Ultimate Steve

I'm not sure about using main engines as RCS, but using RCS as a main engine is a stock feature. In the editor you can right click the RCS, select Fore By Throttle, show actuation toggles, and make sure fore/aft is on.

Seconded. If I am right (and I hope I am wrong), stories written on the forum also would be owned by TT once the update drops. Many people here have spent years on stories, and although TT would probably not seize them and publish them without consent, they theoretically could, and I don't agree with that.

Maybe XS-1 if that ever becomes a thing. Or maybe they will let DreamChaser land there... Or maybe stratolaunch could fly...

Okay, this is a bit of a long/technical/geeky one with only a small portion relating to today, but I'll post it anyway, I guess. A while ago, me and my sister tried to speedrun the Galacticraft mod for Minecraft. The goal was to reach the moon as fast as possible working together, and on our first attempt a few weeks ago we managed about three hours and fifty minutes, we don't know the exact amount because we forgot to stop the timer. During our next speedrun, we dropped all requirements for a return journey, including a parachute, oxygen systems, cargo capacity, as well as not building a super nice house. Our house was then a dirt/cobble hut with six chests, all labeled, which led to a staircase to the mines. This decreased our time by almost half, to one hour and forty-eight minutes. Then, a few days later, we tried again, with a few more optimizations. We wouldn't build a nice staircase with actual steps, our base would be located at the proper mining level, and we would only be on the surface twice, once to gather food, wool, and wood, and a second time to launch to the moon. It worked well, but we got a bad spawn and had to take about fifteen minutes looking for sheep and climbing the staircase for one piece of sand we had fotgotten. However, we still improved by eight minutes, giving a time of one hour and forty minutes. Today, however, we tried one more time, with almost no changes to the strategy of the third speedrun except for "Get lucky with the seed," "Remember the sand," and "Build a third compressor." Those small changes paid off, and our time ended up being 1:14:23 from first movement until touchdown on the lunar surface. The main bottlenecks at this point are: Dying (you have to go back down the staircase again) Getting iron early on (it takes a while to get going, we didn't have a bucket to collect oil until about 40% of the way through) Crafting items you only need once or twice (I should make a list and craft them all early on) How much iron we can find (we need at least three stacks for just the GC stuff, more for armor and tools) Silicon (we need six, but we were one short until the last 15-25 minutes) Initially digging the staircase (solution, craft two stone picks at the beginning and don't go back up to kill animals, have the other people do that) We are going to try again on Monday with a third person and we will attempt to get under an hour. Our planned procedure is: First Ten Minutes: Player one punches trees to get some wood, then grabs two stone picks from player two to tunnel down to y=11. After he is down there, he will hollow out an area for a base after crafting a third pickaxe (or an iron one if he found iron). He will place a double chest, a crafting table, and at least five furnaces and create enough space for the GC machines. If possible in the time allowed, he will craft iron pickaxes for all three players, as well as buckets (although these are secondary). Player two punches one tree, makes wooden pickaxe, and mines 6 cobblestone, gives Player one two stone pickaxes, mines 10 cobblestone, and makes an axe, two swords, and a pickaxe. She gives a sword and the axe to Player three, and then kills as many animals as possible. If less than six sheep are found, shears will be needed, which will be provided either by player three or player one (non-ideal). The sheep are sheared and killed, and she will find one piece of sand. If 32 food, >=6 wool, and 1 sand are found, she will immediately follow Player 1 to the underground base and begin cave mining after depositing food/sand in furnace, and wool in chest (if a cave is found. Otherwise strip mine). If >=6 wool, 1 sand, and some food is found but the sun sets, still do the above. We can get by with that much food. If six wool are not found before the sun sets, restart with a new seed. The wool will be too much of a delay. Player three will punch wood until receiving an axe from Player Two, and then will gather at least 48 wood. He will then attempt to find a surface cave with iron and make a pair of shears to shear sheep with. If no iron is found easily, he should kill animals for a bit with his sword and then follow Player One into the base, deposit his items, and begin to mine. 10 to 25 Minutes (upper bound varies, if things are going well 10-20 and if things are going bad 10-30): Everyone should cave mine, or strip mine until they find a cave. Gather (in order of importance) Iron, Coal, Tin, Copper, Aluminum, Tin. Gather at least six silicon, at least 20 redstone, and at least three diamonds (In general, doesn't have to be in the first 20 minutes). Do not mine gold, emerald, or excess redstone, it is a waste of time. If the base is located near a cave and enough iron exists, gather lava buckets to power the compressors. Cook the food and give at least 10 to each player. Collect a bucket of oil. 25 to 30 Minutes (or less): Player one crafts a bunch of small items he will forget from a list (ex. 9 redstone torches, 3 levers, 3 buttons, etc.). Everyone else mines, places items in furnace, and mines some more. 30 to 55 Minutes: Player one crafts all of the GC stuff, wires, a circuit fabricator, three compressors (or two then another later on if iron is lacking), a refinery, a fuel loader, a NASA workbench, launch pad, and tier 1 rocket (in order). Most of this time is alternating between the compressors, the crafting bench, and the furnaces. The fuel is refined and put into a canister and the rocket components are created. Players two and three keep mining at full speed, not crafting more than an iron chestplate (although if more diamonds are found they can use them for picks/armor, the rocket only requires 3) and depositing things in the furnaces. 55 to 57 minutes: Player one places the NASA workbench, crafts the rocket, gathers the fuel canister, wire, rocket, launch pad, fuel loader, coal, and coal generator and ascends the staircase. Player two grabs a sword if she doesn't already have one and climbs the staircase. Player three climbs the staircase as well. 57 to 60 minutes: Player one, after reaching the surface, places the launch pad, rocket, fuel loader, wire, and coal generator, loads the fuel canister and coal, and waits. Player two defends the launch site from mobs if it is night. Player three boards the rocket. After the rocket has begun fueling, he presses space twice. Due to the 20 second countdown, the rocket will have enough fuel in it by the time it takes off to make it to the moon. about two minutes later, he will crash into the moon and press respawn. The timer is stopped. Then we party.

