DerekL1963

Daytime screenshot and payload capacity are a must...

Interstellar plasma is very hot, but it's not very dense. That's the same reason you can stick your hand into the air inside a 350 degree oven (for a least a few moments) and not get burned, while sticking your hand for even an instant into molten lead (327 degrees) would literally burn you to the bone in an instant.

As you say, that's a roleplay question that only you can answer.

Nice... that will make life much easier for those of us who hack your boosters for our own purposes. My only concern with that would be that Mechjeb sometimes activates those engines (I've had that problem in the past). I've never tried grouping them with a staging action though, that should prevent that from happening. (Will have to test.) Since you're saving so many parts, I wonder if spending a few on Seperatons wouldn't be a bad idea. (They'd give some retrograde thrust to boot, so the mass penalty isn't a total loss.) Then you could flip the stage and use the mains.

For my part, all but the aft most pair of RCS nozzles go away - if I use RCS at all, that pair works perfectly with the nozzles on the payload and they're more than sufficient to turn all but maybe the Nova and Supernova. (Though I usually strip the probe cores and associated equipment because I play with debris off and no Clean Space Act.) I rarely use RCS nowadays because reaction wheels on the payload and gimbaling the inner engines gives more than sufficient control authority, even when coasting to apoapsis. Fewer parts is always good, especially since they'll be on the part of the booster that goes all the way to orbit... If you do upgrade them, would it be too much to ask to standardize on clipping the probe cores under the upper decoupler? It's a real PITA to get at the ones buried under the engines.

Well, lets see... NASA didn't invent or mature guidance computers that can fit inside a spacecraft, that was the DoD. Polarizing helmet visors came from the work of a lot of people (including the DoD who built them into pilots helmets and bomber windscreens in the early 60's). Battery powered handheld tools go back at *least* to the 50's (that's how old the battery powered pair of fabric cutters my mom had were).... Um, what was your point again? That's the spin that NASA has put on the matter for fifty odd years. There's some truth to it, but there's also a whole bunch of credit grabbing and no little truth stretching.

And today, you can look up all the stuff they had to figure out from scratch on the internet. The problems they worried about that could cause fizzles are well covered in the open literature. Consider what NASA had to go through to make that first suborbital flight... and then look at Scaled Composites and Copenhagen Suborbitals. Just because it took armies of workers and the absolute brightest of techs and scientists fifty years does not mean the same holds true today. Not by anyone with any knowledge of the issue apparently. It's frightfully easy, much easier than you seem to think. As TheSaint said, there's a reason why non proliferation efforts have shifted to controlling access to the materiel.

So, what do you do when you have a stage with engines from both groups? (Which is not exactly uncommon.)

I'm in the same boat... does anyone have a copy of the Aug 31 build?

You didn't really describe any style...

No. Even if it takes ten characters to spell it.

The articles starts out with "There is so much amazing technology that came out of the space race.", which isn't really true in this case. As with so much else, NASA piggybacked on technology developed for other uses... in this case, the Polaris A2 missile, which the AGC was developed directly from.

Keep in mind something that the Wikipedia article does not make clear, this engine has not been studied or analyzed in any detail or with any seriousness. It's pretty much among the ultimate of 'paper' rockets.

The problem isn't, and never has been, 'peer pressure' getting in the way of fun. It's folks intruding on forum threads to inform people that "it's more fun to do it *MY* way" or "if you're doing it that way you're doing it wrong".

Just mentioning for grins since Duna is the topic de jour at the moment; I'm developing a Duna exploration system, and the next thing I needed is an orbit tank farm to refuel my re-useable tug. So, I'm flipping back and forth between the game (looking at tank capacities and weights) and the JPEG listing of the Zenith family.... when it hits me that the Supernova proof mass pretty much *is* an orbital tank farm. A little time in the VAB modifying it and refining the design, and voila! a tank farm. Temstar comes through again!

It's going astray from the purpose of this thread - but I'd recommend Kerbal Alarm Clock to keep track of when mid course corrections are due, when they encounter Duna, etc... Saves a lot of jumping back and forth.

This has probably been suggested before... but would it be possible to get some extended arrows on the axes of the dry weight indicator? When you get the two close together, the dry weight indicator disappears inside the loaded weight indicator and you're left guessing exactly where it is...

I'm concerned about the size of the R&D complex... serious lag city.

I use the "lifter delivers a module and orbital delivery/maneuvering system to LKO, after it delivers the module to the station the orbital delivery/maneuvering system is deorbited" method myself.

Yes, spinning on the long axis simplifies the math. I can't speak to MechJeb, but real life rockets do this... When you hear the call "roll program"? Part of that is the booster being spun on it's long axis to align the flight, body, and guidance system planes. (This originated in the analog days, it's not *strictly* needed nowadays though.)

Yes and yes.

Took the engine off my orbital insertion/maneuvering stage in the VAB to swap out it's fuel tank, pulled the lower decoupler up to the new tank, and hit the "launch" button. Watched, quite pleased, as the booster flew smoothly into orbit and separated from the orbital insertion/maneuvering stage...

If you've only got MJ installed, the command pod should be a box with a green light... so if you have 'blue eyes' you have a different mod.

Just curious, can anything be done about the initial (and often very violent) 'flop-over' when MJ starts the gravity turn?

Is it so hard to take pictures in the daylight? Or at least the whole craft in the SPH rather than three repetitive shots of the bomb bay?