MrZayas1

To take a surface sample, you have to go on EVA landed on a planet or moon, and fly/climb down onto the surface. Once you are on the surface, right click your kerbal and select "take Surface Sample." If you have tried this, it may mean that you haven't upgraded your R&D center to level two yet. You have to upgrade it before you can take surface samples. Hope this helps

Look at your pitch roll and yaw indicator on the right of the screen, if one is off of the middle, it means you have trimmed your pitch roll or yaw by using alt+key. Try using alt+x to reset your trim, see if that woks, it worked for me

I voted realism because I love being able to build spacecraft that adhere (loosely) to physics! 1.0 has been a great update, and mods help me satisfy myself

So, just a pop question. Suppose we could take an atmosphere and cut it in half, with 1 atm and another pressure next to eachother (which isn't possible), but at what pressure would you be able to stand on the gases below you? I always thought that perhaps it was possible, if not let me know. I assume that different gases have different densities and things so they might take more of a gas than another, but I thought it would be cool to ask

Thanks red

First of all I would like to say, wow. So many complaints about 1.0, no one complimenting the new aerodynamics model, the hard effort in creating it, or anything happy in general. Despite looking at these forums depressing me, I personally enjoy the new patch. The new parts are amazing, and fun to play around with. The interiors are just superb, nothing else to say about them. I for one am just happy about the fairings because of their stellar looks and good functionality, despite their mass, which is greatly offset by the new practically no-drag atmosphere. I just wanted to say thanks squad for all of your hard work! Hope we can get a few bugs fixed, but a lot of content and new things to play around with!

I built a pretty cool plane really quick for my Circumnavigation entry. It was a breeze to fly and alot of fun to watch, even though it was tedious to balance the thrust so the turbojets didn't flameout. Enjoy! It is called the HSS Beluga for it's fun shape and design! EDIT: To start from launch to landing you have to go all the way to the end and go backwards, thanks IMGUR!

Well I don't forsee this being available in the near future (3-5 years from now) but I am pretty certain it might be possible maybe twenty or thirty years from now when fusion power is invented. Right now, a plane ticket for me, based on the projected 650E/kg is 34450$, because I weigh about 117 pounds, or 53 kilos (and converting euros to dollars). And that is just a Skylon space ticket. Based on chair standards, an optimal person's sitting position is 4.4 feet tall and 3.08 feet wide from the facial view, and about 1.3 feet from the side view. Using these values we can infer that one person takes up about 17.6 feet cubed of space (check the maths please, I haven't taken geometry yet. ) Obviously this is just a calculation, that if we were going to put a person in the cockpit, that is the maximum amount of space we would need. Moving on, if we were to squeeze as many people from left to right inside the cargo bay of the Skylon, we could fit about 3 people from left to right using optimal spacing, though it might be a small squeeze. Now, since the average person weighs roughly 83(ish) kilos, it would be 251 kilos with all three, average weight people. The water the people to need for 3 weeks is as follows: 2.2L per person per day X 3 people X 7 days a week X 3 weeks = 138.6 liters =138.6 kilograms. So up to this point we have found out that one person with plenty of space around them takes up a volume of about 17.6 ft cubed, and you can most likely fit 3 people from left to right inside the cargo bay. These 3 people would weigh approximately 251 kilograms, along with 138.6 kilograms for water needed for the people to drink (excluding food.) So, for just the people it would weigh about 389.6 kilos or 0.3 metric tonnes. We are looking good so far yes? So a few more calculations. Let's say we have about 12 tons of vehicle, just putting it out there, for everything, life support, engines, food, water, and other electronic and measurement utilities needed for space travel. 12.3 tons for 3 people in one very light spacecraft. So using your estimates, we will say that there is a VASIMR engine powering our amazing future spacecraft. The weight of the spacecraft is 12.3 tons fuelled and 12 tons empty and the Specific Impulse of a VASIMR is let's say 8,000 at medium operating thrust. So, let's use the Delta-V equation to find out the Delta V of our spaceship, using 300 kg of fuel. So, after some calculator tinkering our good value is, well a whopping 197.5 m/s of delta V. Let's trade the tonnage for fuel, let's say that the starting weight is 12.3 and the empty weight is 10.4. Much better, about 1342.34 m/s of Delta-V. Thats with about 15% of the mass of the spacecraft being fuel. Perhaps the argon is in it's liquid state to conserve volume, or it is highly compressed to say that we are safe. Sadly, we don't really have an average percentage which tells us the average % of fuel mass out of the whole rocket, but this is a sophomore trying to do math soo, yeah. Calculations end up to be 12.3 ton vehicle, with optimum space for seating, compressed life support systems (to track with time), weight of water, fuel, etc. with 1.3 km/s of delta-v if my calculations are correct. I am stepping out on a limb here, maybe I forgot a value here and there but yes you have a wide, fuel efficient vehicle to get around in space in, and also a pretty hefty launch price of 8,585,400$ to launch your spacecraft, even with Skylon's boasted 868$/kg price tag. That's not including the cost of the spacecraft, which involves development and other factors that WE WILL NOT EVEN GUESS AT. So, it probably won't be you or I that comes even close to buying a spacecar, or spacecraft, in this case, but it will definitely be a helluvalot cheaper than it is today, which hopefully comes with the development of Skylon. If you would like to check my calculations or see what I missed, then please do, Im not very good at the maths XD

