rdfox

As a side note, the Mercury capsule also used a landing bag, jettisoning its heat shield once it was hanging under the parachute and deploying the landing bag so that the astronaut would have a nice gentle splashdown (compared to the 20mph impact that you got in Gemini and Apollo). While not *really* needed, we weren't sure that the couch design was up to an uncushioned landing, particularly if the capsule came down on land, so the landing bag design was used. (This also led to a number of near-heart attacks and the shortening of John Glenn's Mercury flight when they got a spurious indication that his landing bag had deployed in orbit, complete with leaving the retrofire package on the spacecraft during re-entry to hope that it would hold the heatshield in place. While it hadn't done so, the mere thought that it might certainly didn't improve the odds of Gemini or Apollo having a landing bag.) Ironically, the Soviets, when confronted with the same issue of needing to cushion their landings (since they planned for land landings from the start), came up with two simple solutions--the Vostok spacecraft simply had an ejection seat, and the pilot parachuted down separately, allowing the spacecraft to land harder, since it was tougher than the bag of bones that it was carrying; Soyuz, on the other hand, included (and still includes) a ring of solid rockets that fire about one second before touchdown to provide additional braking and cut the impact speed roughly in half. (I'm not sure what technique was used in Voshkod, but then, Voshkod only flew twice, IIRC.) As a side note, the Soviets kept Vostok's precise recovery system details secret for a very long time, because under Féderation Aéronautique Internationale rules, to be considered a successful manned flight, the pilot must land inside the vehicle he took off in, and thus the Vostok system would have been disqualified from being the "first manned spaceflight" under the FAI rules that were internationally accepted for firsts and record attempts--indeed, since that was revealed, the FAI record books now list Alan Shepard in Freedom Seven (MR-3) as the first manned spaceflight, and John Glenn in Friendship Seven (MA-6) as the first manned orbital spaceflight.

Over on the "lolsokerbal" side... I've always seen "Kerbal" as meaning more a "to hell with what they say is possible, let's do it anyway!" type attitude towards things. Kerbal engineers are entirely capable engineers, if easily entertained (Michael Bay would make a FORTUNE on Kerbin!) and a bit lax about safety concepts, but at the same time, they see any sort of limitations as a challenge, not a boundary. (I suspect that there's just as wide a range of personality types and intelligence as among humans, so one can hardly say that ALL Kerbals are capable engineers.) That said, I hope the game doesn't fully lose its "we're doin' this on a shoestring because Jeb got drunk one night and decided it'd be cool to go to the Mun!" feeling. The whole feel that you're doing this with a budget that's not *quite* enough to actually pay for Doing It Right is part of the charm, and explains the use of salvaged and makeshift parts throughout the program that still are enough to get it done... most of the time. As space.com said in their review, "build a little, test a little--thus as it always was." Remember, KSP is as much about the early days of spaceflight, when it was still very much cut-and-try "Well, let's see if THIS version blows up!" testing, as it is anything else. People who've grown up with the modern space age, where spaceflight is pretty much routine and you see at most one catastrophic failure per year would be shocked at the rate at which you had failures from the 50s through the mid-70s; that's the era this game truly captures, when Failure is Not Only an Option, It's Rather Likely because you are, as Arthur Clarke once put it, finding the limits of the possible by pushing past them into the impossible. Yes, even things that have never been done before are usually successful today--witness Curiosity's oh-so-Kerbal landing sequence--but only because we spend so much time simulating them in computers and in ground testing before we actually do them. This game is about the evolution of the space program *to* that standard, when everything works first-time, every time, and to do that, you have to go through the painful early days of gathering enough data to be *able* to model things for simulation. Which means blowing up a hell of a lot of rockets in cut-and-try testing, and scrounging and skimping on an inadequate budget to be able to do so...

The free-return trajectory used on Apollo *did* require more delta-V than a simple Hohmann transfer orbit, but the big reason for that is that it was selected as a *fast* transfer, taking about three days to make the transit, as opposed to the roughly 14 days that would be required for a Hohmann transfer. While it required more delta-V than the Hohmann transfer, the vast reduction of the required consumables allowed a much lower total mass to LEO than a Hohmann transfer would for the Apollo mission. I don't know if there's any way to do a Hohmann transfer orbit with a free-return trajectory--the only way I can think of would be to make it a long, lazy loop around the far side and thus insertion into Munar orbit would be a prograde orbit rather than the retrograde orbit used by the Apollo program. So more like a big O instead of the Apollo-style figure-8...

