Ultimate Steve

Just got back from camp. More details coming soon (maybe). I brought $20 and spent $2. Then I lost the other $18. I was also given another $10 which I also lost. Also, sixteen notifications! New record! Now to catch up on mission reports and slam my face into the piano...

Same here, I'm still in High School and I'm probably the biggest space nerd in my entire town.

Unpossible: something that everyone says is impossible, but then you do it. Kasjunsalaloe: "Thank You" and "I'm Sorry" rolled up into one word.

@Kuzzter Oh, okay. I do know that song. I just happen to have a hard time picking out what song it is from just parody lyrics. Now to go re-read the new pages with the song playing in the background!

You're going to call me an idiot, but what is that song? EDIT: If you even think about saying "Darude - Sandstorm..."

Yep!

(It says this album has 43 views but I've only looked at it once?) *SQUEEEE* We now have filled in a gap in the early history of KSP. New history of early KSP: The Kerbo Log (Big Gap) This flash version of KSP (small gap) HarvesteR begins working on KSP for SQUAD. 0.1 through 0.4 talked about briefly in blog posts. (tiny gap) 0.7.3 released! Analyzing the parts, we have separate fuel and oxidizer tanks (and yet today we don't have separate oxidizer tanks ), two command pods (one with a heat shield, implemented around 7-8 years before re-entry heat), two boosters, two engines, and a strut! Plus, the ship shifts around based on the center of mass. Interesting... There appears to be part connection nodes, but I cannot figure out how to use them! I'm feeling a sudden urge to ask Bill Wurtz to do a "History of the entire KSP, I guess." *Resumes geeking out at the game running in Firefox because neither Edge nor explorer (which has been taken over by a toolbar) will run it.*

@Moach It will not let me run that version, which is a shame, as I would REALLY like to run it! It says "choose an application" but isn't the game itself supposed to be an application? EDIT: Gah, I didn't read the whole thing. Sorry! EDIT2: Woah, this so... I can't think of the word right now. ...Oddly Retro! Let's get the devs to see this. Maybe then we can get Moach's name in the credits! If not, then if there was a mod that did that I'd totally go out of my way to get it.

Um... In the KSP weekly @Badie said: Does she mean "1.3 is the most recent version" or "1.3 will be the last version besides expansions?" *crosses fingers that it's the first option* EDIT: @Vanamonde said in that thread that Badie meant "1.3 is the current version," or I'm at least 90% sure that's what was said (it is slightly unclear). (Hopefully) No cause for alarm, carry on!

Today, I finally finished my first Duna mission. Now, I know what you're thinking: "Steve, you've gone to Duna and back several times! It's in your mission reports, in your YouTube, what gives?" Not my first Duna mission that I finished, the first one that I started. Note: no pictures available (sorry). The mission started sometime between 0.24 and 0.90. It had undergone a test flight to the Mun already, and I decided to send it to Duna. The mission consisted of a nuclear powered orbital module/re-entry module (From top to bottom: Parachute, 3man pod, probe core, decoupler, X-32 fuel tank, Sr. Docking port, with 2 LVN's on those slanted adapters radially mounted plus electrical stuff scattered throughout) and the lander module (Parachute, Large pod, a fuel tank, Sr. port, and four radially mounted FL-T 400 tanks with 3 spark engines each plus landing legs and ladders and stuff). I can't for the life of me remember what the lifter looked like. The lander connected to the orbital section upside-down. Back in the day, a few years ago, I landed the lander and returned it to orbit. I transferred all of the fuel to the orbital section and discarded the lander. Then we got a new computer and I abandoned that save. Fast forward three years and I'm making a music video and have run out of stuff to film, so I grab my USB and transfer my old saves to this computer. I film a few things exploding, yahta yahta yahta, and I come across this craft "DUNA CONQUEROR: The Final Mission." I switch to it. I recognize it. I vow to bring it home. Unfortunately, back in the time I made the craft, nuclear engines used oxidizer and liquid fuel, not just liquid fuel. I had placed all of the saves in a 1.2.2 install, so I was lugging around an extra ton of oxidizer, and the ship was already low on fuel. I performed an escape burn which put me into an orbit crossing Kerbin's (because I hadn't installed KAC to tell me the transfer window). Using the ability to see into the future with maneuver nodes, I devised a plan that would return the crew home within three in-game years. Before the burn I had around 110m/s of Delta-V, and afterward I had around 25, so I was cutting it pretty close. Now this was the nail-biting part: back in the day, there was no re-entry heating, and as such the DUNA CONQUEROR did not have any heat shield. So, I kept the engines attached to the re-entry capsule in an effort to shield the crew from the heat of the 3.5km/s re-entry. The solar panels exploded almost immediately, just as I burned the last of the fuel. The central docking port went, then the central fuel tank, and then the outboard fuel tanks, all within three seconds of each other. Right after that, the decoupler and the probe core went "BOOM." my makeshift heat shield did not last long. I watched as the overheat bar rose to full. I swear, the entire bar was red for a solid twenty seconds, but IT DID NOT EXPLODE!!!! And the crew, after waiting three years in-game and three years in real life, Jeb, Bill, and Bob finally made it home!

