Ultimate Steve

If you get banned is there an appeal process?

Anyone know if we're still go for today? We should be three hours out if the 2 day delay sticks.

I think they need to upgrade their transporter to be able to handle the legs.

I do agree, Earth needs another moon or two... or 620000.

We are not, for the most part, randomly speculating. We are making logical guesses based on the material that has been released to us. Sometimes those discussions get too wild (I think we have a BFR specific thread) but if we are discussing SpaceX then it is only natural to discuss what may be coming in the future. A good source for just news with a little bit of speculation is /r/spacex. There is also /r/spacexlounge because the mods at /r/spacex remove literally everything not on topic. For memes there is /r/spacexmasterrace.

Rocket Garden getting a new exhibit, the last unfinished Delta II!

Someone on Reddit or somewhere did some digging or something, and discovered that the file was last modified in July, meaning this render could be 2 months old already if that is correct... I wonder how much the design has changed since then.

T-1 minute. Farewell, Delta II! Good luck on 100 consecutive successes!

Just so you;re aware, it may be a bit unrealistic but there is an ambient light slider in the settings menu.

In short, I launched tourists, did a mission to a secret space station, impacted Moho, and did explosive surgery on a Mun Base. Space Camp 6 launched on an Odin 1A launch vehicle, developed specifically for Space Camp. In a contract mod, a space camp is this: take 3 crewmembers and 16 tourists to space for 40 days and 3 of them will join your space program. This is AMAZING for me because rescue contracts are disabled and I can't figure out how to turn them back on. Almost free Kerbals. Odin 1A is hydrogen and oxidizer and is actually pretty bad. This one barely made orbit due to TWR and *almost* managed first stage recovery. I used to launch Space Camp on a Copernicus Heavy, I might switch back to that. Both the first stage and the spaceship are designed for vertical propulsive landings, but the spaceship has parachute backups and I'll need them because of fuel margins. Next up, Galactus 7. A crew of 8 bound for Arkangel Station, my LEO station... It has been abandoned due to a lack of a crew (I want 4 Kerbals at every station and base, but the Mun took priority). 4 of the crew are tourists, who booked a 50 day stay, and the other 4 are crew, 2 of which are Sily and Bob (spaceplane crew I ship) who were getting oddly suspicious about why they aren't using a spaceplane for this simple mission. And the Copernicus Heavy has >2km/s of delta-v in excess... This same configuration can do a Minmus crew transfer! The crew detached form S2 and docked with the station... History lesson, the station started construction when we only had 0.625m ports and 1.25m parts, so there's a bunch of mixed technologies. There's also nothing for the lab to research. Also, docked to the station is T-01 Spectre, a nuclear powered transfer ship for crew transfers. Little did Bob and Sily know, hidden in the interstage was a small 2 man spacecraft called Timberwind-3, which used the second stage's fuel to dock with Timberwind-1 which was in a high orbit. The two scientists, (NAMES CLASSIFIED), will spend at least 50 days on the station processing the data from the magnetometer, radio telescope, and gravioli experiments while at the same time monitoring the nuclear reactor (which we have to run at low power due to heat), searching for extraterrestrial radio broadcasts, and hunting for antimatter. They will hopefully return safely in their little return pod, but if they can't, a secret mission will have to be made, maybe disguised as a rescue mission for another country. Background, in this career I'm trying to progress slowly. I have this little paper next to me with a row for each planet/moon. There are several columns, marked Flyby, Impact, Orbiter, Lander, Rover, Relays, Manned flyby/orbit, Manned landing, Station modules, and Base modules. I have to do these either in order or close enough to be logical. I need three relays, 5 station modules, and 5 base modules. When this is done I'll have developed stations and bases everywhere to play with. This was the fifth and final mandatory module for Pandora Base on the Mun. It was for habitation, but also served another purpose. It carried 2 extra Sr. docking ports, and the Arcadia Docking Stage had been modified to include a Klaw and RCS engines, and also carried 5 explosive charges. The new module was docked. One docking port was put on top of the central hub in the picture. Then, the klaw stage was brought over to the non-connected module on top of the picture and attached to the top. Then we blew up the bottom of the module (sorry, history!) and attached a new port, then sky-craned it on top of the center of the base to make an observatory tower! Some background, that was the first module of the base and might have been intended as a standalone base at one point, but for whatever reason I didn't have docking ports on it, so I fixed it today! Pandora base, complete with the Higgins lander and Rosalia II Rover. We did lose a solar panel and an antenna during the tip-over, but we have more antennas, and we actually didn't change in solar power because we had to retract one of the main panels to keep it from hitting the base, so really no loss! Also a probe hit Moho (*checks off impact checkbox*) but that's minor.

Edited my above post to refer to my current rocket ^^^. I guess you'd be able to make it more borderline yourself than Estes would be able to make it, so I guess that's where the discrepancy is coming from.

Probably possible but that most likely involves the most minimal of designs, perfect fin alignment, and probably no paint. EDIT: The Comanche-3, the highest altitude Estes kit, can do 2250 feet with D12-0 C6-0 and C6-7.

A thing about the lack of solar... On the NSF forum someone found the url/filename and it reads https://www.spacex.com/sites/spacex/files/bfr1_moon1_nosolar_all_engines.jpg suggesting that either this is the render with no solar panels or a version of the BFR with no solar panels.