I actually make good use of the aviation lights on my assembled-in-space craft; I set up the strobes and red beacons to be able to help pick the vehicle out at long range against the stars (stars don't flash, after all!) and also determine orientation at distance (one end is red, the other is white), while I also use the navigation lights in a cruciform arrangement around the axial docking ports, to help me determine alignment before docking. White is "up," blue is "down," red is port, green is starboard...

Er, no. Proton doesn't use RP-1 or LOX at all; it uses hypergolics--specifically, unsymmetrical dimethyl hydrazine fuel and nitrogen tetroxide oxidizer. These are both room-temperature chemicals. You're right, however, that any rocket using RP-1 will still generate ice due to the LOX oxidizer, and that you'll get a hell of a lot more ice formation in a humid climate like CCAFS than an arid one like Baikonur...

The Senate Launch System won't be cancelled, it has too much support on Capitol Hill. However, I doubt we'll see more than four or five total launches of it, as there just isn't that much demand for the ability to put a locomotive into low Earth orbit. I suspect NASA knows this, too, and that's why they plan on using the ex-Shuttle RS-68 engines in the first stage instead of J-2X's or some other designed-as-expendable engine--they only have enough RS-68s for about five launches without having to start building new ones, but they figure they'll never NEED to build new ones for it because it's just too big to be practical.

Per Charlie Bolden's introduction to the Shuttle Launch Experience ride at KSC: "If you're within 400 yards of the Shuttle at launch, the heat will kill you. If you're within 800 yards, the blast and sound will kill you. And if you're within a mile or so, the alligators will kill you--those low-frequency vibrations really get them stirred up." As a side note, the reason that the VAB and VIP viewing stands at Complex 39 are about 3.5 miles from the pads is that was calculated to be the minimum safe distance if a fully-fueled Saturn V exploded on the pad--a pad explosion would have had an explosive yield of two kilotons (about one-tenth of the Nagasaki atomic bomb), and anyone closer than about three miles would be guaranteed to be killed by the blast. This meant that some of the bravest men in the program were the pad crew, who watched the launch from about 1.5 miles away, ready to jump back in the car and race to the pad to safe the booster in the event of a pre-ignition abort...

I was still -8 at the time of Apollo 11 (my first space-related memory is flying out of bed at full speed screaming "TODAY'S THE DAY!" at five AM for like three weeks before STS-1, and always having to be reminded that no, it wasn't launch day yet), but my father was in the Army at the time, assigned to a listening post in Berlin. He was on-duty for the launch, but because some of the tech guys had rigged up a couple of spare receivers, a speaker rig, and an oscilloscope into a makeshift TV, he got to see a three-inch-tall green Saturn V ride a tail of green flame into a green sky for the launch, courtesy of Armed Forces Network. (While he was off-duty for the landing and EVA, apparently the same rig was used for that and the re-entry/splashdown/recovery for those on duty on the site...)

