top of the scale, your engines are at full thrust. The scale also has a red area that currently is not used by the game. I’m assuming that this will be used in the future when it is possible to throttle your engines over their rated thrust”. Upon more searching, I found I was not the first person to notice this; In fact, in the very early versions of KSP it was a feature; Unfortunately this feature was removed. However, it shouldn’t be too difficult to make a mod for it. I can think of several great ways of implementing it, most of which have already been discussed in the reddit thread I linked to. For example, if you were to continue holding shift once you reach 100%, the engine would continue throttling up to say, 150%, until you release shift and it drops to 100% again. Engines being over-throttled might overheat or lose a significant amount of their ISP, and never be able to regain their previous ISP and thrust levels again, and maybe if you over-throttle an engine for too long it explodes. I’m also thinking that if you were to over throttle an ion engine it would lose some efficiency, electric charge consumption would skyrocket (sometimes literally), and if an ion drive if over-throttled for too long the batteries on you’re ship are fried. And if you were too over-throttle a nuclear drive, any Kerbals within a certain radius die of radiation poisoning if the drive is left on for too long.

Question: what mod is that shuttle from? It looks super well-made, and more detailed than any shuttle mod I’ve ever seen.

It has an aerospike because I got carried away when drawing it, and I thought it looked cool. In real life the carrier would just use SABREs to get to 30 to 70 km and then the X-33 separates. And were using an aerospike on the X-33 because this is supposed to be a quick and dirty Falcon 9 competitor, and retooling it for bell nozzles would be expensive.

If both vehicles are stable on their own, then separating them won’t create too many unwanted sheer and torsion forces. As long as you have a greater upwards force on the X-33 than the carrier aircraft you’re fine. As I said, use solids if you have to. I am also an aspiring aerospace engineer. I have no way of confirming this, but I would bet the RS-25 is more complex than the RS-2200, since the RS-25 was notoriously difficult to maintain. A RS-68 might do the trick, but you would need to develop a nozzle extension, and why bother when the RS-2200 has already been developed and successfully test fired. Plus, using the XRS-2200 would futureproof the design if you ever want to develop it into a SSTO. And for testing the craft we can strap two together (like in Project M.U.S.T.A.R.D.) and launch them on a suborbital trajectory, and if for whatever reason the carrier aircraft doesn’t work out we can have this double X-33 stack carry an upper stage to work as a light launch vehicle.

We separate rocket stages in the atmosphere all the time, I don’t see how this is any different. Hell, we could just end up strapping solid sep motors to them if we need to. And the reason we use the aerospike on the second stage is to avoid retooling the design, and to allow for possible future development into a SSTO.

Here’s a crazy concept: The X-33 (not the Venturestar) has about 4Km/s of delta V if it has 20t of payload. So, what if we took a X-33 and put it on top of a hypersonic aircraft with 3Km/s of delta V? We could make an orbital launch system to rival a Falcon 9. For the carrier aircraft we could use a plane powered by SABRE engines, which can fly as fast as Mach 5 and can operate as rockets as well. Even crazier concept: what if we took the Venturestar and equipped it with SABRE engines. Would that increase its payload capacity? As far as I can tell, after the X-33 program was scrapped the X-33 prototype that was 95% built was disassembled. Does anyone know exactly what happened to it and if any of its components components could be salvaged? And does anyone actually have any plans for building something like the X-33 in the future?

You know how in KAS/KIS when you set up two pipe endpoints you can right click one of them if you’re close enough and link them together? Well, it’s not working for me. The ‘link’ button simply doesn’t appear. Photos below: Any ideas?

I didn’t say keep accelerating an object to the speed of light and then keep putting more energy into it, I said if all of a sudden the velocity of the craft was superluminal. Think of it as teleporting the ship, but changing the velocity instead of the location. In other words: what would happen to an object if you forced it (through means I won’t discuss) to various velocity’s faster than the speed of light.

