UnusualAttitude

Even with Real Fuels (as in stock), the cost of propellant is still proportionally high compared to the cost of the hardware. This negates the benefits of stage recovery. Sad fact: my RSS spaceplane can actually be as expensive or even more expensive to operate than a single-use rocket, simply because it requires a lot more fuel for an equivalent payload. We can adjust the cost of the various fuels in the community resource config files. (I chose to keep expensive fuel because it fits the backstory of my resource-starved Earth).

According to the second article I linked it is "a 10 watt laser that will pulse a couple of times each night and be visible with a pair of binoculars." I assume such a beam wouldn't be visible from the entire globe ?

I think that the video is just a generic presentation (I don't even know if that is a real launcher). Apparently they are looking to hitch a ride with one of the Google Lunar X-Prize entrants. I found another article with more info here.

Yeah, I'm just kidding and I quite agree. But if Banon actually manages to scrape together the budget to do this through sponsorships, donations and crowd funding, then props to her. 3 million sounds like a lot for a kickstarter project though....

Part of the problem is that people don't have the ability to fold into a 12x12 cm cargo bay, and they weigh a bit more than 1.5 kg.

I 'ope nothing bad 'appens to our beautifool sculpture...

Unsurprisingly, I could not find the "Art & Spaceflight" section of these forums, so I'll try here. French artist Anilore Banon is planning to send a sculpture to the surface of the Moon. Banon, who is best known for her "Les Braves" War memorial on Omaha Beach, has been working on this project for the past three years. The feasibility study was performed in cooperation with Dassault Systemes. A prototype of the sculpture is to be launched to the International Space Station today on board the CRS-10 Dragon capsule, where it will be experimentally deployed to test the behaviour of the shape-memory titanium-nickel alloys in microgravity. The final version of the sculpture will be designed to fit inside a 12x12 cm space and deploy into the shape of a flower once exposed to sunlight on the Moon's surface, revealing the handprints of a million people. Fully deployed, it should measure "between 1.5 and 4.5 metres" depending on the mass-budget, according to the artist. Mass will be about 1.5 kg. The sculpture will also be fitted with a laser that will be visible from Earth, to be used "on special occasions". Banon claims that the project requires "another 2.5 to 3 million dollars" to be feasible, to be financed by donations and crowd-funding. Well, the French band Gojira was nominated for two Grammy Awards, so anything is possible, I suppose... Any idea how much 1.5 kg to lunar surface costs, assuming Falcon 9, say?

In a spaceplane, of course. Alternatively, moar boosters.

Just a short video of another aircraft many here will probably know and love... The video isn't mine but I witnessed this from the carpark of a nearby supermarket. 45 knot winds at Toulouse-Blagnac airport yesterday. Beluga number 2 performed a go-around. They got her down on the second attempt, but it gets a bit sketchy at 0:50"...

Sorry I'm late to the party, but I'd like to submit the Fontanes class probe from my near-future real Solar System save. It is designed around modded parts from DMagic Orbital Science, and the reactors and ion propulsion are provided by Near Future. It is meant to be launched via spaceplane and assembled in orbit, then boosted out of Earth's gravity well by a conventional chemical transfer stage. The dual reactors are mounted on extendable booms and are shielded to protect the probe core and science package. This is just before orbital insertion, slipping inside the rings of Saturn. Once at escape velocity, with the incredible efficiency of the dual stage 4-grid ion engines, it can go anywhere in the system, even orbiting multiple moons of the gas giants. This is Fontanes Three above the hellish world of Io. I like the practical, plausible looking designs of @eloquentJane and @Randazzo (ie: shielding the probe core and fuel tanks in a bus, mounting the RTG on a boom, etc...) as well as the over-the-top"moar antennae" of @Just Jim's and @mobylettespaceindustries's designs. @Veeltch's is pretty cute and wonderfully compact though too.

