Starman4308

And we are orbital! The world now has a new orbital launch provider!

Camwise's diet is not going to be pleasant, is it? Even well-preserved foods don't taste good forever... and I have no idea how much variety there is onboard L'Enfant Sauvage. Between that, and a cobbled-together spaceship whose modules were probably designed to operate closer to the Sun's warming rays, Camwise is going to be one very lucky Kerbal if he survives this. One very lucky, very miserable Kerbal.

Not exactly. It's dependent on aerodynamics and ascent trajectory, which can be guessed at, but don't have an analytical solution anyways. There's also the exact mass breakdown of each stage; while propellant mass is specified (twice, really, since you also know thrust, Isp, and burn time), dry mass has not been specified. You would also need to know how the first stage performs in atmosphere, assuming any upper stages are lit above any significant atmospheric back pressure. Finally, altitude reached is dependent on payload mass. We could guess using rules of thumb and a guess at payload mass, but an accurate guess requires more information to basically simulate the rocket.

Unless you're wanting to upgrade anyways, the first thing I'd try is probably just overclocking your current i7. While there's some generation-to-generation improvement, a Haswell at the same clock rate as a Coffee Lake CPU will perform almost as well. Past that, to reduce loading times, you might put the install on an SSD. It probably won't be super-amazing, since the KSP loading process involves a lot of stuff that isn't reading from the drive (applying MM patches, etc), but it should at least mean physically getting the data into RAM is faster.

Weather is turning to the worse. Booooooooooats!

The very short version: because velocities in KSP are so much less than reality, KSP heatshields are very, very weak compared to reality. RSS, because it uses realistic velocities, buffs heatshields back up to realistic levels. As such, slow down before hitting Duna, or you'll burn to a crisp. I don't know what the upper range is for stock heatshields, but it's definitely far below 10 km/sec.

As a great shock to nobody, everything's operating smoothly. Only remaining issue is payload separation, and that is a pretty unlikely failure mode. Incidentally, for those who may have missed this, Rocket Lab is streaming their attempt to launch "Still Testing", their second lightweight Electron booster.

For all the trash-talking on Twitter, I'm pretty sure ULA's launch window closes before Rocket Labs is scheduled to launch. I just wish every space launch agency did streams as well as SpaceX, though I suspect SpaceX, which had been heavily funded by venture capital, had more to gain from good PR.

That Tesla Roadster would be pretty thoroughly demolished by the hard vacuum and radiation of space. It's not going to be a functional vehicle anymore even before it leaves Earth orbit. Other than that, I try to keep things in perspective. The ULA payload is slated to go up, they have priority according to the same range rules SpaceX agreed to... and it is an actual payload rather than a demonstration flight with no firm launch date set because they're still testing things.

The most atypical thing I've done today involves a lot of "shoop da woop" and "firin mah lazor". Specifically, I forgot to remove those debugging print statements from a kOS method used to check "okay, do I need to discharge a Near Future capacitor to keep my ion engines running?." As a consequence, every second of a 30-minute-long ion burn, kOS would print out "shoop da whoop shoop da whoop shoop da whoop". At least the burn was a complete success, an Oberth maneuver at Tellumo to bring up my solar inclination to about 25 degrees of the 48 degrees required for a contract. For those unfamiliar with Tellumo, it's a super-Earth about 1.6 Kerbin distances from the sun in Galileo's Planet Pack, which makes it very ideal for slingshots and Oberth maneuvers, though solar panel effectiveness is sub-par. Especially sub-par when Tellumo is in the way of the sun. The purpose of this: I had to achieve this high-solar-inclination contract without really enough time to do a proper bi-elliptic. So, my plan was to have an absurd amount of delta-V (over 10 km/sec) on an ion-powered probe, slingshot it around Tellumo, and complete the rest of the inclination adjustment brute-force. Tellumo is excellent for this; at 3.2x scale, escape velocity is over 10 km/sec, so Sir Oberth grants great rewards for burns deep in Tellumo's gravity well. Seeing as that I'm playing with RemoteTech, and I didn't have relays at Tellumo yet, this meant a kOS script not just to hold the burn while in the communication shadow, but also to discharge my capacitors as EC ran dry, something I'd never done with a kOS script before. Other than that, after double-checking the delta-V requirements for orbiting Thalia with just a few weeks until the transfer window, I very very hastily edited this probe, which used to have a 1-ton recon camera, 0.2-ton M700 survey scanner, and some extra batteries on it. Replacing that mass with an extra 1.2 tons of propellant got my delta-V up to a comfortable 5 km/sec. Past that, in about 266 game days, I'm going to be able to test using KSPTOT's multiple flyby predictions to slingshot around Tellumo towards Otho for vastly reduced delta-V vs. a direct transfer. A big part of my issue right now is just setting up a maneuver node at the correct true anomaly to match KSPTOT's prediction, since the Gael ejection burn has pretty large radial and normal components that differ from what a typical interplanetary transfer looks like.