Great... Some more downsizing. WOW, why do I have to be so mad at politics and the world all the time? Especially for stupid things like this. We seem to do nothing but set the bar lower and lower for ourselves and it really makes me upset. >

Okay well as an expression, rounding it to twenty four hours works well enough XD

Time measurement, in 24 hours, 360 days a year, etc, is actually just measurements based on our own relative space. Since we know that Earth's rotational period is 24 hours, we can divide hours into minutes and seconds to represent how much time has passed. Time is actually an illusion to us, it is a series of causes and effects, caused by the small molecules in our body, set into motion by millions of causes, and millions of effects. Rather than explaining all of this at one time, it is easier to designate it into chunks, like seconds, minutes and hours. So really time, it isn't overly a measurement. More of just, a human logical explanation of events happening. It's really a tricky subject. If we were really technical, we would be basing our time on the beginning of the universe, which again, we would bring down to minute amounts of "time" in order to make it practically useful to us. Don't know if this made too much sense, but yeah, time is just an illusion of cause and effect that we put into chunks in order to make it practically easy to use.

Okay, so I know that it is not a widespread topic, maybe it has been beaten to death on these forums, and I don't know anything, but what are the reasons why we don't use gasoline as a rocket fuel? If you can elaborate that is nice. Maybe the MJ/L isn't as high as some other fuels or some other reason, but I think that it is somewhere upon those lines. Also, Gasoline is probably pretty dense for a rocket fuel. Again, not sure, but if you could clear that up for me, I would appreciate it.

Thanks

I am starting this thread to show off some whacky aircraft/spacecraft you have built. I will start us off with a whacky spacecraft of my own! I built this aircraft just with the idea that I would create something kind of sci-fi like, or kind of like star wars. I think it came out pretty well, and I am quite pleased with it

Today I was reading some articles on the X-37b spacecraft by boeing, and I saw a link to the Dream Chaser spacecraft. I had known what it was, and what it's plans were, but I decided to click anyway. Strangely the last time I read anything about the Dream Chaser, it was apparently a cancelled project. But, today on the Wiki it mentions nothing about cancellation, and speaks about plans made or conversations in 2014. Was the Dream Chaser resurrected in some way? Or is this false? Please let me know, I am a big fan of the Dream Chaser and it is looking to be a beautiful peice of engineering! Thanks in advance

Hmm well in that case the hydrogen receiver close to the sun might work, seeing as oxygen isn't really as much of a problem as I thought it was.

Yes they help me visualize it, thanks for showing me how it works, but I don't think astronauts would appreciate bouncing around for like 3-4 minutes hitting there heads on things while gravity sets in, is there any possible way to mitigate this?

