wumpus

Some notes: The science lab is supposed to be limited to 500 science results (of lab processing). I'm guessing there is no limit on the science you are dumping in (although it should have the same limits as a capsule: you can't process the same experiment twice) The "research" button is limited to 500 points worth: but it only tells you the "data" worth, it doesn't tell you the "size" worth. If you are in a place with really lousy data (such as on Kerbin) you will fill the thing up with only a little bit of data (something like 50). Looks like this shouldn't be an issue in most play.

New versions have typically brought me to a re-start. There was at least one time when Jeb was stuck in a Minmus intercept orbit and kept getting batted around by the Mun (don't ask how that happened). I reloaded after determining I couldn't rescue him if he couldn't complete the same orbit twice.

Asparagus is nowhere near as important as it used to be, and is typically included as "important" due to previous editions (note: it is absolutely critical in the demo. Don't try to get to the Mun without it). I'd recommend using bigger engines and unpowered drop tanks before going to asparagus. Unless you are using Mechjeb to land (or can reliably hit the launch pad on your own), spaceplanes are the (near) zero-cost method of launching. Note that if you are already using mods stage recovery makes recovery painless while flight manager allows you to manually recover by doing a SVN-like checkpoint and and flying "both paths" of the rocket at different times (a must for space-x style recovery). It is also quite possible to build non-SSTO completely reusable rockets [without mods]. They are more tricky to fly (expect to either lose a few or reload, but I haven't learned to reliably land a spaceplane anyway) but should have a lower initial cost than an SSTO. The trick is to leave enough fuel in the "spent" stage to boost high enough to not get deleted (to orbit for [nearly] full recovery) and then get your upper stage into orbit before the lower stage is deleted. Typically you have to switch between rockets (and don't be surprised if it won't let you use the "[]" keys during ascent) to get both up and away. Expect to have a fairly steep angle of attack followed by a higher circularization burn than would be typically efficient (so you can get back to your initial stage). Finally, recovery of rockets can get pretty boring, so if that ever happens I suggest immediately stopping and playing another way. You don't want to burn out on recovering rockets when there is so much of KSP to explore (I stopped for months due to spending way to much time recovering). PS: for any reasonably tall rocket, I'd recommend recovery in Kerbin's oceans (preferably near KSC) while landing "sideways". Just put the parachutes in pairs along the fuel tanks (with plenty near the heavy engines) and watch it land. Otherwise you have to land on absolutely flat areas (like the launch pad or plains around KSC) or somehow convince SAS to keep the rocket straight while you stab the "recover rocket" button. Once the rocket falls over, it explodes and you recover only a few pieces.

The point of 10 degrees at 50 m/s is to get the gravity turn started. You want to be beyond 45 degrees at 20 to 30km, so you have to start early. The new aero model with 1.0.x isn't kind to the old "suddenly jerk your rocket over" of the earlier releases. That said, the aero model also allows greater efficiency through reduced gravity losses by having trust-to-weight ratios higher than 1.5 (although much less than 2.0) but you will have to manually turn the rocket (and get steering losses, but they will be offset by your lower gravity losses). As mentioned in the original post, fast rockets don't like to be steered. The problem with going straight up (assuming a 1.5 TWR) is that you are spending three times the thurst for every bit of acceleration you get. You want to get sideways as soon as possible so that you get as much acceleration from that thrust as you can. Obviously, you can't just go sideways from the launch pad (unless you are on a airless moon), but 45 degrees at 15km works much better than 0 degrees at 15 km. You could presumably try a late gravity turn with a TWR of 2.0 (or more, but I think kicker SRBs explode from overheating if you are over 2.1), but I don't know how you will find the means of turning at the speeds you will have (and you pretty much wasted all the speed you generated going up in the wrong direction). The first thing you need to learn about orbital mechanics is that velocity is everything. Height is only a side effect from getting your speed sufficiently high, and only needs to eventually hit 70+km (note that real rockets barely need any circularization burn. They have achieved nearly all the needed velocity on the way up).

This is the real answer for "what is wrong with Skylon". It doesn't really solve the issue of SSTO, as it still has ~7000m/s to go while carrying heavy air breathing engines (don't be too surprised if this isn't true. That first few thousand m/s takes nearly all (3/4 to 7/8) of the fuel and the resulting spacecraft might have a chance). I would expect that as a super fast airplane it might have a chance. Looking at how the Concorde disappeared without a whimper, I'm guessing the super-rich don't care to travel enough to justify it (more likely use a "traveling office" which makes the time cost moot). Otherwise a half-hour "UK-NYC" Skylon is a real possibility (don't ask about ticket prices). And as mentioned a two stage to orbit doesn't make sense at all. Basically you have something like Space-x (or competitors) only 20 years behind them. While it does have an advantage in fuel usage, that isn't a concern at all (maybe if they start now, in 20-30 years there will be enough flights to justify high efficiency to orbit ...).

