Ultimate Steve

T-5. Come on, come on! Put a countdown clock up so I can sync my music!

T-30 minutes. The people on the stream are talking. Anyone here know Russian? I would have chosen it as my second language, but my school only offers Spanish.

It's SOI is big because it is big and massive. How did it get so huge? Well, it ate all of the people who kept saying "I like Ike." Once it reached a critical mass, its diet became primarily overwarping spaceships... Yeah, Ike can be annoying!

Stream is live! I think! Currently at T-1.5 hours! I think!

Welcome to Last-Minute Launches, thread #3 (since I started counting. More like #10). Today, Soyuz • Kanopus-V-IK will be launching from Baikonur Cosmodrome, Kazakhstan at 0636 GMT (2:36 a.m. EDT). I don't have the livestream link yet, but I'll post it if I find it! Enjoy the launch! EDIT: This might be the stream link.

Not mine, but I saw this in the YouTube comments section (Hey, for once something good in there): "I just discovered the deeper meaning behind Tetris. If you try to fit in, you'll disappear." Somewhat interesting.

Really? Second time in an hour or two! @kerbiloid

Actually, I made a similar craft today! I present the "Raven." I don't remember exactly which missions I did, but I will try to recap the best I can. Raven 1 - suborbital atmospheric glide test (with reusable solid rocket booster). Raven landed okay, but we made changes to Raven 2 so that it has separate control surfaces for both pitch and roll. The booster landed fine. Raven 2 - suborbital space re-entry and landing test (with re-usable solid rocket booster) (manned). This mission fired Raven's engine to get the apoapsis out of the atmosphere. The utility bay, solar panels, and RCS were tested in space. Re-entry went well, and it was found that it is easiest to land the Raven using only pitch. However, the gear is too bouncy. Gear settings were adjusted and a drag chute was added. Raven 3 was an unmanned suborbital test flight (I think) which used a prototype reusable liquid booster which would flip engine forward and glide back to KSC once its job was done. Unfortunately, the booster did not make it back to KSC, and the probe core was upside-down, so the gliding to a smooth landing did not work well. The Raven was being tested to see how landing with a full fuel load worked. It worked well, although the bounciness problem wasn't gone. Raven 4 - the first interesting mission. Its objectives were to test Raven's ability to enter orbit, test docking by docking with ALPACA station (placed into orbit by ALPACA 1, a reusable* VTOL interplanetary spaceship which, on its first flight launched that station module, landed on the Mun, and failed at VTOL-ing on Kerbin), boost the orbit of ALPACA station (which for some reason had a periapsis of 69km), test re-entry at orbital speeds, and test crossrange capability. It made orbit fine, but the reusable liquid fueled booster (which had been modified with extra fins) proved to be aerodynamically unstable and crashed shortly after parachutes were deployed (deployed them a bit late). Raven docked with ALPACA station an orbit or two later - and it looks SO COOL! I mean, that bay fits perfectly, and the orbit was boosted just fine despite the off center thrust! I'm considering building a long range version like this, but with a fuel tank. Re-entry went well. However, the crossrange capability got a bit more of a test than I meant it to, we overshot KSC and landed at the island airport (first picture). Raven 5 - Deliver two crewmembers to ALPACA Sta-WAITWAITWAIT! For an unknown reason, EvilBadGuyVillains(TM) have launched an evil computer into space to crack the nuclear launch codes! The computer will function even if you blow it up, so it needs to be recovered and neutralized using special scanners! It will complete its calculations in ten orbits. Take longer and the world explodes! And it just so happens we have a rocket sitting on the pad ready to intercept! Cue Raven 5 - crew transfer mission Evil Robot Recovery Mission! Oh, by the way, did we mention that the probe was in a polar orbit? The Raven was already running low on Delta-V due to the high-inclination launch and the massive plane change it had to do, so it could not rendezvous with the evil probe until the ninth orbit, whereupon realizing they had the wrong sized docking port and had to carefully wedge the probe in between the doors of the docking bay. Re-entry went well, but the Raven 5 fell short of the KSC by about a hundred kilometers. The probe was still calculating - the situation was dire. So, what did the crew do? They landed upside-down in the water, drenching the circuits in the computer (and destroying the Raven's engine and wings). The original Raven a museum piece, the Raven 002 (unnamed, referred to as simply "Raven") was built. They were working on another station crew transfer mission when, suddenly, a random ICBM took off from the runway. Nobody knows where it came from, only that it was on a suborbital trajectory and would impact the continent, wiping out all life for (insert large number) kilometers in each direction. But never fear! Raven 6 is on the launch pad (hey, this seems to be happening a lot!). The lone pilot launched and intercepted the missile, reaching it right before it hit the atmosphere. Having no weapons, the pilot rammed the ICBM, cutting the computer away from the warheads and destroying two of the warheads. Unfortunately, the pilot's engine also exploded. Four warheads were still re-entering - who knows if they still could go off. Thankfully, the warheads did not explode. The pilot, however, had to land in the mountains. She barely survived the resulting crash, which wrecked the plane. So there is what I've been doing today. Anyone have any mission ideas for Raven?

