Nightside

Starlink's are tiny with a small reflective solar panel. How much light will a fleet of massive shiny ships constantly going up and down give off?

Well, another crew transfer in LEO. Obviously this means the returning ship would have to circularize in LEO rather land directly, which would be less efficient, and certainly adds mission complexity, which carries its own risks. The upside is that the crew will land on a recently maintained ship, purpose built for Earth EDL rather than having them land on a ship that has been blasted by Martian dust and deep space radiation for several years. Besides, I'm still not convinced that Mars EDL is just an easier version of Earth. If Starship launches are as cheap as planned, then having a few extra launches won't be a problem. Listen I'm all for getting a Tintin rocket that can go everywhere, but I think that will be a much larger engineering challenge - and gets into "a camel is a horse designed by a committee" territory where you end up with something is mediocre at everything (Nothing against camels! They are great at being camels). ...Astronomers. But this time they have no excuse for not taking SpaceX seriously on their plans.

As explained in Jurassic Park, dinosaurs are essentially large birds, and birds are both easily tamed and good eatin’. A dino kill would feed a small colony for years, and would probably be a high demand black market export. So you wouldn’t need any farmers or beasts of burden.

Oh wow, this is great. I’ve always wanted to start more at a more current date. Thanks for sharing!

All I know is that Kopernicus caches it’s planet data in .bin files. it looks like it found an unrelated .bin file in Trajectories.

True, but it is also a keystone of this community and so it’s fate should be fair game for (non-obnoxious) discussion.

Things will get bad when they discover the source of all the dead skin cells that they have been carrying around and decide to get it more quickly.

What is NKD? A planet mod?

Apparently They have lots of fertilizer.

I like this idea, it is basically a propellant depot, I guess. I suspect refueling operations will be very tricky, given the need for an inertial kick to get the fluids flowing, there are a lot of things that could go catastrophically wrong. Even if the MarsShip is only refueled once, I don't see any reason to risk having crew aboard during that operation anytime soon. Just because the ship will return to Earth doesn't mean the crew needs to land with it. I didn't forget, I guess I am assuming that Mars and Earth are just different EDL problems, but you could be right that Mars is just an easier version of Earth (assuming you were going to land on rockets in either case). Dumping hundreds of tons of props during an emergency separation/ landing seems like it would be hard to do. It seems like you would be descending in a cloud of combustible material, right before your landing burn.

I don’t think Kerbal Konstructs has been released for 1.9 yet, you may have to put up with the issue or revert to 1.8.1

But....why? What would it add to the game? It would be easier to teach yourself to speak Kerbal language - then you can just shout at the computer monitor to your hearts content.

But is that a reasonable requirement? As this thing gets closer to reality I think we will see a lot more compromises. We already know there will be a Lunar variant, a Cargo variant, and Fueling variant. Why not add An Earth crew shuttle variant and a Mars Lander/Return variant - could make a lot more sense than an all-in-one package capable of landing on Earth and Mars. If the cost savings of a reusable 2nd stage are really as economical as SpaceX claims, we can afford to add more launches for safety. An interplanetary mission will require several fueling trips before it is ready, will the full crew really be sitting around on the ship in orbit while fueling? You could make things a lot easier if you fuel the rocket in LEO before loading crew. Then send the crew shuttle, lets call it CrewShip. This variant only needs to transfer a certain number of people (~10- 20?) so it can have more redundant safety systems, extra flaps, 10 parachutes, emergency detachable crew capsule or whatever - it isn't carrying any major cargo, so it can afford to Design it for crewed landing on Mars 1. Launch uncrewed MarsShip to LEO 2. Launch x FuelShips to autonomously refuel (I don't recall how many fueling trips would be required). 3. Launch CrewShip to rendezvous with Marship 4. Launch CargoShip with any other cargo not included on Launch #1. 5. Depart LEO with MarsShip, go to Mars, avoid 10000 possible deaths, then 6. Return from Mars to LEO, transfer crew back to CrewShip and descend in a safe manner. 7. MarsShip also returns to Earth, but uncrewed so if it fails no one dies. Meanwhile CrewShip can be used for tourists, Moon Flybys, or whatever. Also, a few Dragon2 missons could fill the place of a CrewShip. Thoughts?

I'm able to see it. Looks like it is hosted on Discord, maybe you need an account to see their content or something. Anyway, It is a picture of a chubby little shuttle with only control surfaces that can just barely fly.

I just started noticing this happening in a 1.8.1 game, but its modded and I haven't had time to track it down yet.

Upload them to an image hosting site and post a link here. or you could create an issue on the github page and just drop your image there. the forums don’t directly host images.

Your image is broken for me, but I would advise you to check out the Kopernicus mod thread and discord channel to learn how to swap height maps.

Just look at the dimensions of the part in VAB and compare to whatever the real dimensions are.

..._small_large

If their fin/control surface design is as good as their pressure vessel design, we may see LOT of changes.

Would passive stability inhibit maneuverability? Would the shuttle be passively stable?

Not USB compatible?

Yeah, he could use an editor, but I love his ideas.

I’d be much happier riding a rocket-plane with wings.

Always wait for the bugfix version before boarding.