karolus10

Main problem with GMO is money, companies that develop and sell seeds of "super plants" don't like the idea that farmers will be able to buy seeds once and then farm new plants over and over again... think about it like agriculture version of DRM.

"Booster seat" was used in Saturn Ib's (it used modified S-IV stage with single J-2 engine and LM fairing, used later as Saturn V 3rd stage) as they shared same launchpad with Saturn V. This craft is already sitting on launch clamps, so You just had to move her up to adjust height.

This is good example where part clipping allow to do stuff that IMHO should be a feature of stock editor - more surface attaching options and hollow parts, like the bottom of the decoupler, various inter-stage (structural fairing connecting 2 stages) "tube" parts that would partially replace/improve existing decouplers attached to engines as well as be used for creating real estate for surface attached parts for adding parts on inner side like sepatrons inside inter-stages or unpressurized "trunk" acting as a service module.

Yes, each gyro apply certain force and they all sum up. Reaction wheels are pretty powerful for now, and even few are enough to generate a lot of torque. Proof:

Few answers for darth lazarus: I don't know why struts don't work between first and second stage(I loaded it from a file few times and it worked on stock game), but they are essential as both stages are connected by single strut cube rod, you may take fairing off and reattach them. After this she would be solid like a rock. LES tower seperation is under action group 10 First stage cannot be longer unless you use diffrent engines, if stock first stage eng ines would had better thrust (real life H-1 engines where similar in size to size 1 engines but had 900kN of thrust, even 350 would made trick in ksp) You could use one skipper like saturn Ib used J-2 insted 6 RL-10s. Note about flight path, first stage is about getting horizontal velocity, You should be just bellow 30km during first stage flameoff and with perigee not higher than 50km... trajectory must be a bit flat, so second stage dosent had to fight gravity so it can slowly burn all the way to orbit. also trottle down if you exeed 2g acceleration.

Welcome everyone ! Today's evening I found a little spare time to try ARM again, so I made refined version of craft I wanted to replicate since we got 3.75m parts - Stock Saturn I. Craft is capable reaching 100km orbit with fuel reserve enough to deorbit 2nd stage. If you had trouble to reach orbit You may add bit more fuel to upper stage as it's fuel load is tweaked down (maybe it's possible to use less fuel, but I didn't had time for more detailed testing) to save mass. Action groups: ABORT : [COLOR="#0000FF"]LES activation/Service module jettison [/COLOR] Custom_01: [COLOR="#0000FF"]Service module main engine toggle[/COLOR] Custom_02: [COLOR="#0000FF"]Service module RCS toggle[/COLOR] Custom_09: [COLOR="#0000FF"]Parachutes deployment[/COLOR] Custom_10: [COLOR="#0000FF"]LES tower jettison[/COLOR] You can download craft >> HERE << You can post bellow Your feedback about this craft as well as Your custom payloads, modifications or own replicas of Saturn I. Enjoy the flight !

Personally I never had problem with using backspace for ABORT sequence and never had issues with accidental space-bar use as KSP always had staging lock enabled by pressing [Alt]+[L]. You can see if staging lock works by green light indicator near staging counter turning red(-ish)... after this you can hit space-bar for as long as You please without any consequences. Before and after staging lock Small power-tip: bind right shift and control for throttle control as well, I often found useful to use second hand for throttle control. Other thing I would like to see about staging is having them bounded to pods, guidance units and probes. This mean that every craft, module and sub-assembly could had own set of action groups and commands unique only for them, for example "instrument unit" probe on launch vehicle could had programs and sequences useful only at launch and independent from payload. Other use would be to had different behaviors of ships made of multiple modules docked together during mission allowing to turning ON/OFF RCS thrusters groups on specific modules or had different abort action for launch escape and lunar lander during Apollo-like mission. Main command part action groups globally accessible from any command part without alternative action groups (empty action groups on second pod could use same number action group from main pod). Action-groups has very large potential in KSP (especially if it would be directly connected with staging list and allow some scripted commands in future) and I'm looking forward to see them improved .

The largest power plant in the wold, the Three Gorges Dam (in china) produce around 20 gigawatts of power. Even for "doc" this is a lot of juice...

This is true that using real units would be beneficial as You can use real life "stats" as base for balancing (you had something to compare), also they would be more readable as most people are accustomed to measurement units used in real life. As far as I remember this was the first iteration of resources system and they won't changed as resources system has been cancelled for now... Units now are pretty much arbitrary.

I would not mind second row of action groups under [Alt Gr] (right alt), rest keys are pretty much occupied and 20 action groups is more than enough . Also It would be great to had ability to add action groups that would not be binded to keys ,but work as an item on staging list (and could be dragged between stages), I think that it would be useful to had action groups capabilities incorporated into staging. 3rd and Last possible action groups could be bonded with clickable switches/buttons in IVA spaces of chosen pod (available amount depending from switches in Iva space).

I like new ions trust, but their energy requirements is rather silly if You can use few batteries to provide enough electric power for lunar landing... that's how I feel about it. I would even give their old specific impulse back, but make them use adequate amount of power.

Well, after fuel inside tanks are tweekable You can adjust tank weight very precisely (+/- 5kg), but I guess that dedicated parts may be more about convenience.

