DDE

Well, the problem is, many NERVA models burn through their fuel rods in a single burn. Hence all the multi-stage designs from the 1960s. @SomeGuy123, while nominally the propellant is supposed to be the coolant, the radiators help with any escaping heat, and then there are the start-up/cool-down cycles, which require either radiators or active cooling at the cost of propellant. Classic NERVA designs indeed have no radiators but a pair of opposed nozzles that I think are used for expendable coolant.

If they burnt at 542 sec, now THAT would be on the national news for a month.

Interlude: Spoils of War “Flux weld along the edge,” Val observed, standing back up, “How thick do you reckon is this door?” “Standard door fortified against atomic blast. Steel armourplate around ferroconcrete layer,” one of Bill’s contractors from KADB, a massive guy with a thick accent, responded, “Total up to one meter.” “Well… we can go back and try to descend through the vents… What are you doing?” “Fluorine-magnesium torch. Very hot. Should stand back.” “Gas! Gas! Gas!” Valentina shouted before ducking behind the nearest corner and pulling on her gas mask. Bill’s engine design exploits produced such “torches” – as well as new types of high explosives – on a regular basis. She still remembered the two-thousand-yard stare of an intern whom he’d made burn dicyanoacetylene with concentrated ozone; the engine’s steady-state chamber temperature clocked in at a whopping 6000 K. Kermanov’s hellfire projector lit up and began to burn through the door, with fountains of sparks, small explosions, and a massive cloud of hydrofluoric acid fumes. The door was reduced to slag in under a minute, and Val moved in, her ‘hand-held semi-automatic flare rocket launcher’ at the ready. ---------- Jeb marched into the tiny office next to Flagship Mission Control, and began to pin the fresh photographs onto the board. Eilphie was cuddled up under a blanket in the spinning chair; they’d been unable to part her with the water bottle after the six-hour suited flight. “So?” “Well…” Bill drawled, looking at the photograph, “I have to agree with our prodigal geologist here. That is a Moho with a specialist electronics package on top of it. The propulsive stage has a Terrier underneath. Ladder on one side, the landing radar and optics package on the other – here, under the interstage. In the skirt… wide-angle and narrow-angle spotlights, battery banks and…” “The finned canisters,” Jeb added, “Any guess what those are?” “There are no photocells, so, by exclusion, that would be the power source. Radiator fins mean plenty of waste heat, so it’s a thermoelectric system rather than a chemical one… We worked on something like this. Thermocouples with the gradient maintained through heat of blutonium decay. Stable power output for decades.” “Great, I’ve scattered two of them all over the western desert,” Eil complained from where she was sitting. “Don’t…” Jeb began. “…be so sure,” Bill interrupted, “They’re bound to be pretty solidly encased, and the stage’s conical shape makes it quite likely they ended up out of the worst heat. They’re probably pancaked in some random dune.” “We have to suspend all long-ranged manned flights indefinitely,” Jeb blurted out. “Why?” Eil protested. “Look what we’ve got!” Val announced, shouldering her way through the door, before almost crushing through the table with a blutonium generator. “How many?” Bill asked. “A dozen, plus a hundred empty ones and storage cases. They had a full reactor set-up in there.” Jeb moaned. “What?” “These mean Fitz had far bigger plans than I thought. They can power any sort of surprizes. We can’t even survive a night on the Mun? Well, these kept the Protector powered and prevented it from freezing. Until we manage to dig through absolutely everything Fitz’s people have left behind, I can’t let anyone go beyond LKO.” “Well, that’s gonna be a problem,” Val responded, “We’ve found pretty big piles of ashes where their data cabinets used to be.” Jeb exhaled loudly. “What else?” “Three spare Protectors. Some parts from the Athens bogie. Three brand-new booster types. One was just a clustering of Dachshunds, but the other two used a weird four-nozzle motor with integrated verniers. Best we can tell, the Protector was launched on a trio of them.” “What’s the third?” “Looks like they were trying to cook up a propulsive landed LKO ship… trying being the key word.” “Can we use the new engine?” Jeb interrupted. “Flox-70,” Val smiled. “What?” “A 30-70 mixture of liquid oxygen and liquid fluorine. Doesn’t require replacing the plumbing, pretty much the optimal oxidizer for kerosene, but there’s a lot of strong acid in the exhaust,” Bill explained. “Whoa,” Jeb exclaimed, “That’s some terrifying commitment.”