Not me, Niels Bohr. BOAC flew from Scotland to Sweden and back during the war, carrying strategic cargo (ball bearings) and passengers. The Mosquito was used from 1943 onwards because it could outrun all of the German night fighters. Since it is only a two-seater, passengers travelled in the unpressurised bomb-bay with an oxygen mask and a flask of hot coffee. Apparently Niels Bohr forgot to put his on and passed out from hypoxia when he was evacuated from Sweden. You can read about these wartime civilian operations here...

Heh, I agree with him entirely. And that's coming from a guy who flew from Sweden to Britain during the war in the bomb bay of a Mosquito.

We have one of those in the museum where I work. I find it a bit scary... but I find all helicopters a bit scary. Ours belonged to the French Navy, hence the wheels. The team that restored it found it in a barn in 2005 in this condition: I must confess that I'm a big fan of the Piaggio Avanti. It looks super awesome and it is much cheaper than a buisiness jet.

Omelek Space Centre was indeed originally created as a joint venture of the Big Three (Trans Pacific, Trans Atlantic and Trans Indian, indeed), as specified in my intro-blurb. Although they are competitors, until now they have traditionally worked together to maintain the status quo and their shared monopoly of the resource market. However, after the loss-of-contact that occurred with Cernin during the first Mars mission, most of the benefactors (including Trans Atlantic, hence the loss of Kourou as an equatorial launch site for spaceplanes) withdrew their support of the space programme one after the other, with Trans Pacific being the last to go (see here). When the Second Engineer transmitted from the Moon, almost everyone got back on board. Almost. See this entry for a reminder of which one of the Big Three didn't. Bartdon himself was wondering what that might mean... The Big Three are all separate business entities and have their own Boards, but there is a special committee that oversees the space programme. Because of the programme's immense strategic importance, this committee reports directly to the Chairkerb of Trans Pacific (who is by far the most influential figure behind this venture). This is why Bartdon refers to it simply as "the Board". You're both picking up on details I wrote about months ago. Consider me impressed. Bartdon certainly would be.

Oh yes. See Cam's adventures in the Antarctic for an example of dissent that ended in tragedy. The problem is that the Kerbals are too divided and live in small, scattered settlements, and most lack the channels of communication (telephones, internet, radios) that we humans would use to organise resistance. You may have noticed that I never mention countries or states, but rather geographic areas (Europe, North/South America, the Pacific). That is because there are none on this version of Earth. Therefore, the major powers are the three Companies themselves. These Companies control the resources that the settlements need to survive. In this context, any revolution is just distant dream. But what if the settlements were no longer dependent on the Company resources...?

A very moving introduction. Welcome back!

That's a very good question, I've been working on it myself for the past few days. Obviously, Bartdon will be reluctant to trust any means of returning to Earth that is launched from Omelek and funded by Trans Pacific. Unfortunately, there may be no other alternative. There is no court to go to, other than those run by the Company. Yeah, Trans Pacific is really powerful. But not all-powerful. They cannot get away with blatant, public murder, particularly with someone as influent as Bartdon. But accidents can happen... In other news, my 1.2 install is mostly ready, except for a couple of critical mods. In the meantime I've been probing the outer system, and I will have lots of pretty pictures to show for my troubles. Then I can get around to designing and launching, and then writing again... Thanks for your patience.

The hull sections are from Nertea's Mk IV Spaceplane System mod. If you want rotating outboard engine pods you will need Infernal Robotics. Also @joelang6126, would you mind editing your post to remove the entire episode you quoted? It makes threads such as this one very difficult to follow when readers start doing this. Thanks. In the future, if you just want to get a forum-user's attention, you can type in that person's username with a commercial-at in front, like this: @UnusualAttitude

Congratulations, @p1t1o. I wish you both the very best. I don't know about materials (mine is a plain white gold band that is doing fine after a couple of years, despite my bass playing and gardening). But for that special, unique touch, have you considered engraving it? On the inside of my ring I have the latitude and day/month of the place and date we met for the first time. Madame Attitude (funny, that suits her) has the longitude and the year. We figured this would give some future archeologist something to think about...