I would read this post and add the requisite information to your post so we can debug. If you're not playing stock, read the similar thread in the modded installation support subforum. EDIT: The only thing I can guess is that you might have had some serious part clipping going on, and the moment your vessels separated, collision physics kicked back in and exploded something.

A couple points of order for Snark's post: I think they are adding German, it is above the red line, it's just been a time issue. I also think the OP does not speak English, and instead used a translation service. There are also some more subtle factors making KSP less favorable to translate than other software. The game targets a fairly educated audience that is enriched for English speakers, and it involves a lot of very technical jargon that can be hard to translate. "Specific impulse" and "patched conics" are only everyday terms for a very small number of people.

Once you have the relative inclination down to where you want, take a look at the relative phase angle. If your satellite is too far ahead, burn a little bit prograde, wait until the phase angle is where you want, then burn retrograde at periapsis to get orbital periods to match. If it's behind, burn a little retrograde, etc. Creating a communications network is a little bit of a shadow rendezvous, a fair bit of patience, and then tuning orbital periods very finely. Also, if you're sending a batch of relays on the same launch, one trick I'll often do is separate one at a time, and put them into resonant orbits with the main satellite. If I'm going for a triangle, I might put one into a 5/6 orbit, wait two orbits, and it'll be 120 degrees ahead of the launch bus, and put the other into a 7/6 orbit, wait two orbits, and it'll be 120 degrees behind. MechJeb can set up these maneuver nodes for you, otherwise you can hand-calculate periods and semi-major axes and Hohmann transfers.

You win. EDIT: You made your argument, you convinced me, I'm just not very happy with how things got misinterpreted. I'll call in a mod and have this thread locked, because I am getting very angry at how things are being said here and I do not trust myself to keep a civil tone any further.

What to do with all that heat is "football fields worth of radiators". Nuclear reactors are no panacea to energy requirements in space. I'd also point out that NASA had football fields worth of blueprints and even engines for Mars... just no funding or SHLVs to make that a reality. I'm not convinced manned exploration of Mars is economically viable at current levels; while BFR would get us there if it works, there is so much that can go wrong with BFR. Even small additional reflight costs or failure rates would hugely crimp SpaceX's ability to turn BFR into an economic reality, because the hardware is just so expensive and so over-specced for most of what it would do.

Do you have Nibb31 on ignore? He made that exact claim, or at least something close to it, that it would be a "similar budget". That is what I have an issue with at this point. I've given up on the tethered space ship proposal being economically feasible without a lot of fortuitous developments, but I am still amazed by the assertion that it would be on the same scale as a lunar base, with all the complexity and custom equipment that implies.

To be fair to Falcon Heavy, there were some pretty legitimate reasons to delay it: the Falcon 9 it's based on had not finished maturing, so it was either freeze the Falcon Heavy to use outdated F9 cores, or just keep on delaying it until the F9 design had reached maturity. Do remember that the Block 5 Falcon 9 is a vastly better launch vehicle than the original design. What would cause such a delay in BFR is that it requires an absurd number of new technologies and design paradigms to work perfectly. We're talking about reentry of a very large vehicle (the last such was the always-problematic Space Shuttle), precision landing after a hypersonic reentry, fast and cheap turnaround of said very large reentry vehicle, an engine twice as large as anything SpaceX has worked with before (on par with the SSME), and the list just goes on and on. I'm not going to dismiss BFR as impossible quite yet, but at this point, it's barely anything more than a rocket engine and some blueprints.

A lot of the idea was based around "dock in zero-G, then begin rotation". A good thought that, shortly after posting, hit the brick wall of "but current docking mechanisms can't withstand being attached to something accelerating at anything more than a very gentle pace". Are you factoring in the cost of developing the near-future vehicles (commercial crew delivery, HLVs) in that budget? I'm having a hard time justifying how the cost of a relatively small amount of custom equipment could match the cost of a lunar base, that requires the crew, the habitation module, the supplies, basically everything but the tether and counterweight, not in LEO but all the way on the lunar surface, something that takes an additional ~5.5 km/sec. There's not only the raw dV requirement for a lunar base, but the fact that you have to develop a new manned lunar landing vehicle, a stack to get it there, any necessary lunar cargo vehicles, etc. Granted, I've probably overestimated how ready for use orbital tethers would be: that could be a significant project on its own, in part for a reason I hadn't considered at first: the energy stored in a tether when it snaps. A tether hit by an MMOD hazard could have to be somehow stopped, which probably means the tether would have to be built in segments with robust baseplates, and it's definitely more complicated than I first thought. I'm still pretty amazed by the claim that this would be more expensive than a lunar base.

