DerekL1963

Nice use of the science return canister.

There was just as much effort - in Britain. But the relevant people in the US are blinkered by the very limited experience in the US and NIH.

As is generally the case, the problem isn't tech - it's infrastructure and keeping that infrastructure functional for decades without support.

Photobucket, though the ads are a bit annoying, works for photos too. I'm still in the midst of designing mine (see sig), good luck!

After tackling Tylo, the next task was the next big challenge - Laythe. Easy to land on, because atmospheric braking can absorb a great of velocity, difficult to take off from because that same atmospheric drag eats a lot of delta-V. Since Laythe's gravity is essentially the same as Tylo's, I simply Hyperedited a Tylo lander into orbit and attempted to land. Entry was pretty spectacular, and though a number of temperature warnings popped up towards the end nothing actually blew up. Trying to return to orbit... did not work out so well. Presumably because of the broad flat faces of the radials and the core, I ran out of fuel not much above the lower atmosphere and plummeted back into the ocean. This was the next pass at the design: Here too, I encountered a problem - it wasn't aerodynamically stable. As I tried to pitch over to start my gravity turn it would flip head-over-heels and make a kamikaze dive into the ocean. I tried several variant with ever increasing amounts of control authority (torque from reaction wheels, gimbaled engines, even RCS) but the best I could do was delay the onset of the tumble. The final solution was something of a Hail Mary play - all but forgoing the gravity turn and flying an insanely lofted trajectory (more-or-less straight up until well into the upper atmosphere) which actually worked, though at a considerable cost in delta-V. That didn't particularly bother me, since it actually had delta-V to spare and having a lander of almost the same weight as the Tylo lander meant I could hang one on each side of the mothership and they'd balance each other. I also played with solar panels on the Laythe lander to save weight... but they proved problematic because the radial tanks shaded them. I tried cladding the exterior of the core with OX-STAT panels, but it took a ton of them to barely keep the batteries charged. In the end, it was easier to save parts count and just accept the weight of a PB-NUK. (Which wasn't actually all that much greater than the weight of all those panels - solar at Jool sucks.) A few more design-build-fly iterations later, I reached what I think is my final configuration. Next up: (after fixing dinner and being all domestic and stuff and catching up on our anime with my lovely wife) The Vall lander and a change in architecture.

Once I decided to take on the Challenge, the natural first step is the most difficult landing and return in the Challenge - the mighty and obnoxious Tylo. I've landed on Tylo in the past, but never taken off again. Unsurprisingly, my first few attempts didn't work out so well. Landing was easy once I got enough d/V, taking off and actually reaching orbit proved to be the real challenge. After several iterations, much swearing and much pacing of my balcony while taking a smoke break this lander finally more-or-less succeeded. It wasn't an ideal design... mostly because those big radials ended up being jettisoned about 5 kilometers up during the descent, and my t/w ratio took a huge hit at a critical time. But it did land, if a bit fast, and it did return to orbit, though it didn't have enough delta-V to rendezvous. I tried adding more fuel to the radials, but the vehicle grew heavier faster than the altitude at which they were jettisoned decreased. So finally, I trimmed it back to this point (less fuel in the radials and it couldn't return to orbit) and called it good. I also made a note to add some kind of crew transfer vehicle, reasoning that it didn't make any dang sense to move the big heavy mothership around any more than necessary. Next up: (After I take a break from taking a break and get some of my housework done.) The Laythe lander.

Note: This isn't being played as part of a campaign, so there pretty much isn't any RP. I'm coming at it as an engineering exercise, since that's pretty much my play style. So there's going to be a lot of dry reporting on engineering, testing, and development. Comments and questions are welcome! A week or so back, I came across a mention of the Jool 5 Challenge. I've played KSP since 0.19, so it's not like I haven't heard of it before - but for some reason, this time the bug bit. I decided to take on the Challenge, even though I've never attempted anything nearly so big before. Since the Challenge requires some form of log or report, I'm starting this thread to first keep track of my design decisions (in case someone is ever interested) and then to eventually serve as the required report. My current plan is that even if I don't fly it as a Challenge, I'm going to fly it as flotilla mission. I'm going to start with a series of posts detailing how I got to where I stand today, then I'll follow with updates daily or as warranted. Next up: The Tylo lander.

If I'm building a nuclear powered vehicle that needs to dock... If I can, I put the LV-N's on radials. That way you I slide the radials up and down the body of the craft and get my Wet, Dry, and Average COM practically on top of each other, making it much easier to balance the RCS. (Actually, this does work with non-nuclear powered ships, it's just particularly effective in this case due to the LV-N's huge mass.)

