DaMachinator

This still requires propellant to circularize...

Some of these issues might be solved by technological developments in engine technology - if pulse detonation engines or scramjets ever become practical, for instance. However, this discussion concerns the here and now. As far as that goes: The TSA is ineffective. Crazy people still get on planes, and there's no TSA for general aviation. Nobody's going to keep you from buying a used cargo jet if you have the money. If we're targeting this group of wealthier people who can afford SST flight, why not make the plane roomier? Say 2 or 3 seats an aisle instead of 4, and put the seats farther apart. Headroom will still be a bit of an issue, but the Concorde passengers didn't seem to care. The Concorde actually made British Airways money, as unbelievable as that is. OT: Interestingly, one of AMTRAK's other profitable routes is Virginia? to Central Florida. Rich peoples love their beaches and expensive condos and (comparatively) warm winters.

You could also use unconventional propulsion - mass drivers, nuclear thermal engines (which as far as I know can use any fuel that expands sigificantly at high temperatures compared to it's storage temperature), pulsed detonation engines, nuclear pulse propulsion, various forms of electric and hybrid electric engines - all kinds of old and new concepts come to mind. Many electric and hybrid-electric engines, however, require exotic propellants or enhance the efficiency of conventional propellants, either not solving the problem or substituting it for a similar one. Also, what are the objections to constructing spacecraft out of advanced composite materials rather than aluminum? Glass-reinforced plastic, carbon fiber, various other pure carbon materials, and tungsten carbide come to mind.

One could replace the turbojets with ramjets, which are more efficient at supersonic speeds. Whether this would actually improve efficiency and be at all practical is another matter, although I suspect that it would be. Again, it had no competition, meaning that the kind of people who wanted the aircraft that the Concorde was had no other choice. Even with it's outdated technology and poor fuel efficiency, the Concorde aircraft did make British Airways a profit. Any extreme commercial aircraft is going to be suited only for long-range or mid-range high traffic routes. The A380 has the same problem, yet it is used. Also, planes don't fly straight across the Pacific (or the Atlantic, for that matter). They fly polar great circle routes. Or you could refuel the aircraft. The Concorde still would make the trip over twice as fast as any modern subsonic jet. The sonic boom occurs continually as long as an aircraft is moving, but anything moving slower than the aircraft will only hear the characteristic double boom. As best as I can tell, there are four ways to decrease it: Decrease the lift produced by the wings. The higher the lift, the bigger the sonic boom. This strongly favors small aircraft like fighters and business jets, and is the real reason business jets should be able to supercruise over land. Go faster. Shape the aircraft in such a way that less of the energy of the sonic boom is directed towards the ground. Shape the aircraft in such a way that the sonic boom has less energy to begin with. All planes are expensive. The key word here should be "specialized" or "high performance". In other words, any aircraft that does a few things really well will be lacking in other areas, perhaps enough to render it impractical. It is the nature of people to be upset at things which make them late. There are multiple airlines that operate the A380. If one airline is consistently late, people will not use it.

Since supersonic commercial aircraft are clearly possible (see: Concorde) what would be the obstacles to the construction and operation of a new one? Obstacles I see: Noise pollution Dubious economy of operation Low public interest Lack of obvious use in which they would significantly outperform existing subsonic aircraft Additionally, how impractical are theoretical hypersonic large aircraft that "skip" across the thicker layer of the atmosphere?

Concorde had no competitors in it's niche, meaning that the companies who owned it probably had the "if it ain't broke, don't fix it" mentality. On the subject of the aircraft in question: It's an electric aircraft powered by a nuclear reactor. It doesn't use nuclear propulsion. The fission reactor on the NR-1 could easily fit in any modern airliner. It would need very infrequent refueling - the biggest problem would be heat dissipation. Whether 5MW (as someone who, without citing their sources, said the power output was) is enough to propel an airliner through the air, and whether the weight of a reactor would significantly disturb the CoM, is something I am not knowledgable enough to speak on.

BOOSTERS!!! Sorry, I had to do that at least once.

I use https://u.tylian.net mostly. https://u.tylian.net and put the images in spoilers instead because it doesn't do albums.