In a potentially unwise decision, I added KSP Interstellar Extended to my stockalike career. The loading time is doubled now, and the mode switch on the LV-N's might have broken any active craft that use LV-N's but I haven't checked that yet. Because I tend to make everything into a plot, I made the experimentation with nuclear technologies and antimatter detection a top secret program called Project Timberwind after the IRL Project Timberwind. Step 1, launch a top secret nuclear powered radio observatory space station disguised as a solar powered unmanned radio observatory satellite. Launched on a standard Copernicus Heavy, the heaviest payload launched by this rocket to date. Crew will be secretly launched in a few missions, possibly hidden in the interstage of a tourist rocket, or disguised as tourists. Next up i needed to look for Antimatter. Cue Timberwind-2. Powered by an experimental Candle engine. Orbited the Mun, Minmus, and Kerbin, also landed on Minmus, and then entered LKO. So... Installing KSP IE broke my old nuclear augmented SSTO so I redesigned it but due to a glitch I had to delete KSPIE's config file, and that reset some of the stuff... The redesign wasn't necessary and the radiators added almost too much drag, I barely reached LKO and this was designed for Minmus. The reason I launched the X-6C Pendulum was to make an attempt at recovering Timberwind-2. The crew, Bob and Sily (I ship them and they are the kerbs who are specially trained in atmospheric flight) took it up to the satellite with some difficulty and found that the klaw would not engage, so it was just shoved in the bay. But we were going too fast for comfort so we opened the bay to 1% to act as an airbrake but Bob pushed the wrong button and the bay opened all the way, and Timberwind-2 disintegrated. Luckily the engine core was designed to survive without massive radiation leakage. This is top secret so there will be no public backlash, even Bob and Sily think it was just an experimental commsat. Also, the front gear didn't open, but a landing was made at just over 30m/s, this thing glides pretty well. Also this is a mostly no reverts career, so the mistakes are permanent.

9/10 You're all over the place!

Sorry for the late response, I was unaware you had replied! For future reference, if you use the quote button, the person you are quoting will get a notification. As for where I am, I'm a Junior in High School, so I've got quite a ways to go... Obviously I play KSP, and while that doesn't mean I have any extra qualifications, it means I know how orbits and stuff work. I've also worked on a few IRL spacey designs long enough to know that they are terribly designed, but I haven't had the time to do them over. As far as colleges go, I plan to study Aerospace Engineering or some other general form of Engineering... Normal engineering means I am more likely to be accepted by various places, but less likely to be accepted for the places I want to work, and vice versa for Aerospace Engineering. However, only two colleges near me specifically list "Aerospace Engineering" as a major and one of them is a somewhat expensive private college focused more on aviation than space. Where I'm going to college is still very much in the air, but looking at what @cubinator is doing, not to be a copycat or anything, but going where he is going sounds like an option, especially because they actually get hands on experience with rockets, and it's only one state away. Iowa's just not a very spacey place. Too much corn. EDIT: I also just finished applying for a job shadow at Rockwell Collins, one of the few aerospacey places around. Fingers crossed!

No problem, butt-to-butt is still doable, just roll a ship 180 degrees or so.

OOOOOO!!!! With 7 SL Engines could that work better as an abort system now?

The SpaceX Reddit appears to be taking the new design seriously. They have zoomed in and adjusted the contrast or something and they have 2 notable theories. One, the bottom two fins might be on hinges. Two, there *might* be a piece of hardware along the outside of the 7 engines that pops out to act as one huge vacuum nozzle, although it's not extended in the picture. Alternately that space on the outside might be something to help with foreign object damage during landing/takeoff. Either way, HYPE! Unfortunately I'll be at musical practice at the time of the announcement in a building with internet that blocks livestreams. Hopefully there will be a rehost somewhere!

Maybe you could try using ions (a lot of them) for downforce because they have a massive isp boost.

You know, I've had something similar happen... Don't know what is causing it, but I ended up with more Delta-V than what KER said. MJ consistently showed more (No, I wasn't in Aero mode) and as a result my 100t lifter can lift something like 140t, which shrunk my lunar architecture form one launch to two.

Technically that would be classified as Amateur Rocketry rather than model rocketry. At the bare minimum it would be high power rocketry (Size H engines or above). My largest "model" rocket can only do 700 meters theoretically.

So, I got bored and did the math while I was on vacation. I forget the exact numbers, but... Regarding GEO launches, I calculated that if you had a stage with a dry mass of (I forget but its a realistic number) tons that can carry 60-70 tons of methane/lox powered by a subscale raptor engine, with boiloff protection, power systems, and RCS, then you can launch it empty in a BFS, refuel from the BFS to get a full 70t fuel load, and put a 20t commsat direct into GEO and return to the paylaod bay for full reusability. Not a coincidence, this also has the right amount of Delta-V to visit both Deimos and Phobos in the same mission if it's docked to a stripped down Dragon 2 and a small hab module, provided the BFS aerobrakes into an elliptical orbit. It can also have cislunar applications, but I didn't do the math that far, it probably has a useful payload of a few tons, but the cost of fueling this thing for a few tons of payload is much less than the cost of the refueling launches needed for the BFS to go to LLO and back.

SWEDE - Succeeds When Everything Doesn't Explode.

Interesting enough, Russia did this once, although to be fair Pizza Hut did actually launch a pizza to the ISS.