Scott Kelly and Mikhail Kornienko exercised for something like two and a half hours per day over their year in space. I remember reading that the Skylab astronauts (who were up for much shorter lengths) hated their exercise times, largely because the sweat would pool on their skin in zero-gee. After a little googling, it looks like the treadmill had a serious fan (that hopefully knocked some of the sweat off) but the resistance training appeared to ignore such things (hopefully you could wipe down between sets). I have to wonder if spending such time exercising is sufficient motivation for a "gravity zone" in a space station or long term spacecraft (Mars intercept, perhaps). It doesn't look like the problem described in Skylab though: I suspect much of the culture aspect may have changed (Dr. Ken Cooper started the modern push for "exercise=health" during the space age when he was doing research for the Air Force to discover why pilots were having heart attacks while flying. He may have been in the perfect place to adjust astronaut attitudes).

Somehow, Jeb would feel right at home with Jezza's sports train. Pure kerbal engineering, and designed for the likes of him. Bill and Bob would presumably take the other, and hardly be surprised at how it turned out (also appearing to be the work of kerbals).

I suspect that the real number is more than a [US] billion. For one million, NASA could just throw them some spare change (a bunch of [US] companies have received millions to develop potential products for NASA. I suspect that for something as useful as a SABRE, they would easily pay more to a UK company). I'm also guessing that "making a bunch of assumptions and ignoring the risk that any of them are wrong" is needed to justify "economic sense". Note that the assumptions include such big things as "all the engineering of an unknown system" works and "there really is a market for putting lots more things [and people. And the things that are also people*] into space". In another thread I mentioned that the company behind the SOAR spaceplane wouldn't be profitable if a magic venture cap fairy came down and gave them a first working article of a rocket. Skylon is different, in that if Reaction Engines had a working SABRE (I still have my doubts about Skylon), they would at least be able to build something profitable (but don't be surprised if it takes *another* billion. Those things are expensive). It's that bit about getting the huge pile of money needed to do that, and then finding a way to pay back those who provided that big pile of money. * A Douglass Adams reference. Not implying that AI will exist before Skylon flies

Nope. It would help if you had specific complaints, but "none of my mods are updated yet, I'm quitting KSP" is already available. I'm just wondering if the rocket-building UI (we were told there was a UI overhaul) will work better. That's all I ask. (I'm running an AMD-FX8320 chip as well. Lousy single thread performance in hopes that "8*" threads will work better. But give me a better means of adding structs any day.) * only 8 by AMD's optimistic counts. And don't expect physics simulation to play well while sharing the floating point unit. But it needs all the help it can get considering how bad each individual core is.

Looks like the winds have died down and countdown is scheduled for tonight. Space-x vs. my misstatement: go! Reaction Engines' problems (which can really boiled down to too many money issues) break down into two sets: Skylon and SSTO issues: SSTO is a basically a converse error falacy*: since an efficient rocket will have 0 stages, SSTO believers seem to think that 0 stages mean an efficient rocket. It doesn't work that way. In any event, Skylon will have to pull ~7000m/s delta-v with the dead weight of the SABRE engine. While this is likely an improvement over previous SSTO ideas (which needed a couple thousand more delta-v), it still is fighting the rocket equation (and that dead weight in the engine isn't helping). SABRE issues: I'll assume that these are largely financial, but the hydrogen is likely a problem (anybody know if could work on jet fuel or even methane?). Rebuilding SSMEs was a nasty business and of all the criticisms of SLS, building non-resuable RS-25s is low on the list. I use this argument typically when people insist on bringing up hydrogen cars, but even in hydrogen's best enviornment (space) it has use: consider the biggest jets, for England-Australia a jet carries roughly half its weight in kerosene. Aircraft manufactures and their customers wildly value low weight in aircraft, yet won't even consider a hydrogen powered plane. Assuming you could supply sufficiently long flights with a takeoff weight of 2/3 or so of a kerosene plane, why aren't they jumping for it? Presumably the answer is that hydrogen is just that bad, and that you really want to avoid it for anything but the upper stages of rockets. Note: Spaceshipone has a delta-v of 1,700 m/s, less than what the SABRE can presumably provide with air-breathing mode. A London-New York flight would presumably need ~4,000 m/s. Making this a "stepping stone" to space makes a whole lot more sense than trying to get to orbit in one go, but I suspect that they can't even raise the money for that.