How did you know? /summon @cubinator

It may have been that the dates got reset in one of the forum updates. Also, the PDP-1 was used to play one of the first ever video games, Spacewar! which is my favorite "Old" video game.

Bit of a weird one, but I was litening to this guy's bass guitar cover of "We Are Number One." In the background I was looking at his (archived) livestream in which he played the bass guitar for five hours straight. In the comments someone had linked a timestamp, so I clicked. I couldn't hear what song he was playing, so I switched tabs and paused "We Are Number One." However, that song kept playing as that was what the timestamp was linked to...

Project Intrepid Jeb: Aboard the ITV-009 "Intrepid" coming back from a Duna mission. He launched about a year ago, actually. I really need to continue that mission report. Voyage: The Final Warning Jeb: Aboard the "VOYAGER" transferring to Pol (in the story he's still orbiting Vall, but gameplay progresses faster than writing). Solid Booster Grand Tour Jeb: Dead after a solid rocket Eve ascent vehicle test. After I have all of the craft designed, I'll start over with everyone alive and no debris around to actually do the grand tour.

Can the second one be "Space Bar?" And can they be right across the street from each other?

Update: I did not do the cool music video idea due to the lack of available tacos. I did, however, finish my cover of the song! Oh, yeah, and IMO I don't sing well so I didn't sing the lyrics. Enjoy! Also, there's my face... I should really get my channel verified. These auto-generated thumbnails...

Man, you should see my browser history from last night. I was trying to design a lunar impact probe and my history is full of various monopropellants and hypergolics, most of which would explode if you looked at them the wrong way. The design is still on, eventually I settled on Hydrogen Peroxide as a monopropellant. Not too nasty, but it only has a specific impulse of 161 - fairly abysmal.

When you are not within a certain distance of any craft, it is considered "On-Rails" by the game. This means that no physics are simulated other than the object following its orbital path. If it hits a planet, or gets too deep in the atmosphere, it is considered destroyed by the game. Unfortunately, your asteroids are gone.

Wait, so we can't submit payloads even if the OP asks for them in a non-RP way? Or can we? Because actually, I'd like to submit something, but I'd like to check, first.

The Final Countdown.

No idea if this has been posted already, and it's not mine.

@TheEpicSquared often, the webcasts will be marked as "unlisted" after the mission, meaning you need the link to watch it.

@Jimbodiah Interestingly enough, I actually did that on my first ever Gilly mission. It has since become a bit of a tradition for me. You know you're in low gravity when instead of your ship rolling down a hill, it bounces down it, really slowly. ...When you can dock with the aforementioned bouncing ship (actually happened on Gilly). ...When you have to use the thrust limiter... on Ion engines!

