wumpus

Yes. I think the real answer is to send it up on an unmanned flight (but presumably a man-rated craft with a bunch of abort modes) and then arrange all the abort modes to land where you have a collection ship. It might take a lot of ships, but arranging that shouldn't be such an issue. And make it so it takes a bit more refining (and resources unavailable to anything less than a nation state) to make a bomb (I'm assuming this wouldn't kill the efficiency, especially if you can go as pure as you want as long as the total mass isn't large enough to build a bomb. Politics being what they are, if you lose one reactors worth of fuel I doubt you'll have a chance to lose another). A belt and suspenders solution to be sure, but nuclear proliferation is one of those things were you have multiple highly reliable and redundant protections.

You need to haul at least two clamp-o-tron juniors into orbit, and one all the way down the gravity well and back. If you want that tank to reliably be there (and not be deleted as debris) you will need an octoprobe as well. Expect to need RCS on your main ship (and have a use for that monopropellant in the capsule), and a storage bay so your octoprobe doesn't kill the aerodynamics of your ship. [2] Clamp-o-tron jr: .04t Octoprobe: .1 (OKTO 2=.04t) 4 RCS thrusters (on the lander so you can dock) :.2t service bay: .1t total = .44t Total amount of delta-v needed to go from Minmus orbit to Kerbin ~100m/s (probably less. Escape velocity is ~1.4 times orbital velocity, and my handy (.9) map says Minmus has an orbital velocity of 180m/s). I think the only way you are justifying taking that much extra mass to Minmus for >100m/s delta-v is to stick a couple of solar panels (probably needed but not included, but the weight is pretty trivial anyway) and antenna and call it a communication repeater. The Mun has an orbital velocity of 580, making it a much better justification (especially if you put on the communication antennas).

I'd simply use the "hold retrograde" SAS feature, set a timer for five minutes, switch to windowed mode (which is unfortunately quite cumbersome in KSP) and then chat on the forums for a few minutes (you can find out how long by creating a maneuver node in orbit that goes to a complete stop (vertical fall) and checking how long that will take). When you are more or less falling vertically, take over and land it. Can't help you with the orbit you should start at, but I'd go high in the belief that you don't need to care about an ion engine's fuel. Too low and crashing while reading the forum is possible.

Actually, a better means would be to surround the fuel core with U238, in such a way to mix (as a solution) during impact. It might make a better "dirty bomb", but there wouldn't be the issue of a chemist being able to separate the uranium from everything else and getting the purified deal. Once you mix the U238 in, the chemist is at step 1. I suspect this would get axed pretty quick, even a small bit of U238 would be extra mass you don't want, and the means to create the solution would be a danger after a successful flight (chuck it out the airlock with the rest of the trash and detonate? I guess let it explode on its own during reentry, less space junk). If a spacecraft fell near me, I'd be a lot more worried about the hydrazine and similar stuff than any plutonium (although I might be worried about the types that might be attracted by missing plutonium even though its the wrong stuff to build a bomb).

You mean all these attacks of naked aggression against the Pacific and they haven't even hit it yet? (yes, I doubt it burned up *that* much, but too much for a warhead).

In any air launch system I've seen, the means to get in the air is extremely reusable (balloon lift may be an exception). The entire system would likely be more reusable than the shuttle system. One thing to remember is that NASA has flown at least one space ship (shuttle orbiter) on top of a 747 and presumably still has it (possibly mothballed). Converting the hard point to decouplers would be an issue, but I've claimed the real issue would be separation (possible if you idle the 747's engines). I doubt that filling the RP-1 (in the rocket and the plane) is much of an issue. It seems to be standard procedure for both the Air Force and Navy. Filling the LOX is another story (presumably it leaks out too fast), and I really have to wonder if they need to refuel the LH2 from inside the plane. While it might not have been interns, I'm pretty sure it was a junior bunch. Certainly it helps for NASA to have studied all the issues, just in case they miss something pretty important. Although I wouldn't be too surprised if some of the bits (like having to match Delta-Heavy) were sent down from on high to make sure that it was effectively impossible. I'd have liked a project manager to tell them to go back and compute the size they would get without in flight LOX refueling and this type of thing makes me wonder if it wasn't to show how impossible air launch really is (it might work for smaller, but current tech seems to be doing ok there as well). It isn't that far from Orbital's original recipe. They have a plane with hardpoints (just ignore the tail in the way). They have the means to lift (just ignore the LOX refueling). I'm sure there was a herculean effort by the Orbital people to get that idea in space, and NASA seems only willing to write a white paper. Considering the "details" above, that's probably for the best (don't forget that Pegasus is solid rocket, at least stage 1).