They just know how to quickload.

Tyko 1986-2018 Died when KSP krakened out, causing a rapid power discharge which entered his body through the mouse. Rest In Peace.

With a cellular communications device, singing at Allistair, Billy, and Carrie at their birthday parties is possible on Mars and a few other places.

https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/966682218411143169 Nooooo! So close, though. Soon...

Anyone know if the ship can catch both halves, or will they need two ships for that?

Before S1? I really doubt that. It's higher and going faster. A 2015 GoPro video ran about 2 minutes, and that was from after separation to before entry. Ah, sorry, mixed up my order... The fairing does pop off after stage one, doesn't it?

Yay! Mission success! I'd imagine it would make it back into the atmosphere before S1 but would take longer to reach sea level because of the parachute, so it should succeed or fail within the next five minutes, although confirmation will probably take a lot longer.

Can't see the stream b/c of school, but WOOOOOOHOOOOO!!!!!

I never thought I'd get to say this, but today, my crush asked me to Prom!

I would actually get this mod. Part of me wants to learn to code just to make this.

I consider them interesting terrain features that are fun and challenging to explore, like the moholes. If you've ever been to Duna's north pole, you know how interesting the poles can get... Eve is another favorite of mine as far as poles go.

I was aware of that, however many will have to be launched before it makes sense to switch (need to have line of sight at all times, there needs to be enough in sight so one sat isn't bogged down, etc.). As far as I know, there hasn't been any public announcement of timeframes (or anything Starlink in general).

If this somehow comes online before I move away to college I could really benefit from this (hopefully, I'm in a small town but there are 3 big cities within 100 miles). I currently cannot livestream, because my upload speed is 0.56mb/s.

I can relate to the "ish." I was there for the first half of it, but basically two or three people did everything and eventually I stopped coming.

Too long, I did not read the statement - Intelligent humans toy against pushing ships and flat objects.

We are all the Greatest Of All Time.

If you ASDS the two side cores the fuel loss isn't much for them (less than half of RTLS), and the center core is free to expend all of its delta-V, eliminating the entry burn (more than usual due to velocity) and the landing burn. It might be off by a little bit, but the gains definitely are bigger than you would expect.

Where are you getting the information on steepness of the trajectory? Going by memory (which is wrong a lot) I don't think we've seen a BFS Earth re-entry animation. I think the shuttle did about 3G and the Soyuz does about 5 during re-entry, so surface area makes a difference. The Apollos went just above 7G sometimes. The larger surface area on BFS plus the higher velocity should mean that the G's might be about the same... I think... I mean, it's not rocket science or anything, right? Fighter jets have also been known to do 12G for short periods of time. EDIT: According to a random number found on the internet for F91.1 (should be close enough to 1.2) the first stage has a dry mass of about 15 tons. If we say each merlin can do 600kn at minimum throttle and a three engine landing burn is used, that's 1800kn, 20 tons (for residual fuel), gives us about 9G, so Falcon has withstood these forces before, although not laterally.

Since the ship would be mostly empty at that point, it would have a high surface area to mass ratio so slowing down higher in the atmosphere would be easier. Apollo entered at around 11km/s, and Stardust did about 12.4km/s, after visiting a comet in an orbit higher than Mars, so re-entry velocities for BFS will be lower than 12.4km/s unless you're going on a super fast trajectory, so the speed is doable. After it has slowed down it will land like usual. I remember Elon saying somewhere that the PICA-X will not ablate much for LEO missions or Mars entry, but will ablate some upon returning to Earth from Mars.

From LEO they just de-orbit it and land as shown in the Earth to Earth video (but with de-orbiting). Like the shuttle did, but without wings. From Mars, IIRC, they Sabatier it for a few months until it has fuel again, and apparently it can SSTO back from there, aerobrake and land like a normal F9 S1. Unless I'm seriously wrong about this.

There will indeed be numerous changes, but If I had to bet I'd say it will still look like the same vehicle.