Starman4308

In its current incarnation, it can take science data, process it to 5x value with at least one scientist on board, and transmit it. It does not exclude transmitting or returning an identical experiment; data processed by an MPL is outside the normal track. Processing is sped up with higher level scientists, and I think costs electricity. It's overpowered IMO, and I don't use it anymore.

In rough order of realism and detail: Kerbalism (almost everything: radiation, living space, consumables) TAC Life Support (food, water, oxygen with waste, waste water, and CO2; comes with H2O recycler, Sabatier reactor, carbon extractor, but no greenhouse) USI Life Support Snacks!

Elite: Dangerous and other sci-fi games seem like a better bet. KSP was designed from the ground up as a Newtonian simulation game, without the "space is made out of WD-40" that other games have. While you could sort of hack it with Kopernicus configs to alter atmospheres, there are plenty of other games which were designed to do what you want.

Kerbal X should have some useable craft files if you don't want to engineer a new spacecraft. You may want to bring a rover as well, since pinpoint landings aren't the easiest thing to do.

I think he's trying to reduce its mass to make it easier to transport. Otherwise, just ensure the drills are deep into the asteroid.

Have only two fuel tanks selected at once, and in/out buttons should appear. If you want something more sophisticated, there is TAC Fuel Balancer.

150k-200k funds seems a reasonable estimate for the cost of brute-forcing 16k liquid fuel to orbit. I got a little bit more than that to orbit with a 220k funds rocket (1x Rhino upper, 2x Mammoth lower), though there was plenty of dV left in the upper. I eschewed any sort of aerodynamic surfaces; at this scale, gimbal provides enough control authority if you don't veer far off prograde. Incidentally, this has been the first craft I've gotten to orbit in stock KSP in months: https://kerbalx.com/Starman4308/SupertankerII

The end of that Yahoo article says "we could use some warning next time". People. Please. This was announced hugely in advance. You live close to Vandenburg. The only difference this time was that atmospheric and lighting conditions produced an unusually spectacular contrail. You have only yourselves to blame for not caring about launch schedules or checking if there was a launch from Vandenburg.

Okay, are you using RealFuels or SMURFF? There are severe issues attempting to replicate real-world performance figures with stock equipment. Stock tanks are vastly heavier than they should be, with a 9:1 full:empty mass ratio, whereas the Space Shuttle external tank hit something around 28:1. Stock engines are vastly heavier than they should be, with execrable TWR. The Mammoth hits 27.18 vacuum TWR; the Merlin 1D has a TWR in excess of 150, the RS-25 a TWR of 66 (even burning very low-density hydrolox), etc. If attempting to replicate anything burning methalox (liquid methane and liquid oxygen) or hydrolox (liquid hydrogen and liquid oxygen), you're also going to run into the issue that KSP specific impulses are calibrated towards those of RP-1/liquid oxygen rockets, whereas methalox goes up to ~370 s-1, and hydrolox in excess of 450 s-1. All of this is because the stock solar system is a tiny toy relative to the real world, so Squad took a nerf to propulsion to make things even remotely difficult to achieve. If you're using HRSS, I'd suggest using either RealFuels (probably with the stockalike configs), or SMURFF with a configuration in between stock and its full RSS configuration. Overall, my suspicion is that you're simply running head-first into the issue of trying to replicate a real-world rocket with underpowered stock parts.

Would it be possible to upload your engine configurations somewhere where we could see them? From the data I can find, the Falcon 9 second stage should have an initial TWR of close to 1.0, which should be plenty to circularize on any reasonable ascent trajectory. In more general terms: there are several possibilities. First, the Falcon 9 in particular uses a fairly steep ascent, something that should give the second stage plenty of time to circularize while "borrowing" upwards momentum from the first stage; it should also be well out of the thick atmosphere, meaning minimal drag losses and effectively vacuum engine performance. This could be the case; you're staging into the second stage at a much lower altitude than what the real Falcon 9 does. Looking at the CRS-13 webcast, it seems to me that second-stage ignition is at 70 km altitude, with a vertical velocity of around 1 km/sec. Second, if you accidentally copied the wrong number, such as the second-stage thrust in lbf instead of N, that could explain things. Third, if you're using stock fairings, those can be pretty heavy, and may affect the dynamics of the vehicle. Overall, my suspicion is that #2 is likely the major cause, since a 1.0 TWR is towards the upper end of second-stage TWRs, and should be far more than enough to circularize. With 1.0 TWR, you can literally point straight up and resist gravity.