That's good to know. But you still have to keep the U235-U238 ratio low enough to be useless to non-nuclear hungry nation states. Although this is likely meaningless: non-bomb grade stuff is likely useless to anyone but Iran and North Korea, and anything significantly better than commercial grade would be of interest to those two. Since neither has much of a deep-water Navy in the Atlantic (nor any other possible candidate), I suspect it is safe to launch from KSC (although I'm sure there will plenty helping the Air Force push for Vandenburg, if only claiming security for pork/turf). You might want to be a bit more careful to have a set of abort modes that lets you get to the wreckage first.

In KSP we ask for flight line, never bins. This is your only post? Or are you hiding your username? In case of hiding, "bins" are typically different products made on identical processes, presumably tested to different levels (rumour has it that most processes this century yield nearly identical chips. Things weren't always so upto sometime in the 90s). If you have 1GHz chip and a 2GHz chip that are otherwise identical, that is binning.

Any relation to the fabled "Alpha Cent C" from Anthropological lore? - The story goes there is a relatively primitive tribe with a story about multiple object connected to Alpha Cent. There were a few things suggesting that it could have been planted by Richard Burton or just about anyone passing through with the whimsical attitude needed to botch future anthropological work. Last time I head it mentioned, the tribe thought there were three items, and astronomers thought there were two (now three stars plus at least one planet). - but how much closer is Proxima centauri, and how long will that stay (if it is indeed orbiting).

Three days till Pegasus XL/CYGNSS (air launch). [it isn't quite dead yet.] And the economics work better when you don't have to redesign an aircraft and you launch smaller rockets.

Have you looked at the specs of the PS4/Xbox1? While I don't think any tablet ships 8 cores, don't be surprised if they are already shipping 4 cores with twice the power of a bobcat. Those things [bobcats] are wimpy (but seriously powerful for something like 2mm^2). The GPUs of the consoles might be mightier than the typical tablet (less sure about shield), but they really don't need as much resolution (although plenty have more than UHD TVs). The PC might be wildly better, but KSP>1.1 doesn't really need that much CPU or GPU. Memory might be more of an issue, but KSP has shown to fit into 2GB with a lot of room for mods (and android doesn't take up all that much. And don't forget that the tablet will be using OpenGL and not directX). I'd need to plug in a keyboard/mouse/joystick (console control a distant second option). Preferably a table that has a [likely tiny/flat] keyboard flipped around on the back, but still lets me plug in the real deal if available. I can't imagine trying to control a rocket by accelerometer.

Presumably you would want "just under" weapons grade, simply to make sure that a launch failure didn't crush the bits together "just right" in a way that went critical. The politics also means [in the US] following all the "top secret" procedures laid out by the DoD. Expect the price of everything this touches (and the secret part has a tendency to grab everybody else's budget on the grounds of "I need it but can't tell you why, that's classified") to go up by an order of magnitude (higher salaries plus mind-boggling inefficient procedures to keep things secret). Another US thing about such things is that it almost certainly has to fly out of Vandenburg (for security reasons), thus giving it a polar inclination. Not my first choice for a Mars Transfer Injection. Remember there is a long, long way between "weapons grade" and "[commercial] reactor grade". You should be able to get decent efficiency with uranium that can't be directly used for a bomb [but is rather close]. This would at least mean that anybody who got there hands on it would find it useless without massive centrifuges (easy enough to track down) or a weapons program far enough along not to bother with this. Politically, there would still be an enormous trust gap, but rolling it out on KSC would at least demonstrate that the DoD believed that relatively normal security would be sufficient.

Hum, Pegasus. Looks like there were lots of flights from 1990-2008 or so, then 2012, 2013, 2016. I had almost thought it was a dead platform (well, completely absorbed by the minotaur and other rockets where it became an upper stage). I'm guessing if you only want .4 tons it is the way to go (funny that they are launching from Florida. Obviously pegasus wasn't chosen for the inclination advantages, but that's where the hurricanes are so launch in Florida).

