tater

As I said, in that scheme part testing would be A currency to do R&D. You can spend more funds, and get it faster. You can spend more science and get it faster. You can spend some time parts testing and get it faster... or you can simply spend the base costs and time, or you could spend less science and funds, and have it take longer. It would be up to you.

Simulation is only as accurate as the least accurate part. It doesn't do any good to track a 1 cm cross section projectile unless the fidelity of the damage model is at the same scale size. If every part internal to the ship is not modeled to 1 cm accuracy, you cannot measure the damage of a 1 cm projectile (or a 1 cm cross section laser). The "simulation" fails at that point, and you'd be better to characterize it otherwise if you want realistic outcomes. If you want to claim simulation, then you need to have ship models with the fidelity of the smallest particle that might hit them. Take our 1 cm3 blob of steel. It hits the hull, and goes in one side. Its a fuel tank. Is the game (it's a game, sorry) doing the fluid dynamics of the contents of the tank with a hypersonic projectile moving through it? If not, why not? Have they at least been done for typical cases so the damage from that sort of projectile is characterized, or does the game just make simple assumptions--it's a hole, and it deposits X energy, and it leaks? It hits a more critical part... does it hit internal structures within? What does it hit? Did it hit any important piping, wiring harnesses, crew? Did it spall? Into how many fragment? If every single pipe is not modeled, how do you know what actually happened? That's the problem with the silly claim of "simulation." A classic example is age of sail. Ball shot goes into the gun deck. No game I have ever seen tracks the ball, did it hit any metal going in, say a latch on a port lid, turning that into shrapnel? What about splinters, does the game model crossed planking, so that you get variant shard of oak many cm long flying? What about the ball ricocheting off a gun? The reality is that modeling a single round shot hitting a warship would likely be a daunting task to do properly at the scale size of the ball. Just that alone, forget simulating the rest of the ship at such fidelity.

In the VAB you see Decoupler: Disable Staging. In the world you see: \ I assume the top is the top, and the bottom is the bottom, but it would be helpful for them to be annotated. Looks like the other pods don't have this issue, as they don't have the bottom decoupler. The "Show Actuation Toggles" Stuff on the upper stages is fairly confusing as there are two sets, as well. Other than that, it was better than I thought, it's mostly the SC-A-DM.

The whole science--->tech paradigm is odd, anyway. I might be inclined to use numerous "currencies" for the tech tree. Right now we have two, science, and funds. Add a third, time. So you can spend time to reduce the science or funds costs somewhat, or use can use funds/science to buy faster development. I can think of a 4th currency---parts testing, and or "experimental" parts. Experimental parts would be available during development (perhaps halfway into development in time), but unlike regular parts, they could fail. Parts testing would be that having certain nodes under R&D is what generates parts testing contracts. Ideally they would not be awful (as most are right now). They would make sense. Ground testing. Testing in the atmosphere in a sensible way. Testing outside the atmosphere. They might be suites of missions, like "Explore the Mun." For example it might contain some or all of the following: Test the LV-909. Static test: run the test at the launch site. Flight test. Engage the engine in the normal staging process at alt range X to Y, and at velocity v to V. Vacuum test: Test the engine in space. Exhaust and surface debris test: test the engine landed on the Mun. The engine might be experimental, too.

After the kids get their homework done (they need a little prodding) I will make this my test focus. It's mostly parts with loads of right-click text, and some get the specific meaning lost in the pile. I've taken to doing a quick save as I press the wrong one about half the time, lol I'll look at all, and write it up for you.

There is nothing wrong with this at all. What has happened is NOT nothing, time has passed. This is a non-trivial benefit. Career in vernal lacks the progression of time. You're ready for manned flight to Jool a few months after first discovering rockets are a thing. It's insane. Such a change (a added time mechanic) would be ideal along with a general change to make time meaningful. KSC budgets, for example. Time constraints in contracts that are actually meaningful. What's the time limit on a rescue? 10 YEARS? Many contracts have expirations in years, when you clear the tech tree in DAYS. Adding meaningful time to everything makes this make far more sense, and it is yet another way to add time via small changes to existing mechanics instead of something like KCT (which I like).

On the right-click for parts, is there any way to have specific text for decoupling? Take the Soyuz descent pod. It has a decoupler on both sides, could they be marked as such, or is it generic to decoupling?

http://original.livestream.com/spaceflightnow Dragon-8 release coverage (live from ISS). They just undocked it, still on arm. Release at 8:18 US Central Time (13 min)

You'd sell them in bulk to DeBeers so they could dump them in the Atlantic. The point was meant to be exaggerated that if they could sell launches ridiculously cheaply, they'd be fools to do so.

^^^True, not impossible, just stupid. I guess since "stupidity" is a thing in KSP, I need not be diplomatic, and I should rate my assessments in "stupidity."

