wumpus

I'd recommend by doing simple missions and then taking the most simple next step possible, using the most simple rocket components you can (obviously you have enough power by putting a mark1 capsule on a twinboar booster, but getting it stable might be harder). Try something like: Launch a vessel! (hint: you need a manned capsule or remote core, then hit the spacebar). Get into space! (parachutes can be tricky if you go too high. I'd also recommend sticking with the mark1 capsule for manned missions this far up. Go into orbit! This is a big step up. Seasoned kerbanauts have been known to make plenty of adjustments to new rockets to get them into orbit. Minmus/Mun: I still recommend landing on Minmus first (note that in career mode this might not be an option due to radio links) for landing, but if you want to simply orbit (Apollo 8) or simply go there and return (upcoming SLS and/or Falcon missions) Mun should be easier. The trick to getting to Minmus is adjusting your inclination to match Minmus. Duna: Wait, what? The above missions will take awhile and you will know what you want out of this game before you are ready to blast off for Duna.

It is certainly better than less-serious SF writer Robert Anton Wilson's naming planets 10-11 (Pluto was still a planet) "Mickey" and "Goofy". RAW's main claim to space fame was writing a theme song for the proposed High Orbital Mini Earth. It went "HOME, HOME, on Lagrange..."

I like to claim that BO is the only space program that is free of politics, but even that isn't quite true. Still Bezos's independence from congress and NASA is impressive. Having spare billions will do that (I remember John Carmack saying he had budgeted a portion of his "mad money" for space. It was a *lot* of money, but it really wasn't enough to go far in space).

A team of kerbals lifts up the ship and carries it home. This is rather tiring so they attempt to eat the thing as a snack. The further they have to bring it back to KSC, the more "snack damage" occurs. This is why landing far away from KSC returns less kredits/roots than landing on KSC.

A lot of this depends on how high you want your orbit to be. If you are skimming the edge of the atmosphere (for more Oberth), you really won't be able to "warp to" (or use the physicsless warp) until after you've circularized. As someone who uses a lot of low-TWR designs for circularization, I probably *should* use a maneuver node. But I'll stick to KE and easily readable "time to AP" and AP/PE readings. Anyone know the efficiency of burning 1/2 burn length before AP vs. burning for constant time to AP? I know plenty of my designs would crash if I used a naive maneuver node (some of them barely coast at all), but I'd wonder about efficiency for less crazy launches.

Has Spacex always used "fire in the hole" staging? Of course, main engine cut-off, staging, second stage ignition weren't simultaneous, but more like someone hitting the spacebar three times in succession without having time to check to see if everything was going exactly right.

Obviously that was new as well. I was annoyed at the claim that fueling used boosters (early) was somehow more dangerous. I don't recall there being much left of the booster in either failure (although for in the one in question, I think the cargo wasn't destroyed until the second stage could no longer support it and it crashed into the pad/fire).

I suspect that NASA figured that US manned flight wouldn't survive such a loss and there was no justification for other plans. As long as congress (or whoever else controls the spending) insists on micromanaging things you will get cases like this. I'm fairly certain it would make a lot more sense to have split the shuttle program into manned and unmanned [cargo] missions, but that would let Congress simply cancel the manned missions so NASA never gave them the option. Don't underestimate Blue Origin. Bezos may not have [personally] the engineering chops to micromanage the program like Elon Musk, but at least that is the only space program that isn't ultimately answerable to politics.

I have to wonder how many teapot pictures are hung in front of telescopes on April 1. I could just see the NASA press release: We've located absolute proof of the divine. And she is a trickster goddess.

Except that those changes are for both new and used flights, and a new booster exploded. And while the [uncrewed] payload might be at risk, it certainly looks like the army of technicians needed are not (or at least much less at risk). This seems to be the type of change you make if you plan on having a launch cadence like spacex.

I must have been thinking of the Agena target vehicle, but that might have been launched by an Atlas (Agenas launched using both Thor and Atlas). But certainly NASA has used the Thor name.

How do you check? I'm pretty sure I was somewhere June-September 2013, but don't know how to check (I didn't apply for an account here right away).

Are they going to name it Thor? Considering the amount of human sacrifice to Odin, I'd strongly recommend Thor if going for a Norse name. And it isn't that you can only use "classical" god names, I'm pretty sure gemini launched on Thor boosters.

I've heard a lot of comments about schedule slippage with Spacex. The catch is that in 6 months they've put 6 satellites in orbit. It reminds me of the Groucho Marx quote "nobody goes there anymore, it's too crowded". Elon time is certainly a thing. But this isn't Elon time, this is a full launch manifest. I'm not seeing anyone else capable of clearing spacex's manifest out.