Um... yes. Because a proper AV program will tell you a) what the file is, and b) what it thinks it's infected with. Then you do the research or run a second AV scanner yourself and make a judgement call - especially since Norton is prone to deciding a file is bad and deleting it not because it found anything wrong with the file, but because it's a file that not many people use and Norton defaults to mistrusting files not in it's database and not in widespread use. I have to deal with this every time I upgrade KSP - preventing Norton from deleting perfectly good files.

This is why you don't let AV programs automatically delete files.

That's something I don't think people really grasp. They're used to dealing with traditional shipping & handling - which is "one-to-many" and fairly expensive in a large part due to the many sorting operations involved and "last mile" challenges. Shipping in bulk, which is "one-to-one" and doesn't have the sorting operations and a much simpler "last mile" challenge is much, much cheaper per ton than you might think from simply extrapolating from what Amazon charges to ship you the latest bestseller. That two pound box with the latest fantasy best seller might cost you 3 dollars in shipping from Amazon's nearest fulfillment center to your doorstep.... but if that same two pounds were part of thousands-of-tons shipment of coal from Montana to the East Coast it only costs 1.8 cents. Bulk shipping, even on a global scale, is literally dirt cheap. That's also why containerization has become a thing - it cuts out 99% of the interim labor if a container can be filled at a factory and the contents remain untouched by human hands until it reaches it's destination. Thus the cost of the minerals FOB Spaceport Canaveral is much more than the cost of the fuel for the ITS. It's also the extraction, handling, and processing - and given the enormous costs of establishing those things, and the need to amortize them across every pound of minerals... space materials start the battle with one foot in a bucket. Yes, oranges will produce orange juice... so clearly when apple juice is desired, oranges are a superior choice.

0.o We already have a system to ensure that airliners (which look an awful lot like bombers) aren't bombers. We also already have a system to ensure that space launches (which pretty much are ICBM launches) aren't mistaken for ICBM launches. Heck, we even have a system which ensures that actual ICBM (and SLBM) launches aren't mistaken for an attempt to kick off WWIII. The legal and technical frameworks are already in place, widely accepted, and have been for a fair fraction of a century. Setting up a system to cover sub-orbital transports might have some hitches at the technical level, but overall it's a fairly straightforward task using existing frameworks. In the same way that a bio-research lab is more scientifically useful than a materials science research lab - if you're interested in bio research. (I.E. apples and oranges.)

So, as long as the failure isn't in the craft itself... you're good.

Well, that's "colonization", not colonization. It's a very small number of people in temporary residence, not any number of permanent residents. So, even if it weren't covered under the "few exceptions" clause, it's largely irrelevant here. What will get those costs down is a high flight rate, leading to improved operations, improved designs, and amortizing the sunk and fixed costs across a significant number of passengers and tons of cargo. "Colonization" doesn't yield the numbers to drive that flight rate, it misses by a couple of orders of magnitude (at least). (Seriously, reducing costs is as much about counting beans as sliding rules - and space fans have a long history of ignoring the former.) It's the infamous chicken-and-egg problem that's been haunting space development for decades. (And even though it's an elephant sized problem, it's a boring one - so space fans have filed it under "2.?" for just as long.) And while there are any number of groups capable of creating powerpoints - and a couple with the theoretical capability to actually build space stations... There's precisely nobody actually "doing" space stations.

