Blue

I modified my workhorse Mun lander + Rover to be lighter, carry more fuel and recieve more solar energy, in preparation for a mission to Eeloo. I also did the final (7/7) rendezvous to dock with a large drive stage I've assembled for a 2-man landing-return mission to Moho.

Shockscess.

Ion Engines I think would serve well in the additional role of having a 1m engine and 1m tank, but if there was a 2m series, that would be too large. By that point we ought to start having large spherical cockpits and the engine should start screaming.

Ion Engines I think would serve well in the additional role of having a 1m engine and 1m tank, but if there was a 2m series, that would be too large. By that point we ought to start having large spherical cockpits and the engine should start screaming.

I consider Kerbals trapped in space without adequate fuel to get them home as much as a failure as killing them.

Now inventing a <60 part Mun lander and lifter. 'Ere we go. 59 parts, can do moon landings pretty swell. "The Washingtown". The core stage's little bit of fuel left is enough to get into low Munar orbit. Et voila.

When I think of Tech tree, I think of Civilization V. While the tech tree in that game is much more strategic and also made for tailoring the development of your game entity to a specific path towards victory, it had it right in that it was relatively difficult to screw it up. Sure there were ways of making your tech gain great advantages in one way or another, no path through it was really a way of preventing progress. Analogy; regardless of which basket had eggs in it or how many, it was still possible to succeed. Such is not the case in less well-constructed trees of gameplay. But one thing I remember is a very notable detail: the industrial era in the tech tree is a pinch point of only three technologies (to the left of the middle in this image) and how a given Civilization approached those three technologies (Biology, Steam Power and Dynamite) made all the difference in the world of how quickly and easily they would progress to further goals only a few turns down the line. Making such career lynch-pin tech tree decisions would make it much more interesting if cleverly employed, as long as it did not become too involved. I can imagine a few different technologies that could be on the tree: Solid Fuels Monopropellant Liquid Bipropellant Liquid Tripropellant Liquid Hypergols Open Cycle Combustion Closed Cycle Combustion Turbopump Assembly (Level 1, 2, 3?) Nuclear Thermodynamics

Now that is Style with a Capital "S"pace.

My mainstay refueler is actually quite similar, though I daresay 'cleaned up' a bit. The bottom stages are asparagus-- Engines 1 and 3 jettison at around 3800m, Engines 2 and 4 at about 20000m, and the Core stage can get me all the way into orbit as high as 200km without cutting into the payload. The entire length from bottom to top are struts to keep vertical integrity, since right before the final asparagus staging the seperator for the payload takes some serious Gs and has buckled frequently in the past. All in all, the launcher I call "Clover", and is a useful all-purpose heavy lifter for anything under 60 tons.

Don't change Eve yet! I've yet to land there using crapsack older versions!

Even though it would be less technically complicated to aim for Duna, Dres or Eeloo missions, my successful mission to Gilly as well as my one to 4 of the 5 Joolian moons only inspires me to think my next objective will be a return landing to Eve.

I have a bunch-- well, at least I think they're beautiful for myself-- from my grand Jool tour, which I'll shall post soon. 12 Kerbals, one landing on each moon, and home again. Though unfortunately Tylo lost out due to an underestimate of my fuel requirements.

Works like a dream-- that example is exactly what it looks like with both spacecraft being identical: Both are my 'Philadelphia IV' Interplanetary ships. 4 Orange tanks, 2 narrow long tanks, ASAS, probe, 2 large RCS tanks, 12 Nuclear engines. Tested it at 100% thrust, looked solid, and still can have a payload on top of the pushed spacecraft. And that's despite the fact that, as shown, only 3 of the four ports are docked. It was very difficult, but I would recommend docking unfueled spacecraft of that size, and refueling them once they're docked. 3/4 Ports was first attempt, and I didn't want to bother with trying it over again.

On an unrelated note, I've manged to verify that it is possible to do multi-SR port docking. To be honest, this only was done to prove it could be done-- and was done in version 0.2 before the SAS update. But now I know that if I want to dock up two of my heavy interplantary spacecraft and use one of them as an expendable stage, I can.

