legoheli

What you are thinking about already exists. Copenhagen Suborbitals is crowdfunded and everything they do is open source.

Blast something into space on a single stage solid-fuelled rocket? No problem whatsoever. Some sounding rockets are basically that. Send something into orbit on a single, non-stages solidfuelled rocket? Not possible with current technology. If it was, it was being done already because solid fuelled rockets are cheaper than liquid fuelled ones because of the lack of complex plumbing.

From how I understand the question, Gregrox is more or less suggesting another existing engine, but not a turboprop. It's simply the high-bypass turbofan. If you don't know what that means, here's the crash course (tee hee) in turbofan engines: The central piece of the engine, the long tube with small diameter, is essentially a turbojet. This is the "classic" jet engine where a series of blades compress air, which is then mixed with fuel and ignited. Then at the back, said air passes over some turbine blades that drive the compressor blades in the front. Now, in a turbojet, the first compressor blade is much larger than the other compressor blades. This is because this blade acts not only as a compressor, but also as a ducted fan, which is essentially a propeller with a casing. You will notice in the cutaway above that there is a large outer tube in the front. This is the "bypass", air that is simply pushed through the tube by the compressor, driven by the central turbojet, creating thrust. In a lot of cases, even most of the thrust of the engine! This is much more effecient use of the jet engine than a traditional turbojet, and it is much less noisy too! I hope this was what you meant.

This thread has no god damn place on the KSP forum. Seriously, this is ridiculous. I hate people who cry about whaling with a passion. Here's why: People watch that ridiculous Whale Wars show and think it is unbiased and that it is a good representation of what it's all about. They think it's cool when the stupid spoiled kids on that ship attack other ships, but suddenly think it's oh-so-unfair when the Japanese do anything back, like holding people that board the Japanese ships captive. It's piracy and they should be punished to the fullest extent of the law. Same story with Greenpeace and the Russian oil rigs, but another story another time. Also people seem to be awfully, awfully concerned about whaling while completely ignoring much more important issues. Help the god damn people in your own country to decent living standards before crying about other countries hunting a type of animal you think is cute. Same with people who think it's oh-so-unfair that the Chinese have dog farms, but happily eat their cheap chicken from chicken farms. Focus your resources on something that matters. Think globally, yes, but start by acting locally. Care about animals? Adopt one from a shelter near you. Care about the environment? Don't pour chemicals all over your lawn to make it look nicer. Seriously though: THIS THREAD HAS NO PLACE ON THE KSP FORUMS AND SHOULD BE LOCKED AND/OR DELETED

According to the same article on Spaceflightnow, SpaceX would in theory be ready for launch today, but due to Thanksgiving air traffic, no launches are permitted from the cape.

Because the "Orion Drive" in the movie has nothing to do with our beloved nuke-pooping spacecraft, unfortunately.

You wouldn't need a G-suit at all unless you're really overweight. 4G isn't a lot. You would need some sort of oxygen supply since the Cargo Dragon has a very limited amount of oxygen - for returning some experiments it is needed to have an environment with an oxygen atmosphere in order to keep things as close to the ISS as possible, but since there is no intention to use this version for actual human beings, there isn't a lot of it. Regarding the splashdown I don't think it would be too bad, really. It is water we're talking about, and yes, it will be uncomfortable and I would recommend lying down on the bottom (but who would be standing anyway?). If for some reason the burn had a malfunction and you were headed for a landing on dry land? Well... The cosmonaut who landed in a Soyuz with no braking rockets broke all of his teeth during landing even though he was in a suspended seat.

For it reenter? A VERY long time. In fact I don't believe it would ever happen unless some gentle asteroid slowly and gently pushed the satellite onto a sub-80 km perigee. Solar winds and the Moons gravity does have an effect on the orbits of those satellites, yes, as do the tidal motion of the Earths oceans, but it is not something that will actually force the satellite out of orbit. But for a satellite in geosynchronous to leave geosynchronous? That happens a lot. In fact i does require more or less constant stationkeeping maneuvers to maintain a geosynchonous orbit. Therefore, most geosynch satellites do not have a perfectly synchronous orbit, as that would use up their maneuvering reserves a lot. I am not sure about the tolerances, but once a satellite gets too far away from the original position, it will be maneuvered back, and once the fuel reserves are nearly depleted, it will be boosted out to a "graveyard orbit" slightly beyond geostationary. I'm not sure if that answered you question, but hell it's the best I can do, haha.

I recognize those 3D models all too well - the sequences showing the exterior of the Soyuz during burns, re-entry and so forth, in fact everything is recorded in Orbiter2010 with the ISS/Soyuz pack! But a great video overall.

I'm just gonna leave this here http://www.braeunig.us/space/orbmech.htm Includes examples of calculations if you follow the links!

http://imgur.com/a/rWBpS#0 Preview: I did this since a friend challenged me to do a realistic Mars Mission. Launcher was a Falcon 9 1.1.