It depends on the mission. If it doesn't involve docking, I usually drain it out in the VAB. However, it comes in handy when making light RCS only landers for other moons. Mk2 can + 0-10 Puff can take off from Minmus and return to orbit, iirc.

Quick update, I am about halfway there (o-oh! Livin' on a prayer!) (yet another song I'd like to do but probably won't due to lack of time). The main reason it's taking so long is that due to the nature of the song I want to be flipping through clips pretty fast. Which is great, and all, until you run out of video clips to flip through (because I don't want to be repetitive). I've been through old video clips, I've been through my old save files filming things, and I've tried to record clips if I was doing anything interesting. In the interest of not being repetitive, the Eeloo Mothership Mission trilogy has bought me a whopping twenty seconds (). So, this isn't dead, it's just taking a while. I'm going to transfer my old savefiles from this computer onto the one with the recording app now...

NOTE: This chapter contains EVA Kerbals who are supposed to be humans. At the time I did not have (and I still don't) have any mod that changes skin color, so for now all of the humans look exactly like Kerbals. Just imagine them as their human counterparts and go with it! NOTE2: (after I finished writing it) There is a bad storm right outside and I have internet problems and word processor problems and Chapter 8 will not have been through a thorough proofreading. NOTE3: The storms getting really bad, there will be no proofreading until sometime tomorrow. Read at your own risk! Chapter Eight - Ground Control to Major Tom Ethan

I am working on Chapter Eight of Voyage, which is already 2x longer with 1/2 of the story than I intended it to have, plus it's taken longer to write than the previous seven chapters combined. AND EVERY SINGLE TIME I WANT TO DELETE SOMETHING THE STUPID CURSOR LOSES FOCUS AND MICROSOFT EDGE SAYS "OH, YOU PRESSED BACKSPACE! I WILL INTERPERET THAT AS YOU WANT TO GO BACK A PAGE! HERE YOU GO! ENJOY LODING THE PAGE AGAIN!" FWEBIHSDFLKJsdvalkjfeblkjveblihmB#@G&@IRH I'm having to copy/paste from notepad, which is annoying because you can't have pictures in notepad. /end minirant

Does self made music count? If so, here's a cover of the KSP theme I did today: Also, there's this if it hasn't been posted already:

I'm pretty sure I beat it twice and got a 4096 tile once.

Welcome to Last Minute Launch Threads, where I, @Ultimate Steve, post about rocket launches that nobody has made threads for! (Thread #7-ish, #2 since I started counting.) Today, we will see the launch of the Soyuz with the Progress MS-06 cargo transfer vehicle, launching to the ISS. -SpaceFlightNow Also, it is 12:30 AM here and I went on a five mile hike earlier today (and we ran out of water 2/3 of the way through and it was 90+degrees) so I am really tired and won't be able to watch this launch unless I wake up early (highly doubtful). Also, I can't seem to find a livestream, so when it goes live, somebody post it, okay? Enjoy the launch!