Good work, Scorpi! For the record, the other jokes: "Fitting Square Pegs Into Round Holes": The (in)famous Apollo 13 CO2 scrubber hack to make the (square) CM lithium hydroxide canisters fit the (round) sockets in the LM's scrubber, as famously seen in the movie. "Günter is Leaving": Reference to legendary NASA "pad fuhrer" Günter Wendt, and one of the stock Apollo-era jokes, come up with by Walt Cunningham during the last minutes before launch of Apollo 7. Donn Eisele: "Man, it's quiet out there." Cunningham: "Yeah. I wonder where Günter went." Wally Schirra: (after everyone's done cracking up) "Oh, man, I'm stealing that." "Wetting Down Launch Pad": Well, it IS technically a standard procedure... the uninitiated might think it's related to the sound suppression water sprays used to protect the vehicle from its own noise during launch, or the ones that are used to cool the pad and tower during launch, but it's actually much more... unpublicized. See, before his flight, Yuri Gagarin knew that he was gonna be strapped into the spacecraft for several hours with no way of "going" until after he landed, and they'd pumped him full of tea before launch. So just before getting into the elevator to go up to the spacecraft, he took a minute to unzip his spacesuit and urinate against the side of the launch pad, making sure he was completely empty before getting bolted in. Because his flight went off without a hitch, it has since been a standard final pit stop for the crew of Russian launches to do the same, as something of a "good luck" charm. (Irony: The US had the same issue with its first launch, but Al Shepard didn't think of this before reaching the elevator, so he ended up having to go in his suit before launch--a "urine collection device" was in development for Mercury, but the thinking was that it wouldn't be needed on a 15-minute suborbital flight, so it wasn't ready yet. Unsurprisingly, after that incident cost them much of their biomedical data from the flight, the UCD's development was pushed so that it'd be ready for Gus Grissom's suborbital follow-on flight...) A few other suggestions: - "Attempting automated dock--OH GOD!" - "Untangling space tape" - "Canning spam" - "I, for one, welcome our new Kerbal overlords" - "Returning freely" - "Bailing out, you fool!" Only about two-thirds of these are actual space program jokes...

Bzzt, wrong. The black and white squares are called Roll Patterns, and are painted on axisymmetric rockets for a very simple reason--they allow the engineers on the ground to track the vehicle's roll attitude independently from its on-board guidance systems. By being able to track roll, you can then also use the measured angle to the horizon to calculate pitch and yaw, again independently--allowing you to get accurate data as to the vehicle's attitude if the guidance system goes ape**** and starts reporting back false data. The white paint is also helpful for cryogenic tankage, as it reflects sunlight and thus helps prevent solar heating of the tanks and boil-off of the contents. Shuttle eliminated the paint on the external tank starting with STS-3 to increase performance by reducing weight. The ETs used on STS-1 and STS-2 were painted the same gleaming white as the SRBs, at a cost of a couple of tons of mass. Ironically, it made the debris danger greater, as the paint both helped insulate the tank (reducing ice formation) and provided added structural strength to the insulating foam. Once they stopped painting the tank, foam strikes became a more serious threat than they originally had been. I agree that there's a good chance that the Senate Launch System will eliminate most of the white paint for mass reduction purposes, but the roll patterns *will* stay in place, since after SRB burnout, they'll be critical to ground-based crosschecks of the guidance telemetry. (They may, however, be reduced--note the simplified roll patterns used on the Skylab and ASTP Saturn Ib boosters compared to those used on the Saturn I and the Apollo 2, 3, 5, and 7 Ibs; it was reduced to just some checkerboard bands on the upper stage instead of alternating white and black tanks in the first stage.)

OK, for those who are still wondering why we do robotic exploration, there are two simple reasons, both related to what a robotic probe (be it a flyby, an orbiter, a lander, or a rover) does NOT need. 1) A robot doesn't need life support. All it needs is a power supply (which the life support system for a crewed vessel would require anyway), and it's golden. That means you don't need to carry all those tons of consumables like oxygen and lithium hydroxide and such, or the "plumber's nightmare" of the environmental control system to make use of the consumables. A robot can be sent there and worked until it stops working, then abandoned, whereas a human would PROBABLY want to come back home at the end of the mission. This means that the robot doesn't need to carry the tons and tons of equipment and supplies needed for a return to Earth unless it's a sample-return mission from the outset. (Even then, it can use a tiny version, since the sample is going to be maybe a couple of kilograms, tops.) Both of these vastly reduce the size of the payload required, and thus the size of the booster required to get the necessary delta-V. Remember, while the Apollo moon landings required a beast the size of a Saturn V to launch them, the Surveyor robotic lunar landings of 1965-67 did were able to use a Titan II with a Centaur upper stage for TLI... much smaller and less expensive than the Saturn. (There's also further weight savings due to other things, like how a robot probe can be designed to not care if it experiences 14g in the final phases of ascent, or how radiation shielding is only required on the electronics, or how a robot probe doesn't need a launch escape system, but the two I mentioned are the primary sources of weight savings.) A man can do a *better* job of the science, but the cost of sending a human is prohibitive compared to that of a robot.

