Kartoffelkuchen

Can the engines gimbal? From the way they are integrated into the heatshield I'd assume they can't. So they'd have to resolve to shutting of the engine on the other side in case of a failure to balance the thrust. Let's hope they have their engine reliability in check then! I'm >stoked to see this fly

We've had this exact discussion like two pages ago, what's the point about in discussing this again? We know the engine is not as reliable as one could hope for with another flight test coming up soon. Some like the approach, others don't. Apparently SpaceX has the money to give their vehicle a go anyway and see what happens.

I think the point he's critizicing is that SpaceX choose to go ahead with the first orbital flight test, while they knew their engines still were pretty unreliable and the vehicle had a high chance of multiple engine failures / loss of control because of that. No one blames them for exploding engines when they are still in development and are properly tested on the ground. However, knowingly sending your rocket up with engines which are likely to fail on ascent is a bit "meh". Obviously we don't have the full picture though. It could be that they were done simulating everything they can, and just had to know if their launch vehicle design worked as their simulations shown to progress their work. At some point you have to make that jump. Still, I agree with him here that perhaps the test feels a bit rushed, and if they had spent a couple more months proving their engines work halfway reliable it would have greatly increased the chance of a successful first test flight.

Very lovely to see such a big interest in my work here. I've stepped aside from modding for quite a while, but I'll see if I can cook something up for you guys once my time schedule eases up a bit in the next weeks.

Could you please elaborate on your mystical answer? In how far would adding a second Vulcain to the Ariane V or 6 be of any help in making it a more competitive launch vehicle, because I don't get what you are trying to imply.

Yeah, it's pretty nuts to think about. However, not as crazy from an aerodynamic perspective with air density and thus dynamic pressure being very, very low at that altitude and, compared to reentry velocities, low speed at stage seperation. I was much more worried about the aerodynamic stability during ascend leading up to Max-Q, since with the flaps being deployed, that will quickly generate a huge momentum if you deviate even just a little from your velocity vector. When we're talking about the actual stage seperation mechanism, I'm not really sure what the benefits to doing it this flippy way would be, except for a lower structural mass. But I'm sure they have their reasons, or we will very quickly let them see switching their strategy. Rapid iteration in aerospace is always exciting to watch

Like the thing just doing barrel rolls in 35km altitude? Soooo incredibly Kerbal, yeah. Not enough gimbal authority and too much lift in the front obviously, we all know it. /s

Aaaand FTS bringing us an end to the show!

Spinning a little out of control here huh

Holy sh*t it actually flies. Looks like multiple engines out though, maybe intentional?

Holding at 40sec

so basically another Falcon 9, when speaking of payload numbers and architecture. Interesting bet on that design.

Doesn't it work any more in 1.12.? I don't really know if there has been any impact on part mods which would prevent this from working between KSP 1.7 and KSP 1.12.

Excuse me, but "he"? Rocket looks very cool though

Also, having the option to copy and paste a certain colour set from a part, onto another part would be great! It's very tiring to paint a certain number of parts this way, then paint some other parts in a different colour only to see that you forgot to paint some parts with the first colour. Then you have to go back and try to get that first colour again, which mostly results in having to repaint everything because you can't 100% get the previous colour again with the sliders.