Chapter 17: Yarrrr! “Away team, Hermes, how copy? Kath, please check our position, can’t get through to Eil.” “We’re in LOS. How’s the high-gain?” “CAPCOM, Hermes, how copy?” “Good copy, Hermes,” Gene responded. “CAPCOM, Hermes, be advised, observing fault in Communotron 16. No response from the away team, no squawk from the lander…” ---------- Eilphie was quite busy digging through the thin layer of munar dust. The crater was clearly younger than the basalt flooding the region, and there was quite a bit of ejecta and candidate meteorite fragments. Briefly, she glanced back at the lander. Nah, she was seeing things, she thought. This was not new – suit overheating and overdose of adrenaline were some of the problems outlined back in the Academy. Except that the lander’s rockets proceeded to reignite and throw up a cloud of dust. “Wha…” was the only thing Eilphie managed to mouth. The lander blasted off, ripping the drill head off in the process. “Wha… what?” Eilphie continued, the gravity of the situation slowly dawning on her. She was ten million miles away from home, with less than six hours of life support and no way of escape. About to have her slow death broadcast on live television. Her hyperventilation was steaming up the helmet. Maybe she should start by removing that thing. Get over with it. The thin crescent of Kerbin would hover above her. Forever. How did that guy got to the Mun anyway, she idly wondered. “On a rocket, dummy!” she shouted at herself, and began to erratically scan the bottom of the crater around her. ---------- Rosgrid smacked the beeping console. “Got a squawk from the Gadfly’s docking radar.” “Good, she’s coming in. Set transponder to beacon mode.” ---------- Eil ran, stumbling, for well over a kilometre. Mun rocks were fairly smooth boulders, in spite of lack of erosion; an artificial object was thus quite distinct from afar – once you began to look for one specifically. Her suspicions were only reinforced as she got close. The white conical propulsive stage of the Athens bogie, topped off by a Moho capsule sporting a whacking big radio antenna – and a Kermerican flag on the side. Typical government equipment, she thought. The ladder only began near her nose, and a pull-up while wearing a spacesuit was no trivial task. Finally, she got up to the return vehicle. With another pull-up she managed to place herself into the seat, and surveyed the interior. It did look like the old Moho with several updated computers slapped on top of old avionics. Like the rest of Mohos, it had no short-sleeve life support, but standard suit umbilicals. “Enter personal access code,” one of them demanded, with a small interface option reading “Emergency override.” Since Eilphie regretfully could not drag the hijacker back there and beat the password out of him, she clicked on that one, and paused. Government tech. It had to be obvious. Naturally, it had to be stupid. “00000000,” she tapped. “Override accepted,” the capsule responded. Quickly, she got to the radio controls. The radio was set to loop a noise track. Ingenious. “Mayday! Mayday!” she managed to bark into the radio before being shut off by a coughing fit. “This is CAPCOM, come again?” “It’s the away team. One of Fitz’s guys got here and stole my lander,” Eil announced with unexpected, frightening serenity. “And where you’d be?” Gene responded with icy calm. “Oh, I’ve just stolen his ship, it has a model 32 radio with some sort of interference generator,” she said, reaching under her seat. “Interrogative: have you checked for the self-destruct charge?” “You mean the blast pack I’ve just chucked overboard?” ---------- “Hermes, CAPCOM, cease docking procedures and initiate departure immediately!” “Say again?” “The lander has been compromised. You are to avoid capture by the hostile element onboard.” “What the krak is that supposed to mean?” Rosgrid exploded. “Fitz,” Kath responded quietly. ---------- Eilphie was very busy trying to remember everything she’d known about Moho’s flight computers. All she’d gotten thus far was lock the door and engage the external lights. ---------- “You sent them off without checking if it’s a DA?” Bill asked Gene, and shook his head. “Away team, come in.” “Good copy.” “Tell me what you see.” “An AR-202 flight computer suite with some sort of supplemental blocking mechanisms on top of it. Status diagram says it’s an ‘XF-2 Protector’. It’s a Moho capsule with an electronics bay on top, mounted on a conical Terrier stage…” “Stop.” “…yeah?” “Input V06N24E.” “Ok, it’s reporting guidance star acquisition.” “Good, give it thirty seconds, then send command V01N45E and make sure it goes into Major Program 105.” “And what would that be?” “Before Sarnus, we