tater

It's easy to rig up a test in the VAB. I put a huge SSTU tank towards the back of the building since the light source is on the door side, then you can build in front of it and see what happens. It's just the MFT A and B tanks as far as I can tell (I'm home waiting on a repair dude, so I can check). EDIT: to be clear, I would not have reported this with 6.4x. I checked it in a clean SSTU build before posting.

Making a bicycle capable of reaching LEO would indeed be vastly more complicated than a rocket. People have talked about spaceplanes for a long, long time. None have happened. The current contender for the most plausible (but still entirely unrealized) spaceplane is what, Skylon? If they ever make it work, it will barely achieve LEO with a cost to orbit that's basically competitive (?) with existing LVs. I think the basic fact is that while rockets have to move through the regime where most all the aero problems aircraft face happen, they do so very quickly, and the solution to the problems in that narrow regime is easier given the goal (spaceflight). If this were not true, we'd have spaceplanes already. Basically they hit max Q in under 2 minutes, the it's downhill from there. Any spaceplane concept lives in that regime for a while.

Wow, I just noticed something, @Shadowmage. Look at the Apollo shadow on the VAB: Some of the rescaled parts are not casting the appropriate shadows. CSM stack and the S-IVB stage are fine. The diameter change is a fairing, and that's fine. The issues look like they are actually on the tanks, but they are clearly not the whole tanks, just the top part. That or parts of the tanks are right, and all the rest are a little large .

Stuff I did last night or the day before... An Apollo attempt: It's a little tall (a few m too tall after scaling to 64%), but it worked in 6.4X, there, and back again. Last night I did some docking tests, this is the bare bones SSTU install using that little "Block V" CSM---needs better solar panels to avoid that clipping of the tank when it rotates: This was a Saturn 1C type booster I made, but I was a little sloppy on ascent, and blew some dv. I ended up separating the CSM while the thing was (barely) suborbital, grabbing the station, and bringing it to orbit with the CSM's OMS engine. A similar station (this one is a lab though) in munar orbit, but this is 6.4X. The LC pod is actually configured (and really useful) as a station tug. All propellant is mono. The CSM uses a vacuum Merlin, and is bringing a docking hub with 2 inflatables to increase the habitation of the orbiting laboratory.

USI-LS doesn't forget air. All the supplies required for a given kerbal are simply lumped into one, and the large % of this is water. The mass of unrecovered oxygen needed per astronaut is a small fraction of a kg/day. What it's called doesn't matter as long as the total mass is right.

If you think there was human intent involved in what happened, my statement is 100% accurate. %$#@ happens, and they blew up a rocket as a result. It's not more complicated than that. I'm well aware of the internet sleuths. I'll trust people who have more data. They also seem to forget that the fill valve is also the path of least resistance for overpressure in the vessel itself by definition when it is being filled (it's a hole in the tank). All it would take was a breach, and a spark. It;s like a plane crash, it's rarely one cause, it's usually a constellation of causes (assuming it's not CFIG, though those often have multiple human causes).

Right, I'm a dupe of the conspiracy, building 7, etc. We all get exactly where you are coming from.

It's not "suspicious" at all. It's not at all unlikely that the stated cause of the previous failure was in fact wrong, it could certainly be the COPV failing.

I have all those. Mods don;t count, this is the dev suggestions forum, and this thread is about stock. If the answer is "MOD" it doesn't belong in this conversation except to say that the mod should be made stock. I cannot possibly play the career I want in stock.

@sal_vager, I'm only for such a disconnect of some science and tech within the context of a total rework of the career system. As an individual change... it has little effect. That on the table, I cannot possibly tailor the KSP career to the way I would like to play it, for example. I want it to actually feel like running a little space program. I want to have time actually matter, and not reach the milestone of a Mun landing having only invented rockets literally Kerbin hours earlier.

Yeah, I think that if it is loads of extra work, it's not worth the trouble as long as people know to expect it to avoid annoying comments about it (like mine ).