I doubt it, too, we're on the same page, actually, I was saying that best case, they get the number of launches they can possibly get... maybe a dozen a year, plus then some crew missions once they fly D2 manned, and if FH is up, then maybe they get a few BEO missions now and again. Maybe. The total number of possible launches for customers seems to be fairly limited.

The ISRU contracts are 99% absurd (probably 100%, but maybe I haven't seen all of them). Any contracts to move ore from one place to another... boggles the mind.

Nonsense. 2015: 7 launches, 1 failure. 2014: 6 If they continue at this rate, then you are correct, but we have no idea if that is the case. Also, they use 2 pads (KSC and Vandenberg). My statement was 100% correct, they might exceed 1 launch per month in the future (over a year, we were talking about total launches per year), possibly even this year. We'll have to see, but 1 per month is double what they have done in the recent past. We're talking about Red Dragon, so we're not talking about F9 in that category at all, only FH. FH could presumably take some BEO missions at some point, but again, they'd be lucky to get even one such mission every few years (which was what I said that you originally quoted). So in the indeterminate future, when FH is a thing, SpaceX might get a FH launch from NASA every few years. In context, this was about launch rates, and lower prices, and I was replying to the idea that somehow they could sell more launches to NASA, as if NASA is gonna crank out more BEO probes just because launch costs have dropped by 20% (which they won't ).

You're not replying to the context of my statement. I was explicitly addressing BEO missions only.

http://lrostk.gsfc.nasa.gov/preview.cgi Real time spacecraft visualization on the LRO website. Main page: http://lunar.gsfc.nasa.gov/index.html What's the problem, that they haven't published the mosaic yet? Data resources (you can even propose target observations): http://lunar.gsfc.nasa.gov/resources.html Loads of stuff here.

I only used the DL from here, so no other EVE version.

Yes, I remember it from the news at the time

I had an issue where after a brief timewarp, part of the mun went black, then all of it. Restarted the game and it persisted. Everything else looked fine. My quick solution (only other mod was SSTU) was to remove SVE.

I think I'm saying the same thing. SpaceX has no incentive to unilaterally lower their prices as long as they are already below their competitors, and a good value (once reliability is better demonstrated, for example). As long as they save money with reuse, and don't pass that all along, they make more money. People keep talking as if a slightly lower cost structure is going to generate vastly more launches, and I just don't see any evidence for that idea. So they drop to 40M, and competitors work to get their costs in that regime... then SpaceX drops it further because with reuse, they could have dropped prices before, and didn't. Eventually launches are considerably cheaper. Great. But that helps no one in the LV business unless the demand increases commensurately. I'm a semi-fanboy of SpaceX, BTW, I just don't drink the cherry Kool Aid.

Again, you are missing the distinction between lowered cost, and similar prices (more profit for SpaceX), and trying to grossly lower the cost/kg. The latter is universally desirable---assuming there is demand such that the company keeps making at least the same kind of money. 100X cheaper launch requires 100X as many launches to break even.

Absolutely. A few a year, maybe. So they might get up to more than 1 launch per month. Awesome, and fine within the current pricing. This conversation is about the fantasy of charging grossly less than current pricing, and somehow making more money...

Because SpaceX makes more money by giving discounts? $800,000 is a lot of money for a handful of students to work on a spacecraft. Cubesats are far cheaper, and can indeed hit rides, to go at greatly reduced cost, but that's not a model for making more money. I'm trying to stay on topic... Red Dragon, and possible future Mars exploration by SpaceX as groundwork for their grandiose plans. That takes money. My thought is that they can blow their leftover EOL launchers on this, and do their experiments/hobby launches on the cheap, having gotten other customers to already have paid for the rockets a few times over.

Universities are going to cough up 40 million bucks for experimental satellites? They'd not spend 1/100th of that. The point is a business model, not SpaceX giving away launches to kids. Heck, maybe they can do that---but it requires making money first. Bill Gates gets to do philanthropy because he made metric tons of money. That's the first step, make metric tons of money. Mars is either a hobby, or with a really, really long term view, possibly philanthropy (spread humanity around, just because). That requires making money hand over fist back here where the money is as a first step. No bucks, no Buck Rogers.

NASA is indeed a customer, but now you're talking about maybe a single launch every few years. That's it. Given that they are required to use SLS for something, it would be a hard sell to get them to use SpaceX. There have been many threads trying to explain to people outside the US how NASA works, and this post leads me to believe you should read one of them. Any major expenses are going to be spread around, not all put in the pocket of one company, that doesn't buy votes. Student projects? Are you suggesting that universities will pay millions to send probes to the moon constantly? We are talking about ramping up launches, after all. That requires a demand. All some of us have said is that it would be silly for SpaceX to markedly drop prices without a known, or at least well-characterized increase in demand, or they will leave money on the table.