Ultimate Steve

S.P.I.R.I.T. - Space Program In Real Ish Time You read that right, I will be attempting to play through lightly modded KSP career mode in real (ish) time, with the end goal being a mission to Duna, assuming I manage to become Duna-capable before the transfer window. This means no time warp. Note, depending on how my laptop reacts to running KSP for long periods of time, I might change to waiting the necessary amount of time in real life and then time warping to that point in game when I get there. If the fan noise prevents me from sleeping, this will be the likely route. The reason I'm doing this is because I've noticed something, I never really play a KSP save to completion, I always burn out on it and drop it after a few weeks or months. I also don't bother planning stuff any more because I've gotten good enough at the game that the stakes are very low. For saves I come back to every now and then, I often see that ingame time has actually progressed slower than real time, and I've been wondering about the feasibility of a real time save for a while now. It may also feel a bit more like being part of an actual space agency. This is my first year in college, and I got a shiny new laptop just for it, but due to everything being online, I don't use it at all, I just use my desktop. So, since it's sitting around doing nothing, I thought, let's give it a try! I will be playing with Kerbal Construction Time installed to give craft construction a weight in the real world and physically prevent me from playing too much to burn out. I am also playing with no revert/quickload, although we'll see if that lasts... I will post updates here whenever stuff happens in real life and I might also make it into a YouTube series. Of course the most likely turn of events is that I'll grow bored of this after a week like all my other projects, but maybe not. Game time to real time will not be 1:1 due to lag, real world commitments, game restarts, computer restarts, computer transports, trips, vacations, etc. So dates may slip. Difficulty is hard mode, but with a few settings tweaked. Timeline (All times in CST): 3:00 PM March 29, 2021 - Start of save 10:15 AM March 31, 2021 - Launch of Reacher 1, a normal Flea powered starting rocket, piloted by Jebediah Kerman. Gathered 23 science points and was a success! (Scheduled) - May 26, 2021 - Approximate timeframe of Duna Transfer Window Here goes nothing!

I made a thing.

I am not asking for a delay, but if it does get delayed to Monday and goes off without a hitch that would be an amazing birthday present!

I got no such email, so it looks like I didn't get through, unless they aren't sending them out all at once. I'd imagine the video would be about introducing yourself and explaining why you would be a good candidate for the mission, but they definitely should have elaborated on that.

Assuming I'll have time, I'll probably participate. No idea what I'll add yet though.

Has a two-cycle rocket engine been done before?

I've seen this a few other times (not sure if it's been posted here or not) but the LOX tank is at the base right? People are guessing that the hard landing ruptured the methane downcomer leading to methane and LOX contacting in the bottom tank.

Today, I flew the Ascender Mk8 for the first time, and it flew! The line I have between "successful flight" and "unsuccessful flight" is very blurred, but this is indisputably my first successful, no asterisks, hot air balloon flight! It rose about 2-3 feet from its starting position and hovered for roughly 30 seconds. Also I got an A on my physics exam!

On the Nerdle cam you can see the landing legs flopping about and not locking into place, and you also get a good perspective on the bounce.

Sn10 just exploded.

I do look decent in a spacesuit, if I do say so myself... Probably could have zoomed in on my face a bit more though. I've probably already gotten my time's worth out of this just seeing me in the suit lol.

Of course the odds of acceptance are essentially zero, but I'm decent artistic at least in the music department so I'll give it a shot, there's not much to lose here.

"At Rocket Lab, if we say we're going to do something, we're going to do it." "At Rocket Lab, if we say we're never going to do something, we're still going to do it anyway."

EAT THAT HAT PETER!!!

How about Fallen Shield?

Does "Event Starship Update" mean that there's gonna be a starship update soon or is that just a fan render thing

You are underselling this. It's a tweet, so take it with a grain of salt, but a while back elon mentioned that this theoretical expendable upper stage could have a dry mass as low as 40 tons. This (1340t wet 140t dry (100t payload 40t dry 1200 prop load) 382s) gives about 8.4km/s of delta v, just shy of the 9km/s solar escape velocity from LEO. Not even going to elliptical orbit, with just LEO refueling, expendable starship can deliver 100 tons of payload anywhere in the solar system except pluto, although for uranus and neptune it won't exactly be quick (you'd probably want to do elliptical refueling there).