Ask again in five/ten years (probably well after Steam has it for a buck between sales). Buying the source implies that Squad will stop development of it (what's in it for them?), and even current users see little point in such a buy. Once it has gone out of development and is far less economically valuable (few sales for low amounts), you might get a good price for it. And the community (assuming it still exists) will need the source so much more. This reminds me of a current "is KSP dead/when will it die" thread. Squad still wants KSP and won't part with it cheaply. The community wouldn't be as able to promote it as well as Squad is doing now. "Buying the source" [for this anyway, Blender was a completely different case] is a strategy for when "KSP *is* dead" (from a developer/publisher standpoint, anyway).

One big problem with recovery is the "physics bubble". I think this has been enlarged, but it still gets tricky. Stage 1 gets to 70k. Note that if you aren't interested in going back to KSC (or you are as bad at hitting KSC as I am), using kickers (the largest SRBs) as a "stage .5" is probably a good idea. Stage 2 circularizes. Depending on your recovery strategy, this may require more thrust then otherwise economical. The catch is that if you think spacex has the right idea by recovering the lower stages first (which are the most expensive [not the kickbacks, don't recover them] and will hit the atmosphere with vastly lower reentry speeds), then KSP's physics bubble will work against you. At this point you have to pilot two ships. One option is flight manager http://forum.kerbalspaceprogram.com/index.php?/topic/72605-110-flight-manager-for-reusable-stages-fmrs-x110-experimental/ This lets you sit back and relax. Land the expensive stage and then go back and circularize from back when you staged. With stock KSP things get hairier. You can circularize fast and then switch back to your recovered vehicle. One of the more effective tricks is to circularize fast with the spent stage. Since it no longer has the mass of the upper stages on it (and little fuel) it can get into orbit (and deorbit) with not so much fuel. This helps even more when you de-orbit it right down on KSC (well maybe you can, I never really got the hang of precision targeting from [very] low orbit). WARNING: while I did practice this after deadly reentry came to stock, reentry has become even harder. One trick I used was heat shield on top of the fuel tank and airbrakes at the bottom to point it forward. Airbrakes are supposed to be nerfed for reentry, so don't count on this working. FURTHER WARNING: this burned me out on KSC. Don't miss the rest of your game in a driving need to optimize the start. final note: One of the times the physics bubble enlarged, I tried to recover SRBs fired "close to straight up". Presumably it is possible with fleas mounted on top of your SRBs to drive them back toward the ground, and parachutes auto opening at the right pressure and speed, but it looked like very little delta-v for much work.

Was it in the orbiter fora, before any public release of KSP? Somebody must have declared it dead, especially when Harverster was musing about a 2d orbiter. I'm amazed at the lack of ragequit posts. I think I saw a few when the aero model changed enough that all our old rockets started flipping, but even that was small. Any other companies looking for "early access" should think of this and wonder if they can do the same. Maybe there were more back in this time (I was a bit later), but I doubt it.

1. Dig through the video options and turn on the "turn names on" option. If you can't see it in space, you probably aren't going to dock. 2. Try landing first (the OP did, but for others). It should be a better introduction to "moving the prograde marker on to the target". This is absolutely critical. 3. Watch the videos, especially Scott Manley (while the KSP edition might be extremely out of date, docking really doesn't change. Not sure about "[" and "]", see below). 4. Build your rocket with RCS, adjust RCS keys. Ignore Scott Manley's advice and don't wait for the approach to happen, keep the prograde/retrograde symbols on the target symbols the whole way in (presumably mostly watching retrograde and gradually slowing to a stop). 5. Take some contracts to rescue kerbals. You need only get within a kilometer or so (but should try to get as close as possible). It is good practice, and if you play career mode you get free kerbals (they get expensive otherwise). 6. Finally do a docking mission. While you already learned most of it, there's still plenty to go. Remember that you have control of both ships (some instructional videos seem to hunt and find the docking port, for years you have been able to hop to the other ship with "[" and back with "]"). Use these to make sure the docking ships point toward each other. Only use RCS for final docking (you can use power if you forget, but remember to cut your power a good ways away and come in *slowly*. Then don't forget next time).

Don't forget to check where it moves when you use up that fuel. There is a reason that planes tend to store fuel in the wings (that and it makes all kinds of structural sense). Stability matters when landing.

