Hasegawa

Missing my point a touch. How much do you think is enough to make it useful as a satellite but not enough for an upper stage? Because are you sure you can set it high enough to be useful for your satellite and low enough to not be useful for an upper stage? Because I'm not certain it is possible. So you focus on the first statement, and skip the second? Did you miss that I said it makes a degree of sense from a game play progression too? Because I said that... There's a reason that RP-0 isn't the only one to start you off without reaction wheels on your first probe-core. Better Than Starting Manned (rather unrealistic, but game play progression focused) and Yemo's SETI both do so. It's because ubiquitous reaction wheels, especially the high powered stock ones, render the other forms of attitude controls much less important. Especially since the smallest reaction wheel unit is lighter than a set of 4 linear rcs thrusters. And uses a readily renewable resource, especially if its on a probe, as you will tend to use some solar panels anyway. Where is the progression here, again?

I would be one of those that would. It is the probe core that I tend to do my first munar flyby in career, even if the only attitude control I have comes from engine gimbals (The first time I did the mission I checked through my control options; no inbuilt torque, okay. Not enough science to unlock the reaction wheel unit. Fine. RCS? Wait, that's how much further up the tree?! Hm. Both the upper and lower stage engines I have chosen have gimbals. Okay, good enough, lets do it. And I did.). Okay, so it gets about as much use as the RT-5 Flea, but it's an important milestone. Putting limited torque on it? How limited do you propose? Because in space, you don't need much torque to provide attitude control, due to the lack of other forces. As for turning it in space, yeah, I've done that. Okay, so it required a LV-909 engine burn to start the turn, but it turned . As for strapping solar panels to it, in stock you get the Octo in the same tech node as the OX-STAT panels, so you get a more capable probe core in the same node as you get the first solar panels... It does make a degree of sense from a historical perspective that the first probes you build don't have attitude control. Because the earliest ones? They didn't. It also makes a degree of sense from a game play progression perspective, as you go along you unlock more capable parts and therefore can do more and go further. A pity so much of the rest of the tech tree fails to match those concepts...

Considering that NASA's studied reentry and breakup with REBR (news, experiment pages), JAXA has done so with i-ball (and one of NASAs REBR's) on Kounotori 3, and ESA has tried with their own recorder (and it would have had a REBR too) on ATV 5 (Spaceflight Now)? There may just be a reason to do so... Like working out how to reduce the 10-40% fraction of the mass of a re-entering vehicle that survives to hit the ground

Huh, well I've learnt something today And two parts of a triple launch mission too. Very neat. Pity they had the issues with the rendezvous gear on all 3 Soyuz. (Addition to quote in square brackets mine, adding omitted number)

As I said, 2 different launch vehicles, two different pads . The Atlas Agena Target Vehicle launched from Cape Canaveral Airforce Station's Launch Complex 14, the Titan 2 GLV/Gemini from CCAS LC 19. They must have processed them in parrallel, and had them both stacked and fueled at the same time. But the crews managed two launches in one day, which puts a hole in kStrout's claim that no-one tries to launch twice a day because they can't. You're probably right about the usual launch rate for re-using a pad. And that's undoubtedly because it takes time to ensure all the ground side stuff is working correctly after a launch. Indeed, the shortest time between launches from the same pad I know of is Gemini 7 -> Gemini 6A at ~11 days, which is probably not a sustainable rate. Too much overtime and too much deferred maintenance, I guess.

Do I think Skylon will fly? Probably not, too many systems are only in paper with far too much room to under-perform or be over-weight. And that's assuming that their economics work out and aren't stomped by the tyranny of trivial flight rates... Soyuz does have a demonstrated ability to launch once a day from the same pad, as was demonstrated multiple times in the 60s for various rendezvous and docking tests. As there is now an identical pad of the same design, it could very well be launched twice a day.Or what about the Gemini missions with the Agena Target Vehicle? The Gemini could be launched about 90 minutes after the ATV.Separate pads and differing launch vehicles, admittedly, but it shows that it could be done. I suspect lack of payloads are more of a limiting factor than anything else. That assumes the market is elastic enough to make it work. Have you seen any data to back this up?Also: Lovely analogy. How well does it stack up though?Your car finishes it's journey on the ground and stationary, as part of it's mission requirements. Does a rocket?

I like two thirds of this idea. The other third? The barn tier as shown to us is poorly designed. There were parts that do not look like they were built for kerbals, with scaling issues that mean that doorways are twice the kerbal's height, windows and railings that aren't very useful, as they're too high for them to be useful. There are parts which made no sense at all, with roads leading to a wall of sandbags... with a gap a road's width away. And all done in poorly chosen textures that don't help the issues. If we are to get a barn tier, I strongly hope that it ends up being better thought out and implemented than that one.

In a way, the samples they picked up were/became part of the payload, especially on the later Apollo missions. Because that was part of the reason the missions were paid for and launched. And that's why I'd go one further than this and list the scientific instruments (or relay antennas) as the payload of the probe.

I don't believe you can get science landed at Kerbin in BTSM. That said, you should be able to get high altitude science with the tech you have. You could try using a Kestes 1 as a sustainer, with 2 Kestes 1.5's strapped on radially as boosters. Fire off the boosters from the pad, then light the sustainer after booster burnout, and hopefully you'll get up there. You could also try cutting down on the fins too. The rocket I used to get high-altitude science (And a similar one for grinding out weather contracts) doesn't actually have any... The boosters add enough drag at the base to actually not need fins.

SETI-Contracts requires Contract Configurator. Is Contract Configurator installed correctly?

Lowest I know of was $7, but that was a pre-order price.

Out on gog.com too

My favourite feature? I think I'm going to have to go with symmetry, given how much of a pain it was to work without it. Persistence and docking are up there though.

I believe the change to these panels is by design. My career game hasn't unlocked them yet, but in the R&D building the Solar Panel 1.2kW 2x3 that uses the OX-4 model has "These panels cannot be retracted" as part of the Deployable Solar Panel module description. At a guess, this is to differentiate these earlier panels from the later cased ones.

I believe the tanks for the pre-Atlas V were built out of stainless steel, and the Centaur tanks are still are.