Are you seriously suggesting that the V2 was more accurate than the Paris gun? Both could roughly hit the city they targeted, nothing more (no idea what a V2 designed to attack Paris at close range would look like, presumably any increase in technology would allow more effective bombers than throwaway missiles for such short range). Also, the 100kg shell did as least as much damage as anything it contained. Finally, the V2's primary effect on the war was to increase British morale (or at least resolve). Generally speaking, terror campaigns such as that cost more to the bomber than the bombed (war over Britain*, US bombing Viet Nam) and would be a disaster in a war of attrition like the Great War. * the terror war against the English population. The original attacks against the RAF were dangerously effective. However the V2 simply didn't have the accuracy to directly attack the RAF and could only attack London (or other large cities). I doubt it. Consider the fuel pumps: the Wright brothers could build a 12 horsepower motor to power their plane, and they knew that was the technological limit between flying and not flying (I think they believed they needed half that, but it turned out that 12 hp needed a really stiff headwind and a copy 100 years after the fact couldn't get airborne without that wind). The V-2 had a 580hp turbine. I don't think the Wright brothers had a prayer of going suborbital, let alone to orbit. The control issue was just an offshoot of trying to build an orbital rocket with no idea how aerodynamics worked. In general, expect insurmountable issues in every direction (essentially requiring 40+ years of development). On entire reason of the thread. As you may have noticed, the technology differences are just too extreme. When it's steam engine time you get steam engines, not rocket engines (see the differences between the Wright brother's engines with Van Braun's. If you [or ChrisSpace] are changing the entire solar system, you either start with 1940s/1950s tech (in 1940/50 or magically transported to whatever era, Roman would make as much sense) or you shrink the planet to Kerbin size and allow the Baltimore Gun club to fire men to the moon orbit (presumably getting ~1600m/s from the gun itself and another 1600m/s from rockets in the projectile).

Money. A coworker (with both pilots license and A&R qualifications) once mentioned that in school for one of those an instructor asked what kept a plane up in the air. The "correct" answer was money. To really get the idea of Skylon's limitations, you need to use the "realism overhaul" (this should work better with 1.1, or maybe with Linux). They might work great (in KSP) to get a delta-v of ~3000m/s, but Earth requires a delta-v of over 9000 m/s. Since Skylon requires its own fuel after ~2000m/s of flight, the entire engine is essentially "dead weight" after that. Compare this to space-x. Hopefully, space-x will finally launch their rocket sometime next week. There aren't as much hopes for sticking the landing. Nevertheless, the rocket will launch. Here is the rub: the market for launches is so thin that the cost of throwing away a full blown rocket is less than the cost of the non-recoverable-engineering to build a fully reusable (and air-breathing) rocket. While I'd love to see a three-stage system where the first two stages are recoverable (and the first stage breathes air), I just don't expect the space market to pay for it. Personally, I felt that escape dynamics had a much better idea (they didn't require carrying an oxidizer, but could keep functioning all the way into space), but of course the initial costs were far too high. It all comes down to money, and how much it costs to launch each craft into space. Its hard enough to get the money to launch the first craft into space with rockets, and everything else is just too expensive for that first one (and for Skylon and Escape Dynamics it is more like that first hundred. I'm guessing there are 100 launches on order for all commercial launchers, but it isn't much more than that, at least not enough to expect a profit).

Have you tried stitching in stock KSP? You wind up on the launch pad with struts sticking out at a 45 degree angle (that were in the "right" place in the VAB). Squad either needs to fix this or put the joint fixes in stock.

Google the Paris gun. Same effect, lower cost (for non-nuclear ICBMs).