At some point in the future, the particle effects of the engines will change shape depending on local pressure, ambient occlusion will be rendered real time, there will be either a sideways planet or an object with a retrograde orbit, planetary rings are both a hazard and a wonder to behold, the game will cost $50, and somewhere in the world will be a child born whose legal name is in fact Jebediah Kerman.

Engineers from the University of Toronto won the Sikorsky Prize yesterday (11 July 2013), building and successfully flying the AeroVelo Atlas, the first officially successful Human-Powered Helicopter. Other attempts have been made, but all predecessors fell short of the qualifications of the American Helicopter Society Igor Sikorsky Human Powered Helicopter Competition criteria. The Sikorsky Prize, set forth in 1980, states that the vehicle must carry one human being, fly to an altitude of 3 meters, be able to stay aloft for at least 60 seconds, and hover, staying within a 10 by 10 meter area. Atlas's pilot Dr. Todd Reichert managed to achieve this, flying to 3.3 meters at its pinnacle, and flying for 64.1 seconds. The aircraft was built by him and his 'teammate' Cameron Robertson. The aircraft only weighs 115 pounds, despite having four 20-meter rotors. It is largely constructed of carbon fibre, balsa wood and Styrofoam. For the AeroVelo Team's achivement in aviation history, the AHS awarded them $250,000. AeroVelo's previous work includes their 2010 invention, the world's first human-powered Ornithopter (flapping-wing aircraft) Snowbird. [1][2]

Dang. Man that would suck.

Using non-water based bubble formula, such as the purple oceans on Eve. Purple would probably make great bubbles.

I'ma clean this up. This was my reaction When I found this:

After stumbling upon some of the crazier versions of big things meant for space that people thought about in the real world (rather than in sci-fi), I thought I'd put together a rough comparison of some of them. What I found very curious is how much organizing I had to do to put them in order, because their payload capacity was not proportional to their size. It also made me raise an eyebrow at the purported lifting power of the Ares V, especially in comparison to other designs, both past and more recent. I look forward to the development of the SLS, but also I like to look back on things like the Saturn MLV with a Nerva engine, and think about What-Could-Have-Been. EDIT: These are NOT as big as the Empire State Building. I confused the scale that the Saturn V is more than 300 ft tall, and the Empire State Building is more than 300 meters tall. EDIT 2: Fixed the Space Shuttle, added Buran and Ariane 5, added weights of SLS.

My first mission to Jool I actually completed the initial transfer burn this morning. Not intending to waste the 270 days it'll take until it arrives, I'm going to continue various other space ventures, letting them travel in the background. The mission consists of two lander vehicles and 12 kerbals, carried by three ships: Philadelphia A (Habitation, Intercessor Bop/Pol/Vall lander) And the Philadelphia TLT (Tylo/Laythe Lander Transport). Since I couldn't figger a good way of attaching the Tylo Lander to my interplanetary spacecraft efficiently and in a stable manner that I was happy with, I had to launch the thing attached from the ground. Right proper nailbiter that launch was.

You can't. You have to use Shift-Select on a part of your shift to move it as a whole, and move it so that it's closer to the camera.

Orbit: 100,055m AP, 99,935m Exactly 55 tons of fuel with plenty of monopropellant to spare, ready to rendezvous. 365.35 tons on the ground. Nothing fancy. I call it just the Lily-class Fuel Tug and it flies by a rocket family I call Clover. She was designed to refuel a large Jool spacecraft which was launched with 4 dry orange tanks. Unfortunately the mission didn't really pan out, but the Clover has proven since to be a very stable and reliable heavy launcher. The outboards have asparagus staging and with locked gimbals. It gets the entire upper payload to about 100km circularized. The only drawbacks are that it's incompatible with MechJeb because the autopilot makes fatal errors trying to correct when it does staging, and the inboard engine can't run at full thrust for risk of overheating against the tank. The middle stage usually is left with 100 units or thereabouts of fuel too unwieldy for use, since the middle does not have RCS thrusters. It's wasted with the debris, most often.