Cirocco

what will happen is that thrust will vary: the higher the atmosphere, the less thrust. Isp will remain the same throughout the flight path. In real life that is because the thrust of an engine is related to the difference in pressure between the inside of the combustion/reaction chamber and the outside environment. More pressure outside = smaller difference (gradient) = less thrust. Specific impulse (which you can think of as engine efficiency) is related to engine-specific parameters and does not change if the engine itself doesn't change. (note that I think this isn't entirely true, but for simplification purposes it can be assumed to be so) In 1.0, you will no longer be controlling the thrust with shift and ctrl, but rather you will control the fuel rate, just like in real life. So at 100% throttle, you'll be feeding the maximum amount of fuel into the engines, and they'll operate at peak power. Now, as they rise, they will go into thinner atmosphere and pick up thrust until they hit vacuum, at which point they wil reach peak thrust. So in short: what will change is that rather than changing the amount of fuel being consumed throughout the flight (engines are really greedy at the start and become more efficient throughout the flight but always push equally hard), engines will now always consume fuel at a steady rate, but start pushing harder and harder as the flight goes on. So what you want to do is strap either more powerful engines to your rocket (to compensate lack of thrust early on) but you'll need less fuel (because you'll have a steady rate of fuel consumption, same as you would now have in vacuum). Other option includes strapping additional engines to the ship in the first stage to help overcome the lack of thrust. In other words: the basic gist is that you'll need more thrust early on in the flight, so the solution is, in fact, to ADD MOAR BOOSTERS!

Maybe it would offer protection but have a lower temperature tolerance than an actual dedicated heatshield part? If the aerodynamics are getting overhauled to be a bit more realistic, then a fairing would work as you pointed out: it would protect delicate equipment from airflow when aerobraking, but it wouldn't survive the heat stress when attempting something like a direct aerocapture and landing. And yes, if the new aerodynamics model takes shape into account, fairings would make your payload more aerodynamic, reducing drag and making the aerobrake less efficient, but better that that having the fragile payload break up completely. I do agree that making fairing just as good a heatshield as a dedicated heatshield part is silly, but I highly doubt such a thing would ever be implemented.

While I would be delighted to have an IXV replica in KSP, are you sure that's not supposed to be LEO? I guess it's a bit telling that the thread has gone on for 5 pages + without anyone apparently noticing this EDIT: ah, ninja'd. point still stands though

Important skill to have! Ask anyone who has experienced sudden in-flight realisation that the staging order is wrong

I saw an add for the movie "Chappie" yesterday. seemed interesting, and the director is the same guy who did "district nine" which is one I personally adored, so that's good

SSTO spaceplane that does runway-duna surface-runway without refuel Eve ascent from sea level with a 160 ton lander (wet weight) both stock. Never done space stations (not anything worth mentioning anyway), planetary bases/colonies and never went further out than Eve or Duna. I really want to make some big ideas happen (especially in the Jool system), but I think I might wait until version 1.00 until I get to those. When I do my big missions, I want them there to stay a while. (and I want female kerbals in the mission roster )

docking on the surface of a planetary body is actually a lot harder than docking in space. Weight, slightly misaligned parts placing and minute terrain differences all make it so that docking ports become slightly misaligned. Best thing I think of (haven't tested it though) is to use a couple of half-full fuel tanks as ballast and shift the fuel around as needed when you're trying to dock.

well for one: atmospheres, even without a (strong) magnetosphere would still absorb a nice amount of radiation in the top layers. Not nearly all of it, but still it would lessen the amount that reaches the surface. secondly: one difference between pressure suits and radiation suits is that the former must be fully hermetically sealed and will have a pressure gradient with the outside environment. The latter doesn't require said pressure gradient, which renders it less cumbersome. Depending on the type and intensity of radiation you're trying to stop it might be comparable in weight, but without the whole ballooning problem pressure suits need to deal with. Cumbersome? yes, absolutely, but perhaps less than a full pressure-and-radiation suit all in one. EDIT: as for martian terraforming, there's a few trains of thought. slamming some asteroids in the surface could already help. Mirrors to melt the polar ice are options. One theory which is starting to/has gained some popularity is the existence of large bodies of water (either in ice or liquid form) not too deep into the martian soil. If those reserves could be tapped, then they could provide a lot of oxygen for a more breathable atmosphere. I'm no astro-biologist and everything I type here should definitely be looked at with healthy scrutiny, but if I recall correctly there are terrestrial organisms on earth which can survive a simulated martian environment. I don't think there's any multi-cellullar ones that can do it, but some lichens are pretty damn close. If we can get those to survive, they can start photosynthesis, which can in time allow for progressively complex plantlife. Of course all this assumes that a whole slew of other problems can be solved, such as the radiation issue. There's also the possibility that mars already harbors microbiological life today. Maybe that can be used/altered in some way. Of course that also involves ethical issues. Thing is that planetary engineering has never (purposely) been done before, so there's in incredible amount of things we simply don't know about it. Maybe heating up the planet or providing it with an atmosphere will have consequences we never even thought of. We still don't exactly know how Mars lost so much of its atmosphere, who says it son't simply happen again if we try to thicken it? In short: what would it take to make mars' atmosphere habitable? We don't know. But we do know it will involve a looooooooot of time and a looooooooooooot of energy.

