Wjolcz

This post is great and all but what matters the most isn't realism or the lack of it. It's a game. It should be fun. Is career fun? No. Should it be? Yes. Could it be fixed? Yes, but that requires mods because devs never cared enough to make it fun. You can say it's "balanced" and "intended" but by definition a game has to be enjoyable and career mode isn't.

Wow. They will need a big hangar to store all these stages.

Today workmen came and started installing fiber optics in the building I live in and it got me thinking if perhaps it's because of Starlink and if the company installing it is trying to get and keep as many customers as possible before Starlink becomes a thing. Not like I live in some remote place, but it feels like these kind of internet providers are at a boom right now. Another boring story: three days ago I showed my friend the Starman video and the double booster landing. He literally said "but this is reversed" and when I told him it wasn't he was in shock. He didn't know it happened. Really reminded me of when I first saw a rocket come down and explode on the barge. Got used to seeing them landing but it's still something very unusual.

Has anyone here ever taken astropics with phone? I have Xiaomi Redmi Note 3 Pro but there's no shutter control so maybe photo stacking could work? I could take like 30 pictures all at once and then stack them but I don't even know if that would work or not.

You should be able to pick whatever path you like, whether it's atmospheric flight, probes only or manned only or even all at once. There's the tree and science points that only add to the pain. But all this will never change... No. No, it doesn't work better that way. You shouldn't go somewhere to get something you need to go there in the first place. And that's pretty much what the tree is all about. Look, I could talk about this and design a better career mode but I've done this dozens of times already and devs didn't do anything because apparently it's hardcoded or something. I even modded it to get rid of science points and that made the game a whole lot more playable but I decided it still was too much of a hassle and went to sandbox mode instead.

That Soyuz-5 looks pretty neat. What about Korona? Should that thing even be treated seriously?

That joke about Elon lurking... Yeah, maybe somebody should link him this thread. Just in case. The SpaceX team and he probably know all this already but you can never be 100% sure, right? A lot of these ideas actually make sense. Not sure how much payload would have to be sacrificed for this kind of recovery though. For FH it's clearly not a problem since it's crazy powerful. CRS missions would probably not be hurt that much either. If F9 is about to become even more powerful (Block 5) and it can RTLS during CRS missions then it should also be OK landing on the barge after delivering Dragon and S2 with extra "bounciness".

I don't think they are sure either. He posted a "want to hear people's ideas" tweet (sorry, i'm too lazy to find it). My guess is they are still figuring this one out and there's no final design yet. But he also said it's all about weight so my bet is Mr. Stevens will catch second stage. Airbags need to be sturdier than parafoil so they probably weigh more too. But then they could use a simple parachute and use the heat shield (that also encompasses the engine) as the "bouncy castle" +retro thrusters (like on Soyuz and the New Shepherd capsule). That would probably damage the engine nozzle though. Anyway, I don't know. Here are my guesses. Really excited for whatever they come up with.

I'm struggling to imagine how ballutes only would make the landing possible. It either needs to have a parafoil or engines to land itself. And I feel like using Mr. Stevens (or something similar) is the best way to catch it since ocean water would probably corrode the engine even if it had ballutes to keep it afloat.

They actually used the roomba to secure the stage this time?

Kepler looked much farther though. Tabby's star (the farthest star studied by Kepler I know of) was over 1000 ly iirc. Tess will scan as far as 500 ly? It's still the whole sky though.

Given the shape I'd say it's Venus. But the position almost in zenith is not right. Unless it was around noon but it wouldn't be visible at all.

Some of you guys are taking this BFR vs SLS discussion way too far and way too personal. I know it makes me a hypocrite but this thread simply doesn't need this kind of argument IMO. I'm excited for both rockets but for completely different reasons.

Might have been a plane. I saw something like this yesterday (or maybe two days ago). The light was very bright and it wasn't moving at all. Then it dimmed and started flashing just like a plane. Given the right conditions it's possible that you saw it reflect light but didn't see the flashes because the sky was still too bright. Either that or space debris. But space debris definitely moves. You would clearly see it move across the sky during the 3 minutes period. Edit: About a year or two ago I also saw a bright flash very close to the Sun in the middle of the day. It was short but I'm pretty sure it was a plane reflecting light.

That is something amazing I've never thought of. Wouldn't that mean the second stage has to reenter nose (front?) first tho? Unless the CoG moves down far enough to keep it stable during the engine-first reentry. Why though? To test stuff (fuel boil off naybe) or just because that way there's less debris floating around Earth?

Yeah, I also noticed that. As @Jaff said, it probably had a lot of fuel since the payload is >1mT. Effing mobile version of the forum doesn't allow me to delete accidental quote.

Cool. The barge will probably be too short for planes to take off but, as someone once said, "we can make it work".

Or make it so that seed is all you need to load in the mission.

What I think would fix some of this is an in-game online challenge browser and Mission Designer for career mode. With simplified UI, and simplified logic. Just stick together a bunch of experiments/requirements to a "mother" (defining which planetary body you have to visit) node, pick how much and of what (rep/money/science) you want to get, go do it. Seriously. The random mission generator is nauseating to deal with. Get rid of it. Put the DLC system into its place instead. Or just add a simplified version. It could probably use the same UI too.

Would it be possible for ESA to buy a BFR? It would be amazing to see it launch from Europe, sadly I don't think it would make much sense. And ESA would probably not ditch all the Europe-based companies because they provide jobs (and keep the engineers). But then they bought a couple of Soyuzes and launched them from Guiana so maybe having a sea-based (Mediterranean maybe?) launch platform would actually cut costs and shipping/travel time?

I'm not going to be all hipster about it and say that when BFR flies it will be my favourite. For now, double booster landing of FH were pretty cool.

I was about to ask "Won't they miss the Moon if they launch a couple of days later?" but then realized they can just wait until the Earth rotates and the launch window makes it so that it passes the Moon as planned just in a different place in orbit. Is that ballute second stage recovery going to be the one that puts TESS into its orbit? It would make sense since TESS's mass is low and the speeds they will be reentering it at would make for some good data.

Exactly. Minimal effort is one of the reasons why this would be a good and relatively simple addition. I remember downloading a mod with carrier in it. The problem was that its textures didn't look good and the game lagged like hell anywhere near it. Might download it again soon (maybe something changed) but wouldn't mind having one in the stock game too.

Aren't these mods with boat parts? What I'm talking about are launch sites, not boats that you can control.

Sure. I 100% agree. Demilitarized version of aircraft carrier would be great. There aren't many (actually I'm not sure there are any) things like that IRL. If there were we would be probably calling them military aircraft carriers and civilian aircraft carriers. I'm not talking about playing with boats and controlling them but having them as launch sites. Simple stationary objects (there are too many problem with moving). They would be nothing more than that. Just like KSC, The Island Runway and Woomerang.