TomPN

An unfolding space telescope inspired by the designs for LUVOIR and the James Webb Space Telescope

Heh... Well, don't I look stupid...

I've played around with TAC Life Support a bit. I quite like the idea of a life support mod, but TAC requires quite a bit of micro-managing, especially with the food resource. I started to come up with an idea of an easier to use life support mod (more suitable for beginners?), but then I realised I have no idea how to create parts. If anybody does, and thinks this is a good idea, please send me a message. The details for the idea are as follows: Kerbals require a single life support resource, called Snacks 1 unit of Snacks weighs 1 kg Snack containers weigh 1kg (dry mass) for every 8kg of Snacks they hold (9kg wet mass) Kerbals consume 1 unit of Snacks every hour If Kerbals run out of Snacks, they go into hibernation until more Snacks are provided. A Kerbal in hibernation can't be controlled, like a probe core with electricity Command pods hold 12 units of Snacks (2 days supply) for every Kerbal they can hold. The External Command Seat only holds 3 units of Snacks A Kerbal on EVA holds 3 units of Snacks, in addition to their monopropellant Non-command pod parts that can hold Kerbals (e.g. the Hitchhiker capsule) holds 6 units of Snacks for every Kerbal they can hold. There are intended to be several dedicated Snack containers: The Tiny Snack tank (0.625m part, about the size of the Oscar-B fuel tank) holds 24 Snacks The Emergency Snack Box (similar in size to the Experiment Storage Unit) holds 36 Snacks The Small Snack tank (1.25m part, about the size of the Advanced Inline Stabilizer) holds 96 Snacks The Large Snack tank (2.5m part, about the size of the Advanced Reaction Wheel Module, Large) holds 192 Snacks The Deep-Space Snack Storer (2.5m part, about the size of the Large Holding Tank) holds 1800 Snacks, intended for a three-Kerbal, 100-day mission The Mega Deep-Space Snack Container (3.75m part, about the size of the Kerbodyne S3-3600 tank) holds 9000 Snacks, intended for a three-Kerbal, 500-day mission in deep space The Snackificator is a 2.5m part (about the size of the Convert-O-Tron 250) that functions in a similar manner to an ISRU: 1 unit of ore + 20 units of electricity -> 10 units of Snacks Conseration of mass: 10kg ore (1 unit) -> 10kg Snacks (10 units) It can have a heat efficiency modifier, like how the in-game ISRU's do, and need radiators to cool it down Intended for use of surface bases, to produce Snacks for colonies If anybody has any suggestions of how this could be implemented, or made better, please comment.

After the successful launch of the AEGON 1 satellite, the boffins over at R&D have put together a satellite-boosting upper stage. They want us to test it by launching another AEGON satellite, but this time they want it in a polar, highly elliptical orbit. The Rhaegal booster with the upper stage inside the fairing. The upper stage is called the Moondancer, and it is loosely based off the real-life Briz-M, in that it has a cylindrical center tank and a drop-tank around the outside that is ejected when empty. Preparing for launch in 3... 2... 1... The upper stage has a substantial weight to it, but it's nothing the booster can't handle. Since it is going into a polar orbit, the rocket needs to turn north or south, not east. I chose south because it dumps the first stage in the ocean, rather than over land. Approaching booster burnout at high altitude The booster and fairing separate at high speed. The second-stage Bobcat engine ignites. The trajectory has been pushed into space and the engines shut down while the craft cruises to apoapsis. The Moondancer stage is visible now that the fairing has been ejected. Since it is going into a high orbit, the initial trajectory goes up quite high. It makes for a lovely shot with Kerbin in the background. Reigniting engines for orbital insertion. Shutting down the second stage and separating the satellite. This is done just before the orbital insertion is complete, to dispose of the second stage. Completing orbital insertion with the Moondancer upper stage. The fuel is being drawn from the tanks around the edge, leaving the central tank full until the drop-tanks are dropped. We have reached orbit, and the various bits and pieces on the satellite have been deployed. Reigniting the Moondancer stage to raise the apoapsis of the satellite. Instruments are reading an apoapsis of 66 million meters - about halfways between the orbit of Minmus and the edge of Kerbin's SOI. Ejecting the drop-tanks before commencing the next (and final) burn of the AEGON 2 mission. Correcting the orbital inclination to 90 degrees (initially about 87 degrees). Releasing the satellite from the Moondancer upper stage. All in all, a 100% successful mission! The upper stage works exactly as designed, and can deploy satellites into high-energy orbits. This will come in useful in the future... Hope you enjoyed the show. Feel free to leave any suggestions you might have for future missions in the comments. No spaceplanes!

