prophet_01

The Poddle. I want to use it, it's low profile and 2.5 size is rly handy. But everytime I use it and check the stats of my vessel bitter disapointment strikes again. I hate that thing. It has been wasting my time and goodwill so many times, just by making me redesign entire upper stages or landers after sheding a tear about theire crappy twr and delta-v stats. A week ago I couldn't help myself anymore and simply deleted that damn thing. Take that, engine that I won't miss!

The KSC seems to not have fixed costs or personel that wants to be paied on a regular base. Equipment in space such as a giant nerva-based infrastructure with refueling and mining stations that spans the entire system doesn't even require the slightest amount of maintenance and doesn't age... If you do that kind of stuff with your own space program you are either a liar or a wizzard

It's not the final part of the maneuver that might require some form of control, it's the high altitude part that might be problematic here. I'm certainly not an expert, but a purely balistic approach might lack the necessary precision. Afterall, the recovery aircraft has to be quite close in order to perform such a maneuver within a limited window of opportunity. If the stage leaves it's flight path due to wind or if the forecast isn't exact they might miss the targeted area by a couple of km. Probably another pro for the c130 over the ch47 due to it's higher speed, but it still seems risky to rely on an unguided descent edit: @nibb: THAT would have been one big helicopter O.o But I doubt that this would be even remotely realistic, even with todays technologies

@streetwind: agreed the basic concept looks good and the payload issue is definitely a strong aspect, even if those numbers are rather optimistic and the whole refurbishing and maintenance costs will likely cut deep. SpaceX has yet to produce some real data aswell although they are ahead in development. I'm still realy sceptical about the mid-air retrieval thing. I doubt that they will be able to pull off something like that on a regular schedule. I expect them to lose a significant number of engines, not that I don't wish them good luck with this approach. It just appears to be rly ambitious to catch an object of that size and weight mid air. And I doubt that this thing will return unguided without and extra avionics package and at least sone form of grid fins or rcs

I would expect it to be somewhat like the 'grand slam' bomb regarding it's effect. No ground waves and nuke like explosions, but a pretty big shockwave that results in an earthquake like destruction. I have no idea how much thermal energy might be created on impact and if it's enough to create a somwhat secondary effect. The high velocity impactors of kinetic anti tank weapons usually burn up while penetrating the armor which results in a significant amount of heat. I would expect that kind of thing to happen here aswell, but on a larger scale. That probably depends on the material of the impactor. As far as I know the effect is a lot more destructive with depleted uranium due to it's high density/kinetic energy

On the mid-air retrieval. Has anyone got an estimated mass of the stage that they want to recover? Guessing with numbers of engines of similar sizes in mind, I'd expect that stage to be at least 10t. I don't know any helicopters apart from ch47 that are capable of lifting such a weight and even with this one they have a set limit regarding theire recovery capabilities. Maybe I've missed something here or my mass guesstimation is way off, but that whole mid-air retrieval does look like it's going to be seriously difficult to achieve on that scale. SpaceX first stage recovery looks a lot more realistic compared to this approach :/

Ksp is a a game about space flight from a space agency's point of view. It's build around an imo solid physics simulation (I consider the souposphere to be already gone). It's also a good base for moding, which offers the opportunity to turn it into a hardcore sim, a casual sightseeing trip or something else entirely. Ksp is such an awesome game because it's multigenre. You might think that it has too many coats while I think, that this is an interesting base that just needs more content for with each feature and aspect. I neither want a sim nor another game that gets the physics wrong on a star wars scale...

It's obviously made of the remains of all those poor kerbals that magically disappear in grey dust. That's why it's green-grey-ish and magic

Feels good to know that I'm not the only one...

It's nice to know that there are such engines, but as already mentioned they need to be powered by something... As far as I know, the TOPAZ II is the most powerful generator (with a suitable mass/output ratio) that has actually been proven in orbit. It's one of the very few fission reactors that have been developed to work in space and that are more than just "near future concepts". This one has 4.5 - 5.5 kW which isn't that bad, but you can see what this is compared to the requirements of a mature electric propulsion system. Not to mention that it's doubtful at best that a western space agency would launch something with the 'n'-word... (well, beside ntg's) http://fti.neep.wisc.edu/neep602/SPRING00/lecture35.pdf Sure, there is the ISS with it's giant solar arrays that provide ~ 70 kW (don't quote me on that number), but they are rly heavy and are likely to ruin your leftover payload capability... Edit: interesting, didn't know that 'NASA' still works on something like this. To bad they aren't making an official project here and invest some real money. Afterall it's one of the technologies that is more likely to be reality at some point