RCS control axis aren't tweakable at this point unlike control surfaces, they will always work both for rotation and translation in every axis.

I often use mass simulators with guidance unit and fuel tanks, You can adjust fuel levels (so bad that fuel load aren't displayed as fuel mass, but you can get around it easily as one unit is 5 kilograms, both LF & OX) to quickly get any mass you want, It's more flexible solution with less part complexity involved. Also it allow design You launch vehicle and payload separately. EDIT_1: If tanks with multiple fuels/resources would came up I would be glad to see "sand" as one of choices, it would be very simple and elegant solution of making dummy payloads !

How about mars trilogy by Kim Stanley Robinson: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mars_trilogy It's also long read, 500+ pages each

I would say that sandbox games had something from Legos, some people will use own Imagination and creativity to build new spacecrafts and design another epic missions... some other need to read instructions.

Well, coasting to moon on free return trajectory looks pretty optimistic for such challenge.

I think that in most cases Part clipping is a way to go around editor limitations and use it do do more things that It was designed for like engine clusters or hiding batteries and other stuff inside hull. Building Saturn style, anyone ? Also as long as clipping tanks inside each other may feel cheaty and not very logical, Having 2 tanks inside each other are equal in means of weight and capacity to 2 tanks just stacked on top of each other, so it didn't had any impact on the game-play.

This is most ridiculous thing about this movie, I could forgive "everything in one orbit" thing for artistic purposes, but this cannot be explained by any way... If they manage to nearly stop their relative velocity they shouldn't be dragged by any force. Satellite debris would pose such threat when both spacecrafts inclination differs (polar orbit) and it's close to impossible that debris cloud will collide again with other vehicle even if they are on same obit... it is possible that 2 spacecrafts on different inclinations could pass each other meters away each orbit again and again if they both on perfectly circular orbits with same orbital period, but in reality (or even in KSP) there is no such thing like perfect orbit and even smallest difference means no hit... now imagine all largest spacecrafts on orbits perfectly on path of debris cloud and simultaneously are on close enough orbits to be reached during one EVA. From other hand this is pretty neat movie to watch as it had a lot of great eye-candies .

Easter egg hunters, unite !

It had rather terrible TWR with "only" 8 engines, but With some tampering and adding... more realistic trust it fly like a charm. Also I was surprised that stock Lv-909 had enough trust (yet barely) to make into orbit still with some fuel left in 3.75m tank. Inspired by this EDIT_1: Stock, "Flight ready" version, using stock thrust values in first stage engines. Payload(but also it's 23t lighter than kerbal X) and fuel tanks (second stage fuel level is tweaked down too) scaled down to compensate lower engines thrust.

My poor attempt of replicating Saturn I -ish tank clustering:

One of serious problems of engines with better ISP in vacuum is that thrust is not influenced by atmospheric pressure (atmospheric curve in KSP) but fuel consumption - low atmosphere ISP for this engine should be significantly lower but this causing engine to suck fuel at ridiculous rate. IRL fuel flow is constant for the engine and max thrust is available only at certain pressure range (sea-level, vacuum or something in between for compromise) and thrust is lower in case of under/overexpansion of the exhaust... in short engine should consume same amount of fuel all the time it's turned on and it's thrust should change with altitude (so vacuum engines could be nearly useless on ground in extreme cases). Also I'm not big fan of single chamber engine of this size I'm rather into clusters (Imagine 3.75 Skipper cluster assembly tweekable between 2,4 or 5 engines) of smaller engines, bigger engines aren't more efficient nor cheaper and harder to throttle or even start them up (not mention engine restarts) It's like kerbal equivalent of M1 engine, monster much bigger than Saturn V F-1 engines and able to replace 5 engines in the Saturn second stage with just one. EDIT_1: Also I Like new tanks, this diameter tanks where needed in stock from a while. EDIT_2: Other thing that you should take into account that stock engines TWR is pretty much horrible, in real life rocket engines are pretty lightweight when compared to it's trust (for example Space shuttle main engine it's not that much bigger than skipper/mainsail, weight bit less than skipper and had slightly over 2000 peak thrust). TWR disproportion between old and new engines are very visible if You cluster "size 1" engines to match thrust of KR-2L at launch. Here You go, 8x Lv-T30 and 4x 45's with combined thrust of 2520 kilonewtons, only 20 more than KR-2L. Yet this cluster weight 16 metric tones, nearly 2.5 times more than new engine.

I think That better and bigger future space station might be constructed in future by launching just few big parts (Service/propulsion module followed by inflatable modules like transhab) by falcon heavy or SLS... launch and assembly of ISS by space shuttle was too costly and unnecessarily complicated.

Truth is that West Germany had created German Aerospace Center(Deutsches Zentrum für Luft- und Raumfahrt) in 1969. Also Germany like other west European countries joined common effort and become member of European Space Agency (that is successor of 2 European space organisations existing before ESA). EDIT_1: Ariane 6 is designed to be cheaper rocket for satellite lunches and "old" Ariane 5 is more complex but man rated. ESA was designing own, small shuttle but project lost funding after challenger disaster.