Still plugging away on developing my architecture and vehicles for the Jool 5 challenge... I know I've been saying that a lot over the last few days, but it's a complex mission so there's a lot of setup work to be done. But tonight, pictures! And some explanation of my architecture. I worked mostly on my tanker/transfer vehicle tonight. This ship ferries crew and fuel to and from the landers (which fly autonomously from the mothership to their destinations). The central tanks are LFO tanks for refueling the landers, the LF only radials feed the LV-N's and should have more than sufficient d/V for noodling about Jool. (I can add a second X200-8 at the base if I need more, this capacity will have to wait until tomorrow to be tested, I'm tired.) One of the reasons I used the radials is that by sliding the tanks (and the heavy LV-Ns) up and down the core I could get my loaded, dry, and average COM practically on top of one another. This makes it easy to balance the RCS, and even fully loaded it handles like a fighter jet. More importantly this means I can ditch the RCS and monoprop on the landers, saving weight. In my current plan, it nestles up to the tail of the mothership provides part of the thrust. Working on the design tonight I had an epiphany, and another part of my architecture fell into place - using the central tank's LF capacity and leaving the O tanks dry, the T/TV has sufficient d/V to return from Kerbin from Jool. The Tylo/Vall lander. It self ferries from the mother ship in orbit between Vall and Tylo to Tylo, where it is refueled by the T/TV. The T/TV then returns to the mothership and fetches the crew and a second load of fuel and after returning to Tylo transfers the crew to the lander. The lower stage of the core functions as a crasher stage, and the landing is completed on the radials. The radials function as asparagus stages during the return to orbit. The T/TV then rendezvouses with the lander, refuels it and recovers the crew. The lander then self ferries to Vall, while the T/TV takes a detour via the mothership and picks a load of fuel. The two meet up in Vall orbit, and the fuel and crew are transferred to the lander. After the landing and return to orbit, the lander is left in Val orbit and the crew returns to the mothership via the T/TV. I've already Hyperedited into the mothership's planned orbit and, using Hyperedit's ability to 'magically' refuel, flown a full mission to determine refueling requirements. The necessity of refilling the X200-32 tank on the crasher stage was the prime driver in sizing the T/TV. In the same way, the mothership's orbit (between Vall and Tylo) was chosen to minimize the d/V requirements of this phase of the mission. The Laythe lander... which has a simpler and more straightforward mission than the Tylo/Val lander. It simply self ferries to Laythe, and is met there by the T/TV, which transfers the crew and refuels it. As can be seen from the gear configuration, it lands with the radials still attached... and launches as an asparagus when it returns to orbit. I have to fly an insanely lofted ascent trajectory to avoid tumbling head over heels, but so it goes. After it returns from orbit, the T/TV returns the crew to the mothership and the lander is abandoned in Laythe orbit. So, that's where I stand at the moment - probably about a third or a quarter along in the design and development process.

Honestly, so long as you perform the burn as soon as you enter Duna's SOI, it doesn't cost all that much d/V to change your inclination. Doing it once you're in orbit, as Aegolius13 suggests can be risky at Duna because of Ike.

Nobody, except possibly religious fanatics (which this conversation and discussion thread disturbingly resembles), pours billions of dollars in up front and on going costs without an expectation of a tangible return. That's the economic reality of colonies no matter how many trite aphorisms you string together.

That's what a lot of people miss... Historically, colonies (settlements, outposts, whatever) with few exceptions generally served one of two purposes. The first was economic, if not to make money for absentee owners then to facilitate trade or provide a market or other commercial services. The second was (essentially) military/political - to establish a claim on land. (And generally the latter was intended to eventually become the former.) If somebody put money into a colony - they expected to get something in return. That 'something' is the part of the equation that's missing when it comes to space colonization. Almost nobody commits themselves to a long term money sink 'just because'.

Apples and oranges to some degree... A (mostly) solid fueled (and very low performance) launcher than can go through an extensive checkout procedure and then, after being put on standby, be ready in "under a day" is about as newsworthy as the sun coming up in the morning. You'd have to seriously work at it to not meet that kind of readiness guideline. What we're talking about above is turnaround, a very different process. That's why I brought up fueling speed, because refueling is a vital part of that process.

And the main reason we can't do it today is that nobody has prioritized it. Meanwhile, back in the 1950's, back in the stone age of rocketry, they could fuel and prep an Atlas for launch in under an hour.

The original post is quite clear - it splits long nodes into short ones. MechJeb doesn't do that.

There's only two long term solutions - one is unacceptable because people misperceive the risks, the second is unacceptable because it's been a joke for so long that people don't understand why it hasn't happened.

They're still doing particles and fields - and that the most useful thing possible out where they are now. We're going to start losing much of that this year or next however.

No, there's a lot of people out in the real world who badly want SSTO as well.

Still working up towards the Jool 5 challenge. Even if I don't follow through, I'm pretty pleased that I've been able to land and return to orbit at Laythe, Val, and Tylo. I've been playing since 0.19 and never done that. In preparations for the work below, to avoid getting caught by mods upgrading to 1.2, and to ensure I stay within the rules of the challenge; Installed a clean copy of KSP v1.13 and after verifying they were within the rules of the challenge, installed my basic suite of (non part) mods. Ran down the allowed mod list for the challenge and downloaded and set aside those I'm likely to use. Moved my existing lander designs to the dedicated challenge install and made sure they would load. After that, I went to "work"; Continued optimizing the Tylo/Val and Laythe landers. Flew the Tylo lander from the proposed orbit of my mothership to Tylo to validate self ferry capacity. Validated that I can refuel the core of the Tylo lander and self-ferry it to Val. Flew the Laythe lander from the proposed orbit of my mothership to Laythe to validate self ferry capacity. All the ferrying about also let me gauge the capacity my tanker/crew transfer vessel will need - just a hair under two X200-16's or one X200-32 at most. I'm going with two X200-16's (since the Tylo-Val leg requires one X200-16 that will provide a reference point) plus one X200-8 for margin.