Even if Musk's greatest hopes for engineering the BFR work out, his 2024 Mars dreams run into one significant problem. "It was NASA's planetary protection officer, in the mission control room, with a baseball bat." Musk is proposing we send a vehicle that has not been heat-sterilized, one that will be exposed to ambient conditions during rollout and launch, to Mars. Unless Musk can prove the BFR is a reliable vehicle to carry out crewed Mars exploration, I don't think he's going to get the green light on this. This is, of course, assuming it's even ready for operations by then, which I'm not very sure of. Musk is very optimistic with his timelines, and BFR relies on a suite of new technologies not just to work, but to work economically.

Hello, I've been thinking a bit on what I think could be a good mission that can be carried out with mostly existing or near-future equipment. While I think it's at least the basis for a solid mission, I'm short on some details, including some of the necessary physics. Overall mission description: study the effect of simulated low gravity (between microgravity and full Earth gravity) on astronauts and potential Moon/Mars equipment using a rotating pair of spacecraft attached by tethers. This, I suspect, will be a much lower-mass option than a true centrifuge module. Custom equipment necessary: counterweight module, habitat and service module, tethers. Near-future equipment requested: Commercial crew delivery program spacecraft (CST-100 Starliner, Crew Dragon). Backup in Soyuz. Possibly near-future heavy launch vehicles. Orbit: LEO? Must be at sufficient altitude that, if the tether gets cut at the unluckiest possible moment, habitat section perigee is still in LEO. Launches Necessary: Launch 1: Tether counterweight. Can optionally be replaced by a copy of the other sections, at obvious increase in cost. Launch 2: Habitat/Service Module. Will rendezvous and latch to tether counterweight. Rotation will not be initiated at this point. Will have 3-4 docking ports in addition to the counterweight latch. Launch 3: Cargo spacecraft: Cygnus, Dragon, Dream Chaser. Will dock to habitat, containing consumables, scientific equipment, and miscellaneous supplies. Launch 4: Crewed spacecraft: CST-100 Starliner, Crew Dragon, Soyuz. Contents: biological payload astronauts to conduct the mission. Will dock to the habitat. Launch On Demand: Rescue spacecraft, probably the same as the crewed spacecraft. Hopefully unnecessary. Upon docking to the assembly, the crew will first verify functionality of the habitat, then verify good docking and contents of the cargo spacecraft. If necessary, supplies can be transferred by EVA. Once the habitat-cargo-crew assembly is verified, the counterweight and habitat will tether to each other. My guess is the physical tethers would be on the counterweight module (which is otherwise dead mass). An EVA will be conducted to verify tether attachment, with any malfunctioning tethers either replaced or fixed by the astronaut(s) on EVA. Only once all this is verified will the counterweight and habitat separate to mission distance and begin rotation. Crew will likely be in the crew vehicle and in flight suits for an abundance of caution. Propellant for the separation and rotation can be carried on the counterweight, which again will mostly just be dead mass. Next: Science! Upon exhaustion of the crew transfer vehicle's endurance or the cargo vessel's supplies, rotation will be stopped, tethers withdrawn, and crew will return to Earth. Re-use of the mission would probably require another cargo spacecraft, another crewed spacecraft, and another LOD rescue spacecraft prepared. In event of habitat depressurization or other failure, crew will evacuate to the spacecraft and return to Earth. In event that cargo vehicle failure is only detected at mission start, either crew can return to Earth, or a readied cargo spacecraft can be sent. In event that the crew transfer vehicle fails, that's what the Launch On Demand spacecraft is for. In event of unplanned tether separation, crew is to very quickly return to the spacecraft and return to Earth. Simulated gravity will probably be pegged at lunar gravity (0.17G) initially, though the station should be designed for up to 0.5G (in excess of 0.38G Mars gravity), and down to... 0.05G? Maybe? If we use a 200 meter tether, and I didn't mess up the math, that would mean a range of linear velocities from 7 m/sec to 22.15 m/sec, with rotation rates of 4 degrees/second to 12.7 degrees/second. Assuming our tether is made out of Kevlar, each side of the tether is 50000 kg (probably an overestimate), the tethers have 4x the necessary tensile strength, and I still didn't screw up the math, we would need about 160 kg worth of tether material, with a total cross-sectional area of 5.4 cm2. If the rotation rate is too fast, tether mass goes up linearly with tether length, while rotation rate to maintain simulated gravity goes up proportional to the (-1/2) power. Launch vehicles: Counterweight and Habitat: ???. The mass and volume of these, I am really uncertain on, other than a suspicion they would require a heavy lift vehicle: Falcon Heavy, Delta IV Heavy, New Glenn, Proton, or Ariane 5. The counterweight's volume is small (mostly ballast), so it should fit in the existing Falcon 9/Heavy fairing, although a custom payload fairing adapter may be required. The habitat and service is likely to be larger in volume, particularly if a rigid habitat is chosen; I find it unlikely this would fly on the volume-limited Falcon 9/Heavy. Cargo spacecraft: I'm going to mix it up and suggest Cygnus launch on F9 and Dragon on Antares. I'm sure Orbital ATK and SpaceX would be very happy with this arrangement. Crewed spacecraft: Pairs exist for all of these. Atlas V 552 for CST-100 Starliner, Falcon 9 for Crew Dragon, Soyuz for Soyuz. One other element that I've kept in mind: the current commercial crew transport services are designed for the ISS, but the ISS is an aging station, and I have no confidence whatsoever that it will be promptly replaced, leaving us with crewed spacecraft and nowhere to send them. This would be a mission utilizing mostly either existing hardware or near-future hardware to fill in a gap in knowledge that cannot be practically addressed aboard the current ISS. EDIT: Naturally, I only think of a significant problem after I post: I'm not sure modern docking ports are designed to survive 0.05g accelerations, nevermind 0.5g! Crew and cargo spacecraft may have to dock at the center of the tether at a special non-rotating attachment point, and that ruins the nice contingency plan of "if the hab fails, just board the spacecraft!".

