Ultimate Steve

Radioisotope rocket? (Propellant is heated by the decay of nuclear material like an RTG, not by a nuclear reactor)

Also, they bought a new fairing recovery ship called Ms. Chief. I didn't figure this out, someone else did, but the naming scheme makes sense now. Ms. Tree and Ms. Chief Mystery and Mischief

Aww man. I was really looking forward to these guys getting to orbit, but I wouldn't put my bets on it now. RIP Vector.

An addendum, I think I'm going to have to hire a new astronaut group for orbital launches. They are all going to retire soon, in all likelihood before I have the capability to put them in orbit. Edit: which is a shame, not only because of the hiring cost, but because I've spent some time on character development. Not much time but some time.

Having played through most of the crewed Legend launches already, I can tell you I found a solution, but not much more, except for that I wouldn't want to be the pilot.

For suborbital, the Legend 7 design will suffice, which is more of a "falling with style" body than a lifting body, which has a capsule just for landing, after it glides to the touchdown zone. A bit of an odd combination, but it was just originally designed for the sound barrier. For orbital, well, I haven't thought that far ahead yet.

Well, I lied, I will keep posting for now. Here's '55! Notebook Space Program - 1955 I'm gonna make a hypersonic woman out of you! Also launch vehicle development and stuff.

Yeah. I would be much more SLS-positive if they had skipped straight to EUS and had 1 or 2 less budget/schedule overruns.

STS-13 - Laboratory Module 2 Those pics were taken a while ago. Now to reread the thread to remember what I have to do next.

In other news, Chris B on NSF has some info for us: The 200m hop will be Starhopper's last flight. I think this is most likely due to the Mk1 going faster than expected. Hopper was originally supposed to have 3 engines, but that's not going to happen.

Holy kamoley, I assume you have upgraded the launch pad or are planning to. If loaded to maximum, it could require a level 3 pad! I don't have anything with more than a quarter of that power in the pipeline. Waiting for better tech to make something that large and in the meantime pushing current tech to its limits. Not gonna lie, sort of want to get tank III for that vehicle as well so I don't have to buy much tank II tooling. Also need a name for it. And like actual plans.

Ask and ye shall receive: Wow, that's a fairly advanced rocket! Attitude control and everything! Plus two RD-100s! That's probably gonna be a power record for a while.

Now Carl Campbell is a good astronaut name if I've ever heard one! Can I have a picture of his spacecraft/launch vehicle or is that a trade secret?

Notebook Space Program - 1954 Hit a stride this year!

Yee yee!

True, I had realized this, but given the uncontrolled nature it would swing around quite a bit before it settled tail first (especially considering it separates nose first). I am not sure what happens first, the aerodynamic forces necessary to keep it straight or the heating required to melt it if it's not straight.

Oh okay, first manned flight but not first manned spaceflight. I was confused for a second. Update for all, manned spaceflight using the X-1 and conic cockpits is now allowed, but only suborbital.

So if all goes to plan, they can undercut many future competitors, including Starship (launching as a non-rideshare for small sats), basically everything except for the extremely light launchers. This is good for ensuring future market share. Assuming it works, of course. I'm curious as to how they hope to keep it super stable without any form of control. Passive stability seems like a bit much to expect from Electron, but then again I am not the rocket scientist, those guys are.

Which cockpit are you using? If nobody saw the rule, then it might as well not be a rule... We can talk about this in the PM.

I mean, um, the rules we set were that we can't use non space rated cockpits above 50km, and the conic and x-1 cockpits fall under that. Sorry if you didn't see that. If you have a save from before that you can reload if it's not too much of a hassle, but if it is too much hassle then we can allow suborbital only flight of those cockpits. (shame I won't be able to take advantage of it so early on, I've played to '58) Edit for the curious: Current focus is not on manned programs, I'm finishing building up the tech to do cool things, so maybe manned will be my next big project. Not going to get any more specific than that. Also we added the rule in the PM chat before you joined, so it would have been easy to miss, so my fault there.

School preparations, other big projects, vacations where your car breaks down and you have to spend four days camping in a mechanic's parking lot, that sort of thing.

With lasers, all of the rockets fighting each other.

What if we get to the point in civilization where rocket launches are a spectator sport? The implications... The possibilities... There has never been a more pressing reason to become a post scarcity society.

Good idea. Note, I won't be able to do this until the end of '55. Frankly, though, I'd be more interested in build rate upgrades than tech trees. '53 post shortly inbound, and I am keeping track in a notebook. I'll show that soon. Notebook Space Program - 1953 I'm gonna make a supersonic man out of you!

For now at least. It's not like I had an abundance of choices, though... RD-100 is basically an upgraded A-4, and there's nothing between the A-4 and the Aerobee at the start, so going American with Russian engines seems like a good idea. This will probably change in the future depending on what engines I unlock. Especially now that we have TestFlight, the engine out capability of many-engine rockets is appealing...