Personally, making the planet VFX look better would be a start. They already look good, but adding things like a "halo" around a planet with an atmosphere when it is between you and the sun would be worth going to for screenshots. The problem is that it is up to the player to set goals. Contracts in career are simply an income source, as I see it. While being able to do "press releases" and stuff that would cause the contracts you get to more specifically target your long-term goals would be nice, and the ability to SELL space on rockets instead of accepting contracts (e.g. KSA is offering to put up to 5 tons in a high Kerbin orbit for 10,000 kredits!) even better, it is ultimately up to the player to decide what they want to do.

Do note that the company primarily responsible for the console ports is not SQUAD. I forget the name, but SQUAD partnered with another company to port KSP to console.

Lock or remove as you see fit, please: http://forum.kerbalspaceprogram.com/index.php?/topic/143822-kiwiirc-connects-to-espernet-again-yay/

KiwiIRC no longer connects to EsperNet. This is probably collateral damage from a specific user getting K-lined, since everyone who uses KiwiIRC has the same hostname. I like the webchat client I linked as an alternative better than KiwiIRC anyways so I left the next part in a spoiler: Fixed by an unknown party, KiwiIRC users can connect to EsperNet again!

I already have engine lighting, but mostly because it provides a good visual indicator of distance to ground for night landings When you've got multiple engines on your lander, you know you're close when the circles of light intersect.

Gratituous explosions are plentiful, especially when using explosive decoupling

This is in the Windows 10 photo viewer with a grey theme applied to window tops and the start menu bar. The Win10 photo viewer is black with white line icons.

Now go to Moho. One thing's for certain: you'll want a protractor.

They look good ingame, but when I pull them up in an external program they're barely visible. I may start adjusting the brightness on photos just enough to make them visible.

So far, I haven't used any external characters. The characters in the story are the Space Center named people and the astronauts I have and obtain through rescues or hiring. My naming problem lies in finding memorable names for vessels and satellites. Once-and-done things like sounding rockets can have any name as i'll never need them again. Things like CactEye telescope probes and exploratory probes need names I can remember. I also don't like silly names. I like descriptive words that fit the vessel. Like Oculus for a telescope or Caduceus for a Moho probe lander. (If you can find the connection between Moho and "caduceus" you get a prize.) If stuff blows up, it goes into the story. No reverting unless the game crashes and reverts it for me or a game bug occurs. See: The last chapter. That wasn't just something I stuck in, the guidance script I wrote DID crash. I forgot to declare a variable in a function before SET'ing it.

What link? Thanks, wasn't really sure where to put it.

Anywhere except LKO a pair of ultralight escape vessels (Mk3 Crew Cabin + Stack Guidance System + life support) with enough Delta-V to get home usually works better. OT: I still haven't updated past 1.0.5. I keep having to remove mods because of OOM crashes. I sent a probe into Kerbol orbit without orbiting Kerbin first. Stage 1: Biggest SpaceY booster there is, plus a Procedural Fairing with ablator added Stage 2: Asteroid Day big probe core with 6 SpaceY Ejectatrons

I need some tips on writing Mission Reports. Of note: I am in general not a great writer... Almost all of my night-time screenshots that look fine ingame come out too dark, but I don't want to alter them (adjust brightness/contrast). I've already attempted this once, if you want to see a writing sample to make better suggestions, it's in my signature. I'm horrible at coming up with names I like.

I've noticed (depends on browser, browser window/screen size, and browser type [mobile or PC]) various issues, including: Images cut in half Images duplicated, and resized to fit (but not cut in half) [Mobile (Safari) only] Album causing the webpage to error and reload In general not working at random times [usually fixed by reload] And people ask me why I don't use Imgur for images.

The paper kerbal keeps losing everything except the front page of my newspaper

We say good-bye to the Tantares mod, in the never-ending struggle to free up memory. Modlist updated.