OK, I can *totally* hear Peter Jones reading these. Good job!

For the record, all US launches since at least the start of the Saturn series have included a roll program, regardless of whether the vehicle is bilaterally symmetrical or not; it allows you to simplify the control logic for the gravity turn when launching to any chosen azimuth, and even for vehicles that are expected to only launch due east, it's advantageous because it allows you to keep the simple pitch-only gravity turn while orienting the launch pad however is most convenient for ground operations instead of forcing you to orient it so the rocket has the "this side down" markings facing east. (Atlas and Titan, as used in Mercury and Gemini, didn't use a roll program--I'm not certain they even had roll control--and thus the launch sites had to be "aimed" in the direction they were to be launched--there was a small crossrange capability, but not much, maybe a couple of degrees. This was because they were done to quickly get reliable ballistic missiles into service; later ICBMs had the same roll control as purpose-designed space launchers, because it meant that the orientation of the launch site wouldn't restrict targeting or tell the enemy what the missile's target was.) The reason for direct-insertion orbital launches is, as said, most rockets are not equipped with restart capability, to save on complexity. However, if your upper stage is hypergolic, then you'll almost certainly *not* use the direct-insertion trajectory, as it's less efficient than a boost-coast-circularize trajectory, and with hypergols, you just need to be able to keep the tanks pressurized, apply ullage thrust (usually with tiny solids or RCS jets), and reopen the propellant valves to restart the engine. Indeed, the Space Shuttle used exactly that technique to reach orbit. (Originally, it actually launched on a half-rev suborbital trajectory, then did an injection burn of the OMS engines to raise apogee to the target altitude, then did a circularization burn, to make certain that the External Tank would come down where it was targeted. However, later missions, after they had a better idea of the ET's entry characteristics, launched directly to the target apogee, then did a single, slightly-longer circularization burn of the OMS engines, to get a bit more payload capacity, since the SSMEs had a much better specific impulse than the OMS engines.) As for the RSO, apparently the Russians don't put a destruct system on their boosters; their range safety package is merely an engine shutdown command so that it will fall in their designated impact zone--but even that is inhibited until T+42 seconds, to try and make sure that the booster will not fall back onto the pad and thus require massive expense in rebuilding the launch site infrastructure. (As a side note, the shutdown command is incorporated into US range safety packages, too; arming the range safety package sends a shutdown command, and if that's enough to ensure that the vehicle will impact in the safe impact zone, the RSO may choose not to send the destruct command and instead let the vehicle fall intact, should it have something on board that would be more hazardous to have dispersed than allowed to impact intact.)

For the British marketing: "How hard can it be?" "DON'T SAY THAT!"

Ares I-X was never intended as being representative of the real thing in any way except stability testing. It had the correct aerodynamics and mass distribution for a production unit, and thus could confirm that the damned thing wouldn't tumble or inexorably arc over into Titusville or anything when launched. These *are* important things to test full-scale, as we still haven't fully wrapped our heads around wind tunnel scaling effects.

Look up Robonaut 2; the US has also built an anthropomorphic robot for the ISS, in daily use handling the controls for routine tasks to free up the astronauts for more difficult ones. Granted, they deliberately left the legs off for the simple reason that they're not really necessary in space, but the rest of the design is deliberately humanoid enough to make the crew feel more comfortable with it. (The ISS's controls and displays are designed for human hands and the human eye position relative to them, so Robonaut 2 had to emulate those... and if you're already doing that, it's a lot less creepy to have a casing that's sort-of-human-shaped-but-not-so-much-so-that-you-get-into-the-Uncanny Valley than to just have an exposed framework.) The astronauts also used Robonaut 2 to pull a webcam prank on Mission Control. Apparently, they got up earlier than scheduled one morning so that they could uncrate him and pre-position him for the prank, then carefully sealed his crate back up so that it looked like it hadn't been opened. Then, when they came to the time on the schedule they were supposed to uncrate him, they did so on-camera, and were "shocked" to find the crate was empty. After a couple bits of "Hey, are you guys sure you sent the right crate?" and such, they then told Mission Control they had just found something kinda shocking to show them, and swung the camera around to show R2 (uncrated but still not yet activated) parked where they'd pre-positioned him, at the controls to the Japanese Experimental Module. "I guess he was a bit eager to get to work!" The video of the prank is up on YouTube; it's actually almost-but-not-quite viral.

