Ultimate Steve

Yeah, rooting for Martin, however unlikely he is to win! Favorite Wintergatan song:

0.19. Back when rover wheels, aerodynamic effects, and structural parts were new. The first release to not have the launch tower. Also, I noticed three people chose 0.6.5... Unless I missed something, the earliest public release was 0.7.3. There was an 0.6.5 zip file found a while back, but I don't think it would have been available to anyone.

Seeing as it has been two weeks since the last post, and little has been done to reduce the cost of the station, I will consider this challenge to have been failed. That being said, if you want, you can still launch the station for fun.

Unplanned rapid permanent unassembly via lithobraking.

To add to that for completeness, back when the European ATV was flying, it used the rear russian port, the shuttle delivered Multipurpose Logistics Modules (temporary cargo containers) that used the CBM, and the Dream Chaser is expected to dock to the IDA if I got my sources correct.

Nauka is now mid 2020. They have decided to make entirely new fuel tanks based on the Fregat stage, because they couldn't get the old ones to work. https://tass.ru/kosmos/6225559

Is this a mod that makes Kerbin tiny? If so I would like a go.

Well, unless the capsule isn't completely destroyed, and unless it wasn't something simple and obvious but not too obvious, most likely no SpaceX astronauts from US soil this year...

Oh no.

3 AM is tempting for me. Who cares about getting up early enough to get to school on time without being a zombie?

There is one stock tank and four giant spherical tanks.

Wow... I was there last summer. It won't be the same again...

Okay, now I'm having another problem. It may not be directly KSP IE, but it's related. At high time warp values, liquid hydrogen cooling doesn't work and I get lots of boiloff even though I have lots of power.

Currently the main ship uses a positron reactor and a thermal generator. I haven't looked at MHD generators ever, but looking at the stats those work three times as well, so I will probably switch those on the mothership and maybe one other ship. The issue is the amount of hydrogen required. The ship in question is designed for extremely long term use without refueling. In practice, I really only need the power a QSR gives while warping near large planets (or stars, I guess) so I wonder if I could get away with just not running it unless I'm refueling positrons or maneuvering... Or I could redesign the whole thing to be able to ISRU Hydrogen, but the idea of landing an 800 ton spaceship on a small world is not an attractive one. Well, I accidentally overwrote my mothership so it's getting redesigned anyways.

Thank you for your quick response. Intuition says that this would add a lot of mass to my ship, but looking at my landers, about half of them, including the one I spent the longest perfecting, use positron reactors and I don't think I can get similar performance out of anything else. I may have to redesign the mothership to include a QSR. It had one early in the design phase but I decided I didn't need that much power, and the form factor was rather large. I'll do some tests to see how fast it produces positrons and how much it uses... It might be worth it.

Question. How does one make positrons? I can collect antimatter from magnetic fields but I don't know what to do from there. If necessary I can probably switch my operation over to antimatter but I would prefer to not change the tanks on a few different crafts.

Blue Origin has named their first crew carrying space capsule the RSS First Step.

Yeah, of course the launch I told my crush about (and was her first launch to watch I think) had to be one of the least interesting visually...

So, that Vista fusion engine on the back of the Wyvern is the only reason for the 2.5m profile. It gets a specific impulse of 15,000 ish at the highest thrust setting, almost double that at the lowest. However, when I added the thermal rocket nozzles, I noticed that they had a specific impulse of 7,000. I only intended to use them for a little extra boost, but I decided to see what would happen if I dropped the fusion engine and replaced it with an antimatter thermal one. Also, at this point I changed the hydrogen only fuel to a hydrogen fluorine mixture which is more dense, if it only gets a specific impulse of ~4000 seconds (haha, "only" 4,000 seconds!). BOOM. Amazing performance, but only in oxygenated atmospheres, as the thermal rocket can't operate in just atmospheric mode. I still had to use the thermal ramjets to get up to orbit. Except, the thermal ramjets are vastly outperformed in hydrogen-intake air mode by the thermal rocket engine, giving much more thrust. So I decided to try ditching the side ramjets, leaving me only with a single thermal rocket. Maybe I could do non-oxygen ascents on just rocket power. So I tried that. I ended up with a vehicle with 10km/s of Delta-V with hydrogen and fluorine, plus a little extra hydrogen for oxygenated ascents. It was also single stick, so there was a bit less drag. The size of the engine was dropped to 0.95 meters because it actually had too much thrust. Unfortunately, due to drag, it got to Kerbin orbit with 5km/s left. Granted, I plowed through the atmosphere, but given the crazy worlds out there, I don't want to take risks. I messed around with propellants. This is where I hit what I think is my gold mine. PVC gets a specific impulse of 3500, but is very dense. The fuel tanks are less heat resistant, so I wrapped them in a fairing. At this point I may as well put the whole thing into a fairing... But this fuel, in the same volume gives me a Delta-V of about 20 kilometers per second. The only downfall is the 1.55 TWR. I would prefer that at at least 3-4 in order to deal with some of the more crazy worlds out there. So I bumped the engine back up to 1.2m, giving me 2.87 TWR and 17km/s Delta-V. I'm pretty sure that's enough for my purposes. Near current design: At this point it has little in common with the original Wyvern except function. Advantages over fusion design: Lighter overall Five propellants, but one is the plutonium for the RTG which won't need to be replaced for pretty much ever, so functionally it's hydrogen, PVC, monopropellant, and antimatter. Deuterium and Tritium were eliminated but PVC was added. Less drag The only clipping is for the RTG because I couldn't find out where to put it, and the clipping for the hatch (which is just structural clipping). Nothing is aerodynamically clipped. I intend to fix the RTG but I may not. The fusion version had nose cones and fairings clipped around to reduce drag. I've only tested this once but it appears to be easier to land on water with this design Disadvantages over fusion design: Even less atmospheric endurance. The hydrogen tank is small and this can't operate in intake air only mode, so it's good for flags and footprints but not much else. Probably harder to land vertically because the wings are higher up A bit less heat resistant on average I think.

Eventually. The next few chapters require lots of set building, and I have decided that if I want to finish a story before I graduate, it will be Voyage. I intend to finish this story someday, but it is not my top priority and I can't say when the next chapter will come.

He's also doing/did a Ted talk today, don't know much about that besides a tweet.

Who manages the @SQUAD account?

True, but we also know more about landing on other worlds, construction technology, and stuff in general. Not saying it will be easier or harder than the LM, just pointing out a few things. I think it's too early to tell whether it will happen or not. I do think they will try for the goal, though. Bridenstine seems to be pushing this pretty hard, and I haven't seen this kind of push in my entire lifetime. It may be just words at this point, but they aren't empty words. They are examining several approaches and beginning to plan. Again, it's too early to tell. I do think that Bridenstine has a better chance of accomplishing this than any of the recent administrators would.

Yeah. I think that the design should be able to hold the 4 people on Orion. Getting stuck with an interim lander intended to be replaced by something more powerful in the future could very well end up going the way of the ICPS... But if it's a choice between 2 people or 0 people, I'd choose 2.

Fuel. The barge is not equipped to refuel the booster. It may even need a full transporter/erector/launch pad... I think that the barge isn't even equipped to handle the weight of a fully fueled booster, and neither the legs.