planned to take Moho to the Mun. It’s the leftover autoreturn program.” The Terrier fired unexpectedly. “It’s working, it’s working!” “Protector, Flight, confirming good entry trajectory… “You’re foolish to think you’ve seen the last of us,” an unfamiliar male voice butted in. “All callsigns, go to channel 3-2-0,” Bill announced, before shoving the microphone into the speaker.” He waited for a minute before resuming comms. “Eil, I need you to go on EVA and snap as many images of the vehicle as you can.” ---------- “I told him it’s a bad idea,” the agent growled, weighing his options. The smashed-up radio sparked incessantly. The lander had about half the ΔV required for a landing. That left him with one other option. He burned what was left of the fuel, changing the inclination significantly. Then he opened the door and kicked free of the lander. Without the lander, he still had a chance. He had four cans of nitromethane in case the Hermes tried to evade his boarding attempt at close range, and he intended to use all of them. He’d miscalculated. The landing was bone-jarring. Somehow Kirrim managed to roll without breaking anything. “I hate this job.” He got up, and dusted off. One of the monoprop cans had been jarred loose and lay beside him. He kicked in, and it burst open and zipped away. He had known perfectly well where he was headed, and 500 m was pretty good accuracy. He glanced at what all this fuss was about before boarding his backup ship. ---------- ---------- “She’s coming in,” Gene noted. “Flight, Protector, RV sep, over and out.” They were crazy to plan to go to Mun by Moho, she thought, having spent five hours strapped in a seat and unable to take her helmet off. “Flight, SAR, LZ confirmed.” “Copy that,” Val responded wearily, “Tower, send up the Gull.” “Acknowledged. Gull, bolter.” “Full throttle, Tower.” “Boosters in three, two, one, ignition!” “Seagull, Tower, confirming RATO jettison, proceed to heading two-six-zero.” ---------- ---------- President Fitz Kerman was back at the Emerald House, and quite busy. Billions needed management and misplacement. Pesky genii were busy exploring nearby stellar bodies, poking their noses into where they needn’t… The intercom set into his desk buzzed. “Yes,” he yelled into it. “Jebediah Kerman at the front gate.” “Take care of him!” the Kermerican president responded, and stuck his nose back into the paperwork. There was a pistol shot outside, making him sit up sharply. When he told the agents to handle him, he didn’t quite mean ‘shoot to kill’. There were yet more blasts of gunfire, along with slight sizzling and what sounded like cracks of lightning. Then, a deafening silence. A very pale-faced agent ran in, shut and locked the door behind him, and took position behind the corner, weapon drawn. In less than half a minute, the lock exploded inwards, showering Fitz – who remained had remained seated in mounting alarm – with splinters of the door, which was then kicked inwards. Jebediah Kerman marched in. The last agent standing promptly fired at him, dead centre, only for the bullet to turn into a shower of sparks. Jeb, in turn, casually raised a bizarre weapon with a barrel perforated along its entire length, sending a shot that hit the opponent with crackles of lightning. He keeled over. “So, Mr. Kerman, I believe that recent events require a statement on my part,” Jeb proclaimed icily, pulling a spare chair across the room, clambering onto it, and putting his boots on Fitz’s table. “You tried to get three of my people killed,” he spat out, before abruptly checking his watch. “And what do you expect to hear?” Fitz responded, his voice an octave too high due to the pistol at Jeb’s side. “What I’m going to hear later this evening is ‘I did not have sexual relations with that woman’, but the time is yet to come. “What I want you to hear is that there are consequences when mere mortals try to fight someone who has an eye in the sky. The future belongs to us, Fitz, and you’re helpless to stop it. “Oh, and among other things you can’t stop is the evening news!” Jeb grinned, edging towards the television without letting the President out of sight. “…today, Channel One can exclusively report on the recently revealed information,” the usually hysterical Judy Kerman screeched, “Based on anonymously leaked information from within the Office of the President, President Fitz Kerman has utilized a portion of the acquisition funding secured for the Sarnus and Sewage Interface Collation Kits programs to purchase a 600-bedroom apartment complete with an underground airstrip…” “The bit with the five mistresses is near the end,” the spaceman chuckled. As Fitz lunged at him, Jeb squeezed off three more rockets.

