DerekL1963

That would suck, as the Swivel is a key tool in my arsenal even late in the game.

Not unless the ores are of considerably higher concentration than they here on earth... But if you're down in the single-digit-ounces-per-ton range, I don't think there's anything that valuable. It doesn't matter what the total value of the resource is - the only thing that matters is what it costs to fetch it, refine it, and deliver it as compared to what it can sell for on the open market.

Clever - thanks!

That's a personal opinion and a personal decision, not a function of the game. There is a difference. I see - we're not talking about the actual KSP, but how it varies from something you've created of whole cloth.

Only if you turn occlusion way, way, way up... or turn off the additional DSN stations. Only if you run missions that visit a bunch of places. In a world where there was "considerable" extra challenge, that would be a reasonable question. I think the real problem here is that you, like so many people, are locked into a particular playstyle and a particular way of climbing the tech tree - and you simply can't imagine there's any other way of doing things. Me, I've topped out the tree without ever sending a Kerbal beyond LKO. The key is focus in climbing the tree. (Once you can build an asparagused 1.25m rocket, you can go practically anywhere.)

o.0 It's pretty easy to do actually. Though I'd try launching straight up an hour or so before dawn at KSC and not even stopping in LKO.

Completely off topic here. I merely note their short term financials as it may (or may not) impact SpaceX/ICT over the same term.

If Tesla ever becomes profitable, and that point is a number of years off even if they didn't have a significant debt load. (AIUI, Tesla doesn't even had a positive cash flow at the moment.*) Solar City is currently his only profitable enterprise, and it's suspected in some quarters that it was recently purchased by Tesla to tap it's cash flow. * Yes they recently came into a lot of cash from deposits on the Model 3, but unless they're getting a bit dodgy with their accounting that has to balanced in the books by the cost of the future commitments represented by those deposits. (That's how my wife, an accountant, reads the situation.)

What's the baseplate for that rover? Also, finished designing and testing all the vehicle for my Jool-5 run, and updated my log thread. (Link in my sig.) I got the go-ahead from the challenge maintainer, and I launched the first vehicle... and KSP crashed. It's late, I'm tired, so I'm going to take that as a sign.

Thanks! I've done all my practice runs and setup in 1.1.3... and as much as I'd love to be one of the first to climb on the 1.2 board, I'm going to dance with the one I'm with as it were. I like the new rules setup, better to just have once category ("banned"). Makes your life much easier.

One trick with long burns is start way high up - where the burn is less than 1/8 of your orbital period if possible.

That's easy to say, more difficult to do, especially if you're running on borrowed money and have to pay interest. And you have to recoup not only the direct costs and overhead, but also repay the capital costs before you can start turning a profit. And that's the big problem right now - we simply don't have the information to assign reasonably reliable values to any of those.

@sdj64 Could you double check my modlist? AFAICT, it should be good to go.

And my modlist... Parts mods: RLA Stockalike - 45 degree RCS thrusters. Surface Mounted Stock-Alike Lights - various lights. Module Manager - for running a small script that adds MechJeb functions to command pods and probe cores. (To avoid having to put MJ cases all over the place.) Kerbal Joint Reinforcement - pretty much what it says on the label, it strengthens parts and joints so you don't need struts to avoid spaghettification. Modular Fuel Tanks - for changing the contents of tanks, mostly converting stock LFO tanks into LF only tanks. The vehicle is actually mostly standard stock parts. VAB mods: Editor Extensions Redux - various editor enhancements. RCS Build Aid - for balancing the RCS on the various craft, makes docking so much easier. Operational mods: TAC Fuel Balancer - makes it easier to move fuel between all the various tanks on the ships. MechJeb - gives various informational readouts as well as autopilot functions. Docking Port Alignment Indicator - provides a HUD with various useful readouts for docking operations. I know what you're thinking.... "You have MJ, why do you need a docking HUD?" Sometimes I dock manually, sometimes semi-manually, sometimes automatically. And even during automatic docking ops, it can be useful to keep an eye on what's going on. MJ's docking autopilot is notoriously thirsty for monoprop, so using the HUD I can cycle to autopilot on and off and cut way down on the mono is consumes. Misc mods: Blizzy's Toolbar - provides a handy one stop shop for all the mod icons. Ambient Light Adjustment - improves screen shots on the dark side of the planets. Kerbal Alarm Clock - Handy for setting alarms for transfer windows, to prevent me warping past burns or SOI changes.

