Frozen_Heart

Also it would just punch a hole in a LOX or fuel tank. Not vaporise half the rocket. Pure LOX or kerosene isn't flammable. You also might need incendiary rounds to light the fuel that did start spilling out, as that stuff isn't actually easy so set on fire.

Or more likely a piece of debris landed up there that they want to pick up. Literally all they asked was to go onto the roof, and it has been completely overblown.

SSTO shouldn't even be on that list. Many modern launch vehicles could SSTO given just their first stage and no payload.

I noticed that people don't like them being added mid flight, but IMO that is one of their best parts. One of the main reasons I avoid docking large stations or motherships together is due to them behaving like wet noodles, and the autostrut feature is finally allowing me to make proper things in orbit that are stable.

Does it have to be done the same way? Aka a big booster with a spaceship that doubles as a lander? Or can it be something that stays in orbit and uses smaller landers to ferry crew and supplies?

The LV-T15 or T30 both work as a Merlin equivalent pretty well. You can make a vehicle which looks just like the Falcon 9 easily. The Raptors TWR is the only thing which makes the BFR possible to have in that single long booster shape though. An engine the size of the Merlin but 3 times the thrust is beyond anything any rocket engine has done before.

With a purely orbital transfer vehicle you wouldn't need to refuel though. Stripping the belly heat shield, landing gear and all but one of the engines would boost the dV massively. It also wouldn't need the dV to get back off Mars which is one of the main sinks for it. It could just be refuelled in Earth orbit each time like the ITS is planned to be once launched.

What i'm wondering is this; What is the advantage to launching one large ship that lands on mars then lands on earth? Rather than a dedicated mothership with Mars / Earth landers docked on? It seems like it would be more mass efficient to not have to stick a giant heat shield and high TWR engines on the large ship.

So... as part of this revamp, are we going to get an end of tech tree raptor equivalent? 1.25m, with a super high TWR. I tried making a half scale BFR which could do the same job in the Kerbin system, and non of the engines even come close to lifting it off the pad and this is without the spacecraft on top. I doubt it as it would ruin all balance, but maybe if done in respect to career mode it would be ok.

These Q and A questions are making me lose the will to live.

Already working on it

Well.... that's ambitious. That spacecraft is pretty. Though I think Orion shaped solar arrays would look better than those sail like things.

Hmm odd that your SSTOs have been buffed. Though mine was always pretty bad, (could scrap a 500km orbit) it can't even pass 400m/s now.

There have been rumours about a smaller Raptor for testing and use on the Falcon upper stage. Edit: Turns out the vacuum version will have a nozzle diameter is 4.3m. Much bigger than the Merlin then.

Isn't the spike a sustainer engine though? As it is derived from the shuttle engine irl. I agree that the LV-T15 doesn't look much smaller than the LV-T45 is now, but the new 30 and the 45 look like their engine bells are quite a bit larger than they used to be, so might be worse for clustering. I can currently fit a 30 and eight 45s on a single 2.5m stack. I don't think that will be possible anymore.

Wish they had done this with the old Mk-3 parts. I had quite a few craft I liked using them, and would have liked a chance to convert them over use newer parts. Now they just plain don't load. :/

To me the LV-T15 looked like a Merlin engine, which is very much a launch engine. Looks like it is designed for clustering which I like. Also not a fan of giving all the engines the same ISP. Would make choosing an engine significantly more boring and would mean there was no benefit to using low power upper stage engines.

You left weird posts as a new member? Isn't that a description of pretty much every person on this forum?

Set up an attempted Duna landing and colonisation attempt a while ago. Put a mothership in orbit then brought the payloads and crew up in preparation. The rockets second stage was still attached as well, due to it having a big chunk of dV still. The transfer burn to Duna went well, and due to the high dV I arrived much faster than I would have using a standard transfer and then did an aggressive aerocapture. The whole thing went perfect. On approach the satellite was released to head into polar orbit. Then the disasters started. Base went first, but due to staging errors its chutes burnt up, and I then discovered that the mothership had drained its fuel so propulsive landing was also not an option. With the base scattered over the southern hemisphere I decided that I could at least get some science so sent down the rover and its crew. What I didn't realise was that kerbal engineers landing calculator didn't take incoming mountains into account. The stationary crew lander met the same fate. With everything but the satellite destroyed the backup probe control brought the now empty mothership back to Kerbin, to await its next mission...

That better make it into 1.3! The ISP has been nerfed quite a lot for some reason though. Not sure the reasoning with that as 1.25 is already the most underpowered lineup.

I'm not an expert on rocket engines, so I assume that huge amorphous mass on top of the rhino is something important? I understand the machinery underneath that but no clue what that part is.

I agree that the Rhino would work just as fine with that extended section, and it would work just as well and look more realistic like that. However I wouldn't want the Vector to be stuck that far out, and it should have its machinery recessed into the tank and therefore have its tankbutt closer to the nozzle, as the engine is designed for space shuttle use and having it sticking out with all the machiary showing would ruin those craft. This pic shows that not all of the engine has to be on show.

I wouldn't have minded this is an actual jet VTOL engine had been added, either like the harrier nozzles or an F-35 turbofan. If one of those was in game then the other jets could have the compressors and turbines added and it would have been fine. Jet VTOLs are possible in real life, so why stop them being built in KSP? Likewise, I wouldn't mind certain rockets like the Vector having the full machinery if it clipped into the tank and was hidden, as that is how many engines are in real life.

Engines shouldn't be forced onto certain sized tanks though. You should be able to use them on anything. Real life engines aren't forced to be used on only one tank size. Also with engines like the Vector the machinery is supposed to be hidden inside the shuttle, which is why it was omitted. The real life shuttle only has the nozzles showing. That engine was added pretty much purely due to there being no engine suitable for building one. The Rhino could also easily have some of its machinery hidden. The fuel tank ends are even slightly hollow so you can just assume it is in there.

A modern prototype laser weapon on a simple satellite or spacecraft could swat something like that several light seconds away most likely. No dodging or avoiding possible, just instant rupturing of the fuel tanks. Some hydrazine thrusters for propellant and cold gas and reaction wheels for turning. Also why bother with a cockpit? Just make it a drone so it is cheaper, expendable, and smaller. Guns are pointless in space, with even high velocity railguns being too slow moving, let alone 50 cals.