It can if you keep sending out ships that keep pushing it. Note that I'm not saying anything about the condition of the station.

*Cough cough* reboost via Progress tugs or the Zarya FGB's motors. With the former, we technically could keep it flying indefinitely.

Chapter 16: Creaks and Spooks The sound of the air-horn woke Val out of her slumber, known otherwise as pretending to do paperwork. She looked out the window. Bill was outside, on top of a bizarre contraption parked smack in front of the building. “What gives?” she demanded in direction of the walls as she zigzagged down the stairs. The… trolley he was perched on was barely a pair of metal frames, two wiry seats with precisely enough space for a suit life support and propulsive package, and a massive fuel tank on the back slapped with H2O2 stickers. The rear assembly was supported by an extra wheel pair. “Anaerobic propulsion via monopropellant?” she asked, “You’re planning on taking this… somewhere?” “I’m having significant qualms over use of batteries,” Bill mused, “Chemical fuel cells may be lighter, yet quite sufficient for any reasonable mission. Care to try a ride?” “Better than anything I have in mind.” The seat was incredibly uncomfortable for someone not in a thick spacesuit; however, she noticed that Bill fitted the seat with a sleeping bag, and another one was tucked behind her seat. Bill began to take the… vehicle off the pathways around the admin building. The electric motors in the four rear wheels whined loudly. He took the trolley down the steep slope behind Mortimer’s pillbox. Naturally, the left front wheel column got torn off. “We’re testing! This is entirely intentional!” he screamed in a mocking high-pitched voice as Val giggled madly. ---------- They drove directly east. The rest of the ride went fairly normally. The experimental vehicle handled natural slopes of the Exclusion Zone well. The twin fuel cells ran smoothly, powering the buffer battery reliably. As night approached, Bill kicked in the lights. After exactly an hour, he let off the throttle. “So… 27237 m on the odometer, average speed 75 kph or so…” Val began to summarize. “Tank’s at 92%, so total mileage is at three hundred forty kilometres four hundred sixty-two meters and fifty centimetres.” “Are the centimetres important?” “Very.” ---------- Prospector 2 arrived to Minmus first. The probe began a sequence of burns to put itself into the target orbit. Hermes followed them in. The Tunguska stage had been left behind at Kerbin. For Minmus orbit injection, Hermes’s Terrier was quite adequate. The then lengthy landing process began. The new twin motor was proving itself very energetic. Yaroslav killed the engine as all touchdown markers lit. The sun was slowly slipping away, leaving the thin crescents of Mun and Kerbin hovering among the stars. “So,” he began to narrate to his camera, “I want to be on the Great Flats at dawn. But, after four hours of landing…” he yawned, quite sincerely, “Those Minmus orbits are slow, horrendously. It just barely moves in front of you. On Mun, due to its long day an overnight stay is suicide. I’ve killed the vehicle computer, almost completely shut down cabin heating, and only the alarm and the short-range radio are on; I’ve got a bunch of humidity absorbers to prevent condensate build-up. Let’s see if I survive till dawn.” He pulled the blanket closer to him. ---------- The alarm probably prevented him from freezing to death, despite the blanket and the spacesuit. The batteries were almost flat, and his breath was steamy. Nevertheless, he clamped down the helmet, and vented the pressure vessel. The solar cells would recharge the lander by the time he’d be back. The suit had radiators, but no heating – other than the wearer, which left Slava spazzing around as much as he could, leaping well above the Gadfly. Finally, he could be bothered to check the minty-green soil under his feet. “Lander legs are about two centimetres in,” he began to narrate again, “The surface is homogenous rock-ice crust covered by green powder. Will drill once I get back. “Now… radar altimeter check. Gyrocompass check. Jets check. Target distance 18 km. We’re go for launch.” He briefly entered the sunlight at the upper half of his trajectory. As he descended back into the darkness, he watched the altimeter and the variometer carefully. The flight plan was to begin the braking burn at 1 km, and even then he got pretty of wiggle room. Finally, he settled down on the incredibly flat, featureless surface. It wasn’t ice; he’d expected genuine water ice from the Pathfinder’s photos and scans, but what he got was, at least on the surface, more like cement. That explained the lower albedo. His bet was now on calcium hydrates with a good portion of chlorine compounds. ---------- “So, anyway, Gadfly’s a dead end,” Raygan continued. “Well, it’s not that bad, we still have those two rift valleys and it can reach Minmus’s poles…” Jeb protested. “And? What’s next? The payload tolerances are awful, and besides, what can one egghead do?” “Steady on, wrench monkey! Sounds