Two issues: going supersonic and maintaining control after going supersonic. Going supersonic. No brainer, just add thrust. Bullets were going supersonic in 1900 after all... You might find out that your control fins are a bad idea (eject them before going supersonic?) unless you know the one weird trick about SST aircraft... Maintaining control. You can only use fins for guidance past the sound barrier if you know about the cross-sectional rule. Either way, you will have to be doing "proper rocket science" and balancing on your nozzle when you exit the atmosphere. I remember hearing that the Germans knew about the cross-sectional rule during WWII (the V2 appears to follow it), while the war ended (and the X-1 had already flown) before Kelly Johnson knew why the P-38 lightning had control issues at speed. A bit of googling has let me down. I have no idea if Goddard produced rockets that broke the sound barrier. Then again, I don't think Goddard ever dealt with control (other than straight up). He may have been willing to simply let the get exactly on course from 0-500mph, then hopefully maintain course after that (spin stabalization should have been relatively easy). Maintaining a gravity turn would be considerably more difficult, although since you need control out of the atmosphere, it might not matter so much if you switch to vector control inside the atmosphere after you approach the sound barrier. - Note: In the "beat sputnik" thread, I assumed that the ancients wouldn't have a prayer of building a controllable nozzle (although the modern designers obviously have full modeling/wind tunnel apparatus), so it would essentially be the other way around: 1900 designers would have to build proper "rocket only" controls much earlier than Von Braun. And yes, this is one tiny bit of rocket science the 1900 engineers need to know. Probably one of the smallest details. I'd really recommend having it happen on Kerbal (which lets you have proper steam-punk designs instead of "futuristic 1940s designs").

If you do this, I can only recommend enough SRBs to get a significantly higher than 1.0 (1.5 will do nicely). If not (which *will* work, and gives a little better control) I would at least recommend side drop tanks (attach fuel tanks to decouplers on your main fuel tank, then attach fuel lines from your drop tanks to your main tank) so you don't have to drag the empty tanks with you while you gain acceleration. To take this further (typically done only in sandbox because it costs too much) put engines on those "drop tanks" and discover the old "asparagus staging" method. Note: have you installed Kerbal Engineer yet? It is virtually necessary to determine rocket performance (I think more boosters is a joke left over from earlier aero models which were vastly more forgiving). If your trust to weight ratio (TWR) is much more than 1.5 (especially more than 2.0) you will certainly see that adding SRBs (or any means of adding more thrust) isn't going to help at all. But if you are doing fine without SRBs, then don't bother with SRBs. Some of us like them, but I suspect it has more to do with slavishly reducing costs and learning with more limited part selection (when using a lot of basic thumpers made sense).

[UK's Rival] The Germans (and their chemical engineering) would presumably be the only choice. You might want to just further massage reality and let France compete, but I really don't think anyone (even the US) could challenge England in 1900. I spent far too long in the "beat Sputnik" thread and came to the conclusion that it would be prohibitively difficult to do such much before 1950. Remember, in 1900 aerodynamics simply wasn't understood: the Wright brothers had to build their own windtunnel. This gave them answers that were horribly wrong (the scaling gave them answers for a "mollasesphere" worse than the "souposphere" of <1.0.0) but still better than any available science. Since you obviously have to change the society and technology, can you cheat a little bit more and put them on a planet like Kerbal? On such a planet, the Baltimore Gun Club could build a cannon that shot a [young] Goddard-designed rocket at ~1500m/s. The rocket would then only need a further 1500m/s of delta-v and such might be possible with black powder alone (although double base propellants should be available). I seriously doubt that 1900 tech will get you to 9000 m/s (it would likely work under the "beat sputnik" rules since you would have a completely tested design handed to your 1900s engineers. Building such without computer design and testing is another story, see above lack of wind tunnels for a single example).

I haven't ran into a stability bug for awhile. Most of the bugs seem to be weird, repeatable things (probes with command chairs and no capsules being the biggie I've noticed). Most of the real problems I've seen are really with Steam not downloading all the files: this has lead to nasty bugs. My real gripes are with the UI, and it looks like they [I seem to recall Harvester personally] are working on it. The UI is the thing that makes me rage-quit, especially when my struts disappear (either right after putting them on or magically sprawling every which way when I go for launch).

The "expendable upper stage" sounded odd. Best guess is that anything that needed to be sent to orbit gets tossed out at the Karman line and the "expendable upper stage" is essentially a payload assist module that goes all the way to orbit. Don't expect to see it in the various renderings as it will appear way too big (when shown to scale). The CEO and crew must be pretty persuasive. I can't see this company making a profit even if a magic venture cap fairy swooped down and provided a working first spaceplane, there's too much competition (mostly Virgin Galactic) and too little market.

