T-10a

As bad as this seems, it's still better than nothing. I see the SLS as definitely a pork project, but also NASA using it as a "safe bet" in case the better private SHLV rockets do not come to fruition as fast as NASA likes (as well as getting every last drop of Congressional funds to help NASA do NASA things. If they drop SLS, it'll probably be replaced by either an even worse boondoggle or severely hurt NASA to the tune of "JOBS JOBS JOBS JOBS", and there's no guarantee Congress wants to shift funds away from their beloved sectors to SpaceX/Boeing/Blue Origin/other private companies.)

Hello, I'm going to try a BDB themed career, but I'm just looking for mods that can spice it up. Stuff like emulating tech/real world designs up to (reasonable) near future tech, and minor base-building/colonising efforts with a nicely-orangised progression. so far, this is what I've got listed: entire Near Future suite (Mid-late game doodads for fun and profit) BDB (The bread/butter of the pack itself, with about a bajillion different parts for launcher variety) ProbesPlus (Probes became interesting to design with this ^_^) RSS @ 2.5x stock scale. (I mean, we gotta launch Saturns from the Cape, right? ) Tweakscale & Procedural Parts/Fairings (Sometimes, you gotta design that tank/SRB/fairing yourself.) BARIS (Having Apollo 13-esque issues in flight spices up routine missions) What do you recommend? I'd love to hear em

And that's a bad thing because...? (will probs start a BDB/Taerobee/Cormorant/Habtech-themed career soon(tm) as something to do while messing with SSTU configs)

Maybe just have videos of each notable piece of the Ares vehicle? (So the core engines, one of the side drop tanks, an example tanker launch and the grand finale of the Ares crew stack.) I personally never read Voyage, but the Ares mission profile is very interesting. I may attempt to try the STS Mars plan someday.

A thing I do with BDB is install the Rescale patch, as I find Saturn parts to be a touch small (I want my SV-B replicas to make the VAB nervous about my future plans )

No conflicts should occur, though BDB also includes the FASA clamps so issues may arise there.

No worries Shadowmage. Most mods will also take their time to update to 1.4, and many others will be waiting as well as their 1.3.1 games finish.

Wait, New Horizons didn't make orbit before zipping off to Pluto? TIL.

Mars farming research may only happen with surface sample returns happen, and even then, only when we can get a worthwhile sample amount easily- only really possible with Mars Orbit infrastructure (Mars Base Camp, or the even more vaporware Deep Space Transport (whatever it'll be called now with the DSG renamed)) Worthwhile sample amount could mean either: (A) enough Martian soil to create a simulacrum for research elsewhere or (B) enough Martian soil to actually perform those experiments (and making all the other scientists annoyed at the fact you're hogging all the precious samples to contaminate for research)

Gravity turn supports flipping the vehicle 180 degrees, a very useful trick for flying shuttles. There's a reason Cormorant Aeronology recommends it

Don't have pictures atm, but in a nutshell you can "add more engines" to the part, so in the one part it's like you have multiple engines (It visually updates it too, so it doesn't look weird). It's a great part count saver, and can help reduce part count lag with big rockets. EDIT: As seen in this logo for SSTU Nova, that baseplate of engines is actually one part with lots of engines.

Even with the barebones stockalike configs, it's a treat modding these with SSTU engine clusters/rebalancing, and using them in my saves

More details on the Discovery 2 are here: http://www.projectrho.com/public_html/rocket/realdesignsfusion.php#id--Discovery_II

As well as what @PB666 said above, digging into Discovery II shows it is a FUSION powered craft. Way beyond anyone's capability at the moment. This compact Artificial Gravity lift I see being used as a more "compact" artificial gravity setup for testing various components.

Looks upper-stagey. As there's an LMDE but not an LMAE, I'm guessing it's the LMAE .

!!SCIENCE!! would happen.

true. Their secrecy doesn't help with that.

Has there been any images of New Armstrong/ Blue Moon yet?

I may be wrong (and this is sort of the wrong thread to talk about this thing), but I thought the BFR did not have the dV on its own to launch an SSTO mission. And I really doubt such a big booster with so much dev money will be cheap in the near future (Methalox has never flown on a mission before, it needs to approach airline-levels of reliability to warrant serious long-term reuse so there will have to be lots built to cover losses which will increase costs, in-orbit refuelling on that scale has never been attempted yet, I'm sure managing the life support logistics for 100+ passengers is going to be a nightmare (for the passenger vehicle at least), and finally Mars missions/colonisation is inherently non-viable commercially due to the extreme costs in development and maintaining something as simple as an Antarctic-style base at Mars). All in all, until they can prove they can build and fly such a thing successfully, I believe it's going to be vaporware akin to Constellation, or delayed to the 2030s/2040s. But hey, if they do solve these issues and make it viable, it'd be one heck of a showstealer

The BFR is not the solution. The BFR is, well, too big for 99% of all payloads on the current market (and launching so many 1-8t typical satellites in one launch will be a nightmare to orchestrate), so it'll probably be delayed a good while until major payloads near its capacity become commonplace. For the near term, hedging bets on the BFR is a bad idea, so NG, Vulcan and F9/FH is still in the game for the next decade.

Maybe we can finally see something akin to Nautilus-X zipping around with NG, Falcon Heavy and Vulcan doing grunt work. (maybe Roscosmos can come too if they get their stuff together)

Did the math: RS-68 powered SLS: 9856.47 m.s.-1 dV RS-25 powered SLS: 10813.41 m.s.-1 dV That extra 1000 m.s.-1 can be really important, and allow greater payload to orbit. (DO NOTE: This was done with assuming only the core of the SLS's mass, no strapon SRBs, and TWR is irrelevant.)

And despite this "bureaucracy", NASA has at least done some impressive things during the Shuttle Era, even when they were lugged down with the flying brick.

Main issue with the RS-68A is man-rating it (as well as many other changes, though many man-rating issues can be removed in a 'seperate cargo & crew' profile.). Most notably, the RS-68 needs to get rid of the "pre-ignition" (not sure of the official term, but it's the reason why the Delta IV is engulfed in fire before launch) as it can mess up tight engine clusters. The ablative heating is also an issue as it causes significant heating at the base of the vehicle when clustered, which is why the Ares V's RS-68s had to be designed as regeneratively cooled variants (in turn, driving up costs and increasing the Shuttle Gap)

I also remember a plan somewhere for a Shuttle-C type vehicle to carry an upper stage and an Orion CSM to orbit as a new crew ship.