RealKerbal3x

That's KSC Extended, I believe.

The only game I really play on my phone is Spaceflight Simulator. It's sort of a stripped-down 2D version of KSP. The developer is obviously a big KSP fan as well.

@JAKEnterprises Once you've got the deployable part into the Kerbal's inventory, there should be a white icon at the bottom of the inventory slot (I can't remember off the top of my head whether it's on the bottom left or bottom right). It's very small so it's easy to miss. Once you click that the deployable part should appear in front of your Kerbal and you should be able to rotate it and move it to your desired position. Remember that to make your surface science installations as efficient as possible you should have scientists place the science parts and have engineers place the central station and power modules. I hope that helped, good luck!

The game already does auto-staging. It's just that it doesn't really know what you actually want to do with your rocket. Because of this, it has to make a lot of assumptions, and because you can't really tell it that you want to fire the engines before the launch clamps let go, it assumes that they should both be in the same stage and it drops you onto the launchpad.

Presumably they're taking how long they want to fire the engine for and calculating how much propellant they need for that time. Though they probably have a bit of excess as usually rocket engines don't like burning to depletion. It does bad things to the preburners and turbopumps and whatnot.

As title. Does anyone know of any mods that allow you to see your craft's centre of mass/lift/thrust in the flight scene? And do they work on the current version of KSP?

So Super Heavy has been redesigned again, it seems. 'Legs similar to ship' worries me. Despite their recent redesign, they're still tiny. Won't it be really easy for Super Heavy to tip over on landing?

I'm probably very wrong, but isn't the higher expansion-ratio engine bell one of the only differences between the sea-level and vacuum Raptor variants? The bell will need more propellant pumped through it for regenerative cooling because it's bigger but otherwise RVac is very similar to the SL version.

I'm working on Starship. Which means I need a fully working tanker variant. It may take a few days

Looking at it from a development cost standpoint, it'd probably be easier to use the auxiliary engines that are presumably already in development than designing a bespoke concrete-making robot capable of being both shipped to and used remotely on Mars

Those auxiliary radial engines on Lunar Starship got me thinking. They've obviously thought about plume-regolith interaction, so I wonder if those engines will eventually make their way onto the regular Starship design. They'd certainly be beneficial for Mars landing, though they might need a thrust increase as they're probably designed for lunar gravity.

They're reusing Crew Dragon now? I thought NASA didn't want them to.

Yes, but it needs the full Starship launch system to be operational for orbital refuelling, which is necessary for the design to work. If it flies enough in its uncrewed state, it could eventually be crew-rated, which would allow it to totally leave SLS in the dust.

It's meant to launch using the Super Heavy booster, not SLS. It's meant to dock with a crew vehicle in lunar orbit.

Cool new video from SpaceX recapping the launch escape demo flight:

Fair enough. I used KER for quite some time but I found that I rarely used most of the information it provides. I don't use it anymore because I like the way the essentials are now included in stock - it's all I really need.

@_Zee I have a question about your contract pack, specifically how the game works out whether the contract has been completed or not. I've been playing through a career game with PBC and the associated contract pack, and it's been great fun. I'm now just about to send the first probe to Duna and I was wondering - does a part of the vehicle that landed on the surface of Duna actually need to return to the surface of Kerbin? Or can I just have a dedicated lander that delivers its experiment results to a Kerbin return vehicle before being left in Duna orbit? When I do an Eve probe mission, ideally I don't want my Eve ascent vehicle to have to lug equipment for a Kerbin return from the surface of Eve. Similarly, how does the logic work for crewed missions? Is it just the crew that needs to return to Kerbin, or does part of their lander need to return too? Thanks in advance

Interesting, I wonder how they plan to fly the thing with one off-centre engine.

For the basics (dV and orbital information) this mod isn't really needed anymore, as that information has now been added to stock. Though a lot of the other info KER provides is still quite useful.

Presumably using the ladder-drive physics exploit?

It's a dedicated lunar variant, designed to operate between low lunar orbit and the surface.

The white coating might be paint, actually. Stainless steel is reflective, but white paint is even more reflective. Or just send Crew Dragon all the way to the Moon with Falcon Heavy

I wonder if this lunar variant is stainless steel covered in some kind of insulation, or back to carbon composite?

This is the big difference. I feel that in this respect SpaceX is trying to learn from the Shuttle's utter disaster of a TPS by introducing more redundancy. There was one Shuttle flight (I think it was STS-41G) where the heatshield sustained severe damage, and the mission was only saved because the underlying aluminium skin was thicker in that area to accommodate the Ku-band antenna. If your spacecraft survives only by sheer dumb luck, then that's bad engineering.

Well, let's leave that behind, shall we? I, for one, have confidence that Starship will succeed, and that colonising Mars is vital for the future of the human race. It's great that SN5 is almost ready to go, and I wish luck to SN4 and the team for the static fire tomorrow!