Cryocasm

Well, you see, at 3AM, wierd things occur: A friend of mine and I had a race, who could build the fastest rover on Kerbin: the classical idea, reaching 150 m/s before killing itself my other idea, which reached 350 m/s I actually won a race to the Mun with that thing, it was a simple "who gets there first" mission and the goal was to impact the Mun. I hit the Mun at 4 km/s after 1 hour 37 minutes.

Sure it could, you would only experience most of the water fleeing away to the side of the planet pointing towards Jool. This comes from the fact that water is liquid. On Wikipedia somewhere, you can watch an animation, where a theoretical planetoid composed 100% of water, is pulled apart by tidal forces, because the face closer to the star experiences more gravitational pull than the side facing away. Given a few million years, the whole body (due to surface tension) well be pulled closer and closer to the star, until it breaks some barrier (I forgot the dude's name who theorized it) and is ripped apart into "drops" of water, forming a water ring, around the star. Laythe also requires a magnetic field to protect itself from Jool, provided our assumptions of Jool being a radioactive hell are true. A magnetic field usually points toward a liquid core in the case of Laythe (Jupiters magnetic field comes from electrical current in its "lithosphere", or the layer of liquid metal hydrogen which is electrically charged), which could be plausible given that its in Io's position.

From a purely physical point of view, if countries really wanted metals, no matter what kind, the Asteroid Belt combined is many times more massive than Earth, and contains a mind-bogglingly huge amount of everything. If you wanted megatons of Iron, all you'd need to do is fly out there and explore. Hopefully with more size-appropriate ships in the kilometer size class, rather than these puny capsules that we float about the lowest possible orbits of Earth with. Since the Apollo program, no manned mission has left LEO.

It's completely possible, your system using a size ratio of, say, 1:20, requires both participants to be very distant from one another. The other previously described system is a binary system, where 2 gas giant planetoids of similar size orbit a common barycenter of gravity. You only have to watch out for the density, Uranus could have Jupiter orbit it, although tidally locked and with an above-surface barycenter, simply due to Uranus's density and (due to distance from the Sun) much larger gravity well. Neptune has the largest gravity well in the solar system, purely due to its distance from the sun. Neptune is barely the 4th largest planet and an ice giant.

You could always deduce Kerbol's mass from the orbital speeds, Earth's being 27 km/s and Kerbin's being nearly 10 km/s. Using some percents, we find that Kerbol could fit into the red dwarf class. Its also possible to be a brown dwarf, considering its size compares to Jupiter.

It's fairly simple..actually... Water is not solid, that's the answer. Because it is not solid, it is very easily "dragged" into the tidal bulge, but this is not about hydrodynamics tied in with astrophysics, the question was interior heating. The Jupiter-Io system is a prime example for forces on the interior, and this comes from Jupiter's gravity pulling Io at different strengths at different points of the planet. During Io's travel of the perihelion of its orbit (which occurs every 1.77/2 or .885 days), Io is compressed by Jupiter's gravity, conversely, during the aphelion, Io is allowed to expand. These forces which occur on a daily basis introduce lots of friction to the interior of the moon, which in turn creates a molten core, resulting in Io's torus of particles around Jupiter as well as (most likely, if we use our Earth) tectonic regions due to a mostly solid mantle. This all comes from its parent world, Jupiter.

Your problem finds a simple solution: Yes, its possible. Given your statement of a huge gas giant, you have a very large SoI to work with, which makes your life easier. Lets assume this gas giant is a peaceful one, lacking a radiation belt (Jupiter will irradiate you into a piece of space poop within minutes). I'm going to use numbers now. Radius of the gas giant = 70,000 Km at equator. Radius of the super earth = 7,000 Km at equator. Radius of the moon at equator = 700 Km at equator. SoI of the gas giant is (using 700 as the multiplier) therefore 49,000,000 Km SoI of the super earth would be 1,050,000 Km if it were alone in orbit around the Sun (using 150 as the multiplier) I deem the SoI small enough to proceed anyway. SoI of the moon is 26,600 Km, this will suffice. Say the super earth is out at 25 million Km from its parent gas giant, where its SoI would grow to about (25/49 = 51% of it if it were alone, so 535,500 Km. of 535k, 26.6k is a minor fraction (barely 5% of the super earth's SoI radius). If the moon orbited close to the super earth, creating a system of 2 bodies with significant mass orbiting a common barycenter (this effectively makes them stay together, despite the gas giants gravity). With some rudimentary math and a bit of logic, you can explain anything. I would personally go with the binary system with the barycenter, as it's the easiest way to prevent capture of the moon by the gas giant. Now, as you can tell, this doesn't compare to the Jool-Tylo system at all, where Tylo's SoI doesn't even reach beyond 10,000 Km. This comes from the proximity of Tylo to Jool. This system of gas giant-super earth abuses the distance and extremely high gravity for a moon (Earth's gravity is extremely strong given its size) to create a stable system. I would say that they remain tidally locked, even to the point of the super earth slowing the gas giants rotation gradually, and introducing tidal forces to the planet.

