Zeiss Ikon

I couldn't get enough static thrust to launch vertically with the Mk. 1 Inline Intake and a Wheesley. The engine was intake-limited until I had some forward velocity (I could see the thrust build even at the beginning of the taxi). Dropping off the remaining landing gear might get you there, but I don't think there's any way you could land on the Wheesley's exahust cone without breaking something. An Engine Nacelle with a Wheesley and a Command Chair might let you land the craft back into a cradle that supports the Wheesley on the fan shroud. And now, of course, as long as your Kerbal has two stars or more, you could use the EVA parachute for your lifting surface, and probably get away with a single Juno, Small Round Intake, one Oscar B or sausage tank (oxidizer removed), and command chair (though you'd have to figure a way for the Kerbal to get into the chair -- climbing along the top from a Mk. 1 Command Pod seems to work well). Hmmm.

At the time I designed and built the Taxicab family of spaceplanes, my career didn't yet have the Mk. 1 Inline Cockpit; in fact, the only command modules I had were the Mk. 1 Command Pod (the original Mercury capsule analog) and the Mk. 1 Cockpit (the one made from cardboard and tinfoil, that would burn up if you looked at it cross eyed). Heck, I built the Taxicab spaceplanes with parachute recovery because I didn't have retractable landing gear until the last couple missions -- and I'd just barely gotten landing legs above the toothpick size when I attempted a Mun landing in one of them. I had gotten into the habit of using 60 km periapsis multipass aerobraking on Munar return after the first few tests brought home just how fragile the Mk. 1 Cockpit is -- get the Ap down under 200 km, and I could prevent anything important from melting on the actual landing reentry. With the canard "deployed" and some RCS to assist the reaction wheel, it was possible to keep the craft in a deep stall that slowed down most efficiently and spread the heat to more tolerant components, until it was slow enough to enter a normal glide. Nowadays (still in same career -- don't have tens of hours a week to play), I'm flying stuff like this Module Lifter III: There's 6400 units of Lf/O (and a Mk. 1-3) inside that fairing, bound for Minmus Station Alpha. Usually winds up having to borrow about 800 units to make rendezvous, but Minmus capture is assured without touching the cargo. Now that the station's been accepted (contract completed) I'm thinking about setting up a mining/fuel conversion operation to use Minmus as a stepping stone for Duna/Ike/Gilly landings and a visit to Dres. Which, I suspect, is what the "build a station around Minmus" contract is about...

As I understand the process of making a COPV, you get a sort of "automatic liner" in the form of a layer of resin laid down on the form before you start the overwrap. With conventional COPV, like SCBA tanks for emergency responders, the form is the liner, a steel or aluminum inner tank too thin to hold the full design pressure (COPVs are used in this situation because they're lighter for the same pressure and volume than either steel or aluminum). "Unlined" COPVs are made on a collapsible form that can be removed after curing -- essentially a big balloon that will hold the desired tank shape, but can be removed through one of the formed-in ports. The COPVs used for helium in the Falcon 9 tanks (helium to pressurize the tank, which both adds extra column strength to the stage and assists the turbopumps by reducing cavitation) are unlined, but the inner continuous layer of resin keeps the helium in. The outer layers are where the oxygen found a way to freeze in the interstices, causing a combination of tank rupture and ignition energy as the helium pressure expanded the inner tank. I don't think resin-surface tanks, if made with adequate pressure margins and expansion allowance, will be any more hazardous, even for oxygen service, than putting the (genuinely, on the outside) unlined helium tank inside the liquid oxygen. Which, yes, blew up a rocket -- and now won't, because the fueling procedure was changed to prevent formation of oxygen crystals within the wrap.

Really? I thought all their actual tanks were composite (the composite helium tank inside the oxygen tank was blamed for the on-pad explosion a while back).