like you’re bucking for an away job.” “Guess I am,” Raygan continued after a pause, “We’re going to build things there eventually. Besides, it’s not the only dead end in the program.” “You know something I don’t?” “Soon as we get back, Bill is going approach you for funding for a smaller Mainsail equivalent.” “Well, that’s hardly unexpected. Prospectors put the Vector system to the limit.” “Problem is, engine development from a blank slate is no small deal. Plus, he’s still labouring on how to put the Vulkan tug stage into orbit.” “Last I heard, he’s considering an asymmetric booster. That’s uncharted waters right there, too.” “Uncharted waters…” Raygun sighed, “What were our options for Sarnus V?” “Direct Ascent,” Jeb began to count off, “Rugged, inefficient, pretty much not an option with our increased safety tolerances bloating the lander size. “Kerbin Orbit Rendezvous. No considerable improvement, requires new techniques for orbital assembly. “Munar Surface Rendezvous. Literal pipe dream – precision landing and EVA refuelling operations from a pre-placed fuel depot. “Munar Orbit Rendezvous. What we’re doing now. “If you try a bigger lander, you might run into payload stability problems…” “Why do we have to launch together?” Raygan interjected as soon as Jeb paused for breath. “Because… You’re proposing that we preplace the lander into Munar orbit and rendezvous twice?” “I don’t see a problem there. Plus, if we apply our new safety methods, removing the lander from the manned launch is an immense improvement,” Raygan rattled off, “And MSR is rubbish only because that fuel is hauled from Kerbin anyway.” “You’re proposing wilderness refuelling?” Jeb blinked. “We’ll have to start somewhere sooner or later!” ---------- After an hour of work, Slava had barely scratched the surface of the flats, but what he was seeing was already confirming the new hypothesis. He’d scratched enough samples to work with. Although now he had to wonder where such a bizarre moon had come from. The sun was blinding. It turned out that the mist that Pathfinder had supposedly spotted was yet another lie; this further reinforced the model of Minmus as a rock-ice pile coated in enough protective salts to stave off the heat. The tremors were certainly there, but they were far from what he’d imagined. Back in the lander he’d confirmed that they continued throughout the night, detectable from the other side of the small moon. “Away team to Hermes, how copy?” he finally said. “Good copy, we’re approximately one hour away from the terminator, how’s the trip going?” “Site 1’s giving me good data. I’m preparing to jump back to base and then go into the northern bay.” With daylight, the navigation was slightly simplified, but the portable altimeter remained a crucial improvement to these jumps. He'd plopped down next to the tiny lander, the weak gravity giving Yaroslav pretty of leeway for manoeuvring. There was no need for repressurization, and long coasts in freefall passed as breaks; he just had to start the drill and swap out the peroxide bottle. On introspection, the newly-designated Sinus Stridentia did look like a bay. Originally, not unlike Mun’s mare, Mimus’s flats were believed to be seas. Ultimately, they probably flowed, if slowly – the qualities of hydrates under vacuum obviously were never studied. The absence of craters would also have to be explained later on. Right at the moment, the flats were giving Kermanov attitude and stubbornly resisted having a flag planted in them. He had to spin it using the flag holder as a crank, drilling into the damned cement. ---------- “Hermes, away team, requesting ascent solution,” Yaroslav said into the radio, before getting back to the spectral read-outs, attempting to divine whether or not they were mostly Chamosite. “Away team, Hermes, stand by to receive, over,” Jeb responded. ---------- Gadfly may have been obsolete before it was launched, but the program went into full swing anyway – another Munar landing mission blasted off, with the crew slapped together from available hands: Eilphie, Kathula and Roszie. Two of them had been part of the original Mimus mission, while Roszie hadn’t left Kerbin orbit. Eil was dropped off in her lander atop the transfer stage. This time the plan was to use the Tunguska for as long as possible to conserve the lander’s fuel. The stage was ejected barely a kilometre above the surface, and rammed into the wall of the target crater. The flight program began with the first EVA, aimed at initial exploration of the LZ. The LZ itself was at the southern rim of the north-west impact basin, recessed by several hundred meters relative to most of the crater floor. “Basalt, basalt, basalt, and… basalt,” Eilphie remarked, looking around herself at the dark surface with occasional insets of impact products. The previously negotiated name for the area was Vallis Fortuna, but as she tried to stick a flag into it, the name didn’t seem too fitting. ---------- “We’re dark on the rock,” Special Agent Kirrim Kerman remarked to himself, checking his holster, “Mission is a go.”