I think it largely depends on the size and what you want to use it for. I consider a small shuttle to be nothing more but a winged pod. A bigger version like the NASA's space shuttle is one approach for a second stage recovery (not full recovery of course). I don't see why the basic concept is such a bad idea. Of course there were many problems with the final design, some of them as a rsult of decisions that didn't follow the initial idea to reduce the costs per launch. Too many capabilities and the real price of recovery are a big part of the problem. The originally expected price of a shuttle mission wasn't too bad, it just wasn't possible to get even close to those expectations. Like others mentioned, a reusable first stage with sane recovery costs could make the whole design a lot more economic. The shuttles SRB's turned out to be very expensive to reuse and landing equipment in the ocean isn't the best approach to minimise costs (salt water does bad things to your shiny high tech equipment...) The external tank turned out to be not cheap at all, but I don't see how that part could be avoided on heavy shuttles without building something like a buran (which is arguably even less economical, cause I don't see a way to recover something the size of an energija). Maybe this gets less of a problem with a more specialised -> lighter shuttle. But I won't bet on it and in the end, not even space x will be capable of reusing second stages within the next years (more likely the next decade). And finally, the shuttle's heat shield was an aspect that definetly needs to be worked on. If a similar design should ever be considered, the maintenace costs need to be reduced significantly. There is an interesting concept that has been tested by the DLR (german govermental aerospace organisation, partner/member of ESA) called SHEFEX. It's basic idea is to minimise the variants and shapes of panels used in a reentry system. The space shuttle used a vast number of very specific parts which resulted in high costs and very limited on board repair capabilities.

Container ship (and basically any other big transport ship including oil tankers) since we are talking about a vehicle. It's by far the cheapest way of getting almost anything around the globe. We're talking about cents per ton. You can't beat that. Yep, a significant amount of infrastructure is needed, but since most countries already have that, it's very hard for another transport system to get into the market or justify the costs of similar infrastructure, despite the harsh competition. I can't even think of a real competitor for mass transport on a global scale. aeroscraft might* contest with cargo planes in certain areas, but that kund if vehicle is likely ti ru into similar problems as airships did. Wind and bad weather conditions impose threats since you have quite a big structure with lots of surface area. That is a big isdue when starting or landing. Those reasons lead to the retirement of airships. Planes aren't as dependent on weather conditions. Even if aeroscrafts somehow develop into a mature technology (that's still some loong way down the road) I highly doubt that they will have the same all-terrain capabilities that helicopters already have. Chinooks are probably the kings in that area due to theire reliability and insane fright capacity of up to 12,7 tons (that's a lot for vertical take off + landing).

First of all, those thermal tiles don't matter. It's a texture (I don't want to miss them, bcause roleplaying). When it comes to reentry with actual heat you want to stay in the upper atmosphere for as long as possible so your velocity decreases significantly so you don't get too much heat in the lower atmosphere (that's the part where the most heating takes place anyway). If you want to slow down effectively you need to generate lift to lose some speed high up in the air. Thats when plane like vessels (mk2 belongs over here) get interesting as they can easily generate a lot of lift so they generally have a slower reentry with less heat. But that only works if your orientation is right (nose forward, slightly upwards). Capsules/pods work differently but can also use theire flat belly to generate lift and therefore reduce heat, however thise vessels can take a lot more heat before it gets dangerous. Those use different forms of protection Btw 0.90 version of KSP doesn't have any reentry heat mechanics, so this isn't important atm. If you use the deadly reentry mod that kind of stuff gets more important.

If it was to difficult, then I still don't get why it had tonbe removed entirely instead of tweaking some numbers. It is indeed a pretty interesting feature, although I don't know how realistic it is (mostly because: why would it appear near the surface but not in orbit around it/at a similar distance to the sun?). Anyway I would definetly like more unique features for planets and moons. So you don't get that deja vu moment every time you visit another empty rock :/

I would like to see more data and info for my vessels + the option to determine the twr for different bodies/gravity values. But I don't rly like a whole test chamber. I like the moment of surprise and the whole experience of adventure/exploration. Real space agencies had/have no idea what the exact characteristics of an enviroment are before they send a mission over there and determine why certain parts behave unexpected. examples: nobody knew if a heavy craft might sink in the dust on the moon. That was a concern during the apollo aera. They were pretty sure that nothing bad was going to happen though. Venus is another example. The thick atmosphere made it rly hard to get a clear idea of what the lower atmosphere and surface would actually be like. aside crom that, I usually test my landers right on the launch pad to find out if they fly straight and the laders deploy. The rest is guestimation and the use of a delta-v map. Testing is an Import part of mission preparation, but after a certain amount of tests I just have to go fof it and hope for the best. Sometimes that works, sometimes it doesn't. That's part of the game's charm to me

With remote tech you get a permanent marker on the KSC. Rly helpful

Well... as already mentioned, bringing back fuel to the KSC isn't rly worth it. Making money with ressources sounds good to me, but it would rly require some kind of new material implemented, an iridium or platinum analogue could be reasonable. From a realism point of view Xenon doesn't make sense. It's definetly not cheap, but it's produced by filtering redicuolus amounts of air here on earth (with massive energy consumption) just to get a ziny amount of it and as far as I know it's even rarer in other places... How about selling fuel to customers in low kerbin orbit via contract? There have been proposals IRL by some companies to do that in LEO by establishing an unmaned mining operation on the surface of the moon. Not that this is likely to happen soon, but to me that sounds far more sane than literally burning tons of high tech equipment to extract a small amount of ore and land it on earth. I would think of this like a regular contract for satelite deployment, but in this case it requires you to have a vehicle with a certain amount of fuel in a specific orbit. The payoff needs be too low to generate profit with a regular launch. Those contracts could certainly be done with SSTO's by the rly experienced players, but I think it's not a problem since the next patch is likely to balance SSTO rockets anyway.