You're clouds look really quite nice, particularly Earth and Venus. ... but still too demanding for this player's old potato. Putting aside for future reference, if I ever manage to upgrade to a pumpkin. Speaking of pumpkins, may I suggest a slightly paler and more yellow Titan? I find yours a little too vivid and orange. Well done, regardless.

Thanks! I shall. Bartdon has been a thorn in the side of the Board of Trans Pacific Resources for a while now. While they are pushing for a reckless all-out search for the Crew's datacores (that they hope will provide them with a technological advantage over their competitors), Bartdon has been urging for a much more cautious approach. And because he is in charge in the field, so far he has gotten his own way in a certain sense. Until now, Bartdon has been resourceful enough to wriggle his way back into a position where the Board really needed his leadership for the space programme. On Mars, when Bartdon cut off the Martian Face transmission, the Board got the final proof that they can't control him, and he would do things his own way, regardless. So they found a convenient way (that had been planned for all along should such a situation arise) to remove him. Permanently. The rest of the crew would have just been collateral. There are plenty more kerbonaut candidates waiting for their turn. Yes, the Board members are ruthless, and the world in which this story takes place is harsh, but I believe that I have been hinting at this since the beginning. Also, what could be worse for a resource company than having some game-changing sustainable technology (such as advanced fusion power) slip into the wrong hands (ie: anyone else's)...? I hope this makes things clearer for you. And don't worry, when I read back through this story, I do realise that I haven't made certain points obvious enough. This is just one of the quirks of posting it week-by-week, I'm afraid. Don't hesitate to ask.

Good grief... @Kergarin is merely stating that a longer runway would allow him to implement different designs that would be difficult or impossible with the existing one. This requires no new part to be added, it would have no impact on the performance of the game and would require minimal dev input (just a modification to the top-tier KSC), and allow the players who want to use it do some cool new stuff. Unless you consider limited runway length at top-tier to be a gameplay mechanic (makes sense, I suppose, but a shame for sandbox players and replica builders), I really don't see what the problem is.

My point is simply that the runway is too short for certain real/proposed hi-performance designs that many players, myself included, like to attempt to replicate. And sure, there are workarounds. But it would be nice to not have to resort to ugly gear on pylons or fairings, RATO, or yet-another-mod. Sheesh, just another 1,000 metres and I would be happy. And I fail to see how this would spoil anyone else's fun.

This is way too dismissive. OK, you shouldn't need a longer runway for most reasonably sized designs (tens of tonnes), but runway length for larger designs is an issue, and the suggestion of a longer runway is a perfectly reasonable one. I'm no stranger to designing large airframes, and I regularly encounter the following problems: - Lack of large (long) landing gear, making tail-strike a real challenge on long, sleek airframes. This is not an issue of landing gear placement in relation to CoM. I can get my aircraft to rotate, it just can't reach sufficient incidence to become airborne without a ridiculously high TWR. - FAR, although it is an awesome mod, does not simulate ground effect. No, it's not. It is about 2,5 kms long, which is regional airport size. Major international airports are 3-3,5 km or more, and some of the major test flight facilities (Istres in France) have 5 km. I'd be interested if anyone could name one real life large delta design (>100 tonnes) that can take off in less than 2,5 km at max weight..?

Yay, indeed. And thus ends Part Four: Too Big to Fail. Since new versions generally have apocalyptic consequences for my save, I'd really like to update my game to 1.2.whatever before launching my next crewed mission(s), and RSS/RO is not quite there yet. Getting everything up and running correctly on my old computer literally takes days of work, and then I will be designing some even more ambitious missions, so it may be a while before this story continues, I'm afraid. But continue it shall. I can't wait to see the look on Cam's face when he learns what the next harebrained scheme is.