DerekL1963

A few hundred milliseconds, not really so different from large liquids. In both cases, by the time you've reached zero net thrust - the manned capsule has long since fired it's LES and departed the neighborhood.

It's Popular Mechanics - it's not exactly written for discerning and educated reader.

That's the biggest problem with using NERV's... if you're going to make effective use of them, you have to have a fuel tank editing mod.

Is that in the Shuttle pack?

0.o I'm not the one using the 787 as a model. I'm one of the ones repeatedly showing how the 787 isn't relative. What you posted above certainly isn't. A bullet train neither goes supersonic, not experiences multiple gees of acceleration, nor experiences vibrations of the magnitude of a rocket launch, nor experiences the loads of cryogenic fuels sloshing about inside it... So, no. It doesn't experience loads comparable to those of a rocket. The measure "per unit of structural mass" is nothing but meaningless piffle. You invoked science, but now shy away from science. This pretty much ends my interest in the conversation.

You can leave your parking orbit low if the craft performing the rendezvous goes high (enough for a faster warp). You don't have to rendezvous from underneath.

Not an official one, no.

Yes, they're intense. They're also a small fraction of what a booster encounters, and a Shinkansen isn't (as) limited in the structural weight it can devote to resisting those vibrations and forces. (Nor is a Shinkansen filled with a couple of millions of gallons of cryogenic fluids vibrating in response to those vibrations and forces and thus imposing additional forces.) And yes, it absolutely is an issue of how much force - because it's force that determines the level of stress that results from the force. Hang a hundred pound weight from twenty pound fishing line and stand underneath it if you don't don't think force matters. I'll be over here looking up the number of a good funeral home.

Presuming SpaceX can produce second stages fast enough, and presuming they can refurbish first stages fast enough/have enough to throw away, and presuming the range is available - and all this on top of their existing manifest. Which sure sounds impressive taken as a sound bite. But, once again, broken down into reality - you're talking a couple of dozen entries and landings. The science of engineering says that's a very narrow base of experience from which to extrapolate to a much larger vehicle. Worse yet for your nonsensical claim, the experience base was much narrower when they announced the BFR last year and not much bigger when they rolled out the test article. Or, to put it another way, I am minimizing nothing and assuming nothing. I'm proceeding forward from the facts and taking the actual science into account. Science and engineering aren't buzzwords or sound bites, they're very real things. "Half the speed of sounds" sure sounds impressive. But the shockwaves we're talking about occur in the supersonic range, and the stress comes from sustained acceleration and vibration quite unlike that which Shinkansen experiences. To add to those pesky scientific and engineering facts we also have to consider that a Shinkansen doesn't have be as lightweight as a booster. (Not to mention that they don't "go through a tunnel every five minutes".)

Pretty much this. 787 cycles more but the extremes are less. The temperature cycling is over a much narrower range (and are not cryogenic). Etc... etc... These differences matter. BFR is a huge leap outside of current operational experience. That leads the cautious and experienced to be... a little less fanatical and a lot less trusting in extrapolations. In other words, they're doing something never done before. SpaceX isn't in a habit of discussing their problems. Quite the opposite in fact, unless the problem occurs in the public eye they don't discuss it at all.

787 fuseleages don't contain cryogenic fuels nor do they routinely experience the stresses that a rocket fuselage does. Yes, he is reinventing the wheel.

Nertea's Stockalike Station Parts - his new parts are incredible pieces of work, but no longer quite stockalike. I also miss KSP Interstellar in its original form.... each subsequent maintainer has added more parts and more complexity, and now it's practically a mini-game in it's own right. You might look into Heisenberg... Not quite as elegantly simply, but still great fun.

Codswallop. The presence or absence of a stabilizing system is a choice left to the designer - not a law of nature. Mostly correct. You don't need enough range to reach KSC from the lander if you have the appropriately ranged relay antenna on the the approaching vessel. (Or a seperate communications relay bird.)

Nobody outside of SpaceX knows exactly what happened, and inside SpaceX they're under NDAs. The announced cause is that they ran out of igniter fluid. I suspect further discussion belongs in the SpaceX fanboy thread.

NASA didn't have much choice in the matter. Congress pretty definitely killed the lunar landing program in the '65-'67 budget cuts. (Though NASA kept hoping and planning on the spice money flowing again until well into 69/70.) By the time we actually landed on the moon, the program was running on fumes and force of habit. Quite the opposite - the Shuttle was almost entirely NASA's idea in the first place. There was a strong contingent at NASA that believed in the Von Braun Vision - Shuttle, Station, Mars. This contingent viewed capsules and the moon as diversions from the Real Goals. Seriously, Shuttle studies were going on in parallel with Apollo - the contracts for the final round of studies (the one that produced essentially the Shuttle we got) were signed on July 18, 1969. (Yes, while Apollo 11 was in transit to the moon.) When asked to produce a plan for post-Apollo, despite Apollo Applications having already been severely trimmed and the Saturn V essentially cancelled... NASA proposed a large expensive plan that included the Shuttle among other things - and when the dust settled, Shuttle was the only thing to survive the budgetary axe.

Honestly, since NF Construction is the key one for me... Either way works.

Not after you move the goalposts specifically to make sure of that, no. Sure. So long as you define "effective" to mean "within the limits of capsules". Or, once again, you're relying on soundbites rather than actually addressing the difference in capabilities.

Also a known bug. (One of many.) Currently in work to be fixed in the next patch. (ETA... your guess is as good as mine.)

Sounds like a demonstration at Navy firefighting school... They had a simulated deep fat fryer (a cube about two feet on a side) that they heated with a big (you know what) propane burner until it caught fire. Then a guy in a silver fire fighting suit with a gallon of water in a bucket on the end of a long pole went up and poured the bucket into the fryer. I swear the fireball was two stories tall.

Which sure sounds impressive taken as a sound bite. The reality - very different. Soyuz and Progress served so many more because the majority of the ones they served had fairly short operational lives.

Could give it a Phineas & Ferb spin: "Sarbian and the Module-inator!"

Then calculations based on parts counts (which are suspect to start with) are going to be even less useful as the amount of physics calculations and rendering the surface are also going to bog down your processor.

The -16S is the flat surface mounted one. The -16 is the whip (extendable) one.

They have diminishing returns too, but the slope is much less steep.

It's not just parts... It's also what's happening and what's on screen. During launch (highest part count plus a ton of physics calculations) I can go from yellow-occasionally-flashing-red to pure green simply by pointing the camera at the sky so that the ground isn't being rendered. In Kerbin orbit, I put my bigger stations above 250km because the game shifts to a simpler/faster method of rendering terrain at 250km. You can also gain performance by turning down your rendering settings in the Settings menu.