To quote Mike Collins about the quarantine procedures on Apollo 11, "In my opinion, if you multiply a very, very small number (the chances of us coming back with some sort of lunar bug) by a very, very large number (the potential danger if we did come back with one), you end up with a result that's large enough to be worth worrying about." In addition to the planned 93-day stay in quarantine, if any of the crew started showing symptoms of an illness that they couldn't identify as an earthly one, the crew would remain quarantined as long as necessary to make certain it didn't spread. Additionally, some of the lunar samples were taken not for science, but to be used to expose lab mice to them (rocks and dust) for the same quarantine duration; if the mice got sick, the quarantine would be extended. If the mice *died* and we couldn't confirm it was due to some earthly cause, the quarantine would likely become permanent (and yes, they had contingency plans for keeping the crews in quarantine for the remainder of their lives, if necessary). As a side note, it wasn't just the crew that were in quarantine. Two other people (a doctor and a nurse, both volunteers) were quarantined with them--and, in fact, didn't get to leave on the same day as the crew, as the quarantine period starts at the moment of first possible exposure. (During Apollo 11's quarantine period, an additional person got put into quarantine, a scientist who accidentally got exposed to a lunar sample.) The quarantine period and detail decreased with each mission. Apollo 12 was only in quarantine for 30 days, and Apollo 14 (which got the planned quarantine period for 13) was a 14-day quarantine with the crew only being required to wear what were essentially gas masks between the time they were recovered and the time they went into the Mobile Quarantine Facility, instead of the full biohazard suits that were used on 11 and 12. NASA has stated that while they will put the quarantine procedure into effect again for Mars landing crews, they expect it to be rather less of an issue, since even the shortest possible Mars mission would see the quarantine period expire before they get back to Earth. As for what they did while in quarantine? Paperwork. According to Mike Collins, the quarantine period was pretty much the perfect amount of time for them to be isolated from the press so that they could get all their mission reports written and post-mission debriefings completed without being too distracted. (The LRL also had a well-stocked bar and a television, plus a decent library, a ping-pong table, and a few other recreation options to help pass the time once your eyes glazed over from doing too much paperwork for one day...)

Heh, I know that NASA still shows computer-generated simulations of what's happening with every flight once out of visual range. (Witness the Curiosity landing, or any unmanned launch that doesn't carry a rocket-mounted camera.) Also, my dad has a story about watching Apollo 11... at the time, he was in the Army, stationed in Berlin at a listening post. While he was home for the landing and EVA and was able to watch live on his TV on AFN, he was stuck on duty for the launch and didn't think he'd get to see it. Until one of the tech guys called everyone over into a room where they kept test equipment for the radio receivers. Where he and several others had taken an oscilloscope and spare FM and shortwave receivers, and used them to create a jury-rigged television that could pick up the AFN broadcast of the launch. So he got to watch the Apollo 11 launch live, too, seeing a three-inch-tall green Saturn V riding a green trail of flame into a green sky. AFTER they'd successfully reached orbit, there was a throat-clearing from the door, where the duty officer was standing, having watched the whole launch himself, and was now suggesting that the interesting part was over and it was time to get back to work. (IIRC, the tech guys were able to avoid a reprimand for misuse of government equipment, partly because they de-jury rigged the components back to regular use after the mission was over, and partly because the duty officers wanted to see the live coverage, too. Presumably, the landing and EVA, and the re-entry and splashdown, were also shown on that jury-rigged set for those on duty during them, too...)