How complicated is it? Assuming you have kerbal engineer (and since you are playing with at least one other mod, you should have it), you will see the "burn time" of the SRB (about 1 minute for a kicker). Create a "fake stage" with just your main (stage 1) engine and 1.25m (same size as the SRB) tanks. Keeping adding fuel to the fake stage (basically one tank per SRB) until you have a burn time equal (or just under, you might want to remove some fuel) to the SRB. Now remove the "fake stage" and distribute the fuel tanks to the SRBs. Simple. Total cost: the time it took to do the above (trivial) * 300 funds per pair of fuel tanks for the fuel line. * Possibly an extra strut (you probably need the same number with or without fuel). The only drawbacks would be compared to alternate strategies: Build a first stage entirely out of SRBs. Save the cost of fuel lines and only use one decoupler. Good for smaller builds where that decoupler matters and for those not using your recovery mod. Build a first stage that burns out with the SRBs. Saves all the costs of above (including decoupler costs) and lets you switch engines to a lighter more vacuum friendly one. Basically the same level of complexity that you are asking about, but which is better entirely depends on what your primary engine is, and what you do with it (do you recover it? If not, recovering a mainsail and switching to a Poodle can be huge.) Basically I think it is a no-brainer to add drop tanks to SRBs in stage recovery if you are taking your main engine well into space (or recovering some other way). If you are getting "nearly all the recovery" from the SRBs but not the main engine, you might want to dump the engine as well.

No kidding. I built two craft, the first the "workable PAM" I suggested for a specific contract "escape Kerbin". It worked fine (One stayputnik, one hammer, one BACC thumper, some fins (on both stages) and a launch clamp holding it at an angle). Went inside Eve's orbit (doing science with such a craft is an exersize for the reader). I built a similar rocket (replaced the stayputnik with an octo probe, added sepratrons, added a decoupler between the hammer and octo (no problems letting the hammer escape kerbin), a small nosecone and some solar panels). This got within a few ~200,000 km (guessing the thing switched to km for encounters) of Eve, but used three separatrons to escape Kerbin, and left me one for corrections. Oddly enough, the last correction I needed almost exactly the same delta-v as the last sepratron, but was extraordinarily picky. I would need a much better launch and many more sepratrons. I think my biggest problem was controlling the ejection angle. As you might guess, my primitive spacecraft never bothered with a parking orbit and blasted straight at Eve, New Horizons style (it also left at a ~45 degree ejection which is "close enough" considering the burn but not what you would do with a liquid rocket (or even if you had more torque. I stuck to "hands off" launching for this one). The best way to control this would be to carefully handle the launch time (like a real rocket with a proper countdown...). Once that was done, some sort of 3rd stage (other than my 4 sepratrons) would be needed. Possibly just a modular girder with a decoupler and sepratrons, or possibly a flea (detuned, an early 3 stage probe nearly made Moho's orbit). Only then could you use a cluster of sepratrons to manage an encounter (and still require more patience than I have).

I should point out the exception to KSP's anti-pam design: the contract "escape Kerbal's sphere of influence" works very well with a last stage as a hammer (or possibly flea). The problem is that while SRBs have amazing fuel/dry weight (thus excellent delta-v), they don't provide sufficient control: you will probably need to bring control rockets that destroy all your precious dry weight and make the advantage moot. Kerbal (mad science) suggestion: bring sepratrons. Bring pairs of them and use them for correcting burns. Trial and error will be needed to perfect this, but I suspect that you should be able to fix your burns midcourse (note that you might need sepratrons that aren't full). [Side note: I have to try this...] As far as second stage SRBs, while they are rare they aren't quite the impossible solution typically described. They will work provided the third stage (and above) is sufficiently massive that the second stage doesn't effect the efficiency that much while the second stage is sufficiently light that the first stage can lift it*. I'd expect this type of thing to most likely happen once hammers are unlocked (giving you the hammer/thumper/load combo) or NERVAs (using the NERVA for the final circularization burn and not wanting to recover lower stages). Don't worry about not looking for such unicorns, while they do exist, you can probably find much better solutions using the time it takes to try them on all the other rockets... * the efficiency of SRBs come down to two things: cheap thrust and (relatively) low mass. The mass may be a surprise considering how heavy those things are, but as long as the dry mass of the stage is dominated by the upper stages the efficiency will be close to the difference in Isp. Once the dry mass starts to dominate, expect really bad efficiency. This is the same reason that they work so well as PAMs (ignoring control issues).

I've been told on this forum that the two craft hanging in the Smithsonian that qualify under this definition (the X-15 and Spaceshipone) don't qualify as "spaceplanes", at least under the typical KSP definition (which implies orbit, although I'm pretty sure both had more than 3400m/s delta-v).

Didn't we have a thread for the economics of a martian colony? Once you eliminate politics, the main relations will be economic. Also considering the history of puritans in america and the religious tolerance of the conquistadores/Spanish inquisition, I'd expect that outer space colonies will be pretty extremist, but you really can't predict which way (even without thread rules). A lot would depend on who the gatekeeper might be: Musk (presumably any takeover of spacex would be done to prevent wasting money on a colony), Putin (or successor), China?.