That's annoying. I suppose I have to figure out the angle I need and find the angle I get from a Munshot (the easiest direct escape to compute) and make adjustments to determine what time of day to launch. It doesn't seem to be included in the information given (because you can simply use the maneuver nodes). It also requires parsing a bunch of savegame data and looks like a project that would be quickly abandoned. This assumes you are in a circularized orbit, not the highly elliptical one you would get from a direct ascent flight. Of course you have all the issues of direct escape (and the issues computing the exact time you need to launch) so that your initial orbit is eccentric in the correct path you want to go. And you also get all the issues of Mangalayan and the dreadfully slow nature of flight. But you get the advantages of both as well. You would likely gain even more Oberth this way. In fact, the nature of orbital flight means that if you burn into and orbit and begin to coast, you will return and cross your path at some point during the burn. If you were burning full throttle (which of course you would) during your "direct launch", the only way a second burn could lose Oberth would be if you managed to gain *all* your velocity at an AP lower than the atmosphere in a full direct escape launch. It might happen, but it seems pretty rare. And the amount of circularization is pretty small (stop when PE is 70k. You could even stop when 65k, I think it might work better for one burn, and I think Apollo used a very low parking orbit as well), especially when out halfway to the Mun. I'm pretty sure Mangalayan is the clear winner, but that you should continue burning all the way up to the point you breach the atmosphere (at least). Of course, that only works for a given rocket with a known TWR. Which TWR is optimal makes this a vastly more open ended question (aside from the obvious "full thrust from all available engines as the atmosphere thins*"), the choice of engines is the difficult task (presumably with Mangalayan the minimum-fuel choice is either LV-N or LV-909, but players who want to eventually get somewhere might have multiple poodles). * I'm fairly convinced that you want full thrust much lower as well, but the number of exceptions should tend to zero as the atmosphere thins to zero.

You really don't need the science jr back. I'm pretty sure that even Jeb can take out the science, but to reset it you need a scientist. (I *think* he can close the doors. That is a separate option than "reset", it closes the doors without a reset. The thing is still pretty fragile). My suggestion, don't bring it back. It typically causes more center of mass issues (flipping your capsule over and blowing everything up) than just itself dying as well. Typically I try to have the octoprobe unlocked around then so Bob can use it multiple times (and still have SAS), but for earlier flights (assuming you've unlocked EVAs) Jeb can spacewalk out and get it.

DON'T FORGET THE "SCIENCE DANCE". There is an annoying feature that only one type of each science can be stored in the kerbal's hands or in the crew cabin. So everytime you EVA, pick the "take the science" from the cockpit (typically crew reports) and store them [a clickable option] (in some magic "infinite science storage" that isn't inside the cabin). You need to do this with every new science. This is how you manage to rack up all EVAs over all the biomes when orbiting Kebin the first time (well most of them, you need a polar orbit to hit all of them). If you follow career mode to the Mun (I'd still recommend Minmus, it is easier and wildly easier to land multiple* times for massive science) you can still pop out for an EVA and collect the EVA report every time it looks like you might be over a different biome (especially big craters, they are almost always a biome). I'd go so far as to call the "science dance" an annoying bug that needs to be fixed, but Squad apparently doesn't agree (they've created more science containers, presumably for science spamming with the MPL**). * hitting all the biomes usually requires refueling. Don't expect to pull it off your first time there (thanks to the way the tech tree works). If it really is your *first* time there, don't worry about multiple landings, but try to remember to EVA a number of times while orbiting whatever body you want to land on. Also those moons are *big*: you don't want to use land travel to get to other biomes. Jetpacks do work well on Minmus, but I'd advise to save early and often before trying that as a beginner. If it doesn't work, the important thing is to revert to where you were and get the kerbals home with the science of at least one biome. ** The MPL is significantly further down the tech tree. You can decide whether you want to use it to grind when you get there.

