tater

What % of a Mars flight is VASIMR supposed to be under acceleration? Strikes me that you'd not spin up that middle section except during a coast phase.

My point is that the engines won't be running while a ship is spun end over end. The crew cabin will not have been occupied until space, and the only time up/down would change in the crew cabin is unspun (down towards rocket motor), or spun, where down is now away from the rocket motor.

A very interesting read.

Latching the cabinets, etc, has to happen anyway. Not an issue. Designing "up" already happens, ISS has a preferred orientation within, because people expect an up and down, even in space. It also orients them for communicating with each other (it's apparently very distracting to talk to someone who is upside down). Fuel is only going to slosh a couple times, and it's going to do this in 0 g as well (it sloshes every time the ISS boosts). These are trivial issues as long as they bother to design for them (which they would).

All spacecraft already manage to survive under 1g during construction, often in more than one direction (possibly horizontal during construction, then vertical after mating to the rocket). They then experience over 1g during launch. I doubt this is a serious issue at all.

Do you have to allow the craft to be totally destroyed for learning, and if you did so, then reverted?

Or landing among mesas, lol Clearly that was to make the most of a stunning film location, a NASA landing ellipse would be rather more boring.

Yeah, this seems like an obvious experiment to do with a Bigelow at some point. Long-duration missions would also actually give us data on what the minimal gravitational value is for human health to not be negatively affected.

The problems with rotating habitats have to do with radius. I think that under 2 rpm, things are fine. For 2 rpm, you need a ~223m radius for 1g, but just 67m for martian gravity.

Yeah, they said it was for the entire series of missions. I know it's not supposed to be Orion (even though in the movie version they showed the Orion test flight launch). That said, look at it, it's a capsule. I realize that it's just what the CGI artist decided looked cool. So the mission plan requires a propulsive Earth orbital insertion for the Hemes cycler, then a separate craft to deliver the new crew, and take the old crew back I guess.

Yeah, this is a totally different idea than Mars DRA 5. The capsule (?) at the front of hermes is a little odd with the 2 cupolas behind it since the point of the capsule is Earth reentry, and the current plans are all for direct reentry.

Why would you explore caves in a vehicle? There are caves on earth, and people generally don't intentionally drive into them. Not that rilles, and uncollapsed lave tubes would not be cool. They don't add much reason for rovers though. I think honestly a better reason would be to have kernels that could do stuff on their own. Then, instead of merely clicking to collect a sample, you'd turn them loose on EVA, and they'd walk around doing stuff near the lander. Add a rover, and they drive it around. Science gains would then be based on the crew type (scientists gather more), and the area they EVA around (perhaps at this point you place a time limit on EVA time, so you can go farther with a rover in the same time, or indefinitely with a rover with a cabin). The player could always chose to drive, obviously.

Are they pointed the right way?

The default is for EVA kerbals to poof back to KSC I think.

No plane should be landing anywhere except a paved runway at 100 m/s, anyway.

Yeah, but the skill levels are sort of dumb. Astronauts are trained for whatever it is they need to do. If the point of an engineer is to repair, it's bizarre that I need to have them plant flags, or leave kerbin SoI, then return to "level up."

I wish they'd abandon "biomes" for something that doesn't require that there be life.

What KSP needs is autonomous kerbals. I'm in the camp that would want them to optionally even pilot, but forget that for now. Let's stick with Science and Engineering (skills are a thing, and unlikely to go away). Scientists should EVA when landed, autonomously---there would be a toggle to turn this behavior on and off on the craft's right click. Their skill would not be increased via flag planting, but "doing science." So they'd EVA, and walk around. Perhaps they are given props like little shovels, etc. Instead of clicking to collect a surface sample, they walk around themselves and do so. They'd wander as far as a few hundred meters and do stuff. Perhaps they could be given some new experiment parts, and instead of current clickfest, they'd go to that part (must be put within a couple meters of the ground on lander), collect the experiment, and walk off and place it. Maybe things like the seismometer get placed on the ground instead of the craft? You get the idea. If there is a science lab, they will EVA now and again to get stuff "for science!" Does it do anything? Not really, it's what we have now, but it creates some atmosphere. While you run around with Jeb taking screen shots near a rock, Edmark is in the background doing stuff. In space, they could EVA on tether and look busy. Engineers could EVA with a drill (like KIS/KAS) and maintain stuff when this is turned on, both in space and on the ground. Perhaps a new "docking" part could be added. It would be very thin and would snap to angle (you'd need to rotate to within a few degrees, then it snaps). Having done this, you set engineers to EVA, and their maintenance function has them weld those parts over time. Maybe they have little arc welders. So you approach a station or large ship under construction, and you might see a few engineers moving around doing stuff. This would be almost entirely for immersion, but it would be neat to see.

LOL, autocorrect does something cool for a change.

I'm with reggae, the classes are pretty dumb. If we had Kerbals that were actually autonomous, then they might be useful.

I'm playing in a scaled up system with stock parts (planets 3.2X, distances 6.4X), and the new fairing option will be nice to see as even set slightly steeper than your best guess, I don't just get flame effects, but overheating and part destruction. If the fairing deploys early, thenI end up will all the surface attached parts getting scrubbed off.

The principal issue with space suits is that they are inflated, making bending limbs difficult, and in fact hard work in both flexion and extension.

That first craft on Minmus could almost certainly right itself just by retracting the legs and using SAS.

Comparing robots to Apollo is a bad argument. Apollo did a lot not because it was humans (and one a geologist) doing the work, but because it had a massive budget and support of the government. That is the sole reason Apollo did more than robots. Given the same resources, Robot-Apollo would have done MORE science with robots than real Apollo did with people. There is no science you can name on Mars that could not be done remotely. There is no science you could do with people on Mars that could not be done better with robots given the same resources to accomplish them. The reality is that manned spaceflight is not done for science, but for excitement/adventure/flash. Manned flight is also vastly more expensive to do for any given science goal. Probes will not get the budget that manned flight will get. Look at the Senate Launch System and Orion. A rocket without a purpose to launch a spacecraft without a purpose. Science will benefit as NASA is forced to build stuff to put on top of a ridiculously large rocket, but the only reason they have the rocket is to launch a manned craft. That craft, Orion, has as a first mission going off to do something that could be better done by a robot at far less cost/risk. Bottom line is that any science benefits from manned spaceflight are in fact just gravy, not actually the point.

We know for sure only what we know from testing. I think we are in agreement that neither is an off the shelf propulsion system right now, whereas chemical and ion propulsion are well understood in actual use in space.