Aethon

Check me if I'm wrong here Sandy, but Hohman to Pluto is a 90 year trip, and you'll need Hohmann to land, no?

NASA got buck fever and forgot to run the graviolli exp. low over Pluto. Thanks everyone for keeping the info up to the second. Much better outlet than any other news. (Hugs the world [except ISIS])

Yeah Frida. It's not even up on NASA yet. Necromancy! Love the Sci lab! Great place to stay updated on stories like this. Good job community! Soo cool. Need sleep. (over)

What a nerd. Sitting here glued to Eyes on the solar system, watching where Pluto is in Sagittarius. Go little space piano.

I don't opine much here lately because of the usual violent negative responses, but I have read quite a lot about panspermia so here goes... IMO, no known life form would survive naked in space, primarily due to radiation and it's effect on DNA. That's not to say that certain life forms, safely encased in a large rock couldn't survive ejection as a meteorite, and long enough to encounter another suitable planet. This is highly unlikely, due to encounter times and interplanetary reentry speeds, but by no means impossible. I do however believe panspermia can and does happen, in certain situations, over vast time spans. In the list of things man left on the moon you'll find -96 bags of feces, urine and vomit. Now I'm not saying than anything in those bags lived very long, (The Poop Monsters of Apollo 11), or that this mechanism is likely to be repeated in other solar systems, but it's a concrete example of the mechanism at work. If we examine the speed at which we currently encounter interstellar debris, it is highly unlikely any life bearing rock could survive a collision with a planet intact, let alone geologic periods of time in space. However there was a time many billions of years ago, (perhaps around the time life took hold on Earth) when our sun and proto planets were nestled in a cloud of stars that would boggle the mind. The skies were ablaze with a thousand suns, much closer than the stars we see now. Interstellar sharing of material was much more common and encounter speeds were much lower than today. I like to speculate that one of our older sister clustermates could have been 'infected' with life, which spread throughout our cluster, which then smeared life throughout the galaxy during cluster dispersal.

The image was taken on July 7, when the spacecraft was just under 5 million miles (8 million kilometers) from Pluto, and is the first to be received since the July 4 anomaly that sent the spacecraft into safe mode. http://www.nasa.gov/feature/nasa-s-new-horizons-a-heart-from-pluto-as-flyby-begins

Is there a giant crater on Pluto? http://www.universetoday.com/121042/is-that-a-big-crater-on-pluto-pyramidal-mountain-found-on-ceres/

Hopefully the first of many more to come.

I'm not sure how to keep this politically correct enough to avoid a thorough moding so I guess I'll just quote. The following is a statement from NASA Administrator Charles Bolden on the Senate Appropriations subcommittee vote Wednesday on NASA’s Fiscal Year 2016 commercial crew budget: "I am deeply disappointed that the Senate Appropriations subcommittee does not fully support NASA's plan to once again launch American astronauts from U.S. soil as soon as possible, and instead favors continuing to write checks to Russia. “Remarkably, the Senate reduces funding for our Commercial Crew Program further than the House already does compared to the President’s Budget. “By gutting this program and turning our backs on U.S. industry, NASA will be forced to continue to rely on Russia to get its astronauts to space – and continue to invest hundreds of millions of dollars into the Russian economy rather than our own. “I support investing in America so that we can once again launch our astronauts on American vehicles.†-end- David Weaver Headquarters, Washington 202-358-1600 david.s.weaver@nasa.gov http://www.nasa.gov/press-release/nasa-administrator-statement-on-senate-appropriations-subcommittee-vote-on-commercial

Some new images released recently. Take a walk through the canyons.

This may help. NASA sound cloud. https://soundcloud.com/nasa

You can also try right clicking the engine and limiting engine gimbal.

Some newly released images.

This might help. http://forum.kerbalspaceprogram.com/threads/48876-The-art-of-modular-base-building

Three balancing boulders imaged on 67p. http://www.space.com/29431-comet-ballerina-boulders-rosetta-photos.html

If the asteroids in KSP were made of something dense like rock, they would be too massive for us to move or too small to look asteroidy.

What Snark said. Also, try right clicking the MK-16XL and setting it to open at a higher altitude. I have my Mk-16 set to 1000m A(bove) G(round) L(evel) and two MK2-R set to pop at 900m AGL. Trial and especially error are the blood and soul of KSP.

Yeah, don't worry about the heat. Kerbin is too small to do much heating damage at Minmus return speeds. As long as you can keep your ass end (engine works fine but you said you have a heat shield) pointing retrograde you'll be fine. I've been testing some Kerbin aerobrake altitudes recently. It depends somewhat on your ships' unique drag profile. My standard 1.25 m early Mun Minmus lander is pretty standard so my results may apply to you. From Mun, I use a 30 km periapse for breaking into Kerbin orbit. Anything lower will put you on the surface and higher will allow for another pass. Minmus will be similar (haven't tested much yet). You could probably shave a km off the 30km peri and still go back to orbit. Alt f5 for safety and try 27 km peri. You may go halfway abound the planet, but that should land you. Welcome to the forums and good luck... We're all counting on you.

Yes. Different drag coefficients will change pad TWR requirements. My ships are all using about the same TWR, but I know some of the Wackjobian erections made by others here may require more TWR to keep up with terminal velocity.

Ideal pad TWR is ship specific. What's right for one ship won't be the same for another. I'm pretty early in career, with not much of a fleet designed and therefore not much data on this yet. My solid 1st stages are set around TWR 1.90. Kerbal Engineer Redux's atmospheric efficiency stat shows me at 100% efficiency just as the solids burn out. After that, terminal velocity races away so fast that my liquid stages never catch up.

I feel guilty when I time warp. There's always something that needs to be done. Thanks Kerbal Alarm Clock.

Welcome to the forums. If I understand your design correctly, your problem is the LV-909's in the first stage. If you right click on the LV-909 in the VAB parts list you can see that it's ISP at sea level (ASL) is 85, and it's thrust is only 14.873, but in a vacuum ISP is 345 and its' thrust is 60, so the LV-909 should only be used in space. Here's my early Mun Sci flyby ship. It will easily do a free return trajectory science flyby of the Mun. After The swivel burns out (about 35,000m) the the LV-909 kicks in. The entire upper stage returns from Mun (heat shield unnecessary) for recovery. The fins on the command pod allow me to turn off SAS at about 50,000 m for a hands free reentry. Hope this helps. It will probably do a flyby of Minmus as well. I shot it out to 70,000,000 m to test reentry. With a 30 km periapse, and all that burned off was the MK 16 'chute on the top.

Wow. Nice images Frida. Thanks for sharing. Nice to have the Forum with all the details wrapped into one place. Very exciting.

Lol. I just popped in here to ask the same question.

Some highly topical heat shield testing. http://www.nasa.gov/centers/marshall/news/high-tech-analysis-of-orion-heat-shield-underway-at-marshall.html And friction stir welding on begins on the Orion Pathfinder. http://www.nasa.gov/feature/welding-begins-on-orion-pathfinder