Man... the first thing I thought of when I saw that was "V-model? they're doing validation?" It may be time for me to take some time off work

Wow, seriously? I did not know this! awesome! Is it just for testing or are they planning to actually use it to help counteract orbit degradation?

Son of a Kraken... this is why I love space exploration. We're finding more and more (liquid) water evidence everywhere in the solar system. And that is AWESOME! Man I really hope we'll see a (permanent) space colony on another celestial body within my lifetime.

It's all a cost vs. benefits discussion. NASA and other space agencies have already thought about electrolysis of urine for different purposes. As mentioned before, the ISS already uses electrolysis of waste water for oxygen generation. The best way to go about using waste products is to convert them back into usable materials rather than expelling them. That requires energy, but the advantage of just requiring energy is that energy-producing equipment can provide energy for years and years for comparably low weight. What changes is that the rate at which energy is generated goes up if you use better (heavier) equipment. If you recycle almost all your matter, you'll need a lot of energy, but low starting supply weight. If you expel waste matter as a propellant, either through mass driver or converting it into rocket fuel, then that part of your supplies is gone forever, so you need a lot bigger initial supply. This would be the problem with a mass driver expelling solids. (also, amon other problems, accelerating non-ferrous solids without a propellant would be difficult) Of course, if you have sufficient resources on-site, then ideas such as converting water into rocket fuel suddenly do become a lot more appealing. Current plans for Mars return missions are looking at rocket fuel procuction on site on Mars in order to save weight on launch. In essence: on missions where raw materials are extremely limited in supply (such as deep space), you want to expel of as little matter as possible because every atom you expel is one you're never using again. On missions where you have access to a large supply of raw materials, on-site production of goods is very attractive because it saves on launch weight.

granted, enjoy your complimentary dog biscuit. I wish I could space for real.

Hello fellow kerbonaut, welcome to the fold! there's a ton of helpful people on the forums, if you have general questions or discussions you can always post them on the general KSP discussion forum. For specific game-related questions you can always refer to the gameplay questions and tutorials section that starhawk mentioned. See you in space! Cirocco

hello and welcome fellow kerbonaut! I won't re-iterate what has already been said too much. RSS and realism overhaul are hard as nails. But if you do want to mod your game and you run it on steam, here's how you go about it: download the mod. This will probably be a zip file. Unpack file. You'll see a folder. Go to your C drive in "my computer" go to "program files". Depending on the windows system you're running (I'm assuming you run windows) it might also be called "program files (x86)" go to "steam" > "steamapps" > "common" > "kerbal space program" in the folder "kerbal space program", you'll find a folder called "Gamedata". This is the folder you'll want to back up in case things go wrong. Copy it and save it on some other location on your drive. Once you backed up the "Gamedata" folder, just capy/paste the downloaded mod folder into this folder and hey, presto, mod installed! hope it helps! Cirocco

Using Jeb's name and claiming that you're an evil alien invader? CHEATER!

japanese swordsmaship been doing it for 2 years now, I should really take my exams to get a better grade but I'm too lazy

as mentioned before in this thread: I tend to design my ships so that any spent stages are jettisoned while either still on a sub-orbital path or in such a way that they crash/stay on the target planet. Mind you, while I actively avoid spent stages in a LKO, I have for less problems with putting spent stages in a "graveyard orbit" i.e an orbit around the sun. The odds of those ever encountering anything or doing any harm are so astronomically low that I can happily ignore them.

yup, sounds like the kraken wanted his afternoon snack alright.

Welcome to the forums! also, you built THAT with under 100 hours of experience? That's pretty impressive! I have over 300 hours on the counter and I've never bothered even trying a planetary base, let alone one that was assembled on-site with docking ports! well done to you sir, have some rep!

okay so I know the sample size is pretty low and probably not representative, but still... the amount of people that prefer stock spaceplanes is equal to the ones that prefer FAR/NEAR spaceplanes?! mind = blown. I go spaceplanes because I just love the look of them, and I'm too lazy to install and get to know the intricacies of FAR, but I have no doubt at all that planes would work/fly a crapton better in FAR. In fact I know for sure because I ran FAR for a while. Wow. I thought spaceplane stock users were a minority.

the difference between this thread is that the posts are all the same. Especially the even ones. Also: I voted yes because F*** YEAH!

stock spaceplanes. Yes I know I'm weird.

well... while it is true that we don't have a conclusive idea of exactly which parameters are required for life as we know it to start, we do know what conditions are required for the chemistry required for certain basic aspects of life as we know it (self-replicating organic molecules for DNA, fosfolipid double-layer for a cell wall). It's not too huge a leap to assume that the conditions required for life to begin lie close to the ones required for all the building blocks. Of course, like Drake's equation, this is all based on certain assumptions which may prove to be incorrect, but the trick is to make sure the assumptions seem as probable as possible. I do agree that in searching for or hypothesizing about extraterrestrial life, one should always include "life as we know it" as a caveat where applicable.

you saw nothing. It was all in your imagination. The Green Iron Crown does not exist. Iron isn't green, everyone knows that. There is no Green Iron Crown AlL HaIl ThE GrEeN IrOn CrOwN