No one is saying they need to test every single part they buy themselves, but they are none the less responsible for their design choices, and procedures (possibly including certifying parts themselves at some point). In this case a strut failure is incredibly unlikely under 1 g. The proposed fault mechanism in the last loss was said to be counterintuitive because the forces were actually up on the parts due to buoyancy in the tank. As I recall, they are not 100% on the cause of the previous loss, either, it's their best guess. A burst COPV would be more likely... and COPVs are harder to test for faults than metal---but they are much lower mass. There are numerous other possible problems. Sadly, this will take a while I think. Hopefully they have data that narrows it further.

Everything is their fault, it's their rocket. That's what testing is for. The "suspicious" comment is frankly absurd.

2d stage. Ouch. Another COPV issue? Clogged vent?

It's practically free anyway.

SpaceX already has a good handle on the cause, and will post something later. They have telemetry, and likely HD video (a plus of it being on the pad). A video alone would allow us here to narrow it down a great deal were one available (we'd know the time, and location, which would reduce the suspect causes massively.

I took a new look at some of the various "Eyes Turned Skyward" posts on the forum, and was messing with my own versions in 6.4x last night (I'm gonna turn RSS/RO back on with 1.2 I think). I made a Saturn 1C with that stubby Apollo CSM on top, using the petal adapter to house an inflatable, plus a tank of parts for fitting out (with a docking port, docked to it). Worked like a charm. Thanks for the mod!

Strongback looks like it was not retracted, so that puts the explosion before T-3:30. The vehicle goes to internal power at T-5... We are stuck waiting for some real information. Video will nail down a lot, as the location will be determined.

This. I ran out of likes, lol.

Decades for ULA, plus a long string of flawless launches.

Yeah, I edited in the tl,dr into the beginning so it didn't appear as harping on something I quickly figured out was beyond your control (I was typing as I tested, then figured it out). So a note in the part description I figured would be a way to immunize yourself from later bug reports in the thread... the rest of us can then all reply, "read the part description, and don't bug shadowmage with this.

Handling operations matter for turn around, etc, so while it would be a plus if it is not the F9 itself, they certainly need to reevaluate all pad procedures. Yeah, this sucks.

MacOS is fine, and fine for KSP. I use all three OSes at different times. I'm entirely OS agnostic, frankly. Mine is very stable, and runs well. My PC is old, so I use my (still old, but newer) Mac (i7) for KSP, decently modded, and I've only had mod-related crashes lately (which happens on the PC as well). I loaded KSP on a mac laptop to answer a question for someone here with it running on a laptop, and it runs on the laptop as well. I have no real issues with MacOS, frankly, heck, I have a terminal window open all of the time, and I use it (old unix habits die hard).

I get that, I was simply making an observation, since I happened to notice it. The fact that the inflatables all have a stated negative cost is what actually caught my eye. I then literally opened this thread, and started typing as I checked last night, and hence the sort of stream of consciousness to the post. Like said, I get that you cannot nail the cost down at all, with all the variables, just figured someone new to the mod would then have no place to post an issue if there is a disclaimer that "Because of the extreme customizability of parts, the quoted cost in the part description is not accurate, caveat emptor." (I'm thinking ahead to people submitting reports that don't matter, really, then the answer is "Read the part description." (of course that is like the FAQ in any mod, that no user ever seems to read when they seek support)

It's not flexibility, it's poor game design for career mode. For some other mode... whatever. To use the game I used to mod campaign mode for, Silent Hunter 4, it would be like a career where you set a few things, drive the boat for a cruise around Hawaii, come back to port and you'd unlock a late war boat with torpedoes that actually work. The problem is that any conversation about a particular about career mode (science vs tech in this case) invariably becomes about career in general---because they are so intertwined. Challenges are for sandbox, frankly. Contracts are all side quests in KSP, and are so random/stupid as to remove all suspension of disbelief that this is a "space program." Everyone plays differently, and that's fine, but what some of us want is a "space program" mode, where it feels like a real space program. The base/station contracts are some I actually take, and they are still random. We have sandbox. We have science mode, which is career minus any chance of failure. We have career mode, which is supposed to include failure---but doesn't. The idea that you could ever lose career mode is sort of baffling to me, it's only hard at the beginning, and that's only if you play it without trying to exploit the holes in the system (unlocking everything in 20 minutes by driving a rover around). I don't think it's much to ask for a career system that feels sorta like a real space program.