I badly overestimated how common that book would be. Nothing on Google Books or Barnes And Noble, only a "not available" on Amazon, nothing from the university library... it will clearly take some hunting to find even a Russian-language copy.

Fixed that for you. What is it, anyways, with Russians having all these good ideas that remained obscure until we actually needed them for space programs? I don't think very many people took note of Tsiolkovsky's work in his lifetime (though one day, we would reach the Moon using the hydrolox propellant he suggested), and now rocket scientists and enthusiasts around the world know his name. I'll have to see if I can look up Kondratyuk's work.

If something had gone wrong with ascent, astronauts died, which is why the ascent stage was made as stupidly simple as possible. The risk of that happening was minimized by very robust design and extensive inspections. That works for a relatively small ascent vehicle, not so much for a massive launch vehicle, where there is no practical and economic way to make it simple. The Space Shuttle, unlike many other manned programs, had a severe lack of abort modes through many of the riskiest parts of the mission. The Shuttle's abort modes mostly covered failure of SSMEs, ignoring other major components such as SRBs and the ET. Even post-Challenger, most of the improvements to abort coverage amounted to "okay, well if 2-3 SSMEs go out, we can ditch the ET and bail out; it's risky, but less risky than ditching". While a lot of what you say is true in theory, in practice as applied to the Space Shuttle, it's a weak argument. EDIT: And yes, for similar reasons, I'd criticize Gemini (ejection seats, really?), Vostok, and Vokshod.

This sounds sufficiently obscure yet nevertheless exciting that I need details. Anyways, a few ideas on my end: "Galileo: first, the heliocentric model has been shown, and extensively refined. Men by the name of Newton and Kepler helped refine this model and explain why nature works this way, and we have used it to send men to the Moon, and our instruments to the furthest corners of our vast solar system. Also, don't insult the Pope. That gets you charged with heresy. Seriously. Don't publish something featuring 'Pope Simplicio'. This isn't going to go over well for you, even if the Pope was remarkably gentle about your arrest". Second, show Dmitri Mendeleev the modern Periodic Table of the Elements, and at least the Bohr model of the atom. The modern understanding of electron probability clouds might make him think I'm leading him on. Third, Antoine Lavoisier, mostly the same. The man was one of the greatest chemists of all time, turning the study of alchemistry to true chemistry. If the conversation is long enough, I might also describe the modern computational technique of alchemical free energy simulations. Fourth, to good old Charles Darwin: "The world is 4.5 billion years old, with life having existed for 3 billion. Here's the molecular mechanisms underlying your theory. Hopefully this helps patch up some of the holes in your current argument." EDIT: To clarify on the Darwin thing, I may very well have been one of the skeptics when he first released "On The Origin of Species". Some of his theory was at the time founded on shaky evidence; for example, it postulated that Earth was around for longer than most people were willing to credit at the time, and the molecular mechanism behind it (DNA, its mutation, recombination, and overall genetics) was unknown. It wasn't until well in the 20'th century that the estimate of Earth's age started to hit over a billion years old.

It's a difference in magnitude, of reasonable risk. Commercial airplanes are extremely well-understood, and can be extensively tested. Each new model of aircraft flies a large number of times before ever being allowed to carry passengers, with the individual airframes likely flown several times before carrying passengers to boot. Commercial airflight has been pushed to the point where it is reasonable to forgo abort modes that do not rely on survival of the airframe. Spaceflight, however, is at the point where a long, successful production run is the number of times a commercial airliner has to fly just to get certified. In the future, maybe space travel will get to the point where it's safe to put people on board and just expect it to work, but right now I would call space travel insufficiently developed to forgo abort procedures for the entire mission.