Unfortunately, all my really early rocket images were on my Photobucket -- that account was deleted when Photobucket started asking $400/yr to share images with the world. The oldest I have in my Imgur are from Jeb's first orbital mission in my current career -- Explorer III. Common 1.25m rocket, solid boosters and core, Swivel upper stage, dependent on batteries and the Swivel's alternator for electric power (hence, no successful science transmission, as the internal batteries in a Mk.1 Command Pod are insufficient to transmit even temperature and pressure logs (makes no sense to me, but that's the way it is). Later, there was the spaceplane era (vertically boosted spaceplanes, like graceful and fragile versions of Dyna-Soar or Space Shuttle): With a little stretching of the orbiter, and adjustment of the aerodynamics, combined with multi-pass aerobraking, derivatives of this vehicle went on Munar flyby and orbit missions -- even one attempt at landing, which would likely have been successful if drop tanks had been added to increase terminal fuel capacity. Eventually, tourist contracts took this spaceplane family to its end point: two at once. That ridiculous outgrowth, coupled with the failure of the Munar landing attempt with one of these orbiters, and the one death so far (a pilot whose cockpit exploded attempting reentry in an overstretched version) was the end of the spaceplane era; after that, the program returned to conventional vertical launch, expendable vehicles -- like the Space Shuttle, too little of the Taxicab spaceplane family was reusable to gain much on the funds side, and by then the space program was profitable enough that reliability was more important than purported reusability. Not really much to see after this -- direct launch Mun and Minmus landers, everyone has seen those.

This sounds very like the autostrut bug -- if autostrut is on, especially to "heaviest part," you can get wild oscillations when physics eases in as you load from save or otherwise switch focus to a craft. The long term solution is not to use autostrut to "heaviest part," instead setting it to "grandparent" (or sometimes, "parent" may be useful), if you really need it at all (you usually won't once a space station is assembled, unless you need to boost the station on occasion).

Well, not as propellants. The last generation External Tanks for the Space Shuttle were skinned with an aluminum-lithium alloy -- which, to me, seemed prone to very rapid corrosion in air, but might have used the natural aluminum oxide surface layer to protect the lithium. It was used because it saved several percent on the dry weight of the tank assembly (there's a LOT of skin on one of those tanks).

Does your rover use autostrut while in boost configuration? If so, either change the autostrut target (don't use "heaviest part"; use "grandparent" if you have to have autostrut), or disable it entirely. Autostrut can, if there's a change in configuration that leads to potential ambiguity on what's the "heaviest part", cause escalating oscillation that will eventually separate parts at non-decoupling joints, potentially also causing explosions when those parts collide with other parts. An example of this is in my recent "What Did You Do in KSP Today" posts concerning Minmus Station Alpha -- after I had four tank sets docked to the station, with the "heaviest part" autostrut that they needed to launch intact, every time I'd load back to the station (i.e. ease in physics by bringing the station into focus or physics range) it would start to oscillate, either to the point of disassembly and ejection of parts, or to the point of part explosions. Turning off autostrut as quickly as possible after loading solved the problem for me.

If you aren't averse to using mods, you can get a lot of rendezvous help from a tiny mod called Better Burn Time. It'll clue you when to start your burn (once you've gotten pointed at the target relative velocity retrograde marker ) in order to stop at or very near closest approach. That will help your 200 m distance stay 200 m so you have time to figure out docking from that distance. With practice, you can learn to set up intercept maneuvers a full orbit out with sub-300 m separations, and "stop on a dime" at closest approach. From there, docking is mostly a matter of knowing how, and being patient enough to wait, even if you're in a hurry (Scott Manley has a couple videos of things like docking with a suborbital target, picking up an EVA Kerbal, suborbital, with empty maneuvering pack, and such, where you are in a hurry -- there's still some waiting involved).

If you have docking ports on the portion that'll be landed, you can have engine modules (ideally with either probe cores or command pods, plus tanks, and whatever else is needed to get them attached and aligned) that dock on, symmetrically around or with thrust limiters adjusted to balance everything, and land the whole mess already horizontal, then undock and fly away the engine modules. That's really the only practical method aside from "land, tip, pucker and pray," that won't require permanently mounting thrusters/engines and tanks, and possibly reaction wheels, to your station. The engine modules (tugs) can be reusable, of course, if they have enough dV left after landing to get back to orbit (or to hop to a fuel depot/mining station). For modules the size of the one in the above illustrations, this is a very practical method. Of course, everything that's going to be attached together in a single group needs to be combined for landing, unless you have some means of moving the modules around on the ground at the destination.