No offense, but did you even read the list of differences I posted? In extremely abstracted (to the point of meaninglessness) comparisons, yeah, they seem the same. But in actual engineering, those differences matter, they matter a great deal. This is the Science and Spaceflight forum, for silly word games I recommend the Forum Games forum.

*points at my apple* That's an apple. *points at your orange* That's an orange. Seriously, you don't grasp that two very different operations are the in fact two very different operations? What's hard to understand?

That's what mods like Modular Fuel Tanks were invented for...

0.o Let's see... Well, there's gravity. And atmosphere. And they're starting with completely different raw materials in search of complete different bulk products. And the presence of humans to supervise and perform preventative and corrective maintenance. And... How are they not totally different?

The the rest of the infrastructure to support orbital assembly... I posted this tug last week, but the more I thought about it, the less happy with it I was... I can't put my finger on why, I just was. So I reached back for a design I've been using since .20 or so... It's a nice compact design that is very maneuverable even when laden with fuel. The ISP is impressive, but that's unloaded ISP. Speaking of fuel, all of the components of the ship are launched with only oxidizer on board to save weight. In the same way, the drive units are only partially fueled at launch... So, I need a fuel depot. Five orange tanks worth, about three flights should fill the ship to the brim. And last, but not least, a humble vehicle to ferry the crew into orbit.

That would be about as wise as mastering woodcarving before taking on the Daytona 500. The two things are completely unrelated.

We aren't "trying to cram more people into one planet", all the demographics show the numbers leveling out in a century or not too far above current levels. Seriously the "Club of Rome" carp you're spouting has been discredited for decades now. Not to mention that "colonizing the system" will do pretty much nothing to reduce numbers on Earth - short of dedicating a substantial fraction of the world's industrial capacity (which isn't going to happen) we simply can't move enough people fast enough.

Mined and processed and returned to earth (in significant quantities). The sticking point is that of the three, we have no idea how to do the first two - and machinery for doing so tends to very large and very heavy.

OK, took a couple of days off... real life and other hobbies and stuff. So, a couple of posts to catch up and I'm ready to start the run. First, a bit about the development of the mothership. The first design for the mothership emerged out an engineering mockup to study the placement of the landers. Basically a set of orange tanks with everything else mounted to them, simple and straightforward. This shot shows an early configuration and two features that eventually changed. Originally I had a large crew compartment, but the crew was eventually cut from six to two and the crew compartment slashed to save weight. I'd also hoped to use the T/TV to help boost the vehicle... but no matter how much I paced and swore there simply wasn't enough room under the base of the tank farm for the T/TV and the drive units. My first overall design was this monstrosity.. (with 12 LV-N's!) it was marginal, but it worked. And I had no idea how I was going to launch the huge drive unit, even unfueled it weighed a ton. Eventually I hit on this scheme... Very cool looking, the drives could be launched easily, but it was a bit marginal in terms of performance. I found out during the dress rehearsal that I needed to carry more fuel, which meant the two drive unit design simply wasn't big enough... But once the two new fuel tanks were mounted to the side of the existing core, it was easy enough to go from two drive units to four. I was kinda sad I lost the cool 'dragon spine' look though. But with a t/w of .16 instead of .1, and nearly a 1000 m/s more dV, practicality took precedence over cool. It gets pretty hot when I'm boosting out of Kerbin orbit, but I don't get any alarms and it doesn't blow up - good enough. 1.2 comes out today... but with all the work I've put in so far under 1.1.3, and the delay for mods to catch up (even though the ship is almost all stock), I'm just going to soldier on with 1.1.3.

Nice! Am in the process of running a Jool-5 myself (see my sig), and it's not easy. Congrats!

Sometimes you just need to get five orange tanks worth of fuel into orbit and you say to yourself "self, I'm tired of delicate, perfectly optimized lifters - just get that sucker on orbit".