MechJeb is really good for beginners, and once you get a feel for the game, start doing stuff yourself. I use MechJeb to plot my landing trajectory, but the final approach and landing are all done by hand, as MechJeb likes being a bit inaccurate and lazy with landing on target.

It would be stupid, the colonists would hear of the developments hours later, and considering that the colonists are 8 MONTHS TRAVEL AWAY, it's not like 2 countries taking stabs at each other really accomplishes anything. If I were a colonist, I would simply not care, I would go about doing my work for mankind doing the science that I'm supposed to do on Mars. And if I was asked to give an opinion, I'd tell them "I really don't care and find space politics to be a waste of money." Before mankind even returns to the Moon, mankind needs to unite as a species and not as a detrimental and self-destructive collection of sects that are greedy and exploitative. As to space, how would you go about doing this? If I claim 1234567890 m³ above Earth, would they rotate with the Earth or not? If not, then I would exit my territory with my space station and other people would enter my territory with their space station during an orbit. How would one remain sovereign of one's space?

My first flight to somewhere on Kerbin which isn't the equator where I carelessly land all my pods because I'm too lazy to correctly land near KSC, I managed to drop a crew at the North Pole. Descent from space after airbraking. This image is from one of my first attempted landings at KSC, during the aerobrake as Kerbol rose above KSC.

I use MechJeb primarily for Smart A.S.S, it really helps in being 100% precise (which I kind of OCD over). I occasionally use the ascent autopilot if I'm feeling too lazy to actually care about sending whatever into space. Other than that, I do most of my flying by hand.

An airbrake would actually be a pair of control surfaces, stacked vertically. The B-2 stealth bomber exhibits this behavior: its speedbrakes (airbrakes) are parallel before deploying into a V shape, therefore not introducing any vertical forces on the aircraft, only strict horizontal drag. Fighter jets reduce this to a big panel which is hydraulically forced into the wind simply because they have enough thrust to recover from dangerous situations, and they require the high-yield of these airbrakes, one must notice that the airbrake on, say the Su-27 Flanker, is top mounted, which makes it usable as a spoiler during landing. The principle difference between a fighter jet and a commercial aircraft lies within their operative nature: one is meant to fly in unpredictable conditions and environments (enemy tactics etc), while the other is meant to fly on standard routes with only weather as its main "opponent", and enough research and training has been conducted to reduce or eliminate the effects of weather on an aircraft (commercial airplanes weigh in at +200 tons dry). Aerodynamics interested me a for period of time a few years ago, and they are a very easily applied branch of physics, all you need to do is think logically and imagine airflows. A much, much more difficult branch of physics is theoretical physics. KSP gives a nice and simple approach to astrophysics, which helps make it a lot more understandable (although currently orbital mechanics are in the foreground with rocketry, while things like Lagrange points are excluded (due to the game mechanical complication, which is fine).

So a hub for I-beams and structural stuff rather than direct 1 meter beams. This one I will look into, especially due to the .CFG file challenges behind it. To my understanding of aerodynamics, an aircraft has 3 integral control surfaces for landing and takeoff: Flaps, Spoilers, and Slats. Given KSP's current model of aerodynamics, none of these can be applied without dirty "hacks". The spoilers are probably the easiest, and the best to counter misuse with. A spoiler would be an animated part, which would (through control group) pop up and be "deployed" therefore creating tons of drag. In KSP this suffices. In the real world, a spoiler has less to do with direct air braking and more with transferring the weight of the aircraft from the wings to the wheels (as to prevent it from taking off again). This creates additional drag (as the wheels are actually carrying weight now). The main braking method of an aircraft during a powered descent is its thrust-reversing mechanism, which are simply panels deployed into the exhaust shaft at low throttle (so the engine doesn't rape itself), and then throttled up again, being held in place purely through a simple mechanical locking mechanism and the force of the exhaust. I always carry drogue chutes on my spaceplanes, and my earliest spaceplanes were configured to even do parachute descents, as I wasn't the best at planning my aerobrake and managing to get the KSC runway aligned properly (in the sense of the length of the runway, its easy to hold course, but on an unpowered descent its hard to modify glidepath). The drogue chutes now serve the purpose of assisting in braking the aircraft once on the ground.

This comes from interpreting that the "..Transform.." configs usually equate to models. Lets look at it. A model.mu file, is simply called the model.mu file. Now within this .mu file, there are multiple "submodels" (this is also how gimballing is done on engines). The primary model is usually called the anchor, but it can be whatever, main thing you know and the config file knows that it doesn't move/rotate. Now this "suncatcher" or "gimball" is the secondary model which you can only edit when the primary model is deselected (like in Blender). However, you can even make the 2 models on separate .blend saves, they still work, provided you put them together correctly in Unity 3D. This secondary model can, once again, have any name, main thing you know that you need to specify it in the config for the rotation. And thats about it, actually. I haven't fussed with solar panels yet, but I assume a game object denotes which "side" of the model is the one that receives sunlight.