After renting out a launch pad at the KSC, the ORIN Space Consortium are ready to test out their launch vehicle. This is the satellite that they will be launching, based on the AEGON satellite bus. It has batteries, solar panels, and some relay antennae so it can act as a CommSat. ORIN Space Consortium's initial launch vehicle, the Rhaegal booster (all of these are named after characters from A Song of Ice and Fire). The Rhaegal has two stages; the first is powered by six Mk-55 Thud engines, and the second by a Bobcat (the engine, not the feline). Commencing countdown. 5... 4... 3... 2... 1... Launch! The rocket has launched and it seems to be doing well so far. No crashing into the launch clamps, no pinwheeling, and it has enough thrust to actually take off. Commencing gravity turn. The Thud engines have a very good gimbal range of 8 degrees. From now on, gravity will do the work as we fly into orbit. Breaking the sound barrier. The rocket is now going supersonic. Nothing bad has happened yet. And now it has gone hypersonic. The trajectory will now carry the rocket into space. Ejecting the fairing and cruising to apoapsis to commence the orbital insertion burn. Reigniting engines for the circularisation burn. The first stage has burned out. Separating the stages and igniting the second stage engines. Don't worry about the explosion, it's just the decoupler. And we have achieved Low Kerbin Orbit! (mass celebration at mission control.) The Rhaegal booster has been proven to be orbit-capable. The satellite is released from the second stage. The AEGON 1 satellite, in orbit, with all of the solar panels and antennae extended. That's a wrap for episode 1, folks. Stay tuned for more launches from ORIN Space Consortium. Suggestions for missions are appreciated, but no spaceplanes!

So, this is just an introduction to my new KSP project. ORIN stands for Orbital Rockets InterNational, and it is the name of the (fictional) company who will be launching my rockets in this KSP project. The project will be starting with simple things, like launching satellites, setting up a communication network, etc., and will move on to manned flight, space stations, and exploration beyond Kerbin orbit. I do have missions that I want to do for this project, but any mission suggestions - serious, strange or just plain silly - will be taken on board. No spaceplanes, though! New episodes will be posted as soon as I have done the mission. Screenshots will be included!

I honestly don't know. Best way to find out would probably be to test it yourself.

Note: Ike and Laythe don't have rings because they're too close to their host planet/would interfere with their host planet's rings. Hale, Ovok, Polta, Priax, Tal, Plock and Karen don't have rings because I haven't gotten around to it yet.

Pictures, by popular demand! Here's a montage of the stock system, with rings: And here's the (as yet unfinished) OPM rings extension: Enjoy!

== Background == The great Kerbal empire, having expanded out into the black, one day discovered a lonely little solar system in the unfashionable eastern arm of the Milky Way. Although they originally thought that it was mostly harmless, they soon discovered that some of it's planets had rings going around them. Enthralled by their beauty, the Kerbals decided they were going to have rings, and nothing was going to stop them! Unfortunately, some of the moons in their system wouldn't hold a ring system, no matter how hard they tried, but they managed to get brilliant and technicolour ring systems around most of their planets and moons. == Background (real) == After I made the Jool Rings Mod, I thought, "let's do that again, but all over the place." I consequently went on a spree of adding rings to every planet and moon in sight. Currently this is only a developmental version; I still have to optimise some of the rings. The mod also comes with an OPM extension, adding rings to the Outer Planets Mod moons, but it is only half-finished. Pictures will be added soon. This mod is released under an MIT licence. Download the KSP Ringification Mod from Spacedock

Whoa, getting ahead of yourself a bit there! If you want rings for all planets, check out my new KSP Ringification Mod

NOTE: if you want rings for all the planets, not just Jool, check out the KSP Ringification Mod. Tired of boring old Jool? Add some rings to it! This mod offers six different ring variants, in a range of styles, sizes and colours to suit (almost) everyone! Jupiter style - Grey and relatively faint, with one bright white ring. Based off of the real-life rings of Jupiter. Saturn style - Various shades of green and yellow, with seven distinct zones. Also includes a faint Phoebe ring beyond Tylo's orbit - see if you can spot it! Uranus style - Slim and grey, stretching out towards Tylo. Fainter and less "in yo face" than Saturn style, but more extensive than the Jupiter style. Neptune style - faint and blue. See if you can find them all! J1407b style - yellow and mind-bogglingly massive. X style - who says crossed rings aren't possible? Top tip: you can add rings to Neidon (in the Outer Planets Mod) by going into the config file, changing "Jool" to "Neidon", and changing "AFTER[Kopernicus]" to "AFTER[OPM]". Pictures: J1407b style rings J1407b style from KSC launch pad X style rings Neptune style (around Neidon) More pictures coming soon! Can be downloaded from Spacedock. Make sure you have the correct version of Kopernicus installed! This mod is released under an MIT license.