I was refering to the original ARM, not this new profile. A 4m boulder is indeed hardly visible and sadly far from the original idea... That boulder isn't nearly as visionary. edit: about the step towards more missions toward (the m-word). I do think that a medium/long duration mission in deep space with a manned vessel would be beneficial in terms of developing and proving technologies. It's been a while since a human went beyond LEO

Nibb, you make me sad. Why do you have to be this convincing? But it's rly not much more than a vastly overexpensive sample return. At this point it seems a lot more reasonable to simply bring that boulder back to earth and use something like a dragon or soyuz for further experiments and tests in zero-g. I also agree that such an object in munar orbit, as a visible object for the whole world to see, would be a truly inspiring achievement.

I kinda emediatly started with the design of a heavy launcher and failed miserably. I tried to fix it without a clue what I was doing. For example: the rocket is whobbling -> put engines at the top of it that pull it upwards just for stability while the main sails do the work. Stupid stuff like that... and then finally one of those monstrosities was able to actually reach orbit (well sometimes, ...at best). Since I had literally no idea what I'm doing my first payload in orbit was about an orange tank worth of fuel and 3 nervas + 3 kerbals in that stupidly heavy pod >. < After missing the mun a couple of times and losing bob in outer space due to me not knowing how to activate rcs..., I finally managed to reach otbit more reliably. I watched some scott manley videos (fan here) and of course I emediatly wanted to do an apollo style mun landing. My first docking attempts took place in munar orbit after landing... and after wasting about 100 units of monoprop I actually did it. That's when I hit the 50 hours mark. After that I started all kinds of different stuff. Small planes, a fuel depo in LKO and some more mun/minmus stuff. First interplanetary mission was supposed to be a jool 5 (didn't knew about that challenge), failed in the joolian system due to a bad lander design, but since then I'm good when it comes to docking After that I did more interplanetary stuff and been to most planets and moons. But that got boring quickly. I started to play with mods and enjoyed it. I used mj for a couple of launches, but I've stoped using it since I rediscovered the fun of launching stuff. Switched to career when it was released and liked it a lot. I installed more and more realism orientated mods and focused more on kerbin and it's moons. I've spent many hours on building shuttles, I like those (even flew a particulary heavy one with an external tank all the way to eeloo). I recently started preparations for a new jool 5 approach, since I still haven't completed that. I've passed the 600 hours mark and still enjoy KSP worth every buck

I used slingshots for some of my satelite deployments. It was quite helpfull to get my last relais satelite up to a 40.000km polar orbit. It was a pain to get the nodes just right, but it saved my quite some fuel to use the mun for a gravity assist. Gravity assists are always nice for switching from a polar to an aequatorial orbit (if you rly have to). It's also great to use those in the joolian system, especially tylo But for interplanetary burns they usually suck since the oberth effect in LKO helps a lot more. I've seen that some people actually pulled of cassini style missions with multiple assists around eve and kerbin, but that's just too much planing for me. Congrats to those that actually achieved that Edit: I forgot about free return trajectories. I just love those in career mode

I tried to ignore comments before my first post here to keep it as original and subjective as possible as I understand the OP's intention that way. To me the speculation about the real world answer fits best. Of course it's so much more. It's also a method of approaching and discussing a certain area of knowledge. It's something that has developed out of the need to find a professional and commonly accepted base of communication, while establishing principles that try to keep those discussions as objective and rational as possible. But it's all orientated towards a better understanding of the world. At first I also considered the proving ourselves wrong answer, but as I thought about it I 'only' think that it's a very important function of science. It's not the main purpuse of science in my opinion. It's a method to ensure a more objective/open discussion, instead of docmatic repetition of statements about the world.

http://live.slooh.com/stadium/live/the-total-solar-eclipse-of-2015 Great lifestream from world's end (edit: svalbard). About 10 minutes to solar eclipse

Quite foggy in northern germany. Only saw it for a couple of minutes through the clouds, but still rly cool edit: ofcourse only partial

Astronmers visual pack + ATM causes issues for me. I get a red and white nebular like texture for kerbin and some other textures and graphic features tend to not work/look as intended. Reloading the textures for ATM and messing around with it's configs helps with some problems. The 64bit without ATM works a lot better, but some mods like FAR are locked for 64bit and there are still some 64bit related issues... Last time I tried RO (without any other mods) it wasn't free of any issues either. I had ingame crashes, a corupted safe and some minor stuff. Nothing too bad, but I don't want to invite more trouble. I do admit that it's been a while since I played RO, those issues might be gone by now. @QPDO: another pro for RO is that it's more interessting to build replicas. For most players that have looked into real life space programs it feels strange that your launchers are that small. It can break imersion sometimes. Simple ISP tweaks are another way to adress it, but it's still not the same. LEO also feels different with a bigger kerbin/earth.