UmbralRaptor

We could always go back to posting cat pics. ICHC isn\'t dead...

Unless I\'m doing something wrong with my assumptions/calculations, it takes substantially less energy to heat ice from 35 to 273 K and melt it, than it does to accelerate it to 7000 m/s. By about a factor of 30. (~834 kJ/kg vs 24500 kJ/kg)I wonder if that kind of energy difference applies to this theoretical ice/water mining as a whole. Or if energy requirements for purifying either way dwarf the above?

There\'s a lot more water in the Kuiper belt and moons of the outer planets than on Earth...

If you\'re asking about the lines, that\'s either because I have the graphics at minimum, or because this is an old video card that was not designed for gaming. As for apparent stretching, I guess because of the angle of my camera, and because the pad\'s base is wider than the top? If you want a revised challenge (boosters only?), I\'m up for it. Does this make me a Spinagon, or something?

I\'m really not seeing the difficulty here. (Of course, the Kerbin atmosphere has a well defined cutoff at ~69 km...)

Depending on the size/mass of these asteroids, the hard part might be keeping the engines attached. (NovaSilisko\'s 18 tonne Mun being substantially smaller than many asteroids...)

Within the context of stock parts, solids are lighter and have a better thrust to weight ratio, making for better drag racers. That said, I run nearly pure liquid fuel engines for anything orbital. The insane Isp of stock liquid engines (~25% greater than the SSME!) is part of this...

Seconded.edit: actually, I\'m calling shenanigans. Let\'s look at the first craft picture. With stock parts (which those initially appear to be), the last stage would have a mass of 6.3 tonnes (full) to 4.1 tonnes (empty). An LV-T30 pushing that mass at full throttle (200 kN), would result in at most ~2-4 Gs. As the rocket is accelerating at 15+ Gs with a full tank of fuel and below full throttle... Same deal with the second one: With the listed parts, the craft would mass ~25.45 tonnes, and have a thrust well under the 1000 kN it is capable of. The net acceleration would be <3 Gs. But again it is pulling 15+...

Yes, I\'m replying to myself. But I\'d like to think I\'ve earned it. Lessons learned: 1) Adding even 6 additional boosters to the upper stage requires an additional set of struts to keep the stack decoupler from snapping. 2) The lower stage is *still* not big enough to make a larger (13 or 19 booster) upper stage useful. 3) Watch your positioning and winglet placement better, and you can fix a lot of tower clipping. 4) Sometimes all you need is another ring of boosters on the first stage (91 -> 127) I\'m tempted to add another ring of boosters (127 -> 169), but this is getting silly. edit: 1 more ring, 1 more second shaved off. It\'s developing aerodynamic stability issues just before first stage burnout, though.

I wonder if a 2 stage approach would be better? Safely landing would be 'fun.' Upper Stage: 1 Mk1 Pod 4 FL-T500 1 LV-T30 DV: 6419 m/s TWR: 1.57 Parts: 6 Lower Stage: 1 TR-18A 1 ASAS 95 FL-T500 13 LV-T30 6 LV-T45 18 EAS-4 DV: 7195 m/s TWR: 1.25 Parts: 134 Total: DV: 13614 m/s Parts: 140 Probably not enough delta-v. And the TWR for the lower stage is iffy.

I guess another question (besides the difficulties in landing purely stock ships without blowing things up) is what\'s the largest ship that performs decently on a high end system? The biggest rocket I\'ve flown with a usefull framerate on my P4 had 98 parts (85 after the boosters). Can an i7 handle 4-500? (and if not now, with .13.1?)

I think this is a case where you want more tankage and fewer engines in the lower stages. eg: 7 engines (6 LV-T30, 1 LV-T45), 28 tanks, 6 struts, 1 decoupler, and 1 ASAS should give you ~5.8 km/s of dV when lofting the 10.5 mass minimal SSTO. Granted, it has almost as many parts as your initial scaling, might get stuck needing RCS to maneuver when the engines are off, and isn\'t much lighter (96.4 for the two stages, not including any decoupler to attach it to a third stage)...

Well, here\'s a 1:29 2-stage design. I think it needs a smaller upper stage or a bigger lower stage. Also, I need to work out a more organized/expandable strut pattern. edit: Going from 19 to 7 boosters in the upper stage does help. 1:24 edit again: I think to optimize the lower stage, I should push it up to 100+ boosters? o_O edit 3: I\'m thinking that I\'ve been overbuilding upper stages. At least compared with the largest lower stages my P4 can reasonably handle. (Running TWR and mass ratio numbers suggests that an upper stage with 3 boosters gives you most of what a 7 or even 19 booster upper stage does) 1:21 7 booster upper stage, 61 booster lower stage. edit 4: Maybe not? 1:24 with the upper stage reduced to 3 SRBs. edit 5 (and last for the night): 1:18 98 SRBs (91 in the lower stage, 7 in the upper stage), 108 struts. I don\'t think I\'m at the limits of what KSP can handle, but my P4 is getting abysmal framerates. I\'ll post a .craft if there\'s interest.

The Tricoupler is still subtly asymmetrical. ASAS and a bit of control authority are enough to counteract it, at least...

1. Appropriately placed struts, and/or parts with large connection strengths help. Also, IIRC, HarvesteR is looking into redoing joints. 2. Tuned ASAS may help. 3. Very little, especially if you\'re not lofting giant payloads. Many problems that people try to solve with extra boosters and/or stages can be better solved with slightly more tankage.

There is no sleep; there is only SCP-966. @Foamy: At least it\'s a PNG...

The results are less impressive than you think. Putting it above the command module allows for some silliness with throwing things forwards, but you don\'t get as much velocity would be nice (and there\'s no control of it post-launch.) Putting such a decoupler below the command module will result in messy explosions, as parts fly into eachother at high speed.=(

Leaning towards a design like this: . Landing will effectively be vertical, no SAS is used, periapsis can be brought above 70 km, and it has less than 9 stages. That should give -5062 points. In principle, one could drop the parachute and a tank by adding 2 fins, but even with the powered landing bonus this only comes to -5080 points. I suppose if anyone manages to pull an orbit with 2 tanks and/or a powered landing with no fins...? No screenshots of the flight because this is not yet an official entry. I\'ll have to practice landing near KSC. >_>

Can you use fewer parts (No decoupler or parachute), or arrange them oddly (decoupler below engine)?

I tend to spend several hours a day using AutoCAD at work... >_>

;_;I'm starting to wonder if I should fear NASA's unmanned activities winding down over the next decade or three?

How fast are you going (horizontally) at what altitudes?

But will it be the new Constellation/Venturestar/NASP/...?

Also, the distance is closer to 3770 km. (600 km radius, not diameter...)

Welcome, pandor! ...pand0r... flamingpanda?