DerekL1963

Um, no. Though Gemini could dock, it didn't really have a docking port. The chutes were inline with the rendezvous section, which contained the docking radar and was pulled away by a drogue. (source) In Apollo, the parachutes were around the docking tunnel, not inline with it. (source)

That doesn't mean the LM couldn't only that they didn't. In fact, the LM was quite capable of taking the active role during docking if need be. The CSM was the active partner for a nominal docking because CMP was specifically trained to dock to the LM and had a better FOV. As with docking, that they didn't doesn't mean the couldn't. It was the backup method for transferring from the LM to the CSM. (And they performed a stand-in-the-hatch EVA on orbit during Apollo 9 and on the surface during Apollo 15.)

You mean the 1.8m? I used the heck out of Angel-125's version. You could build an nice 1.5m probe and fit it all under a fairing.

Is a decades old proposal from the era when Soyuz was still a general purpose earth orbiter and in the process of transitioning to serving as a station taxi. It doesn't really say anything about the ability of the current generation to perform a lunar mission or what modifications will or won't be required.

For certain values of "capable". Soyuz is pretty specialized as a LEO station taxi... Can it survive the thermal environment of cislunar and lunar space unmodified? It's standard flight duration (2-3 days to a station, 2-3 days back) is awfully close to that of "loop around the moon" mission - what are it's margins?

1) ask the ESA, it's their plan. 2) Who proposed firing it from ISS? 3) I made no suggestions, see #1. 4) Is completely irrelevant, I was discussing the complex autonomous rope wrangling 'bots in PB 666's scheme. Since we know nothing about the ESA's plan, there's nothing to criticize. Once again, you said nothing about starting at the low end of the range. You said nothing about testing and practicing first. You said "It takes very little dV for most satellites to clear them from LEO, since a good segment are between 250 and 500 km", which I showed to be incorrect. [snip] The only people I know of offhand who have been denied a license by the FCC were denied (IIRC) because of issues with tracking them, not with disposal. Is that who you're thinking of?

Tested the stock "Gemini" and "Apollo" service modules... Neither is at all useful, so they'll be blanked out when I install Janitor's Closet. Built my own "Kerbpollo", mostly to test the Mastodon and Skiff engines and flew it around the Mun. Sorry, I keep forgetting pictures.

0.o Your defined range was 250-500km. If the density starts at 450km (I said 400, but no biggie) - then (as I pointed out) the bulk of your defined range is empty [snip] AIUI That's one of the big concerns about the proposed internet provider constellations - they're huge, in the way of access to geosync, the various constellations overlap each other... And there's no clear regulation or agreement about graveyard orbits or deorbit capability.

Assuming you pay slave wages to the magic pixies doing the assembly work and steal your material at gunpoint (without getting caught)... you might get prices down that low. Otherwise, no. 0.o Nobody worries too much about dead birds in that range. That range (especially the lower end) is rapidly swept clear by atmospheric drag. I mean c'mon - ISS is only 400km up and it requires regular reboost. Sputnik I was at 577km and it's long gone. The worry in that range is heavy small debris - stuff with a high ballistic coefficient that isn't effected as much by drag. Take a gander at this graphic showing all birds in orbit as of 2015 - there's a reason why the population suddenly explodes at around 400km. https://qz.com/296941/interactive-graphic-every-active-satellite-orbiting-earth/

Since nobody has specified the size of the bird the ESA is planning to send up... That seems a bit of a stretch to assume. But frankly, given the nature of the mission and the environment... I suspect no solution is going to be small or cheap.

Yup I realize that. And I also realize they aren't suited for the application you're proposing. I didn't say communications wasn't an old problem. I said that you'd left them and practically every other system the 'bot would require off the list. And you seriously overestimate the current state of the art in autonomous robots. And you very seriously underestimate the weight and costs.

Ah. You've crossed the streams. That can cause problems in and of itself.

Did you properly set the naming priority in the VAB? I haven't played much with this feature, but properly setting that priority strikes me as being the key to getting it all to work.

Which ends up in the Apollo Trap - an expensive vehicle that really isn't useful for any mission that isn't the mission it was originally designed for. At the other end is the Shuttle Trap - a jack of all trades useful for a number of different missions, but too expensive to use for any of them. And I'm not sure there is a happy middle.

Uh huh, and if the space bots fail then we have additional pieces of junk to deal with too. And if the space bots wrap their tethers around the wrong part of the craft, they too can generate additional debris. Well, setting aside the fact that ion drives (despite your obsession with them) lack the thrust to perform the mission (not able to perform fine rendezvous maneuvers on their own) and that tethers are unproved technology... You've left out the communications systems they'll need. And the power management system. And the RCS needed for fine maneuvers near the target. And the sensors needed. And the computer systems needed to control the whole thing. And.... I'll just stop right there and say that you've not only grossly misrepresented the systems required, you've equally ignored all the devils in all the details. Well, no. Not only are these completely different problems - SpaceX required a modest amount of additional systems (all based on existing proven technology) added to a proven system. You require a completely new vehicle with a number of speculative technologies. A tank of liquid nitrogen the size of a small continent would just about increase the density of gases at the relevant altitude by roughly one part in millions... for a couple of years I'd guess. So, no, not really a practical solution.