First, on the poll, while it's probably less important than what a forum full of KSP players would suggest, it definitely has its place as an example of the proxy conflicts that the US and USSR engaged in; in this case, the Space Race was a proxy for ICBM development and space dominance. In the case of the US, I also suspect part of it was an attempt to reassure the US public that the US was still on top, and that traditional liberal democracy with a regulated free market economy was still superior to the Soviet model. Second, I'm reading through the Wikipedia article on STS-61, and it's quite interesting reading. My vague guess for why they started off servicing the gyros and solar panels instead of the mirror was to get the astronauts accustomed to EVA operations before more delicate operations involving optics. It was a lot of work to service what I presume was something not intended to be serviced in orbit.

Assuming a perfectly rigid vehicle, it doesn't matter. If your vehicle is a bit wobbly, the center of mass is probably the best place to minimize torque-induced wobbling, but usually you can just stick them wherever they fit.

Less than might be guessed from my playtime, probably a consequence of multiple factors: restarting my game every so often when I lose track of what I was doing, playing at larger scales with mods like RT and TAC Life Support, not using much physical timewarp on ascent, etc. Stock (1x and 6.4x scales): Eve (1-way probe), Gilly (land-and-return), Mun and Minmus (extensive space stations and ground bases), Duna (1-way probe), Ike (at least an unmanned flyby), and I think some unmanned orbital operations around Jool, flying by Tylo and Laythe at a minimum. Outer Planets Mod (6.4x scale): Nothing ever actually reached, but I think I had probes en route to most of the OPM gas giants. Galileo's Planet Pack (3.2x scale): Icarus (3 unmanned flybys at scary velocities and scary low periapses), Thalia and Eta (1-way probe landers), Niven (definitely at least a probe orbiter, possibly a lander), Iota and Ceti (manned landings, surface and orbital bases in progress), Tellumo (1-way probe lander), Lili (... the probe crashed into Lili), Gratian and Geminus (1-way probe landers), and probe orbiters en-route to at least two of the gas giants. Natch, I've restarted yet again (though this time I'm keeping better notes!), and so far haven't done anything more ambitious than probe landers on Iota/Ceti.

At least with TAC:LS, there are multiple recycling options, and it isn't quite as simple as "strapping larger weights on"; you can trade delta V for faster transits. In my game (which has some MM patches I made myself), some of what I've done: Add reversible H2O <-> H2 + 1/2 O2 fuel cells to a planetary base to last through a 360-hour night without needing 20 tons of batteries or resorting to a nuclear reactor. Added a water/hydrates drill to replenish water supplies. Just now realized that drill theoretically makes water replenishment redundant. Given me reason to schedule double moon missions for transfer windows. I've also seen other people do things like use complicated and slow slingshot trajectories to preposition return supplies, with the Kerbal sent later on a much more direct trajectory. Life support is what you make of it, not necessarily a lead weight.

And all the rest of the science done in microgravity? Materials science, botany, etc? While one could argue whether or not the ISS was the most efficient way to conduct those experiments, they have, as point of fact, been conducted there, with even more to be learned.

Um, no? While a ground-based centrifuge might briefly see approximately 0G once per rotation, it cannot replicate extended stints in microgravity; for that, you need an orbital platform.

In addition to "source better than a magazine article" for the cost, I'd like you to cite something for "the ISS was useless". For the cost, you can always find a rosy prediction from people suggesting unproven technologies. I strongly doubt a moon base could be done for $10B without even further drops in launch costs... and the SLS is hardly the epitome of cheap space access. For the ISS, countless experiments have already been performed, and LEO will continue to be the cheapest place to conduct microgravity experiments. I would honestly rather have a replacement ISS (preferably with a centrifuge module capable of 0.1-0.38G) than a lunar space station that will be much more expensive to build and maintain.

