sevenperforce

Wet workshops planned by Von Braun were about 4x the volume of Skylab, IIRC. The manned Venus flyby would have been a single Saturn V launch, no bigger than a moon mission. The third stage would have had solar panels and radiators on the outside and cylindrical floors built inside. In place of the lunar module would have been life support equipment and a bunch of supplies. The mission would have launched into LEO and then the CSM would have performed the same flip-and-dock as in moon missions, followed by eyeballs-out burn into a Venusian flyby trajectory. After the burn, the third stage would be vented to vacuum, then sealed, and the life support equipment and supplies would have been pulled inside the empty stage on hydraulics. The stage would seal, pressurize, and then the crew could proceed through the lock into their new home for the next year.

I am Elon.

An interesting whitepaper on proposed use of a towed ballute to perform cislunar Earth entry without a heat shield: https://ntrs.nasa.gov/archive/nasa/casi.ntrs.nasa.gov/20060018288.pdf

Second stage would definitely need to enter nose-first. Gotta protect the MVac. After separation, the stage was in EEO, so it was probably less of a dV cost to get out of the Earth-Moon system entirely than it would be to brake all the way back down to a certain entry location. With a really high orbit like that, the entry trajectory uncertainty is super high. And the MVac will be dead after a couple of days so there's no way to perform any sort of correction later on.

Apollo could have gone to Mars. There was substantial discussion and planning around conducting a manned Venus flyby using a Saturn V SIVB wet workshop and Apollo CSM. If two SIVB wet workshops had been launched and docked nose to nose around a central docking module launched along with one of them, you could rotate it end-over-end and you'd have artificial gravity with plenty of space for supplies, living, and a very long-duration mission. Spacewalks could be used to cut the J-2 engines free from the bases of each stage, to reduce dry mass. The central docking module would be reinforced and have four smaller docking ports. One opposing pair would be used for Apollo CSMs, launched periodically on Saturn IBs or Saturn-C for servicing during mission lead-up. One would be used for the Martian Entry assembly (a lander and a large solid braking motor for Mars orbital insertion) and the last would be used for the nuclear transfer stage for TMI. The Martian Entry assembly and the nuclear transfer stage would each need to be launched on Saturn Vs. So, a Mars landing (flags and footprints) for the cost of four or five Saturn Vs and an equal number of Saturn IBs.

I was thinking of something like this for the rigid central cushion: All the tubes inflate at once using leftover helium from the pressurant system. The tube walls are joined and so, when stiffened, the tapering cylinder becomes rigid enough to protect the MVac, both from the airstream and from any impacts on landing. The larger ballute (not shown above) is attached to the lower region of the ring and comprises some sort of sturdy canvas or polymer sheeting that would expand either via inflatable ribs like the individual tube sections, or via an inflated ring:

Similar to an airbag, yes, but comprising a series of inflatable tubes connected lengthwise to create a secure, stiff cylinder. Retropropulsive landing is a non-starter, though. He's already said he'd do a bouncy castle (that is, a big-ass net). The MVac can't fire retropropulsively in-atmo, and auxiliary landing engines would be too large a mass penalty.

Musk said "party balloon" but I'm thinking something more like a rigid inflatable, like HIAD. Toroidal inflatable ballute with individual inflatable ribs, tight-packed around the engine area and plumbed to the same helium lines that go into the engine bell for regenerative cooling and tank pressurization. Wouldn't have the ablative coating of HIAD though.

Beautiful launch and landing! Flew this a few days ago but I'm just uploading it now: The dry mass increase of adding this system would be prohibitive. If the system masses, say, one tonne...well, if you don't have it, then there's one extra tonne of fuel you'd have left over instead. So just burn the one tonne of fuel. The biggest problem with MVac recovery is that the engine bell is too fragile to be exposed to the hypersonic airstream during entry, and it is too over-expanded to fire at sea level (even if not for the major TWR problem).

Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite (TESS) I accidentally flew this one several days early, on the day it was originally planned. Oh well. The payload here was neat to build, because I think I got it pretty close to the real thing, but the mission planning was just as cool. I had to use Falcon 9 to place it into a high elliptical orbit, then use its onboard thruster to raise its periapsis just high enough to get the right phase for the Mun gravity assist. Then, one orbit later, I had to boost again into a TLI for a moon flyby to bring me up into a bi-elliptic transfer. After the moon flyby, I did inclination adjustments at apoapsis and then brought my apoapse down at periapse (this was actually the longest burn) so that I had a 2-resonance with the Mun. Meanwhile the Falcon 9 upper stage left the Kerbin system.

I flew this yesterday but only got to post it today:

Blagovest 12L This mission's payload is technically classified, but earlier versions of Blagovest are available to see online, so I built it around that. The version I built ended up being much lighter than the actual sat, so I had to heavily sandbag the Proton-M. Proton-M is much, much more capable than what we see here.

what the

I'm not quite sure what would be cooler than Starman. Sending a pallet with a billion dollars into space is something Bezos can afford to do that Musk can't. Though that's not exactly cool, just flashy and obnoxious. New Glenn will likely be able to go interstellar with a small enough payload. That would be a cool inaugural flight.

This will be my first Proton launch... Ready on the pad!

New Glenn will hit the market like a freight train. I'm a fan of whatever lowers the cost of access to space.

If you're very lucky, watch from on top of a tall building, and look in exactly the right direction, you might be able to see the rising contrail from about T+30 onward. EDIT: Actually, I just did the math, and if you have a clear line of sight due East, you could possibly see the rocket at less than a kilometer of altitude...so closer to T+20 onward.

...until economies of scale reduce launch costs so vastly that the cost of manufacturing payloads begins to drop as well, since the investment threshold is lower, and suddenly Russian launch AND Russian manufacturing is kaput. Or, as they say in Russia, КДРЦT. (Just kidding. They don't say that.)

"Take me down to the R-U-D city, where the grass is scorched and the air is gritty"

Is there a corresponding mass increase? So...more thrusty than a Mainsail at SL but not as thrusty as a Rhino in vacuum, I assume?

This issue goes along with bases and colonization. There is simply nothing for Kerbals to do anywhere, particularly in sandbox. The simplest solution I can think of is to introduce offworld assembly and launch facilities, and have them built slowly by Kerbals who are present.

Low latitude is easier for players who are just starting out. You can do Mun missions without worrying about inclination, for example.

I don't want to be a jerk, but how is this science or spaceflight? There are tons of coding forums. This is not one of them.

I...would not call the RL-10 simple.

Falcon Heavy's upper stage can go out of the solar system without a gravity assist. BFS, if properly refueled in elliptical Earth orbit, could make it to gas giant destinations without gravity assists. Not coming back though.