RealKerbal3x

To be honest, even if Artemis I is not delayed any further, and the commercial landers are ready on time, I highly doubt we'll see anyone on the Moon in 2024. As much as I want to see people return to the Moon as soon as possible, 2024 just seems like an unrealistic goal.

It says somewhere in the LabPadre livestream chat that today's testing window is 1400-0200 UTC.

Build a rocket, forget to check my staging, and fall unceremoniously to the launchpad when I press space

Starship doesn't need to head back to LEO. It would remain in high lunar orbit while Orion used the propellant in its service module to return to Earth. Though I doubt aerobraking would be too much for Starship HLS to handle. It's still made from stainless steel, so even without a heatshield it can take a respectable thermal load. And also, there's a way humans could be put back on the Moon without using SLS or Orion at all. Put Starship HLS in LEO, and refuel it with a couple of tanker flights. Then launch a Crew Dragon on a Falcon 9, dock with the Starship in LEO, and have the whole assembly continue to lunar orbit. Undock Starship, land, do your stuff on the Moon, and return to the Dragon in orbit. Starship can then remain in orbit while the Dragon returns to Earth, perhaps with the help of an auxiliary propulsion unit in the trunk. It's possible that this auxiliary propulsion unit could be used for an entire mission, so that a Falcon Heavy could deliver Dragon to TLI, and have this extra engine perform lunar orbit insertion, rendezvous maneuvers, and trans-Earth injection. I'm just guessing here, I'm not sure how much dV that would need, and whether it would be small and light enough to fly to the Moon with Dragon on FH.

Yeah... Starship's lunar variant is just the coolest (I'm probably biased ) but we're still missing a lot of details, like: - Why is the exterior white rather than shiny steel? Is it covered in some kind of paint or insulation? I doubt they're planning to build this variant out of entirely different materials, but we don't know. I don't think it's carbon composite, we saw that once they switched to stainless steel the speed of development increased considerably. - What exactly are the auxiliary thrusters? Are they modified methalox hot-gas RCS, or something else? And, finally: - How does NASA feel about SpaceX building Starship out in the open in South Texas? Hopefully these should be answered as we see more Starship progress, but we'll see.

Does the upcoming Starlink launch have any modified 'VisorSat' satellites onboard?

I would totally play this game

Hmm, I'm not sure...it's not 'science' (so to speak) so I guess it should go in the Lounge. Also, for some reason your post ended up before mine even though you posted after me Edit: Weird stuff is happening with my posts for some reason, please ignore.

@Ultimate Steve Maybe you should create another thread specifically for this simulator. A leaderboard would get lost with all the other stuff in this thread

I haven't tried it yet, but I want to change the controls to be IJKLHN, because it's more familiar.

OK, great. I think I can solve my dV issue with a combination of a couple of extra fuel tanks and higher Isp engines, perhaps Wolfhounds rather than the Skippers it currently has. I'll lose TWR but the increase in dV will most likely make up for it. I only need ~400m/s extra (I'm guessing) for the vehicle to make it back to HMO. We'll call this mission a test run. The tankers need some work too, they ended up crashing after re-entry due to a lack of fuel. I just have to work the bugs out.

No, it was refuelled in LKO and had to use part of that fuel to reach Munar orbit, as the real spacecraft will (at least on its first mission). Part of the reason for the lack of dV is probably poor design, but my piloting was probably inefficient too.

They are once again planning to use the LA site as a Starship construction yard (IIRC), so that image would still be relevant

I landed my stock recreation of the Starship lunar lander variant near the south pole of the Mun. Sadly it doesn't have enough dV to get back into orbit. Back to the drawing board, I guess...

Since I rarely make actual planes, I'd have to say Mk3. It's best for making space shuttles.

I'm not saying this to disparage SpaceX in any way, but the Boca Chica construction site is basically how I picture Jeb's Junkyard looking.

@sevenperforce Is it necessary for the lander to enter low Munar orbit before landing or can it drop directly from high orbit to the surface? Edit: A bit of an update. I managed to get my Starship recreation to high Munar orbit to rendezvous with my Orion, and achieved a successful landing, but then... I realised that I have ~480m/s of dV left, which isn't enough to get into low Munar orbit, let alone return to the Orion in high orbit. I guess it's time to go back to the drawing board. That's kind of annoying as I only have a couple of hours to play KSP each day, but at least I'll be able to optimise my design and add some things that I forgot initially, like some Breaking Ground surface science experiments. Sorry for taking so long with this challenge, but I'm going to complete it eventually, no matter how many redesigns and restarts it takes

Interesting, I started to wonder if this was a new design change when I realised that it's just a stylised logo and probably doesn't reflect the real landing leg plans in any way. Though Starship/Super Heavy's design is extremely flexible, so we never know... Edit: New NASA Spaceflight video, there are nosecones everywhere in Boca Chica!

I only started playing in 1.3.1 so I wouldn't call myself a veteran. At least I remember the time when the 2.5m tanks looked like oil drums.

They've mentioned in the past that KSP2 will be better optimised than the original game, and that there will be ways to reduce the graphics and whatnot if your computer can't handle it. So hopefully no worries there.

Full video from NASA Spaceflight on Raptor SN20 being delivered:

I'm pretty sure it still is. KSP has never been the best optimised game and this is one of the places where it shows. A while ago they introduced one-thread-per-craft, but the ultimate single-core limitation still stands.

@traisjames I don't really know much about the specifics of those components, but I do know what is best for KSP, sort of. KSP really benefits from single-core CPU performance. It's never really been made to benefit from multicore CPUs. I'm not sure how good the single-core performance on that CPU is but KSP will only really be using one out of the six cores. I'm not so sure about clock speed but a cursory google search gives me the impression that higher = better. VRAM isn't that important unless you plan to use a lot of fancy visual mods, though with the visual upgrades that have come in the recent updates I don't know how much that has changed, or will change as further updates come. Generally KSP is pretty forgiving on graphics - my laptop can run it on its integrated graphics, just about. The game is fine with 8GB RAM, even when it's lightly modded. So unless you really want to go ham on mods (I wouldn't recommend it, you spend more time troubleshooting mods than actually playing) I don't think you'll really need to upgrade beyond your current 16GB. Even if you downloaded every mod you could find, 64GB would probably still be overkill. Good luck with your new computer, I hope this will help!

@SirFireWolfe Wow! Being a huge Trekkie, I've always wanted a mod like this! Your models look amazing! I would love to help, but I have zero experience in making mods beyond simple MM patches. I'm going to have to look at some tutorials and I might be able to get back to you in the near future

Idea for new Christmas song: Frosty the Starship.