I'm not sure I can find them all. They are mostly backups, and probably all since 1.0 (I'd love to play the game "I bought", but unless Steam allows a ton more reversions, don't see how that's possible). At some point I'll have to scoop all of them up and zip them into a file (at which point they will continue to multiply). Not that I'm all that worried about Take Two, but it would be a really good idea to have a directory with all the working mods you need (especially in the case of RO/RSS).

I'm sure it's premature, but is there any indication of Raptor/Mars Colonial Ship being integrated vertically or horizontally?

Burning to turnover generally assumes that energy is free and crew comfort is the primary goal. Another possibility is time is most critical (and energy isn't really on the table): you burn whatever the crew can take during the initial burn, but there is never any reason to drop below 1g. L.E.Modest Jr. wrote a book that had a lot of this, but unfortunately it came out after KSP. I'm pretty sure he botched all the orbital mechanics (I *might* be wrong as he was mostly concerned with direct burns, but I really suspect my KSP-tuned orbital senses got it right). One related idea that might possibly be done would be "turnover at escape" (presumably for unmanned probes). This would involve using gravity assists to fling a probe to Mars, and then using ion motors for capture. In cases like this it is entirely possible that the ions are never used to get to Mars, only to "stop" once there. They start the slow change from Hohmann transfer to spiral orbit once slingshotted past the Moon, and don't stop until aerobraking.

Much harder than acceptable in real life (the magnets are also critical in saving your bacon). But if you forget your RSC thrusters, you get to do it without them. After a recent docking I became convinced that having reaction wheels on both the target and docking craft are more important than RSC thrusters.

Barely. And in some places there are regulations that prevent using effective nozzles at rocket grades you would consider play-doh. I have to admit, I really don't think anyone is going to build a compessed gas/liquid hybrid using play-doh as a fuel, but you never know.

Skylab spent *years* in a decaying orbit[1] that had to be roughly ~90 minutes. Any positive feedback oscillation would be pretty unstable and crash *way* earlier. I'm pretty sure the orbit was almost exactly circular up to the end. This isn't Kerbin, anything in LEO is eventually coming down (anything in GSO is almost certainly batted into low PE by the Moon before it comes down and I wouldn't be surprised if something from the graveyard orbit could eventually be ejected). [1] look up Shuttle plans to save Skylab. They new it was decaying when they planned its orbit (ISS requires a certain amount of fuel brought up with the other supplies, or maybe just some delta-v delivered by the docking craft).

I'm guessing Mars would be an exception. Your drone wouldn't look at all like a Cessna, it would strongly resemble a glider or U2 (although probably a propeller-powered glider, not jet powered). Packaging such a beast for the trip sounds like the fun part (especially since you have to unpack it at ~mach 1 during descent). I think this came up in the "circular runways" thread: I suggested that Mars would be the obvious place for a circular runway (Randal Monroe says mach 1 takeoff speed) to handle the craziness of Mars launch/land. Maybe Mars isn't any more possible (you try unfurling glider-sized/shaped wings during orbital descent).

No astronaut got space sick before Apollo. Even though plenty vomited aboard the "vomit comet", 0-gee didn't appear to affect the Mercury and Gemini astronauts. I *think* they were aware of the Russians getting space sick, but didn't think it could be due to being in space (because of so many NASA astronauts not getting sick). Best guess it was due to the tiny capsules and any real way to be turning differently than the capsule, because once they got into space with Apollo, some astronauts got sick. So it turned out there were advantages to a capsule that you could wear. PS. any idea how big the interior of the shuttle was?

How do you have a window for that? The fire department gets grumpy if you create an enormous fire and possibility of a bigger explosion a little outside of the scheduled time? I see the point, but I don't think "window" is the right word.

I'd recommend that anyone thinking about sandbox, to start in "career" and then keep applying cheats until everything is unlocked. That way you have the missions if you want them (you probably don't) and you also get reports on science and recovery data (I'm annoyed that I can't test recovery systems in sandbox that tell me how many credits/roots returned by recovery). I play career. I think it is a mistake (but I started playing before science mode, so why not). I tried the "milestone strategy" in hopes to turn the game into a "boldly go where no kerbal has gone before game", but it has some nasty prereqs and costs. Google around before trying that method.

I'd expect it to be fairly stable, with Ap shrinking the most thanks to Pe going the fastest through the thickest atmosphere (this should continually circularize any decaying orbit). Once the orbit fell into "skylab is falling", things wouldn't be all that stable, but it took several years (there were plans to save it with the Shuttle) to get that far down.