I'll have a look, but I'm tending to keep my wings to my craft. I've got this idea of a Energia-Urugan floating in my head.

Well, if everyone likes pWings so much, then I'll just leave wings alone and craft those for my spaceplanes.

Well, I have been experiencing the problem of too many wings and too many parts and lag. So I will make our lives easier and introduce larger wings. This includes "fat" wings that can hold fuel as well as wings which have aerodynamic attachment nodes for engines (as seen on the wing at the front page). Well, I'm generalizing ideas so that it ends up being a good misc. crap pack. My heavy lifter designs will have their own pack. The only two real problems I have right now is a massive math exam in T-48 Hours, and the fact that version 0.20 is out.

After reading about the Buran, I decided last night that it was time for a space shuttle cockpit with considerable visibility (much higher than the current Mk3 spaceplane pod). It will seat 1-5 men. The cockpit will attach to the Control Section of the Allspringer, my Dreamchaser analog. This will most likely be an airfix though, as elaborated on below. Well, ofc, I generalized the pack in the advent of it being far too user specific. Thats why the all-in-one stuff was rounded down into capsule related stuff. I'm also using regular KSP scales, meaning my Service Module for my capsule will fit a regular stock 3-man capsule just snug. I'm also going to attempt at being stock-alike. Mmmm, dammit. I was planning on having a simply massive spaceplane capable of delivering 50 tons to LKO in an animated cargobay (similar to B9, but larger, much, larger). For this design I was considering a Delta Wing similar to our human contraptions or more advanced stuff, more specifically a mixture of aerodynamic wing and canard for control (as this aircraft, the VF-11 shows).

So I've decided to round up the ideas and transform them into usable parts, as to allow people who didnt specifically request them to also find use in them: The All-In-One Capsule stuff has evolved into the AC-Raumfahrer I, a manned system consisting of multiple parts: Orbital Module: docking port 1-meter, top rcs clusters. Crew Module (capsule): Parachutes, 3-men, retrorockets, heatshield. Service Module: engine, bottom rcs clusters, fuel, solar panels. The Rover sadly has to be put aside, as I'm more focused on Launchers and Spacestations currently. 2 Meter Batteries for space stations (will try my best at stock-alike) Dreamchaser and SLS: A 1-man (with cargobay), 3-man, and 5-man version of the same basic spaceplane will exist, which will be known as the Allspringer I-I, I-III, I-V, respectively. SLS will come to life in form of a launcher system, similar to Anvil: <1000 KG payload <10000 KG payload <25000 KG payload <70000 KG payload (yes, 70 tons of payload, I even have a crude design of this) Biodomes: Space Station Habitats. Ion/Plasma/Magnetoplasma/Electrical Rockets: Will have a set of these eventually, will come as I read and study how they work. Saturn V analog: see 70 ton payload design. Habitat Capsule: will persist as an Orbital Module component for 2 meter capsules, high visibility. Large Habitat: put aside until I have my 70 ton launcher going, as it would have the size necessary to be aerodynamic with this (5-m diameter habitat at least). Solar sails: I will test their development, otherwise I will use the models as solar panels.

Just a stupidly high vacuum Isp, while requiring "intake air" (a separate resource which isn't compatible with stock airbreathers, so that the intake which gives ~100 of this resource can't be abused). Remember, Scramjets are 40km+ in altitude, meaning the vac Isp applies very, very well up there.

Politicians are the worst asses anyway, quite straightforward. About the technological assessment: large spaceships as those seen in games or movies aren't researched into, which is really stupid if I'm honest with you. Today's manned space travel research goes primarily into tiny confined capsules. It would be much, much better to invest money into massive shipyards which directly blast huge steel constructs into orbit, where they are primarily fueled and head off for the Asteroid Belt (to begin construction of a real space-shipyard which uses the locally available metals both for itself and for the ships it will once commission). Instead we sit on our very own Earth, constructing oversized ICBMs as means of getting into space, and fighting against each other rather than being a progressive species which aims for the stars. Its shuttering to look at humanity: bureaucracy rules over our resources only to greedily take them (the money) for themselves.

That actually seems like a solid thought..hmm yes...

Rescaling doesn't worry me a bit, I model properly, so from that point of view I have no problems. Modifying and adding resources is simple enough, however engines and especially EFFECTS aren't documented anywhere, leaving you to guess.

In pure game mechanical theory, yes. And its easy to explain: Suppose you set your spacecraft (consisting of a mainsail, a flat 2 meter tank, and a capsule) atop a Jumbo tank for whatever reason. Now you fire your mainsail engine, to discover that you utterly incinerated the fuel tank below. This came due to excess heat. This same reasoning explains how radial boosters can harm the main engine if improperly placed. So, conversely, if you have a part producing negative heat as thrust, you create a primitive cooling mechanism.

The .mu and .mbm file formats are write-only, KSP.exe is the only program currently known to possess the decoder (obviously). Its a sort of binarization to prevent model theft.