Ultimate Steve

I'm glad to see that they're shaking this up and taking it seriously!

No, I think he's onto something. It blows my mind - Reddit is bullying. YouTube is bullying. You know what? Facebook may be as well, you can react with an "angry." I think this is sound and logical. The internet exists on a foundation of bullying and the KSP forum has managed to escape that until now. Because of this stupid move, the entire forum has turned corrupt and has sunk to the level of the mainstream internet. We all hate each other, as it should be. /Sarcasm

So, most of the screenshots for the next 2 or 3 chapters are done, I think. Don't quote me on that, it depends on if I decide to do anything extra, or how many chapters I cram into the space of one. But I'd like to give an interesting update on something not directly related to the story. The Wyvern can do Earth ascent, but IIRC I had to use ignore max temperature for both the ascent and the descent. It also uses a lot of part clipping. For a potential future project, I started designing and testing a Wyvern II design. It is being designed to be able to land on and take off from any reasonable Kerbal-scale atmospheric world. It could do vacuum worlds too but another lander can do that much simpler... It also must not use part clipping, and must also not use ignore max temperature. Not a very good picture, but here is the latest design: A far earlier picture: This picture shows the layout much better. Many of the details have changed, though. The wings, outboard engines, and crew cabins have been completely redone, and many other things have been tweaked. Unfortunately I broke my "no clipping" rule by attaching nose cones to the backs of the engines and offsetting them inside to make the whole thing sleeker. I'll see if it works without those, but if not I'll keep them. But, this is still less clipping than in the original, which had the fusion engine, a hydrogen tank, a nuclear ramjet, and an antimatter reactor/power generator clipped inside each other. I'm not sure if it will still be able to do Earth (it might, and should be able to but maybe not) but it makes up for that shortfall with more versatility. Wyvern II: Can land and take off vertically Can land and take off horizontally Holds 4 crew instead of 3 (a bit cheaty, the 4th seat is a tweakscaled hatch, it will probably only fly with 3) Can land on and take off from oceans (in most cases). It has a hydrofoil type thing to help with this. Unfortunately, it also adds drag. Operates on 5 propellants instead of 6, antimatter, deuterium, tritium, hydrogen, and monopropellant. The original needed to refuel its nuclear reactor from time to time, but that's not really relevant. Can fire hydrogen powered antimatter thermal engines (which can also be used as hydrogen jet engines) in order to increase apoapsis if it's too low to clear the atmosphere Wyvern II has been designed with a greater range of worlds in mind, ocean worlds, thin and thick atmospheric worlds, but in order to fit those roles it has lost some of the original Wyvern's capability. Wyvern II: Cannot fly near-infinitely for exploration. This is the biggest con. The atmospheric engines are antimatter powered, and the antimatter reserves on board are good enough for a few ascents/descents without refueling, but antimatter is not as efficient as you'd expect in atmospheric flight. It can fly around a bit, enough to get pretty far away, but antimatter reserves become a problem quickly. The original Wyvern had a nuclear ramjet instead of an antimatter one, which was much better for flying around. I'm going to try switching out the antimatter ones for nuclear ones to see if it is better, but if I'm probably going to stick with antimatter unless nuclear is just as good as ascent. Cannot fit in any reasonable cargo bay. Has more drag (I think) than the original Wyvern. I may be wrong, those radiator wings are actually pretty draggy and I replaced them, but I can't get up to original Wyvern speeds with Wyvern II. 3km/s? Nah. Maybe 1.6, but actually it's heating at that point that becomes a problem, but even with ignore max temperature I doubt it could get to 3... And I'm not sure whether to put this in the pros or cons, but it has significantly higher performance in oxygen atmospheres because the engines can operate in hydrogen-intake air mode, giving better performance than atmospheric mode, while still remaining fuel efficient. So, yeah. Progress is being made related to the story, but not towards the story. BTW Wyvern II is definitely not canon, it's for something completely different that I may or may not do. It just had its roots in this story, so I thought I'd share it with you.

It would be cool if they did this as a stunt, period. Few things are done as a stunt in spaceflight ever, and most stunts have some basis in reason.

TFW the most capable launch system being seriously proposed is also a meme that the creators embrace and encourage

I've only used it once, for a massive contract in career that gave me like 4 million funds. It took a few years to complete the survey, but it was so worth it! Unfortunately the subsequent sentinel contracts aren't giving me nearly that much.

Hmm... Maybe I should modify the SSTO to be capable of vertical takeoff as well. It can currently do landing... But then I'd have a ladder issue... Maybe...

I SAWED THIS SPACE STATION IN HALF!

Alright. I have redesigned my atmo SSTO. It now has a lot more flexibility - if you are very gentle, you can land in and take off from water, but it was only tested on Kerbin. I have also added braking parachutes, as well as parachutes near the front so you can deploy them and do a vertical propulsively assisted landing. This makes water landings easier, and it also makes landing on worlds with thin atmospheres (tested on Duna) easier. It was tested on Jool again and still works.

Probably because of the black hole and Falcon Heavy launch in the same week.

Woohoo!

WOOOHOOO! Peanuts are only a JPL thing, but I'm gonna go get some peanut butter because I don't have any peanuts.

Assume, for a second, that you must do a grand tour. The catch is that you don't know what planets you will be going to. It could be any of the planet packs in KSP. You could have mega Eve, mega Tylo, boiling ocean moon, mini Gilly, etc. You don't know. You also have KSP Interstellar Extended and a few other futuristic but balanced mods. In order to have all of your bases covered, which Landers should you bring? So far, I have an an all atmospheric world SSTO, tested on Jool, a fusion powered Tylo plus non atmospheric lander, a Mun ish sized nuclear lander that can handle light atmospheres, and a nuclear light moon lander. I am concerned about large world's with thin atmospheres as the SSTO can't fire its fusion engine in an atmosphere, and needs an atmosphere to accelerate. I am also concerned about ocean world's. I don't know what to build for a landing there. Can you think of any other niches I missed?

It would also make a very large platform to test wet workshop on.

Isn't black the normal color of the interstage? IIRC it is carbon fiber. They paint it for aesthetics and stopped doing it on B5. I don't think that the white adds much extra protection. Maybe Elon decided that FH looked better with a white interstage?

Wait, so will we get the Sagittarius pictures today or later?

This looks interesting! Alright, I've been thinking of doing an Interstellar Consortium mega exploration expedition. Assuming my computer can run it, of course. This system is listed on the IC page as compatible, but that was a while ago I think, is it still compatible?

A few people on Reddit have started calling the first "orbital" starship the Stardiver/StarDiver, as it will presumably test the skydiver re-entry pattern.

By my calculations, a maximum of 10 SRBs can be around an SLS core... That would certainly be interesting to see! At that point, you would probably want to start looking into air starting some of the boosters to make the TWR not so ridiculously high.

What I don't get with ACES is, if you need to refuel it to reuse it, and if you need another ACES to refuel it, how is that better than just launching a new ACES?

I looked it up. Not counting acting administrators, the average term is 1536 days (not counting Bridenstine) or just over 4 years. Term length is decided by the President, but many administrators have served across multiple presidents and a good chunk of them have served across party changes, so if he keeps doing good things and politically wise things, he should be in office for a while.

I tended to think of front as the side facing the pad, the opposite of the way you think of it, but as far as a side I recognize better, I'm not sure.