It's a lunar impact probe that could fit on CloudOne. It's nowhere near finalized yet, I'll be writing up on it further when I finish design. Tonight was about the initial calculations to make sure that it was possible. Those calculations are mostly finished now. So, the main obstacle is the number fifty, as in fifty kilograms to orbit. Initially, I thought to myself "Hmm, I wonder if there are hypergolic propellants out there that won't kill me if I look at them funny" (Mostly talking about hydrazine) and began searching. Turns out, all practical hypergols are pretty dangerous, so I moved on to monopropellants. A lot of them are toxic as well, but eventually I came across hydrogen peroxide (which I didn't know could be used as a monopropellant until today). It is common (albeit in diluted form) and is significantly less dangerous than hydrazine (still, I wouldn't swallow it if I were you). However, it only has a specific impulse of 161 newton seconds, which is fairly abysmal. I went on to calculate that the proposed probe would need to be 47kg fuel and 3kg tanks, guidance, engines, etc. Fairly impractical. After a few failed attempts to get the fuel tank mass under 1.5kg (hooray for 1mm thick walls) I was having a conversation with someone who accidentally gave me the idea to try and use solid fuel for a first stage. After some number crunching, here is the new plan: 44kg solid rocket first stage with 35kg of some mixture of Ammonium Perchlorate Composite Propellant, 8kg for the tanks (2.5mm titanium) and 1kg for other stuff (nozzle, decouplers, ignition equipment, etc.). The upper stage will use the remaining 6kg, with 2kg being some hydrogen peroxide (which hopefully won't freeze on the way to the moon), 1kg for the hydrogen peroxide tanks (3mm aluminum), and 3kg for "everything else." Everything else includes the monopropellant engine (fairly simple, you just need a valve to let the hydrogen peroxide through a silver mesh), a tank for pressurization (using either helium or nitrogen), a basic RCS system (probably just pressurized gas, maybe using the aforementioned helium/nitrogen), a stripped-down GoPro (might as well), and the electronics and power systems. Since cubesats already do power and computing with a 1kg mass budget, I'm pretty sure that the computing/power part will be mostly straightforward. Some numbers: S1+S2 total mass: 50kg Mass after S1 burn: 15kg S1 specific impulse: 260 (baseline number, APCP mixtures can get up to nearly 300) Delta-V expended by S1: ~2990m/s Mass of wet S2: 6kg Mass after S2 burn: 4kg S2 specific impulse: 161 (probably closer to 150, no engine is perfect) Delta-V expended by S2: ~630m/s (You don't have to use it all at once, the engine should be restartable just fine. However, if you don't use all of it right away, it could freeze as the fuel freezes just below 0 degrees Celsius.) Total Delta-V on spacecraft: ~3600m/s Delta-V from LEO to TLI: ~3100-3500m/s So, it's certainly possible and I'll have an interesting time designing it! Good luck with the November test, best of wishes to the entire team!

Not dying, just dormant. The space industry may be exciting, but it can be slow at times, especially when the booster static test (if it is a static test, iirc it is) keeps getting delayed (speaking of which, what's the current date for the test, if there is one. In the space industry, especially for a small, newer company like Cloud Aerospace (or just Cloud), no official word for 8 days is perfectly normal. Also, on a completely unrelated note, I got bored and decided to try and design something which could launch on CloudOne.

To the people asking for the landing video, there was a discussion over on the SpaceX reddit a while ago (sorry, I don't have the link) where someone who had seen the video said that it had done an "impressive one leg balancing act." Later in the discussion people arrived at the conclusion that SpaceX would probably not release the video because of all the clickbait news articles saying "SPACEX ROCKET NEARLY FAILS!!!!!111!!1" that would be bad PR for SpaceX. Now, if anyone did their research they would know that landing in such conditions a failure isn't terrible, and that landing on such thin margins is very impressive. Unfortunately, a large percentage of the general public doesn't do research...

For me it is ~ or `, but it is probably rebindable in the settings menu. If it isn't, then it's probably rebindable in the settings.cfg file.