Setting aside the fact that the harpoon is simpler than the non-existent space bots, such bots don't exist. The harpoon is also at least a couple of decimal places cheaper than the complex and non existent bots. (Yes, complex - maneuvering in 3d remotely, dragging a rope around, etc... etc... not gonna be cheap or simple. Don't even try to claim otherwise.)

Launched an "Agena" docking target and the flew a "Gemini" docking mission. Mostly this was about learning the capabilities of the new 1.85m parts.

IIRC, the term you're searching for is "fission fragment propulsion". tl;dr version - incredibly high ISP, absolutely lousy thrust. And by lousy I mean "practically indistinguishable from zero".

With the caveat that their ability to leverage the budget is sharply limited by various governmental rules. And even within those rules, Congress can take notice and summon the individual or his boss to testify before them (read: harangued and harrrased by them) on all but the thinnest pretext. The real problem isn't NASA. The real problem is that space fandoms (among it's many other blind spots) doesn't grasp that NASA isn't Disney. NASA doesn't exist to entertain you. NASA is a government agency whose purpose is defined by the policies of the Executive Branch. In theory. In practice, over the last twenty years the Executive has largely let that role fall to Congress by default. (To the point where Congress has been several times recently been emboldened enough to try and convert that de facto control into de jure control.) Or, to put it another way, we didn't go to the Moon because NASA had vision. We went to the Moon because Kennedy and LBJ (mostly LBJ) made it a policy of their administration and a national priority. Congress, for a couple of years anyway, agreed and funded NASA at national priority levels. If you want to go back to the moon, you need to convince the Administration and Congress that it's worth funding.

And it really only kinda works if the transfer in question is one where the upper and lower bounds don't vary much from the average and you get a good transfer window (I.E. near the average). It's quite often spectacularly wrong in the case of Moho and Dres.

There are mods with airlocks, not mention stock hatches used for EVA... so I'm not sure I buy this. The key limits in KSP/Unity would appear to be size and whether you could specify the interior to be 'EVA space' (with dynamic kerbals) rather than 'IVA space' (with static kerbals). @Earthlinger appears to be on the right track. So I may have been wrong in my first assessment.

There's a barely visible narrow little tab right under the "launch" button in VAB, clicking on it drops down a menu that lets you select the launch site. Protip: The SPH also has one that lets you choose between KSC and the Island Runway.

No worse than what I've done ten thousand times... Put the "deploy solar panels" action in the spacebar action group. A better fix in my experience (YMMV as always) is to put the solar panels as low down on the stage/payload as possible, giving the maximum time for the fairing to travel horizontally far enough to clear the panels. That way I don't have to keep remembering to jigger with the ejection force. It also helps to keep the fairing as small as reasonably possible.

That's not how safety factors work. If you have a strut that will experience 1,250 lbf and you want a 4:1 safety factor you design it to take 5,000 lbf before failure. If it fails at 1,000 lbf that doesn't mean you had a 5:1 safety factor - it means you have a faulty part or a flawed design (or in rare cases, both).

And that takes us right back to where we started. What is fun for you is not necessarily fun for others. Do not presume to speak for anyone that isn't you. Right. Because when I successfully ran a Jool-5, MJ designed the mission concept, designed the ship, determined the assembly sequence, etc... etc... Or, to put it another way, utter hogwash. Flying the vehicle is only one small part of the overall game, and even there - MJ can only do what the player specifically tells it to do. It's not a shooterbot and it's not a puzzlebot. It's an autopilot. And if you think I didn't have to learn a ton of non-piloting things to make that successful run... My only possible response is to ask have you even played KSP? I mean seriously, I don't grasp how anyone can think piloting is the whole of the game. Right. So let's take out most of the wings, since they're a niche. And let's take out half the wheels and half the landing gear and a good chunk of the tankage because building ginourmous vehicles is a niche interest. And... Do you not realize how stupid that sounds? There's a ton of niches in this game, and what makes KSP so censored cool is that it accommodates so many of them so easily - and none of them take away from any others. It's not a zero sum situation where adding something for a niche takes away from anyone else. Not to mention, looking at the number of downloads... it's a very big niche. And that's just downloads of the big releases on Curse... it doesn't count the dev versions a fair fraction of MJ users actually use. There's people who object to strawman versions ("it's just like a bot the plays Minesweeper for you"). There's people who object to other people using MJ ("they won't have any fun!"). There's people who wish to push a certain playstyle onto others ("It's OK - but only after they have learned"). None of these are really conflicts over MJ itself.