delta-v to Low Eve Orbit (LEO) from sea level: 7500m/s (according to the wiki) highest atmospheric Isp: 295s (Vector rocket engine) jet engines don't work on Eve dV = 7500 Isp = 295 therefore mass ratio = e^(7500/[295*9.81]) = 13.35 You need a dry mass:wet mass ratio of 13.35:1 in order to reach LEO in one stage The highest mass ratio of fuel tanks in KSP is 9:1 Therefore, SSTO from sea level is not possible on Eve.

Wikipedia's "List of Firefly planets and moons" might be a good place to start. Of course, if you include a moon you also have to include the planet that it orbits. Since the moon Whitefall is mentioned in the pilot episode as being "the fourth moon of Athens", Athens and all four of it's moons would be included.

It's possible to implement a planet with rings in KSP. Squad did it with Dres: just get procedural asteroids to generate around it to form the rings. Totally crazy idea: could you make a mod that adds the planet J1407b and it's rings? It's rings in real life are 90 million kilometres (0.6AU) across, hence the "crazy idea" part. They would be scaled down in KSP but still pretty massive.

Agreed. To anybody reading this: get permission before making this mod. Repeat: GET PERMISSION BEFORE MAKING THIS MOD!!! There's a list at the start of The Verse in Numbers of all the fans who contributed to it, so get permission from the author and all of the fans to use their info. DEFINITELY get permission from Joss Whedon and the guys who produced Firefly. If you can think of any more people who you'd need permission from, post them.

I don't see why not. You'd need a cityscape-type or earth-type surface, a desert-type surface, an unterraformed (moon-like?) surface, a gas giant surface and a star surface (for all of the protostars and stuff).

If you scaled everything down to 1/10th size, then dropped everything smaller than Gilly (26km scaled diameter, 260km original diameter), you would drop three moons from the White Sun system and 1 moon from the Georgia system. There would still be a very large number of bodies remaining.

I looked through the Verse in Numbers and it turns out there are about 250 planetary and lunar bodies in the Verse. However, approximately 50 of these have no terraforming (including the planet Shadow, whose terraforming was destroyed at the start of the Unification War), and 7 are gas giants. In addition, the vast majority (all except two or three) of planets have a lunar system, and many of these have 3 or more moons. Of these, the largest is that of the gas giant Fury, which has nine moons - quite a challenge to explore, even for veteran Jool explorers. There is no data on the inclination of the moons orbits, so the orbits of the moons could be placed at various inclinations making them more of a challenge. So, even though about 80% of the Verse is composed of similar worlds (gravitywise, not sizewise - the sizes vary between a minimum of 970km diameter and a maximum of 1.4 x Earth diameter, according to the Verse in Numbers), there's still quite a bit to explore. However, I do agree that the system is of titanic size and would take a long time to put together. The Blue Sun system would be quite a challenge to reach - it does orbit in the opposite direction to the others, and on the Complete and Official Map of the Verse, it appears to me that the orbits of the Blue Sun's planets are highly inclined compared to the rest of the solar system, although this may just be the way the map is drawn. So, difficult and tedious to put together? Yes. Boring? Not at all.

Fair enough. Getting all of the legal permissions would probably be the easiest part of it. You probably wouldn't need many textures for the planet surfaces - from what I saw on the show, they're mainly cities and deserts. Throw in a moon-like texture for bodies that haven't been terraformed yet, and a Jool-like texture for gas giants. (Alright, it's probably more complicated than that).

I know that somebody has made a mod that turns the Kerbin solar system into the Earth solar system. Could somebody make a mod that turns it into the Firefly solar system? The data on all of the planets - sizes, orbital periods and radii etc. - can be found in "The Verse in Numbers 2.1", available online as a pdf. I think this would be very cool as there are tons more planets and moons to explore in the Firefly system. It's all one system, so FTL travel is probably not needed.

I've downloaded the mod and the module manager and I've found that I'm missing a bunch of part.cfg files. Could somebody do me a favour and email these part.cfg files to [email protected]: IDAim9K IDKLU-82b IDIau68Rocket IDMk84Bomb IDOrdChute IDReticle IDType91T IDWW1Bomb IDZRocket SSN-VLS-Trident My thanks to you in advance.