sevenperforce

It would be interesting to set a hard sci-fi novel in the rings of Saturn. Suppose it was discovered that the magnetic field of Saturn produces deadly radiation (like the Van Allen Belts, but thousands of times more powerful) all around the planet, except where the water content of the rings essentially deflects it. However, the moonlets scattered within the rings are the purest source of water in the solar system and are regularly mined for propellant. Thus, the only habitable zone for the planet would be those rings, which would have their own challenges to navigate. Ships and space stations would need to be at least vaguely sleek in order to reduce the damage from heightened micrometeoroid impacts. The rings cover a LOT of space (150% the surface area of Jupiter), enough to have whole civilizations scattered across their expanse, but ships would only need a very small amount of dV to move from destination to destination, since everything is in a coplanar orbit. If KSP added a Saturn analogue, how about doing a hologram ring which would cause moderate heating of your spacecraft (enough that you might need to plan for some radiators), and be dotted randomly with asteroids that are 98% ore?

Obviously. And no EVA suit could protect you on the surface of Venus. And Kerbin's core would need to be neutronium to have 1 gee on the surface with such low escape velocity.

I built a "heavy" lifter using clustered Sparks and triple parallel boosters, where they all share an essentially common core but the strap-ons RTLS and land on chutes and retrothrusters like the Zenit boosters for Energia and the core does either a dogleg to the island landing strip or a RTLS, both Space-X style with landing legs, grid fins, and retropropulsion. Using successive launches, I've built an interplanetary spaceship with an ISRU module, a propulsion bus, and a 4-kerbal hab/command module. It was about as much as I could reasonably build in a realistic form factor with this small a launch vehicle. Now to run the numbers and see how much dV I currently have. My command module has some spare docking ports for extra tanks or disposable landers if I end up needing them.

Technically more a flamemaker than a flamethrower.

Rhino as your final stage if you have one serial staging with everything else parallel.

Not Eve. My thought was to use Junos to get up to where the Terrier had decent ISP and then burn for orbit. Unfortunately I'm struggling to get over 3 km on the Junos.

Sooo...a Juno SSTO is...challenging.

Au contraire; going SSTO was a real pain. I must have flown that 20 times before I got the perfect ascent. If I'd just done basic serially-staged Kickbacks, it would have been easy.

Not an SSTO either, but yeah, that's where I would have aimed if I'd been free to stage. Although I think I would have used Thumpers; they have a lower wet mass/cost than any other SRB. However, they don't have quite the ISP for the final push into LKO, which is why I primarily used Kickbacks on my SSTO.

Loving it!

@Reusables Wow. Just wow. I think you may be the first person to have ever done that.

I recently moved to one of the largest cities in the US, and I'm seeing lots of ride-sharing systems crop up left and right that will probably end up being integrated directly into car autonomy. Maven's car-sharing, and the fact that you can now get an Uber from just about anywhere in the city within 5-10 minutes. Electric cars REALLY need to be self-driving, because of the charging issue.

Nearly, but not quite. It was a drop-tank (well, drop-wing) design.

Hmmmm...I wonder if I could manage a Juno/Spark/Dawn SSTO to basically anywhere....

The Dawn is pretty much the weakest engine in the game, though I can see why you wouldn't want to allow it.

Hmmmm. I don't know if this has been conclusively proven impossible, but AFAIK it has never been proven possible. An infinitely large LV-N-powered-plane has only 3900 m/s of dV, starting from sea level, though the amount of remaining dV climbs as the engine efficiency increases. However, this doesn't factor in allowance for lift or TWR at all. If someone can do it, more power to them!

I see 90 points.

I will try to do a proper entry, but in the meantime I will get in the first qualifying crack with this: It's the bare minimum, I know. You should add points for "returning to Kerbin" and "returning to KSC". Also either points or a point multiplier for full and partial reusability.

I'm just saying that they always target the start of the launch window, so that they'll have time for a retry if there is a small hold. So a long launch window isn't really a problem; you can expect them to attempt at the beginning. In this particular case, 99 out of 100 reasons for a hold would probably be a scrub, so it is most probable that they either launch at the start of the launch window, or not at all.

All indication would be launch at the start of the window.

Well, I'm not, like, mind-blown or anything.

He probably hasn't even thought of this and I can imagine that whomever he hires to launch this thing in space will probably have to take that in consideration. Uh, he is launching it. It is a mass sim. Well, the moon is pretty standard fare. And the ISS isn't at a great inclination to be seen regularly, and it doesn't flash, so it's easy to miss. As a mass simulator, it's a great deal more interesting than alternatives.

I don't wear ball caps, either, but this time I made an exception. My wife just about lost it, hah.

Finally got my Boring Company hat this week! I tried “I love NASA,” various ways, no dice. Protip: if you ordered a Boring hat before they ran out, then you know the password. It comes inside the box. Not tellin'.

Then specify prespositioned ISRU.