cubinator

Cities.

I want it to take me to Mars.

Two possible futures exist for humanity. In one, we decide to stay here on Earth. In this future, we will live our traditional lives on our rightful home. Maybe we will go extinct soon, maybe later. Maybe other intelligent species will arise, maybe they will not. The oceans will boil away in one billion years. All life will burn. We will never know if we were the only manifestations of consciousness and life in the Universe. In the other future, we build rockets and satellites today. We step on the Moon. We learn how to grow food in space and use the scarce resources on other planets. We make spaceships that can refuel and fly again and again. We go to Mars and build a base, then a city there. We float in Venus' sky. We learn how to exploit the precious metals in the Asteroid belt to build even larger spaceships in space. We create new kinds of rockets, and...We blast off to the next star. We will find worlds similar to the Earth that we can live on. It will be different than living on Earth, and it won't be perfect, but we will be there. In five million years, we will be everywhere in the entire Milky Way, as our ancestors five million years ago dreamed of when they looked up at the sky. The oceans will boil away in one billion years. It will be no matter to us, because we will have our other homes by then. We will not be limited to the Earth. Our home will be the Milky Way. Life will persist in the Universe for billions of years to come. The diverging point between these two futures is in the current century; it lies in our efforts to pursue human exploration of Mars. Decisions we make today will definitively decide the future of the entire Milky Way galaxy for the next several billion years. That is why space exploration is important, and that is how I remind people of the true magnitude of its effects.

Landing at Laythe As Laythe rotated, a group of large islands moved underneath the path of CLOUD ONE. Now was the time to depart and make a landing on those islands. Phoenix fired up its engines and sped away from the space station. They would fall over the south pole of Laythe before entering the atmosphere and gliding to land. Because they were in such a high orbit, it would be a slightly more intense reentry than optimal, but the brave Kerbals posited that it would not really be much more intense than entering Kerbin, because of Laythe's gentler gravity and atmosphere. Would the surface prove to be as gentle? There was no going back now. Flame engulfed the airplane as it drew closer to Laythe and met its atmosphere. Sanster watched the thermal sensors diligently, pitching and deploying the airbrakes to slow down before getting too hot. Soon enough Phoenix was gliding on a gentle breeze. Thin white clouds floated over the surface, which appeared to be a grayish brown color and made of some kind of sand or sediment that was blown into dunes by the wind. There appeared to be a land bridge between the island they were on and another larger and higher island to the west. This seemed like a good place to land and set up camp, so they glided down to solid ground.

Don't forget the five-part Mars sample return mission!

Thanks for the nomination! I'll be curious to see if anyone takes on my challenge this month.

You know, horizontal propulsion might be a way to gain more speed, and would avoid the issue of the fireworks bouncing off the ground and hitting the vehicle.

Glad I could help! This time I just drew it on the same picture in MS Paint. Here the new rocket is launching from São Paulo, Brazil and heading due east.

(Don't worry about the weird twistiness to the curve, it's in Earth reference so it tracks the spinning surface. The orbit itself is just an ellipse, but you can pretty much see it here.) The spaceship launches from the Cape and heads due east. It enters orbit where the red curve finishes. The plane it's in can be defined by two nearby points along the rocket's trajectory, and the center of the Earth. You can see that this plane is inclined relative to the equator. I used flightclub.io to make this crude plot.

Lol, they're basically saying: "The moon lander looks too big, we need to make the moon lander look smaller by building something bigger than it"

I would only want VR for realistic IVA flight sim. If anything, there could even be a custom modded capsule or lander pod which makes it more workable to sit in there pushing buttons/have a custom control panel. Basically a 'lite' version of any spacecraft trainer.

Oasis Laythe was the water world, even Kerbin did not have water like this. Only the highest mountaintops peeked above the vast ocean, leaving scattered archipelagos and islands as the only dry ground on the moon. CLOUD ONE only had enough fuel to insert itself into a high orbit, and would not be able to drop in closer to the pretty moon as a whole. However, five Kerbals could make the trip down in the Phoenix, which was a well-proven spaceplane. Laythe was a smidge smaller than Kerbin, so this should be even easier than its previous flights at Kerbin. Perhaps the plane could even make multiple trips? It would have to be seen at a later time...For now they had to get SOMEBODY down to the surface, to see what this other blue planet was like. The Kerbals wished to see this place because it was so similar to their home, and they needed to know what this place shared in common with Kerbin besides looks. So, five Kerbals packed their bags and boarded the plane, and waited for an opportunity to drop to shore.

Kermans...Kermits...It checks out.

Ooh, I know this one! The answer is MOAR boosters.

This is the only mission report/fan fiction I've cared to follow closely, and I think the story has been great. It's inspired me and given me new ideas about what the Vallhenge is like, and what kinds of missions I want to fly. My latest project, CLOUD ONE, is somewhat based on this story (particularly the eeriness about Vall) and is a precursor mission designed to scout the areas I want to fully colonize in KSP 2 by establishing a presence at Jool. I always appreciate the new chapters and am eager to read them every time.

I quickly reclassified Gilian 1 as an impactor probe instead of a lander after I realized that it did not have any stabilization devices. The Ant engine doesn't gimbal and the Qube probe core doesn't have reaction wheels. The mission was a complete success!

I heard this latest booster first flew a year ago. That would mean that 8 of these 36 launches have been on ONE booster.

Make sure you have a big enough antenna. A lot of those weakling early antennas aren't strong enough to do any good on other planets. If you want to go any farther than Mun or Minmus with a probe, you should invest in heftier comms equipment. Otherwise, it sounds like the issues you're having are mostly to do with the design of the launch vehicle rather than the probe itself. Having just a few, longer stages with fins at the bottom might help. Smaller stages can be unstable.

I agree, maybe we could even have experiments where instead of taking a single reading you have to fly all the way through the atmosphere taking continuous readings.

When is this next Starlink launch from Vandenberg going to be?

We should have some recognition of the heroes operating the cameras for those views!

Vall, the Frost Demon CLOUD ONE zipped past the last mountain and the ground dropped away, bidding the station farewell for now. Suddenly the radio came back online and Jebediah phoned home to let them know they were all right. Several Kerbals likened the experience of having the moon pull them that close to looking into the eyes of some deep sea creature and then watching it swim off. It was as if the new moon had pulled them in, looked at them, studied them, and then let them go. Who knew if the moon really had any consciousness or intent, maybe it really was no more than a big ball of ice. But even a ball of ice can make you feel its presence in space. Analyzing their new trajectory, it turned out that CLOUD ONE was miraculously on perfect track to fall into Laythe's gravity, and it would be a single very easy burn to park in orbit. As the station pulled farther away from the moon and into daylight, it got a good view of the frozen world...

If it was an airplane, we would say 90 degrees in a standard Earth reference frame, so I think I would stick to that. (I actually think it might be -90 because of the right hand rule) So when the rocket is horizontal its pitch angle would be 0 degrees. When studying a vehicle's motion we use an Earth-fixed frame with xyz dimensions, and a body-fixed frame which is oriented along the axes of the rocket/plane/etc. The motion is determined by finding the differences in position, velocity, acceleration between these frames. Technically you can choose whatever you want for these frames, but certain frames are easier or more useful to use.

Yep, if you launch from Baikerbanur and head due east, you will end up in a 20 degree orbit because Baikerbanur is at 20 degrees latitude. An important thing to note is that your range of inclinations get more limited as your launch site moves toward the poles. If you're at the equator, you can get into any inclination by changing your direction. If you're at Baikerbanur, you can only get into 20 degree or more orbits. Launching from the north pole, every direction is due south and you will be in a 90 degree orbit no matter what.