A few issues with your analysis of the cooling required: First, water is used as the coolant here on Earth because we can easily afford to have gigantic cooling systems. In space, you're more likely to see a liquid metal-cooled reactor; see the SNAP-10A as an example. Assuming an NaK-cooled reactor could be run at 973K (85 Kelvins below the NaK boiling point), cooling per unit area rises by a factor of 46. While I'm unsure how practical a lead-bismuth eutetic cooling system would be, that would increase cooling per unit area by a factor of 635 vs. a water-based cooling system. Second, there are some strange unit issues, such as "watts per meter". I re-did the math, and came up with 25.4 kW/m^2 (assuming 973K temperature, 0.5 emissivity) for an NaK cooling system and 0.55 kW/m^2 for a water cooling system. For Streetwind's figure of 1.7 GW and a 0.25 heat efficiency (thus 6.8 GW of heat that must be rejected), this would entail 12.4 km^2 for a water-cooled system, vs. 0.27 km^2 for an NaK system. Using the published specs of the ISS radiators (https://www.nasa.gov/pdf/473486main_iss_atcs_overview.pdf), I'd estimate perhaps 20 kg/m^2 for radiator mass; while it's probable that the ISS radiators can be improved upon, I suspect NaK is harder to handle than ammonia. This would mean 5400 tonnes of radiators for NaK, vs 250000 tonnes of water radiators. Third... why a sphere? You can hugely reduce wasted area by having flat radiator panels edge-on to space, versus having a sphere where half is actually absorbing solar radiation heat. Overall, while I'm still not confident that a high-thrust ion trajectory is practical, since any way you slice it you're going to need absurd quantities of radiators or solar panels, there are still baffling flaws in your analysis.

Real world atmospheres do not work that way. They continue up indefinitely, though eventually it just merges with the interplanetary medium. The strict cutoff in KSP is a game mechanic to permit time warp for LKO satellites. What you would have in this scenario is a slowly decaying orbit, that may either strip off the heatshield or simply take too long to decay, running you out of life support supplies.

Unsure about anything native to RemoteTech, because I haven't used its flight computer. I'd look into kOS. Bind your science parts to an action group, and use triggers such as "WAIT UNTIL Vessel:Altitude < triggerAlt." Don't forget to include transmitting data after collection, probably waiting a few seconds for instruments to finish their animations.

It's this part, unlocked at the basic science node, added I think with version 1.2: https://wiki.kerbalspaceprogram.com/wiki/Experiment_Storage_Unit

Experiment storage units, much like manned command pods, can each hold 1 set of non-redundant* science results for recovery. Between those and scientists' ability to refresh goo pods and materials bays, you can end up with a pretty fair operation farming science from some body and sending back probes with experiment storage units. *Non-redundant as in "cannot store 2 goo pod results from the exact same biome", though "2 goo pod results from different biomes" still works.

Even in the real world, you would need a very large space station to be able to semi-stably orbit it. For example, the Hill sphere of the ISS is 1.86 meters, so to orbit around the ISS's center of mass in a stable fashion, you have to be literally inside the ISS.

Generally speaking, if your ship is reasonably trim, the tiny size of the KSP Mun (leading to reduced delta-V requirement) and the heavy nature of its parts (disfavoring duplication of parts) favors a direct-ascent mission; the gains from leaving your return-to-Kerbin fuel and heatshield in orbit are outweighed by the losses of having a separate lunar lander with many duplicated parts. While it's been forever since I last played in the stock KSP system, I suspect that the most efficient sort of mission profile will be direct-ascent, with landing legs and scientific equipment staged off either at the surface of the Mun or shortly after takeoff. You can store one set of experiments in the command pod itself, and a 50 kg experiment storage unit on top of the pod can store a second set of experiments if wanted. Hold down alt (at least on Windows); that should prevent radial attachment.

You may also want to double-check if the contract asked for any parts you forgot to put on the vessel.