Augh, the whole "Bernoulli" argument. Wish they didn't teach that in schools at ALL. Listen, you want to find out what's most important in generating lift? Go out on the freeway, driving at 70 miles an hour, and stick a hand out the window and "fly" it up and down by adjusting pitch. The human hand is a TERRIBLE airfoil shape, but you'll still get huge amounts of lift. The primary source of lift is the pressure on the underside of the wing due to its being pitched upward to the relative wind (i.e., positive angle of attack). The airfoil shape takes advantage of Bernoulli's principle to make the lift more efficiently, by reducing the upper surface pressure and thus increase the pressure differential. It does allow the wing to generate lift even at zero or slightly negative angle of attack, but very little--this is why airliners cruise in a somewhat nose-high attitude, to maintain a positive angle of attack for efficient flight. While the airfoil was a critical item in making flight possible in the early days, these days, power-to-weight ratios are high enough to make them merely an efficiency issue. As Peter Garrison (aviation journalist who has also designed and built at least three different light airplanes of his own, from scratch) once put it, "these days, there's enough engine power available to be able to make a plane fly with a couple of two-by-twelves for wings."

The method I'm using for assembling my Mun base is to launch the base component modules to Munar orbit, then sending a standard one-module-capacity skycrane after them, docking it to them, then docking the combined craft into the base. Once it's fully assembled, I'll use the skycranes to deorbit and land the base in one piece.

Born in 1976, so too young to have seen any of the Apollo missions, but I do recall back in early 1981 having, for weeks before STS-1, awakened my parents by flying out of bed at about six in the morning screaming, "TODAY'S THE DAY!" at the top of my lungs, only to have to be reminded that no, it's not for another two weeks... Made STS-135 bittersweet for me; I grew up with the Shuttle and, while I had grown to be a big critic of the decisions that led to it, it was still the only manned space program I'd ever known as anything but photographs and films and artifacts in museums. The launch wasn't that hard--particularly since it was the first time I'd been present for the launch of anything bigger than an Estes "Big Bertha"--but I had a long, quiet period watching the post-landing safing and shutdown procedures for Atlantis on that flight, with the tears coming as I knew that was it...

By all accounts, the Soviets covered the mission nearly as thoroughly as the US did (Pravda had, the day before the landing, famously called Armstrong "the Czar of the ship"), with two goals--the Soviet government knew that everyone WOULD hear about it through the BBC World Service and other media, so not covering something potentially so historic would make them seem like a huge joke... plus, if the mission failed, it could then be used for propaganda purposes, "oh, look, the capitalists tried to make their landing too quickly and now they've killed their brave heroic crew, whereas the Soviet Union has taken a more conservative path and will not launch a Moon landing mission until we are sure it will be successful..." The N1 never blew up on the pad. Of four launches, the first (early 1969) suffered engine failure just after liftoff and fell back onto the pad, the second (late 1969) tumbled and broke up about 30 seconds after launch, the third (early 1972) suffered another fallback crash, and the fourth (late 1972) was proceeding normally but had first stage burnout earlier than expected due to higher-than-anticipated fuel consumption--a problem it could have compensated for with the upper stages, at least for this initial Earth orbital test, but an overzealous range safety officer sent the destruct command anyway. N1 had great potential, though limitations in Soviet metallurgical technology meant that it was a plumber's nightmare (30 engines in the first stage alone!), but the heavy secrecy surrounding the Soviet program meant that they couldn't conduct "all-up" static test firings (hard to hide the test stands, much less keep people from noticing such a large booster being test fired) of the stages, instead relying on test firings of individual engines. The US suffered a similar number of failures in the Saturn V program; it's just that they happened on static test stands rather than in flight, meaning A) they could make an emergency shutdown immediately upon detecting a problem and thus save the stage from blowing up, and even if it DID blow up, it wasn't in flight. (Note that every single Saturn V stage was fired for a duration equal to that of its full operating cycle on a test stand before being cleared for flight, AFTER final assembly, to prove it was assembled correctly--this was a major factor in the booster having that unprecedented 100% mission-success rate.) "All-up" static firings of the N1's first stage would have revealed any design flaws on the ground, and would have revealed individual stages' workmanship flaws before launch, too. Equally, the Soviet program was handicapped--ironically--by the fact that the Soviets had three competing private space programs, whereas the US had a single centralized government program. Normally, I'm all for competition and the private sector (competition improves the breed, and the private sector is invariably more efficient than the government), but when you're trying to meet a specific goal in a short timeframe on limited resources, central coordination is critical. It keeps the funding flowing to where it's needed, when it's needed, and it avoids parallel development (as much as possible) that wastes effort and funds, by assigning each contractor to a specific role and having them work pretty much exclusively on that role. The Soviets, on the other hand, had three separate design bureaus all competing for space funding. One of them quickly decided to concentrate solely on military projects and thus was largely a non-issue in terms of competing for civilian projects, but the other two--including Sergei Korolev's bureau that ended up being behind just about all Soviet manned missions that actually flew--were going at it hammer and tongs for the dominant position, resulting in much wasteful parallel development, funding being split between the two that could have been better spent by concentrating it on one of them, and a general lack of overall direction to their program, resulting in progress in fits and starts towards no overall objective, instead concentrating on a series of spectacular "firsts" that looked good to the political masters who controlled the funding. Sergei Korolev's death in 1965 did nothing to improve matters, as his successor as the head of his bureau was nowhere near as politically adept as Korolev, making him less able to keep his bureau the one that got the lion's share of the funding, exacerbating the problem of the parallel research and split funding.

