Rakaydos

When pesants of the middle ages toiled in the shadows of the roman aquiducts, there was ample evidence of an advanced prior civilization. We passed that point ages ago.

Can the lander refuel at a mothership (or on a kethane deposit) between launches? Do you need to get all the way up to orbital velocity before landing the second time?

In the dark ages, peasants were finding evidence of advanced civilizations everywhere. Today, we call that advanced civilization Rome.

A shape charge doesnt violate conseration of momentum. If one went off inside of a huge sphere, there would be zero net mmentum change, once all momentum was absorbed.

Most train locomotives are Diesel-Electric (hybrid) vehicals- Diesel power plants running high torque electric motors, pulling hundreds of tons of cargo.

For a nuke? 43000 ISP -is- inefficent. the shape charge is more efficent than a pure inverse square, but it's still less than half the output of the bomb. (as the other half is required to launch the shape charge at the plate- every action has an equal and opposite, after all...) It is, however, quite EFFECTIVE.

Are you saying this would work like a shape charge fusion bomb? Orion style engines are horribly inefficent at using the bomb's energy, making energy containment "someone elses problem" and relying on capturing a fraction of the raw power of the weapon Without a warhead as directed as Orion, this would need devices that are even more powerful, EMPing a hemisphere or more during it's orbital insertion maneuvering.

So I recently built a SSTO tylo lander/return vehical, with all the massive delta V that requires. However, what I wnt to attempt now will push the limits of that delta V, so I want someone to check my orbital dynamics- my first attempt tried to brute force the question, and it failed. My mothership can lift the lander to Tylo escape and into a Vall intercept, over several orbits. Decoupling, the mothership alter's course to a val slingshot, to generate a Layth intercept. The lander needs enough delta V to suicide burn on Vall and return, generate a Tylo slingshot for the inclination to hit Bop, suicide burn there, intercept Pol at the inclination node for a third suicide burn, then drop for a tylo slingshot into a layth intercept for refueling. assuming perfect hoffman transfers and perfect suicide burns, (the tylo lander has very high TWR for landing burns) can I manage this mini-tour with my lander's 6k Delta V?

What judgement? it would simply be putting canidates on the spot. "Senator, during your presidential campain you've pledged to make sure schools, police, and fire departments are well funded. How does this uphold the campain promices you made in the primaries to cut the budget "by any means possible?"

I'm given to understand the problem with multithreading KSP is that physics doesnt multithread well. However, does anyone know what the problems would be to run the active vessel on one core, and any inactive vessels in load range on another core, physwarping to keep up with the active vessel? It wouldnt help with large vessels, but it might make rendevous with large space stations easier.

I wonder if you could design a Sabot that doubles as a barrel extenion- that is, when the sabot reaches the end of the barrel it catches and creates a seal, and the shot continues to accelerate the length of the sabot. Sort of a "telescoping barrel" for a space cannon

Someone isnt paying attention to 3rd generation reactor designs. A Pebblebed reactor could be completely drained of coolent and the moderator rods removed completely, and thermal expansion alone would be enough to de-critical the reactor. Molten Salt reactors, in the event of a leak, gravity-drain the fuel into a neutron moderating holding tank. None of this required human or computer interatction- they are the definition of "fail-safe" (not immune to failure, but that when it fails, it goes into a safe configuration)

I need to build a laythe lander that doubles as an RCS tug with a crew capacity of 2. My Tylo lander can easilly manage the other worlds, but I can land and return from Laythe AND val AND return to earth with the fuel in the mothership.

Nobody? I called out this as supporting evidence for something like Dark Matter, and noone wants to comment?

I'm going to address a different part of the OP thn the rest of you... Subassembily rebates. I would suggest a system where it costs 100% of a group of part's cost to save it as a subassembilly, and you have to pay the same cost again to pull the assembilly out and use it (so 200% of cost) However, the next time you pull it out and launch it, it costs 90%, and the time after that, it costs 90% of that 90% (81%) (limit 1 per launch, to avoid subassenbling one orange tank and just making asparagussed monstrocities for nothing) The more you use the same subassembiily, the cheaper it gets (though if you have recovery rebates, you would reduce them in lockstep with the cost reduction)

If we consider a wormhole a link between two points of 3-dimentional manifold, (even if impossible to cross becoause of event horizons) such as suggested by string theory, and we consider that in string theory gravity is not bound to 3 dimentions, then our galaxy will be applying a gravatational force (dilluted, perhaps, by the distance between the manifolds) to whatever is on the other side of the wormhole. Conversely, if there is a galazy-sized mass around the other side of the wormhole, it would presumably appply a gravatational force to us, though not otherwise interating with our space. Weakly interacting, massive objects...

Hmm... Soil samples are worth Science. Science can be sold for Budget. So isnt this a form of mining already?

Oh the humanity! Oh godohgodoh...wait.... So all we lost was the lift engine? and we're in orbit? ...why was this not in he original mision plan?

So when budgets roll around, how do we want to balance price? I would suggest pricing by scale- a bunch of weaker engines added together cost about the same (perhaps a little more) as an equivilant larger engine.

My Jool 5 attempt failed today, shoaled on the rocks of "we didnt test the lander on laythe!" Also been having problems getting kerbals to climb onto a ledge from a ladder. I probably could have brute forced the rest of it by refueling instead of landing on laythe, but when the third stack of my tanker vanished, I jjust didnt have the fuel to visit all the moons and make it back.

But remember that contracts are suposed to be optional. That means that you must be able to expand your budget WITHOUT doing contracts.

This confirms that Contracts will give Funds, and that you need to spend Funds as well as science to R&D new parts.

With FAR and Stock Rebalance, I have a rocket that it probably a contender, but I'll have to see how many times it can get to orbit.

If the rogue planet is big enough to slingshot the earth to jupiter orbit, you could theoretically get a "voyager grand tour" ejection... if it happened back when voyager launched, planetary alingments dont happen every week, after all.

Actually, the stock rebalance mod makes big rockets look -more- like rockets. The 3m engines lost quite a bit of ISP but gained thrust, meaning they can lift a taller stack but have to stage at some point. And it also puts fuel in adapters and aerodynamic nosecones so you have reason to put them on even without FAR.