To be honest, the only thing common between an R-7 and a practical ICBM is that they are large rockets. Multiple core aspects of R-7 made it completely worthless as a weapon, from its strap-on "petals" of the first stage to its cryogenic propellants. From there on, the development branches began to split even further; unlike the US, Sergei Korolev essentially considered hypergolic boosters to be incompatible with manned spaceflight, and Soviet large-scale solid rocketry was a non-starter until the 1980s. So in the end ICBM designers would have very little to contribute to manned spaceflight, and visa versa, because the technologies ended up being quite different.

Ze Russians claim to have had an onboard fault detection and pad destruction avoidance routine integrated into the control system since the R-7. At least that's what they've been saying after the Antares explosion when someone raised the possibility of a range safety self destruct being involved.

OK, another spreadsheet coming right up!

Apparently, at least it used to be.

Guys, can someone give me the breakdown of how to translate the standard map output (longitude-latitude, orbital parameters) into what Hyperedit and the save files use?

False, @Leftotian, a closed intake creates less drag. Hence once your airbreathers die the standard drill is to close ALL intakes as you go to rocket thrust.

"Yo dawg, I put some rockets in your rocket..." Yeah, surprisingly effective Kerbal engineering.

My jaw just dropped. I think I know why they did it, but... there has to be a limit to how far you go to maintain commonality across systems.

Once you get around to TAC LS with recycling systems, and RemoteTech, it stops seeming so excessive. Currently, there is NO background consumption of power at all.

Uhm... legs? A rocket chair - quite a few designs of which were explored to a great degree - is not worn directly on the back.

Honestly, I just always cheat and edit the save file even with MechJeb.

I agree with @klesh; I only have had success building 0.625 m launchers with Ven's pack, which throws in 0.625 SRBs and decouplers.

Captured object?

Not the story Wikipedia gives. Popovich wanted to fight through the cold caused by a heating malfunction, but he also reported seeing thunderstorms from orbit. Thing is, "I see thunderstorms" was the code-phrase in case the space sickness that plagued Titov had come back, so mission control began the return procedure... even though he meant it literally.

This should be emphasized. The lab is supposed to have a shielded vacuum exposure section.

That reminds me... http://www.astronautix.com/s/sassto.html

@shynung, interesting, I thought it didn't do anything to drag and only kept the really hot plasma away.

KSP jetpack has around 600 m/s of dV, too, which is stupendously more than the MMU. However... the MMU uses cold gas thrusters, which are simple, but pretty derpy; this is because its predecessors were tested inside Skylab. On the other hand, Gemini 9 and 12 were supposed to test the USAF AMU, which used peroxide monoprop and had a dV of 76.2 m/s (and came with woven steel pants).