Yesterday (never have time to write this up after playing until I should be in bed): Lufrid brought the third (and, for now, final) set of tanks to Minmus Station Alpha, and the contract finally completed -- after some shenanigans with the station shaking apart on multiple loads (finally managed to turn off autostrut quickly enough after loading the save, in time to stop the shaking; then all was well). She was "honored" with being left in command of the station as Nelcan and Adeny returned to Kerbin -- leaving as much fuel and monopropellant behind as they dared. This leaves Mun Station Alpha with about 18,500 units of Lf/O on board, and tank capacity of 22,400; 595 units of monopropellant with tank capacity of 760. The station has maneuvering engines (an array of six Cub vernier engines) as well as RCS, so can change orbits and actively dock when needed (which is good, because Lufrid ran out of monopropellant twice in the three trips to bring tanks). Honestly, the station itself is probably capable of going anywhere in the system, if one doesn't mind very, VERY long burns... That left one contract to fulfill from the current branch: two tourists wanted to visit the Mun, one to land. Monie was tapped to take them, flying a standard Mun lander (one pilot, two passengers, meant nothing special was needed in the lander other than disabling controls for two seats). After discovering that the crossfeed in the decouplers for the drop tanks had been disabled before flight (?!), she was able to land successfully near the Mun's south pole, and bring back a full load of science from a previously untapped biome. Fortunately, she discovered during her EVA (to plant flag, take surface sample, and file EVA report) that the assembly crew who modified her vessel from one originally built to carry four passengers plus the pilot had managed to leave off the main parachutes; she therefore had a Mk. 1-3 Command Pod loaded with science that had only a pair of drogues. In the best Kerbal tradition, she first tried to self-rescue: instead of direct return, she set up an aerobraking trajectory, and after six passes (starting at 50 km Pe, working down to 42 km) had established a low enough orbit for everything to survive reentry -- except she'd noted enough instability to be pretty sure the ship didn't have enough pitch/yaw authority to keep retrograde through the denser atmosphere. That put the kibosh on her plan to use the transfer stage to thrust brake on a (hopefully) water landing and/or use the engine and tanks as a crush zone on land -- she'd never get the vessel low/slow enough, intact, to open the drogues. That left one alternative: she used the fuel she'd reserved for terminal braking to stabilize in LKO, which left her inclined about 45+ degrees, and called for rescue. As the ground crew rushed together a rescue vessel based on Explorer III (one of the earliest Munar flyby craft -- six stepped-thrust Thumper SRBs around a Swivel core, with Swivel upper stage, and a Mk. 1 Inline Cockpit with KLAW and RCS replacing the original Mk. 1 Command Pod -- Jebediah convinced everyone on the ground he was the only one to pilot the rescue craft. With tourists aboard, an EVA crew transfer wasn't possible, and the technology to add parts to a craft in flight doesn't exist; the only hope was to grapple Jeb's rescue vessel to the tourist craft and let Jeb's (gross overkill, for the vessel he'd be flying) parachutes lower the conglomeration to the ground. Jeb chose to launch from Woomerang, to match the target vessel's inclination without spending a bunch of delta-V (which his vessel didn't have to spare). After several unsuccessful attempts to grapple the Mun lander by its nose cone, Jeb and Monie agreed on Plan B: Monie staged away the Munar transfer module, leaving her large, flattish heat shield exposed, and Jeb grappled on virtually dead center, first try. The rescue vessel's main engine provided thrust to deorbit the -- well, it's not quite a stack, is it? -- joined vessels, the engine and tanks were staged away, and Jeb set things up for reentry, his module leading the way. Despite an unavoidable slight misalignment (a few degrees tilt, a few centimeters off center), the combined reaction wheels had plenty of authority to keep the heat shields forward, and the KLAW held then the main parachutes deployed (that had been the one uncertainty in the plan), even though the combination flipped nose-down when the mains unreefed.

If there's no atmosphere, there are really only two options: thrust of some kind, or crush structures (i.e. lithobraking). A potential third option is wheeled landing on a careful chosen slope, but this requires exceptional precision, to hit the slope just right, as well as a suitably smooth run-out area and wheels that can take near-orbital rolling velocity (not likely for bodies larger than Minmus). Similarly, lithobraking requires high precision control of velocity, along with prior testing, to ensure that the parts intended to explode do so, and those intended to remain don't explode. Thrust landing is by far the most popular method of landing without atmosphere, because it works well and is more forgiving than the alternatives. If you find the presence of engines an eyesore after landing your base assemblies, you could build the thrust systems in a form that can be undocked and flown away after landing -- like the skycrane landers used for the last couple Mars rovers, or like more conventional landing craft with docking ports on the sides so they can connect to your base unit, then just undock and launch back to orbit for reuse.

