cpast

45 USD is also less than most video games in the US, at least AAA games. New games are typically $50-$60 here.

Never on launch (my launch path has a fairly early gravity turn, so by the time LRBs separate, I'm quite a bit downrange and island abort isn't practical; RTLS is easier). I have used the island as an unplanned backup landing site when I overshoot the KSC (fairly often).

Yeah, I'd be excited to see this sort of thing (mod or stock, either one) implemented - then, I could use the half-width surfaces on wings, with outer ones being ailerons/elevons and inner being flaps.

It takes a certain number of posts. You might want to look at stupid_chris's Forum FAQ for new users; it may answer a lot of your questions.

Test weights are completely in line with trial and error gameplay. They don't tell you the craft's lifting capacity outright; they only make it easier to manually run those trial ascents.

The reason planes only take off at the end of the runway is that main landing gear are too far back, meaning that it's hard to pivot on them. Nothing that flaps would really solve; you just need to reconfigure your landing gear. On flap design: The flaps don't even have to slide back. Flaps that just tilt down (increasing wing camber) work fine as flaps.

RTLS aborts are quite possible with the KSO, *without* the external tank. I've done them several times (like when I put too many Separatrons on the boosters, which blew up the EFT - I reverted to VAB, but only after successfully aborting).

Again, only explains speed differences in elliptical orbits. Angular momentum is *not* the same between two different orbits.

That works for elliptical orbits, but less so for circular - two different circular orbits have different orbital energies, and it's not immediately obvious that the higher orbit has lower speed.

...what? No, that's not right at all. Speed is the magnitude of velocity. Period. Speed does not inherently imply any reference frame, let alone "inertial reference frame relative to which the object has zero velocity". If it was what you're saying, everything would have a speed of zero. Velocity (and thus speed) only has meaning in a reference frame, which must be specified (this is normally implicit in everyday speech, but is *not* "frame following the object itself", because that's utterly useless for this purpose). For things on the ground, we normally use the surface of the Earth at that location as the reference frame. For things in orbit that are decidedly orbiting around only one body, we use (I believe) an inertial reference frame that translates with the center of mass of that body (in which case the reference frame does not rotate; incidentally, "reference frame Y does not rotate" does *not* require saying "does not rotate with respect to reference frame Z", because a reference frame just is or is not an inertial reference frame, and that property is not relative to any other reference frame).

No, it isn't just that a further-out object travels a longer distance per orbit. The further an object is from the planet, the slower the orbital velocity. If you double the radius of an orbit (thus doubling the length an object has to go to complete one orbit), the orbital period increases by a factor of around 2.8 (orbital period squared is proportional to semi-major axis cubed). Now, orbital velocity is a property solely of an orbit (and the craft's position in that orbit); mass of the craft has nothing to do with it, because at a given altitude, everything, no matter the mass, is subject to the same gravitational acceleration.

How's this? "KSP is a game, the primary purpose of which is to permit certain members of Squad (maybe all the devs, maybe some are only considered part-time) to do things like 'pay rent' and 'buy food'. In general, games which are enjoyable to play have been better at this sort of task; a game being realistic does not thus improve its ability to do this, unless it is hyper-realistic in enough aspects to be useful as an actual training simulator, or if the realism makes the game more enjoyable. Within the constraints of 'provide for basic sustenance', Squad has various priorities for the game, but their top priority is making the game enjoyable within the framework of a space simulator which tries to be generally realistic."

Yes, but using fuel tanks is a) ugly, can require odd structural changes, and c) is very bulky (really important for cases where you have limited room. For actual rockets, some of us like to rate boosters and save them as subassemblies - just because something isn't an SSTO spaceplane, doesn't mean you don't want to use it for many different payloads.

There isn't actually any reusability advantage to side staging (provided you allow the stages to separate a bit before firing the upper stage engines, to keep lower stages being damaged by exhaust). It's perfectly possible to recover a first stage that was on a stack; this was in fact planned for the Ares I first stage (which was a solid-fuel rocket, basically a shuttle SRB with an extra segment added). I think the reason it isn't done so much on stacks is that above a certain weight, you cannot effectively recover something with parachutes. The shuttle SRBs used among the largest parachutes ever made; the record was broken by parachutes being tested for the Ares I first stage. Three of these are put on the booster, and they only slow it to 23 m/s at splashdown (admittedly, even empty SRBs weigh 91 metric tons, but still). Taking that kind of impact is not easy, and the shuttle SRBs were among the first heavy rockets built to take it. With liquid rockets, you tend to have more moving parts (such as turbopumps), and you really, really, really don't want to expose it to seawater, and a land touchdown *will* destroy it at those kinds of speeds. The advantage of side staging has nothing to do with reusability - it's because side-staged engines are never deadweight. That makes side staging beat serial staging, but it might not beat not staging at all (in which case there just aren't deadweight engines, period). It's been used like this for a while - the R-7 and the Atlas missile both use side staging for that reason. However, that mostly affects TWR, which is irrelevant at altitude - hence why side staging is used for the first stage, but not for upper stages.

In which case you will be restricted as to what you can do within your budget. I completely fail to see a problem with being restricted by budget. That's what it's for. If struts have mass, you'll need more powerful rockets to lift ridiculous craft that rely on the magical struts (not much more powerful rockets, since struts aren't very heavy and the rockets that need lots of struts already weigh a lot in the first place). This will cost a bit more. That doesn't change much (since struts are light), but it encourages you to design rockets that are inherently more stable and don't require as many struts; why is that a problem in the slightest?

Density affects *surface* gravity (because gravitational acceleration depends on distance from the center of mass, which, for a given mass, depends on density), but outside of cases where you're *inside* the planet your gravitational acceleration depends only on total mass. If Jupiter were artificially collapsed into a black hole somehow without changing mass, it *still* wouldn't affect the force of gravity.

I also used fuel tanks before I got NRAP.

Indeed. Even if I *want* to balance parts, that can itself result in an unbalanced design if one side has physics-less parts and the other has physics-ful parts.

RCS thrusters are massless? Those literally *are* a kind of engine.

There's probably a reason why the Super 25 reminds you of the KSO. EDIT: Wait, do you mean the Dream Chaser reminds you of the KSO (replying to my post)? If you're replying to a specific post, especially one a few posts back, you should hit "Reply with Quote" under that post so that people can see which post you're replying to.

Both KSOs have 6 Kerbals (the Super 25 was set to have 8, but the flight deck was cut from 4 to 2).

I find it odd people are assuming that fenerzilla is making a serious proposal that we should actually nuke Jupiter, instead of just being curious whether Jupiter could sustain a fusion reaction if one were ignited.

This thread isn't about the Dream Chaser. It's about the KSO.

Alternatively, the ARM adapter's model could be sealed top and bottom.

The CBMs, and indeed just about all of fusty's station parts, are heavily deprecated in favor of sumghai's remake listed in the OP. Sumghai's parts have a similar aesthetic, but there are more distinct parts (not just Karmony), which are actually set up in a sensible way for stations. The CBMs are replaced with sumghai's IACBM.