Real life and figuring out kOS conspired to send this on a far-too-long hiatus. Chapter IV: Genesis The four astronauts sat together in the Mission Control building looking out towards the launchpad. Jeb proudly displayed his single star, while Mortimer fretted over the 10,000 kredits the space agency would never see again. Today's attraction: The Genesis rocket. Wernher von Kerman had, through observation of the Mun and the trajectory of the Extra-series sounding rockets, cooked up a revolutionary theory. By accelerating parallel to the ground for long enough, an object could get into a state known as "orbit", where, barring Kraken attacks, collisions, or other mishaps, it would never come down again, but would instead pass overhead in a similar manner to the Mun on a regular basis. Except for the rest of the staff at the somewhat impoverished space agency, no one believed Wernher. Wernher presented his idea to Bill, who agreed to an inane proposition: Bill would write a control script to be fed to an onboard computer and automatically put it "into orbit." This took Bill a long, long, long time. He had to continually ask Wernher for equations to calculate trajectories and burn times. And now, the day of the launch was here. Genesis was equipped with the latest and greatest in rocket technology: liquid fueled rockets. The probe core and computer protected from the elements by a sleek white fairing, it sat on the concrete circle affectionately known as a "launchpad". Lights flickered as the guidance computer booted and automatically pulled files from the mainframe in the basement of the Administration Building. Bob: I've got the telemetry feed! Darn you and your twisted sense of humor, Bill! The telemetry terminal displayed a single line: Bad code brought to you by HydroCorp Inc. Aerospace Division! Bill smiled. "Wait for it..." The LV-T45 liquid-fueled rocket engine burst into flame, and the Genesis rose into the air at ever-increasing speed. Farther away, those who were close enough (mostly nay-sayers and reporters) heard a roar and looked up to see the trail of smoke marking the rocket's path. The kerbals watched the telemetry stream, and the view from the single fairing-mounted camera: Bill: "The first stage should be running out of fuel any minute now." Bob: "The telemetry shows we've got no thrust!" Bill, who had a more verbose telemetry stream, called out events occuring too fast to watch on the hullcam: "Interstage fairing jettisoned...Stage separation confirmed...Second stage ignition confirmed." Bob: "Mort, when this is over, go out in your boat and see if you can find that spent stage. We put pressure-deployment 'chutes on it, and it should have landed out in the ocean somewhere." When the guidance computer calculated the rocket would reach an altitude of 80 kilometres above the surface (a value chosen by Wernher from extrapolations of the pressure data from the sounding rockets), it shut the engine off and coasted to the point at which the atmosphere was no longer detectable (also extrapolated). Suddenly, the telemetry stream stopped. Bob panicked and yelled at Bill and Wernher. Bill: "Bob, the guidance computer is switching to an antenna with a longer range." The telemetry stream came back online. Seconds later, the guidance program crashed, turning the telemetry stream into gibberish. Bob ran to the tracking station with its three massive radar dishes and pinpointed the probe's location on a 3D map. Bill sent some hurried commands to the guidance computer to transmit its output log back to them. Jeb: "Now we can have REAL fun!" He grabbed the emergency joysticks and turned the probe to point parallel to the horizon. "Throttle to max! We've got lots of fuel, let's go to orbit!" Wernher, Bill, and Jeb watched the 3D map, programmed with Wernher's equations to show the trajectory of the probe. Suddenly, the trajectory appeared to encircle the planet instead of impacting it. Wernher: "Don't stop now! Ve must get the periapse above 70 kilometres!" Which it did, moments later. Jeb cut the throttle. Everyone cheered. And then they turned the data recorders on, pointed the radar dishes to the projected location of the probe according to Wernher's theories, and went to bed. They awakened to the sound of an excited crowd. Wernher was in the spotlight, followed by the four astronauts, and Mortimer, who had fished the slightly battered spent stage out of the ocean and brought it back. Mortimer, Bob, and Wernher were so delighted they hired three new staff on the spot from the crowd: Linus Kerman, to head the Research and Development team; Walt Kerman, to oversee the PR department; and Gus Kerman, as general operations manager. The scientific data from the rocket's telemetry as well as the surge in possibilities due to the proof of Wernher's theories led to some very generous contributions that doubled the ready cash of the space agency (Mortimer was delighted and had to be physically restrained), and some groundbreaking discoveries in the field of rocketry. The influx of cash was used to start construction of a new and better VAB, worthy of its' name. KREDITS: 92,530 REP: 157 SCIENCE: 14.4