Using the first KSP planner hit (and one I like): https://alexmoon.github.io/ksp/ Plotting the first optimal trip to Duna yields: Year 1, day 236 at 4:19:12 Any guesses if launching at exactly 4:19 on year 1, day 236 will provide a sufficiently accurate angle for direct escape? In practice, I suspect that burning halfway to Mun (with something like 700m/s delta-v) a day earlier would be more effective. It would take [at most] a tiny amount of circularization (and it would take tremendous thrust to require any) and let you set up a maneuver node for a more accurate flight. Which brings up the third option for those willing to go beyond KSP's simple tools: direct escape or Mangalayan maneuver? Manganlayan wins every time if you are using LV-N engines (and simply can't be beat by direct accent with high thrust engines), but I guess it all comes down to which gives you more Obereth (and the "correct" answer is likely a combination of the two, using direct accent to put your AP high enough that the costs in raising PE enough to use the Mangalayan strategy is even possible. In the end, it comes down to how much abuse you are willing to take avoiding KSP's internal tools for some fairly small delta-v gains.

While this is great, I'm convinced the real life of a game can be found in the mods. The "official" game has to appeal to virtually everybody (and compared to just about any other game, I can't think of anyone rage quitting over all the changes they've made). The mods can greatly appeal to a small sliver of that small sliver of the general population that loves KSP. The mods extend the game in many ways that the official releases just can't (although I'd think that Kerbal Engineer should be engulfed much like hyperedit and so many others). Realism Overhaul is probably the most extreme, and collects enough mods to appeal to many kerbalnauts while not really following Harvester's original vision of a "light hearted orbital". And if you really hate your processor, you can presumably fix the gravity as well. I also have to object that the whole idea that once a game hits peak popularity, or even is no longer actively developed it is dead. A game is dead when it is no longer played, and KSP doesn't have specific servers that require connection to play. It will live on as long as a PC (or Mac/PS4/XB1) can be emulated and somebody has a copy of KSP (obviously plenty of the old versions *are* dead, unless Havester pulls them out for old times sake). Is Starcraft[1] dead? When was it last updated? Counterstrike? On a thread on a different forum I pointed out ongoing mod development of Morrowind (a 2002 game with two more recent games in the series). Civilization 2 (not 5,4, or 3. TWO as in 1996). https://forums.civfanatics.com/forums/civ2-general-discussions.11/ Last comment, yesterday (I prefer 4. Gotta love Nimoy doing the voice work.) Kerbal Space Program has a certain advantage as there doesn't appear a clear roadmap to a KSP 2.0 (perhaps KSP-VR someday). This implies that while there won't be another direct boost to KSP, there also won't be anything effectively replacing it. I suspect this game will have a seriously long tail. [afterword] I'm also confused as to what more can be done in sandbox. I've felt that the exodus of devs is due to completion of the sandbox. Career mode obviously needs work, but that is a different set of skills. What more do you want? Multiplayer: It seems multiplayer is a critical feature to some people. Except that space travel is *slow*. How do you deal with multiple players wanting to run time at different speeds? Realism: Realism overhaul exists, as far as I know Ferram aerospace still improves the [much better than it used to be] stock aero model. Principia exists (with n-body gravity), but I don't know how stable it is. Interstellar: Interstellar travel is fundamentally different from interplanetary model and typically requires technology that doesn't even exist in the lab. Expect this to stay as a mod. Here's a hint: of the above can can be found in mods (no idea if the multi-player hack is current), and would likely change the game too much to expect the entire player base to move to such new play. I'd also like to see less bugs, but I'd like to see that in all software across the board. And a pony, and my very own rocket.

10% bigger implies almost no delta-v change (and I think launching at ground instead of mach 3 adds 100%, but nobody is talking about mach 3). But even adding 50% more fuel (and thrust) to a rocket is nothing compared to building an albatross like stratolaunch (Whiteknight was dealing with a rocket that needed a few thousand m/s, not 9000+ like a satellite launch). The linked article suggested 50% more cargo on a rocket 20% lighter than a falcon 9. But it still has all the advantages of being a "paper rocket", not to mention some serious aircraft issues. My guess is that if rockets landed a bit more reliably [think Musk's "thousands of flights per booster"], you might stick a jet engine in for stage 1 (no airplane, just stick the engine under the booster). Until then, rockets provide more thrust for less cost.

Way back on USENET (when the thing was still published regularly), there was a claim that the last book would be nothing but the wind blowing snow over all the graves. Then again, I don't think I've read any since then (I've learned not to start unfinished series since then). I'm pretty sure that plenty of the characters I've heard mentioned weren't in the first few books, so presumably he is introducing new characters while killing off the rest. I've also heard that by the time "War and Peace" is over, almost everybody is dead.