I said this elsewhere, but I think I've beaten all of you on "getting as close to disaster as possible without actually having one." I once managed to complete a mission that required more delta-V than I actually had available. 0.18 or 0.19, can't remember which, I flew a very-high-inclination Munar landing mission. As in, "I was checking out the polar Munolith" high. My standard three-man Mun mission craft was pretty optimized, and usually had about 100m/s of delta-V margin for a Munar mission. So I flew the flight plan (launch, transfer, plane shift, enter low Munar orbit, deorbit, land, EVA, launch back to low orbit) just fine, and then, for some insane reason, I decided I needed to shift back to an equatorial orbit before my transfer burn to return to Kerbin. This was a dumb move. During the return transfer burn, I ran out of propellant in my service module engine. Ooops, oh well, that's why I always bring along plenty of extra RCS juice. I used the RCS to complete the burn until I had an SoI change coming up, then aborted, figuring that I'd do a midcourse correction after the transition and go for the same direct re-entry that I planned on doing anyway, just using RCS to do it. And it all worked out that way, except for one thing... About halfway through the burn, with nearly 50 m/s of delta-V still required, I ran out of monopropellant. And the spacecraft wasn't going to even *graze* the atmosphere yet, so aerobraking to direct entry wasn't available. It was about this time that I remembered the line from Empire Strike's Back: "Would it help if I got out and pushed?!" "It might!" So straws were drawn, and Bob got forced out the airlock to jet around to the stern of the ship, wedge his helmet in the engine bell, and thrust like mad on his jetpack. He had to return to the command module twice to steal propellant from Jeb and Bill's packs, but eventually, he managed, by literally getting out and pushing, to put the spacecraft on a trajectory that would result in a successful direct-entry and splashdown. So yes, I actually ended up with *negative* delta-V remaining on a mission and still brought the crew home in one piece!

My standard heavy-lift booster is based around my Common Core Booster Fuselage (2xJumbo-64 with a 200-8 underneath, all "stapled" together with sixfold struts at the joints between tanks). I use a CCBF with a Skipper as a core/sustainer stage, then six CCBFs with Mainsails as strap-on boosters. This has gotten all but the heaviest payloads I can put together (that don't make the booster tumble/banana) into low orbit all by itself, usually with a few hundred m/s of d-V to spare. For the rare occasions when that's not enough, I put an upper stage powered by a Poodle on top, and SRBs if needed for initial TWR after that. (If THAT'S not enough, I break up the payload into multiple modules.) Remember, once you've gotten past the initial loft (periapsis above about 20km), you don't NEED a high TWR, and the Skipper is almost perfect for getting the rest of the way out of the atmosphere, in that it has a good Isp. and enough thrust to keep air resistance and gravity from dragging you back down.

Sucking the gear up while on the ground happens relatively frequently--even though they design the flaps lever to have a handle shaped like a flap and the gear lever handle to be shaped like a wheel, AND tell you not to retract flaps until you turn off the runway, people still manage to grab the wrong lever and try to retract the gear during the landing rollout. This is why retractable-gear airplanes have a "squat switch," basically a normally-closed pushbutton type in the landing gear suspension that opens when the aircraft's weight is on the wheels, acting as a cutoff for the landing gear control circuit. Of course, the only way to test the squat switch is to throw the landing gear handle while on the ground, and if it's not working...