I'll second this. I recently (February 2018) rebuilt my desktop computer. I bought an AMD FX8350 (4.0 GHz, 8 cores, 8 threads), motherboard, 16 GB DDR3-3300, and reused the nVidia GTX750 I already had, along with my 256 GB SSD and two older platter drives. I spent just over $500 for the whole rebuild, mostly because I already had case, power supply, drives, monitor, and keyboard as well as GPU and other peripheral cards. The machine does a pretty good job running KSP, though I don't run memory-hungry mods (just never wanted to tread that endless road). An alternative can often be to put an improved CPU in the same socket you already have; I've done this in the past (Core2Quad 2.7 GHz replaced a Core2Duo 2.1 GHz); if you have a suitable motherboard already, this can be an inexpensive upgrade path. Don't forget to plan for cooling -- KSP isn't the worst CPU heat abuser around (because it uses a single core/thread for the bulk of its work, so at most two cores will be running all out while the others are loafing, and hardware in the CPU will switch the load around to even out the heat), but you want your CPU to be able to run at its full potential, which means not getting so hot the CPU or operating system throttle back to prevent heat damage. A minimum would be the manufacturer recommended heat sink and fan; if you have any plans to overclock you need significantly better cooling than the minimum.

In fact, I was just fiddling with that. Problem is that in order to get anything like full thrust, and combine fuel with the intake, I have to use the Engine Nacelle, which pretty much requires a Mk. 1 Inline Cockpit, leaving me with a 6+ T lander with 6 parts (three legs is the minimum for a VTOL). And then it loses enough thrust in reverse motion (i.e. dropping for landing) that it barely slows down at full throttle (has only 1/2 G in excess of ambient to start with). Plus, at 200 m/s, the legs act like fins (even retracted) and it's so stable it's almost impossible to turn. Honestly, anything in this category is a novelty anyway -- just having gotten 5 parts to fly is all I'm after with this; now I'm going back to hauling fuel to Minmus Station Alpha.

Okay, five parts can take off. Actually easier to get off the runway than the seven part variant. Sure runs out of fuel fast w/ only 27 units Lf in a Bagel tank. I might have to go back to the Inline Supersonic Intake for the larger fuel capacity, now that I don't need the full 120 kN from the Wheesley to get off the tarmac.

When you're going to land at 150 m/s, more than one wheel is good. I might switch to a Medium and try it, though...

Well, I managed to make one I can get off the runway and fly without SAS, with only seven parts. Haven't managed to land it yet, but I'm not the world's best keyboard pilot -- I probably could, with a joystick. I found the Mk. 1 Inline Supersonic Inlet gave too little intake air at low speed -- an engine that ought to be able to lift the craft vertically (handy on takeoff -- then the gear catches and flips it, click on "Radial Out" and it'll climb vertically out of the SNAFU) was producing less than 20% of rated thrust at static. The Radial Intake still doesn't give full air at rest, but it's enough by the time the craft is moving to be able to fly out of a runway flip. Fuel is in a Bagel tank clipped inside the rear of the Cockpit part (oxidizer pumped out), and COM is just about on the COL, giving very slight static stability with gear up (neutral with gear down, due to gear drag).

Okay, I switched to the Mk. 1 Diverterless Supersonic Intake, which carries 200 units of fuel, moved it forward inside the Mk. 2 Cockpit so the intake was in the same position. Now it runs, but it won't fly (yet). Still fighting with the landing gear.

Wow. That's, what, four parts? Make it six, by putting tricycle gear on with a slightly nose-up attitude at rest, and you might be able to take off and land. Maybe even with a Wheesley. I'm off to the SPH to check... Edit: Wait, where's the fuel for that last version? I built one and the Wheesley just flames out when I try to throttle up.

KIrk (looking up as Enterprise burns in the sky): "What have I done?" McCoy (scowling at Kirk): "What you've always done. Turned certain death into a fighting chance."

Nice! Does this also alter the height map? Earth's Moon is a lot, um, smoother than the Mun...

You could do the same on Earth's Moon, given a 2 atm. air containment with enough space inside. And you wouldn't have to worry about suffocation and frostbite in the Luna City air storage silo.

Hmm. Now I need to go find it.

For short exposures (like a suborbital flight below the Karmann line), a wet suit mated to a dry suit type full helmet should make a perfectly serviceable "space suit". Wouldn't want to stay in it more than an hour or so, especially with heavy exertion, because it fails one of the important things a "skin tight" suit needs to do: allow your sweat to evaporate to let your body cool itself. You'd also need to prebreathe pure oxygen (to prevent nitrogen bubbles in your blood and joints), and regulate the supply to 2-3 psi while in vacuum, to protect your lungs and make exhaling practical, however -- adding a strong elastic around the chest and abdomen would make exhaling easier, too, though it would make inhaling a chore at surface pressure.

Only if you do it rather a lot.