Succesful launch has been acheived - now let's see if it can rendezvous too!

A real problem in KSP is that using N-body mathematics on the planets and bodies as they are now means that the entire Kerbol system is very unstable. I recall a lot of guys making the system in Universe Sandbox, which does have accurate physics, and watching it all fall apart. Especially the Joolian system is impossible. In other words, it takes a lot more than a rewrite of the physics engine to allow KSP to be similar to how KSP is now, while gaining the ability to have lagrane points and do gravity captures and so forth.

That is, unfortunately, just how KSP is. It's a very demanding game, as is simulators in general - it's not about your graphics card or your RAM, but about how fast your processor is, and I'm not sure an i3 cuts it. I'm playing on an i5 3.4GHz and still I do not get smooth gameplay with larger crafts and rockets - it's simply just a thing you'll have to get used to.

Even satellites in geosynchronous orbits experience atmospheric drag as well as gravitational pulls of other bodies than Earth causing orbits to change over time. A stable orbit as in KSP does simply not exist in the real world. Regarding debris, however, you'll have to take several things into factor: How big is it? How aerodynamic is it really? How eccentric is the orbit? Some of the spent rocket stages re-enter after just a few days - when COTS2 Dragon was "dead", it would re-enter automatically with no thrusters fired after 4 days, as would the spent 2nd stage of the Falcon 9 - and the 2nd stage of course did re-enter.

Think about how many spent rocket stages have made relatively close flybys of Mars as well - it's the payloads that get the glory even though the rocket did all the work, haha!

Good day, gents. I'm currently getting my bachelor of mechanical engineering, but when I have that I'll be headed for Stockholm to finish off with a master of aerospace engineering (since the two degrees are more or less the same the first three years, this is possible).

It's interesting how the nationalized agencies have a long waiting period from capture to berthing (as always) and SpaceX has a "Get 'er done"-attitude where the Dragon is installed as soon as possible rather than just hanging it there. I guess it is some sort of desire to be careful, but still, 4 hours is quite a wait when the HTV is captured.

Anyone can be on wikipedia, so why not. I believe the rules state that it is not allowed to write an article about yourself, though, but in theory, you and a friend could add an article about each other. Be factual, though.

Usually, I go for a real-world style immediate 5 degree pitchover. This means my lateral velocity is increasing with my vertical velocity instead of essentially being at zero when you begin the pitch-over maneuver. I am not sure how much of a difference this makes in fuel consumption, but I do not think that it's a disadvantage at all.

I have up to 60 second load times now, mods or no mods, where before I could take even 400 part ships from the VAB to launch in a couple of seconds. I'm not sure why it is, and I see no reason why my computer shouldn't be able to keep up. I run a 3.1 GHz i5 dual core and 8 GB RAM, and my harddrive speed is fast enough to play Arma2 with no trouble whatsoever, which is highly unusual. It's not directly keeping me from playing, but it does mean that R&D is bothersome and I often forget the game is running at all because I do something on the internet while the game loads and forget about it.

I see few of you build big. Here is my interplanetary ion drive vessel, currently in high Kerbin Orbit (beyond Minmus), waiting for a refuelling of its xenon tanks before heading out to interplanetary space. Pictures taken during the initial burn away from LKO. The only mods involved here are the two Orions docked to the station. It does NOT accelerate fast at all. It gets around 0.01G according to the acceleration meters on board, but it is VERY efficient. The solar panels are arranged for maximum efficiency as well so that no matter the orientation, electric charge will not be depleted at full thrust.

I can't say I ever found docking hard. I've flown military combat simulators for way too long and done too many air refuellings to think that fine maneuvering is really that much of a deal. Rendezvous I figured out based on my physics classes. Higher orbit->longer period and so forth, then it was just a matter of raising the orbit in small steps until rendezvous. That was back in orbiter, though. In my serious business KSP savefile I still use this real rendezvous technique in KSP, but usually I just carry enough dV to go straight for the object I wanna rendezvous with. EDIT: My first KSP Docking was with the 0.15 CERES Orion-esque spacecraft where I har mounted SAS units with landing legs on the nose, and then the landing legs on each craft would clamp down on the other CERES, locking them in place. I've lost all the screenshots I had of that when I formatted my computer, unfortunately.

I'm pretty sure this is going to be your cheapest chance around. http://www.ebay.com/itm/F-16-Jet-Aircraft-ADI-Attitude-Directional-Indicator-panel-instrument-/151087604114?pt=LH_DefaultDomain_0&hash=item232d85e192 The "Navball" is called an Attitude Direction Indicator or ADI for short in real aviation, you can always try looking at ebay or similar sites until you find something you like.

This question has been asked A LOT of times, and every time the answer from Bobcat has been a resounding "Maybe, but it's very low on my list".