Say you have a spacecraft that weighs 100 tons, and is cylindrical, 100 meters long and 10 meters wide. Now imagine that spacecraft is instantly ‘teliported’ to a velocity beyond the speed of light. For example, 1.5C, 2C, 5C, 18.367475C. We know that as a spacecraft approaches the superluminal barrier, the vehicles mass will increase exponentially, and the energy required to keep accelerating will increase exponentially. We also know the length of the spacecraft will decrease exponentially. So the question is: what happens to a spacecraft’s mass & dimensions if it is going faster than the speed of light? From what I can tell, there are three possibilities: 1. It’s mass will continue to rise beyond infinity. 2. It’s mass will stay at infinity. 3. It’s mass will start decreasing. Which one is it? And could we take advantage of it?

No point, the payload will be good enough to get multiple kg in to orbit, any less and the 95-100 success rate goes from 0 to 5kg, that’s too risky, so we will have the mass for a proper GoPro, and remember how heavy a kg is, we have a lot of mass to work with. As for the aquarium, not an option. I’m no expert, but the water has to be oxygenated somehow. In micro gravity and air on top to form a ‘surface’ would float as bubbles through the water.

Ok, we already came to the conclusion (on slack) that a ten ton hybrid with 3 boosters and 2 small solid upper stages would work with 4 kg payload, maybe a diesel lox upper stage would work? I’ll think about it tomorrow, it’s 21 past 12pm in London, so I have to go to bed. Goodnight.

i would agree with you. Also, you should join our slack account, that’s were me and sevenperforce are discussing the launch vehicle in more depth. Click here: https://join.slack.com/t/amaturerockettoorbit/shared_invite/enQtNDM2NzEzMjA1Mjg2LTdkZDY2YTI1ZTNjYmNlNzJiMmQ2MTBmYjUzY2JhNWMxMmNkMGE2NzYwOGRmMzQzYWM4MGM2ZTZkYWMzOWI2ZDc

I think with a takeoff mass off 51 tons, that will work.

Plus, hybrids are difficult to refuel Although there’s no reason why a biprop stage can’t be landed via chute

Okay, I’ve just created a slack account, you can join here: https://join.slack.com/t/amaturerockettoorbit/shared_invite/enQtNDM0NjgxMTcxMjM2LWY5NmM5YWEwYTY2ZDU1M2ZhYWJiYzA5MmNhNDBiNTJmNTA4NDMwZjE4MWMzYzA3ZWFkY2JiNzNmNWQ1OGE2NjU Anyway, the main propulsion system choices we have are: 1) Hybrid - jellied petrol / htp - htpb / nitrous oxide - htpb / lox 2) Liquid - methane / lox - kerosene / lox - alcohol/ lox I think ether methane or kerosene for the core stage, and hybrids for boosters, though they too could be liquid Maybe something like this: Core stage: kerosene/lox 4 boosters: kerosene/lox the core stage would be slightly larger than the boosters, think of the r-7 for example

@Steel Yes I know. Every component on the vehicle, down to what type of rivets we use, will need to be carefully planned out. In aerospace, every component needs to be traceable back to the ore in the ground. But right now, thats very far off. We still haven’t even completed step 1, find out the mass of the payload we want to put into orbit.

Ok, so I’ve been thinking, and from what I can see, this is what we need to do: 1) figure out what type of satterlite our payload is gonna be 2) figure out the cost and mass of the payload 3) figure out what type of rocket propulsion system we’re going to use 4) do the math on the size, shape, and mass of the launcher 5) design the basic concept of the launch vehicle around the required propulsion system and payload 6) use ksp realism overhaul to simulate it 7) 3D model the vehicle and do cfd on it 8) get me to persuade some guys I know at the British Interplanetary Society to let me use their proper rocket simulation software 9) 3D model the vehicle in much more detail 10) reach out to university’s and organisations to sponsor us 11) build it ...sound simple enough! *sarcastic facial expression*

https://n-avionics.com/platforms/6u-cubesat-bus-m6p/ - 6u prebuilt https://n-avionics.com/platforms/3u-cubesat-platform-plt3/ - 3u prebuilt https://n-avionics.com/platforms/cubesat-2u-platform-plt2/ - 2u prebuilt https://n-avionics.com/subsystems/ - individual components How about this? I’m thinking the 6u would be good, but it might be too expensive, so we might need to go for the 2u.