1101

Implies mass kill off of characters? Check. Schedule Slip? Check. This really is Game of Thrones for KSP. And it is good, and I eagerly await the next installment.

I think it's specifically a LOS to Cape Canaveral, what with it going under the horizon at that point. The Second stage had a similar call given around the point of SECO, I think.

Sounded like a very short landing burn before landing leg deploy - must be really trying to squeeze every last bit of performance out of it.

https://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/LRO/news/apollo-sites.html They are certainly there, but it's hard to state how intact they might be from a few pixels of image. Even if propellant leaked from them, I wouldn't expect much damage to be visible at the scale we see here. http://www.spaceinminiature.com/ref/apollo/sim7_images/fig14.jpg Obviously the image linked above hasn't had the ascent module take-off from it, so appearance may vary.

This thread does science? I forgot it did science.

Is the description of time for a static fire the 100% thrust rating duration, or Engine Startup - Engines off time?

Playing around with the transfer planner located at: http://alexmoon.github.io/ksp You can get some pretty quick potential courses. I got one for 9,000m/s dV, which would be a 210 day flight. If you meant 10 km/s total including getting to LKO, then it indicates a 6,500m/s burn for a 250 day flight too. Bear in mind that at such speeds slingshots are more or less useless as mentioned above, even if you're using a Tylo capture. Setting the planner for a capture burn puts it about 7km/s of dV, add in a Jool orbit of around 8 or so km/s you'd have a fun time aerobraking with an entry speed of around 15km/s. TL,DR: Totally doable for a flyby.

Looking on the footage posted upthread: An extremely close up view at around 4 minutes shows some faint puffs between First and 2nd stages, presumably the Fairings?

Or, behave like the proverbial pigeon and strut/produce mulch all over the board anyway, regardless of victory or not. I feel like your thoughts just went all Mass Effect. Coming up next time: "Kerbulan, you have changed nothing. Your species has the attention of those infinitely your greater. That which you know as kerbals are your salvation through.... Salvation?"

Well, it might be.... According to SpaceX, FH should be capable of 16.8tons to Mars, so what are they going to do with the rest of the payload?

So, if I'm remembering Culture novels correctly, he's moved on from Use of Weapons (OCISLY, JRTI drone ships) and is now on State of the Art, wherein the lead character lands on Earth from orbit via a car rebuilt for the task, and the ship Arbitrary sends a postcard to the BBC asking for Space Oddity to be played...

I half expect someone to draw a smiley face in it, like Picard did in that slow-mo warp core breach in TNG...

Or this? Or did you mean a face that has seen horror, rather than a face that is horror?

Wouldn't it be rather a worst case scenario, given higher local g(and so more thrust needed) and the presence of atmosphere narrowing the plume, amongst other issues?

Cheated an Albatross (The big, slow, high altitude style stock plane) into Orbit. Went as well as you might expect on the way down: Not pictured: The results of the flare maneuver near the runway - the wings folded together, broke apart and a highly amusing set of explosions were generated.

Any idea exactly how much gravity? Does it need 1g, or would it work at less?

I feel like having a submarine, which needs to have a density roughly that of Water, and the Tsiolkovsky equation just wouldn't mix, for a manned vehicle.

The fact these all happened after succeeding at their actual missions really helps that enjoyment, too.

A perfectly nominal re-entry procedure:

I'm not going to claim to be an expert, but if you have sufficient life support and time isn't too much of an issue, then you could drop off the lander/rock a lot further out. If your lander can be captured or slingshotted by a moon toward the needed atmospheric trajectory, the last impulse you need give it could be weeks before it gets close to the target. You would need a lot of processor power to calculate the trajectory, and well mapped out gravity well, but it could work, I think. Alternatively, if the enemy planet knows it is being watched, pretend it's a failure. Have a small lander system (like MOOSE) in among a much bigger decoy craft that disassembles during the entry sequence. Then, your manned bit looks just like a bit of debris and no one is any the wiser.

One thing I've seen as a reason not to use NTRs is potential public issues with putting nuclear reactors at risk of launch failure. How much worse for the environment than Hypergolics (already present in many, if not all, rockets), would it be? How would the effects differ between say, a launch off the Cape and debris falling into the sea, as opposed to Baikonur?

Still, a consideration in Hard Scifi for deflection from shooting, and also as an emergency backup if for some reason, you have no propellant but can still shoot.

Not sure about the exact composition of the plume for Hydrolox, but 'Ignition!' lists basically any combination of Hydrogen and Oxygen you like for the combustion chamber. Presumably once it's cooled down a bit in the plume, you'll just get the normal stuff, but:

What if, there already was a lot of air on the inside of the hollow shell, and our atmosphere (atmotorus?) was just the upper layer of it? Then at least we wouldn't suffocate. Admittedly then the interior wouldn't be overly breathable from overpressure and prone to ignition from huge amounts of oxygen, but we wouldn't suffocate, right?

I thought it was better off with a hydrogen rich mixture, as it gives better specific impulse? As well as not being horrendously oxidising?