I have a sudden urge to make a cover of "Raining Tacos" in which I actually toss tacos off of my roof. EDIT: I think I could actually modify one of my model rockets to carry a small taco and jettison it midflight. Either that or borrow my friend's drone.

DISCLAIMERS: I am fully aware that there is an exceedingly high chance that the following will never become reality at all. I have no formal education in aerospace engineering. The following is waaaay to heavy to launch on Cloud One and potentially too heavy for Cloud One Plus, depending on the stats. I did this purely to see if it was feasible. I may or may not know what I am doing. I am not affiliated with Cloud Aerospace in any official way. So, I had a little bit of spare time and I decided to see if it was feasible to design a 1.1 (I rounded up from 1.08 to keep it doable in 3 hours on graph paper) meter diameter manned space capsule. As it turns out, if you're not really tall, you can lay down inside a 1m interior diameter capsule if you bring your knees up to your chest. So, diameter works. Now, mass is a very different challenge. Cloud One can get ~50kg to orbit according to the officially published stats. Even a person with a spacesuit probably weighs more than that, so C1 is out of the game unless you were to do purely suborbital flights. We have no idea what Cloud One Plus (C1 with Luna boosters) would be able to lift. So, with that in mind, I tried to go as low mass as possible. DISCLAIMER: I designed this in less than three hours, half of the people here could probably do better than me at optimizing mass. I also have no idea if there is enough thermal protection on the sides of the ship. I also have no idea if this would simply crumple in on itself under the G-forces of launch. (1 square=5cmx5cm) First off, material. This is not the lightest solution nor the most thermally resistant, nor the strongest, but it's the only one I looked into (and I designed something similar for another space capsule I designed for a school project). Imagine corrugated cardboard, but with aluminum on one side and as the corrugation, with Rene-41 (a heat resistant alloy uses on the exterior of the Mercury spacecraft) as the outside. Doing some rough, back of the napkin calculations (which very well may be extremely wrong) (assuming wall thickness is 2mm for all sheets, and we're building 5cm thick walls) we can get a bottom disc, a 25cm tall cylinder, and a semisphere shape for the top (and a bulkhead right below the cone) for around 90kg. The heat shield would probably be reminiscent of the Apollo heat shield (made of AVCOAT, google it) (skipping the math here) and would weigh about 25 kilograms if it was made 5cm thick. The curve in the heat shield would either be simply made by varying the thickness, or by sticking a bunch of beryllium poles (because beryllium has a high specific heat) of varying lengths in between the shield and the base of the capsule. Note that the heat shield is not strictly necessary for low altitude suborbital missions. Parachute: Estimated at 20kg. Not sure if this is anywhere near the actual amount needed. Launch Escape System: Again, estimate time: 50 (?) kg. Oxygen/Nitrogen system: Somewhat like a SCUBA tank system for suborbital flights. More for orbital flights. ~30kg. Also includes a lithium hydroxide canister for CO2 scrubbing. Frame: (Inside the corrugated aluminum there will be a series of strong (probably better than aluminum) pipes. A ring at the bottom, a ring at the top of the cylinder, and a ring at the parachute bulkhead. There would be eight other pipes going up through the walls at 45 degree intervals for added structural support. 10-30kg, depending on pipe thickness. Battery/computer: Minimal. For a few hours on orbit, a modern laptop and its battery might just be enough. ~5kg RCS system: Would use the same supply of O2 as the life support unit. Minimal, requires piping, nozzles, and valves. There would be 8 nozzles total in the forward section of the craft, two in each direction providing full pitch, roll, and yaw authority. ~5kg (because the tanks are already there). Retrorockets (orbital flights only): located in the forward section of the craft (yes, I know, negative g-forces and that sort of stuff, but it would be a mass burden to make a jettisonable structure to place the retros on the bottom). There would be two or four. ~10kg. The hatch: There would be a hinge above the astronaut's head, just below the parachute storage bulkhead. That entire section of hull would open similar to a gull-wing door. I'm not sure how it would seal, but that's probably not too huge of a problem. Not too much added weight. Would have a borosilicate glass window. Flight profile: LES jettisoned sometime. Enters orbit. Astronaut does spacey stuff. Retrorockets fired. Capsule re-enters. The dome portion beyond the parachute bulkhead is detached, and the retrorockets with it. Parachute is deployed. Total: between 245 and 300 kilograms, plus the astronaut and spacesuit (60-90kg), so, minimum of 305kg and maximum of 400kg. Definitely doable for suborbital flights, maybe for orbital depending on the capabilities of Cloud One Plus. List of other things not taken into account: Landing rockets to lessen the shock of landing similar to the ones used on Soyuz. With the rigid walls, slim amount of padding, and parachute descent, you'd be hitting the land at around 10m/s, not a healthy speed for your spine. Water landing isn't really an option because the airbags would take up a lot of weight and space, and the hatch goes all the way down to the base of the craft. If you opened it, the capsule would flood. Communications systems. Any sort of decoupler between the capsule and the upper stage. Other scientific payload. How high the acceleration of Cloud One Plus's first stage burn will be. If it's more than ~6-7 gees (10 if you're a trained fighter pilot), then this concept is worthless. How the LES is mounted. The mass of a control panel. The mass of any seat or seating restraints. There is room for 5cm of padding. Well, that was fun. I may flesh out the numbers more if I have some spare time in the coming days. Even though this will probably never go anywhere. @Tristonwilson12, if manned flights are somewhere you want to go with Cloud Aerospace, then suborbital flights using the Cloud series are definitely possible. Depending on the capabilities of the Cloud One Plus, then orbital flights are theoretically possible, if that is a direction in which you wish to go.