Well planetary bodies right now are out of the immediate question for resource utilization, we really don't have the infrastructure for a Europa water harvesting plant right now, then again, you could always do such things with a probe which makes me wonder why we haven't yet, but the answer of course, is money and fuel

Yes but where do you get that water from lol thats the biggest question in space science right now

I've never understood centrifuges too much, I understand the concept, RPMS and all that, but how do you induce the gravity? If you are floating, and it starts spinning then you will either hit a wall or be just perfectly placed to watch everything around you spin while you get dizzier than a drunk man. Maybe strap yourself in? Other than that, what happens when you jump? Do you fall down, or do you slide sideways? Would love an answer, I have always wondered about this.

The problem with space is always that we need resources, and those resources are all here on Earth. In order for humanity to move to become the first known extra-terrestrial inhabitants on another celestial bodies, we have to be able to utilize resources on other planets, or moons. One problem with this is that we have to be on the surface first to get these resources, and we currently do not have the money/budget to sustain or properly build an extra-terrestrial base. We are stuck in LEO, and the problem is: Oxygen (O2). Once oxygen is used up in the human bodies, it is replaced by Carbon Dioxide (CO2), which is routed through the extensive CDRA system on the Destiny module. This gives a slight return on oxygen, but it is not 100%. Eventually, without periodic refueling from Earth, the ISS can run out of oxygen. This can be a significant problem for deep space missions to Mars and other planets in our solar system, and we can't just stop at a gas station to refuel millions of miles from Earth. So what can humans do to counteract this problem? I have listed one below, and the pros and cons of it. Feel free to discuss your own theories as well, and maybe add to mine. Enjoy! Plants Pros: Nice to look at. Feels like home. Gives oxygen from photosynthesis. Cons: Takes water. Takes soil. Needs light. Possible fixes: 1:Sending unmanned crafts to near solar orbit with some resonance encounters with Earth in order to take advantages of Hydrogen (H) and use them to give space stations supplies of hydrogen that can be used to create water with oxygen. (Maybe you could freeze the two to make rocket fuel?) 2:Shipment of light hydrate gases to orbit for use in separation processes to create water which can be used for hydrogen and oxygen. 3:Some really hot source of energy to separate carbon dioxide into carbon and oxygen. (Nuclear reactor much?)

I was rather dissapointed too, I watched it all morning on NASA TV, can't tell you how angry I was when they said "Hold....Wind violation" I literally slammed my desk the second time in a hype rage

I happened to think to myself today, like I do a lot, and I thought of a puzzling question. Is it possible for an orbit of a moon or satellite to never cross into the shadow of it's parent body? I'm pretty sure this is impossible without gravitational interference from an object with gravity, or from a preset burn, but I am wondering nonetheless thanks in advance!

I don't believe that you are immune to salmonella, which thrives in chickens and foul alike. And the infamous Ebola Virus, which is from animals, so I do think it is very likely that viruses from extraplanetary organisms is definitely probable (if any exists).

The prospect of a moon base is not a new one, as we all know. But a common missing question of extraplanetary bases is: why? I am starting this post to analyze the pros and cons of base building, and in what circumstances would building a base be both beneficial, and practical. Down below is my analysis of the pros and cons of base building, and why or why not we should start allocating more money to a galactic endeavor such as colonizing the solar system. Pros 1: Colonies, for human beings to live on in case of worldwide emergency. 2: En situ resource utilization of resources scarcely found on Earth. (Ex. Helium-3 on the moon) 3: Possible tourism opportunities after funding. 4: Human exploration. 5: Understanding of universal laws and principles difficult to test on Earth. 6: Boost economy after startup, for raw minerals and valuables. 7: Human understanding of orbital mechanics. 8: Investment in new technologies. Cons 1: Huge initial cost of management and startup of base. 2: Huge costs of launch limit in situ resource utilization without proper tools. 3: Habitation costs/problems with survivability in microgravity. 4: Possible microorganism escape. 5: Lack of some fundamental resources on other bodies(Ex:low amounts of water on the moon) 6: Body contesting (Ownership rights, etc.) 7: Long times away from Earth. 8: Prolonged exposure to solar radiation. 9: Adaptability concerns. 10: Deflation of once valuable commodities. These are some of the few things I have come up with, if you happen to think of some other pros and cons, leave them in the replies section, and discuss bases in general, What should we do next? What planets/moons should we colonize? Discuss! And safe flying!