DerekL1963

I just dock them in the VAB and undock them in orbit, they seperate pretty-as-you-please. Though in your situation, I'd have used radial mounting points with separators or (most likely) a radial decoupler.

Um, maybe in whatever universe it is you come from, but not here in this one. As for what heat is generated onboard, well I refer you to what I wrote above. We're already able to keep much colder material cold for extended periods without active cooling. You vastly exaggerate what methane tanks will require.

Absolutely not. KSP abstracts aways virtually everything of significance, and rocket scientists of the 1950's were actually engineers. And KSP (as a game/simulator) with it's Lego block construction system is almost completely innocent of engineering. Precisely this. Hanging about here in the Science & Spaceflight sub-forum, it's abundantly clear the KSP community is largely ignorant when it comes to the practical details of spaceflight. (There are individual exceptions, but they are not the norm.)

Here in the 21st century we've long since mastered insulation and thermal isolation. Waaaaaay back in the 1960's they were building LOX tanks that could hold much colder LOX for years-to-decades.

Nope. Because all phase difference (doppler) provides you is instantaneous velocity along line-of-sight. That's insufficient to determine vehicle velocity or deviation from the (planned) flight path. Nor does it provide the vehicle with an attitude reference.(How can it yaw left to return to the desired flight path if it doesn't know where the yaw plane is and which direction is left?) ITAR is only a problem if the design information or the hardware crosses international boundaries.

Even with an instantaneous decision to divert, roughly one in two ended in failure. (And one-in-two isn't actually quite correct - IIRC it was one-in-two for LaGuardia and zero for Teterboro.) However, that instantaneous decision requires knowledge that neither the pilots nor a computer had or would have - that the engines could not be restarted. No sensible control process is going to skip a simple test (trying to restart the engines) in favor of a complex and risky maneuver (immediate divert). Another factor is that IRL Sullenberger skipped ahead in the procedure and started the APU, ensuring the continued availability of hydraulic power.

And you still need a stable platform, which is... (you guessed it...) a complex piece of precision equipment.

Radio guidance requires a functional and fairly accurate radar - still a complex piece of precision equipment.

Do you have a link for those?

The basic problem is that even the most basic inertial guidance system is a complex piece of precision equipment.

In terms of real life, a direct launch/direct landing also vastly simplifies guidance and navigation requirements.

It also should choose the path with the highest signal strength.

The space station design I've been fiddling with for the last few days... based on stock, Angel-125's M.O.L.E. mod, and Nertea's NF Solar and Stockalike Station mods. Docked to the station are a crew transfer vehicle and logistics support vehicle.

Pegasus is "cheap" taken in isolation (that is it's total cost to launch is less than other, larger, vehicles), but the last time I looked (it's been a few years) they were one of the more expensive vehicles on a per/kg basis.

The higher (and thus slower) the orbit, the more tolerant the system is of small errors in orbital period between the birds. Plus (at least for me), putting 'em high puts them off screen when I'm working with space stations or whatever else which are typically much lower. Plus it only consumes a little d/v and doesn't hurt anything in particular.

Nowadays, yes it is. SpaceX is the only major launch provider that does full stage static fire tests any more. (Nobody can figure out quite why.) The same for individual engines, they pretty much go from factory to flight.

Last night I was fiddling around with space station designs in the sandbox, and had an epiphany... Now I know how I'm going work M.O.L.E. into the plot line of my next campaign and how to make a transition to larger stations.

You've discovered a real-world truth, design is a complex balancing act between multiple priorities.

To not use aerobraking...

Building a space station in the sandbox just because. I devised a simple and elegant way to move the RCS on my delivery tug close to the loaded/average COM.

No, we aren't really taking about the same thing. You're discussing 3D printing as an alternative for existing conventional processes. I very specifically stated that it's not just an alternative. Though I linked to a prototype as an example of something that can't be done with existing processes, I have specifically otherwise avoided using the word prototype because 3D printing is rapidly moving out of producing prototypes in the lab and into the world of manufacturing.

3D printing and CNC are used not to eliminate welding, but to reduce the amount of welding. The F1 engine required an enormous amount of touch labor to assemble components from individual weldments that we'd machine as single piece today. (No CNC or six-axis machines back then.) No, 3D printing is not an alternative to machine for things that can be machined. The point of 3D printing is create things that cannot be created with more conventional methods or which it would be prohibitively expensive to create with more conventional methods. Such as this prototype engine manufactured at Lawrence Livermore.

For the lander/return vehicle in the VAB or for the whole vehicle at liftoff?

When I played using Remotech, here's how I did it: 1. Choose one bird as the "reference" bird, and get it into the "perfect" orbit and note it's orbital period. 2. Move a second bird into the "perfect" orbit, and then move it into the proper position relative to the reference bird. If it needs to move East, drop the Pe and let it drift, then circularize. If it needed to move West, raise the Ap. When you're at the proper relative position, match periods (or preferably match periods by matching the semi-major axis). The key here is to watch the difference in orbital periods between the reference bird and the bird being moved into position. The larger the difference, the faster the relative motion, the harder it is to brake precisely into position. So, if it needs to drift a long way you can start with a large relative difference in orbital period and then slowly lower the relative difference as you get closer. (Tweaking your thrust down is a massive help as you're making the final adjustments. Correct that, it's not a massive help, it's the only way) It took me a huge amount of practice to nail the procedure, but in the end I could nail position +/- 1 degrees and period to +/- .01 seconds. I'd typically use tweaked RCS for the final persnickety adjustments. 3. Repeat with the third bird. Using a mod such as MJ or KER that gives you a readout of the relevant data (Ap, Pe, period, semi-major axis, angular position relative to target) is a massive help. If you do use such a mod, matching orbits by matching semi-major axis is much easier than trying to match period by matching Ap and Pe. Just out of curiosity why did you use those massive RA-100's when all you need are HG-5's?

I've already pointed that out, twice. ("Except at the smallest scale (where the weight of the drive dominates) the NERV will always be lighter".) I didn't say it couldn't compete, not even once. I pointed out (twice) that (except at the smallest scale) a vehicle powered by Poodle's will be heavier than one powered by NERV. Congratulations! You've "proved" what I already admitted to and pointed out two times now - at small scales a NERV comes off far worse. No offense, but do you even understand what this discussion is about? Please scroll back up and read the OP's post. This discussion is all about gargantuan vessels - vessels in a weight range where NERV's have a vast advantage.