I finished the envelope for my latest hot air balloon a day or two ago but made myself finish something else before unfolding it and hanging it up for the first time. The Ascender Mk8 is a very big balloon with envelope walls made of wax paper. Today I hung it up for the first time and built the (removable) frame, fire gondola, payload gondola, and tether, although quite a bit of it is placeholder and I'm probably gonna redo the lines (especially the joints) to be stronger. The fire holder is paper at the moment because I didn't have aluminum foil with me, that will be replaced before testing, and there will probably be aluminum foil heat shielding covering the paper frame and the first inch or three of envelope to prevent fire spread. I knew it would be big, but it feels so much bigger than I thought it would feel. 40 by 40 by 50ish inches for the envelope, and the gondola assemblies reach pretty much to the ground. The full stack is taller than I am and I can stand up in it! Worst thing that could happen is it catching fire immediately. Second worst thing is if it doesn't hold air, maybe tissue paper is more air permeable than I think it is. I won't get to test it for a few weeks, though, that will probably require going home. I did order a digital scale, though, so I'll be able to run some numbers on it before I fly it.

I have the opening and closing hours of my campus restaurant. I'm dead, but if it's at the right time I'll be dead with a full stomach. Before that it was an HDMI to VGA adapter (trying to set up double monitor), so probably worse.

Wow. This is big! One seat is given to the guy who started this thing. Second seat is for someone with close ties to St. Jude's children's hospital. Third seat will be given away in some sort of entrepreneurial contest with an online store and judges and whatnot. Fourth seat will be given away in a raffle. Donations to St. Jude's give more raffle entries for more money. The odds are doubtless extremely low, but it's awesome to think that normal people have at least a tiny chance of being able to go to space!

A couple of days ago I finished a video about my hot air balloon experiments from a few weeks back! There will definitely be a part 2 eventually, I've made a lot of planning progress since then.

My era list: 0: Prehistoric Era. The Kerbo Log and the KSP Flash Prototype. Not KSP, but important developments that would inspire KSP. 1: 0.1-0.7.2. The Early era. We know little about these versions. What little we do know comes from HarvestR's old blog posts about 0.1-0.4, very early KSP prototypes. 2: 0.7.3-0.14.x: The Classic Era. Classified by gradual changes to gameplay, addition of many core features, and that early KSP art style we all know. 3: 0.15-0.18. Golden Era. Characterized by massive content updates. The 2.5 meter rocket parts, plane parts, planets, probes, docking, space stations, electricity, and a LOT more was added during this era. 4: 0.19-0.24.x. Refinement era part 1. Most feature additions are small tweaks, there are lots of improvements to old features, part niches get filled, and the game begins looking a lot nicer. The main feature that is gradually added in and improved on throughout this era is career mode. 5: 0.25-1.2.x. Refinement era part 2, also release era. Same general stuff as the previous era, but with more of a focus on preparing the game for release. 6: 1.3-1.4.x. Era of Stability. Main focus was localization, and a few small features were added, such as long requested EVA chutes. 1.3.1 was the current version of KSP for a long time, and as such I remember modded KSP flourishing, as mod authors didn't have to try to keep up with KSP updating for a while. However, many mods got left in 1.3/1.4. 7: 1.5-Present. Renaissance Era. While the updates aren't huge, they are relatively frequent, and often come with amazing quality of life features, graphical improvements, and features that have been requested for a long time, such as Delta-V readouts, decals, and gradual introduction of a system similar to KAS. Throughout this era, major graphics overhauls on both planet terrain and part design have been gradually released over several updates. I wonder what we'll see in the future... Broadly these can be further simplified into graphical eras with very fuzzy edges, and quit a bit of overlap. The first graphical era began in 0.7.3 or earlier, and ran until 0.18 at the earliest (massive part graphics changes) and 0.21 at the latest (new space center). This era encompasses the classic look of all those striped danger tanks and white 1.25m 3 man pod and the late classic look of early grey barrel tanks. The second graphical era began 0.18 at the earliest and 0.21 at the latest, and ran until somewhere around 1.2-1.4. Middle KSP part graphics, basically every part was redone at some point. The third era began around 1.2-1.5 and is still ongoing. They redid all the part graphics again to make them have a more cohesive and less junkyard style. We are also in the process of planet terrain overhauls.

What part is the needle made out of? Is it a really sharp fairing?

Where are they gonna put it? Iirc the two launch stands are taken up by sn9 and sn7.2.

FAA just said it's a scrub