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Kibble

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Everything posted by Kibble

  1. Kibble
    IIRC Big Gemini was going to have an escape tower.
  2. Kibble
    I have never built a plane that can do anything but crash when I fail to land it.
  3. Kibble
    Pretty! Buran's RD-58's didn't fire during ascent except to circularize, like Shuttle's OMS, only kerosene-fueled.
  4. Kibble
    Launch towers aren't needed for stock KSP, cause rockets seem to be teleported to the pad already full of fuel and pilots and payload. Stability enhancers appear to simulate the hold-down arms, but its an unrealistic solution, they are integrated as part of the thrust deflection/ignitor structure. I would love to see a mod replicating an actual launch pad, with a LUT and tower for astronaut access. The rest of the launch pad structure could be a part attached to the rocket during construction!
  5. Kibble
    Its going to be important for capsules to have rotation RCS once proper aerodynamics is implemented - deep space reentry corridors depend on proper orientation for lift.
  6. Kibble
    I agree! LAS systems are very misrepresented in the game, on the verge of being useless. No jettison motors, it doesn't fire for long enough, no steering capability, and in the event of a pad abort it doesn't pull the astronauts high enough for effective parachute deployment.
  7. Kibble
    Great idea, and lovely models! Personally though, I'd prefer if not too many parts have complex systems of mechanical hatches, spacecraft (usually) aren't designed that way
  8. Kibble
    <3 5char
  9. Kibble
  10. Kibble
  11. Kibble
    Glamorous texture I love it <3
  12. Kibble
    I agree, OP. I bought the game cause I like rockets, but every single update makes air-breathing single stage to wherever you want spaceplanes better, and rockets less favorable in every aspect of gameplay.
  13. Kibble
    The limiting factor is how much heat you can dump into the fuel, a high-thrust resistojet would need truly enormous solar panels to match an equivalent electric-static rocket engine.
  14. Kibble
    For interplanetary propulsion you are much better off with solar-electrostatic propulsion, rather than electric-thermal. They tend to be more scalable, higher thrust, and better specific impulse. And I am sure that we'll see a lot more spacecraft propelled by solar electric rocket engines as time goes on, the technology is fairly new. Only one ion thruster has ever flown as the main propulsion on an interplanetary expedition - NSTAR, one on Deep Space 1, and three on Dawn.
  15. Kibble
    Typical high-power electric-thermal rocket engines like Arcjets or Resistojets are fueled by hydrazine, ammonia, or a nonreactive gas like xenon. They also have thrust on the order of fractions of a Newton. They also don't generally have very large nozzles compared to chemical-thermal rocket engines. Below is an example of a typical 3.3 kW Resistojet with a maximum thrust of .5 N.
  16. Kibble
    I just wish we had extensible hundred-meter booms!
  17. Kibble
    That's a great idea. It makes the game a little more realistic (I'm pretty sure most of the cost of a rocket launch is amortizing developement expenditure), and also encourages different styles of play than "reusable air hogging RAPIER spaceplane".
  18. Kibble
    Nuclear thermal rocket engines still emit deadly radiation, even if the exhaust isn't radioactive.
  19. Kibble
    Most of a space vehicle's mass is in its rocket fuel. I don't think you could design a spacecraft that concentrates all or even most of its dry mass between the astronauts and the nuclear reactor - especially because most of the non-payload dry mass is the engine itself, and fuel tanks - which are, by necessity hollow.
  20. Kibble
    Exactly! Plus they have very few benefits over traditional chemical-thermal propulsion - low TWR, undense propellant if you use hydrogen, and if you don't use hydrogen the specific impulse drops rapidly to being not that much better than chemical-thermal. It doesn't make a good space tug either, cause hydrogen isn't storable. Plus you have to carry a massive shadow shield if the spacecraft is piloted, and keep everything within the cone it casts, including another spacecraft if you are trying to dock. Nuclear reactors are also massive, complex, messy plumbing nightmares.
  21. Kibble
    If specific names or anything are tied to specific biological features it becomes prejudice. I hope the "female kerbals" thing just means the kerbals are going to have a more varied body type, and it doesn't affect gameplay whether its about names, skills, or how frequently each body type appears.
  22. Kibble
    I don't use nukes cause of suspension of disbelief
  23. Kibble
    I wish KSP would make no major violations of the laws of physics, like having planets that aren't impossibly dense, and having rocket fuels and other resources that reflect real things. It should still be whimsical, it should just also represent real life spaceflight. Things like the patched conics model isn't an egregious contradiction to actual orbital mechanics, for example.
  24. Kibble
    You should make the rocket engine part two pieces, with the six center rocket engines removable (like as one part) so that you can make the 1962 draft of N1. Poor Korolev </3
  25. Kibble
    So why has no one flown a microwave-thermal space vehicle ever? I don't know enough about the intricacies of aerospace design to answer that question, but there must be an answer otherwise we wouldn't of been flying only "inefficient chemical rocket engines" since the invention of human spaceflight, with no real flight-worthy microwave-thermal hardware even being considered, much less designed, tested, or flown. My guess is that the expected returns on the investment in such complex hardware and extensive infrastructure simply aren't high enough to justify replacing the already-sufficient convention of expendable multiple-stage chemical-thermal space vehicles. Especially considering that most of the payloads that go into space at all, are to geosynchronous altitude.
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