Okay, how in the world did I not notice this until now?!?!?!?!? I would like to help in any way that I can. However, I may not be able to help in any way whatsoever. I see you are planning to launch from Nevada - are you also based in Nevada? I am in Iowa, so if I can help it will probably have to be remotely. That, and I'm still in high school, so I may not be that big of a help. I could theoretically do some design work, but you probably have mostly everything designed already for Cloud One. Also, do we have pictures or video from any of the static tests? And what's the status on the first stage firing that was pushed back? Since I haven't seen this picture on this thread yet, this is all I could find: "Little Boy II" test firing. Also, my browser thinks the website is malicious. Also, because I haven't seen the link in this thread yet, Cloud Aerospace's launch manifest.

It's finished! Here's part 3:

Here's two! Largest Space Station put into orbit around Laythe in a single launch: Sorry, I don't have the numbers right now, but it is probably >100 tons. Number two: Most Kerbals landed on Minmus in a single launch: 916 Kerbals! (Although technically, I wasn't going to spend an hour hiring 916 Kerbals and I couldn't figure out how to turn autohire on, not that I trust autohire, so really there was only four on board. Maybe highest capacity and not actual number landed? )

I would like to know as well! Also confused!

Woah, hold your horses! I appreciate your desire for more of the story and I will do my best to ensure part 8 comes out at the end of the week at the latest. However, I've got a lot on my plate right now: Unpacking Mowing our huge lawn that has been growing for eleven days straight Hanging up all my artwork for real (It's a ramshackle arrangement right now, I got home from vacation, and a lot of it had fallen off of the wall) Tons of other small stuff Getting a job. I've been selected for this awesome concert band Europe trip but the cost is somewhere around ~$8000 and I need to make that money by this time next year. Not really looking forward to my first job... So, I'll be back eventually! @Just Jim when I read your post I thought of this: EDIT: ONE THOUSAND POSTS! YEAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAH!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!