DerekL1963

Your DSN (Tracking Center) level determines how sensitive/strong it's receivers are - meaning you can hear the same (spacecraft) antenna from further away. Antennas are more like engines, each one has a given strength and that strength never changes. The only antenna that currently stacks (combines) is the C-16 whip antenna.

No, it's not an issue. CommNet (the new stock system) only checks to see if there is LOS.

Nice!

Not agreeing with you is not the same as not having read what you said. No, you aren't trying to say the Buran is flawless - but you are trying to justify the notion that it was 'safer', 'an upgrade', and 'improved'. None of those three claims can be justified on the basis of a single flight. You have no way of knowing whether or not there was an inherent design flaw that would render all three claims false.

*sigh* The Buran did not fly often enough to uncover any inherent flaws in it's design. You cannot say it was safer than the Shuttle. Period. (After STS-1 the Shuttle had a perfect safety record too.)

Birds in polar orbits are only in LOS to KSC very rarely. They're best used (in my experience) with 1-2 equatorial birds. The new [stock] CommNet system (which can be disabled entirely if you wish) has an option to disable the additional DSN stations, leaving KSC the only ground station.

There isn't. I used to use an array of relay birds in a 1000km orbit in RemoteTech (which enforced strict LOS) all the time. To eliminate gaps there's only three requirements; a) that all birds be in LOS to each other. b) that they have the range to reach each other, and c) that at least one bird have LOS to KSC. For maintaining LOS to each other, the RemoTech visual planner suggests the lower bound is a little below 700km. You'd have to test to see if an array that low will maintain LOS to KSC. IIRC my low array in RemoTech required four birds, but I can't recall if that was to maintain connectivity or to increase the array's tolerance to orbit drift. Kerbosynchronous orbits and arrays with three birds are popular because they let the array builder show of his l33t skills, and that's how it's done in the Real World - but there's no physical reason that limits you to such arrays. I've built arrays with very high connectivity that had no birds in the same orbit at all in RemoTech. The HG-55 will reach out to the Mun and beyond, it should more than suffice for a Kerbin orbital relay system. In fact, under the current build, it's practically the only use for it.

If you told us which ICBM it was, we could tell you... If it was the Titan II it was Aerozine 50 and nitrogen tetroxide.

It's not the total budget that matters... it's where Congress directs the money to be spent. If they directed that extra money be spent on the Senate Launch System (for example), then they might as well have stacked up a pile of dollar bills and burned them for all the good it will do.

Best discussed in the 1.2 forums.

That's what the sandbox is for... Build your vehicle in your career save, then transfer it over to a sandbox for testing. Modify it, and test again. Lather, rinse, repeat. When you've got the design and your mission techniques dialed in, go over to your career save and fly it for reals.

Having a truckload of engines only reduces the impact of a failure *if* you have a control system that can promptly and correctly introduce the appropriate corrections. (And such a control system itself introduces additional complexity and chances for failure - as happened on AS-502.*) The KORD system carried by the N1 was... not the best in that department and would itself (IIRC) cause one flight failure. * As a side note: Something not generally known was that reactor control systems were a major point of focus for Rickover during the development of naval nuclear reactors. They relentlessly lowered the number of parameters monitored so as to simplify the system to the maximum extent possible.

1] Use KER or MJ for a high precision readout of your orbital period and SMA (which is what you really want to match). (And MJ's "Warp To" feature is very handy for zipping to a few seconds before your Ap/Pe.) 2] A craft with a ridiculously low T/W ratio. (RCS based preferred because you can burn pro- and retro- grade w/o rotating the vessel.) 3] Practice, practice, practice. Seriously, it's not that hard once you get in the habit of piloting "by the numbers" [displayed by MJ or KER].

That presumes that you *can* upgrade - if all you have is Reliant level 2... you can't upgrade and either you can't load the file, or the system auto downgrades and the craft doesn't work as advertised. And that makes life more difficult as the complexity of the craft file (from the point of view of users trying to exchange them) goes up exponentially as it's no longer enough to say "my craft uses engine x, and probe core y, and fuel tank z". Instead you have "engine x, version 1, 2, or 3" and "probe core version 1, or 2" and "fuel tank version 1, 2, 3, or 4". (We already see that problem occurring because of mods.)

Basically, the N-1 didn't fly well because it wasn't tested as a system until they tried to launch one. Trying to fly a completely untested and un-debugged design is... madness at best. And no, it wasn't a particularly good idea. It had waaaaay too many too small engines, which significantly increases the chance of something going wrong.

Not too unlike a submarine hull. The hull is the easy and cheap part (relatively speaking) of a submarine, the rest is expensive. The same is true of rockets, the tank barrels are the easy and cheap part (relatively speaking), the rest gets expensive.

I suspect that he means "difficult" in that if I (who have upgraded parts) send you (who doesn't have upgraded parts) a .craft file, the vehicle will load - but the performance will be different, potentially radically so depending on the nature of the upgrades. That's a considerable departure from the current model where if it loads, it works identical across saves.

That's about 4 minutes too long. Seriously, howsoever popular, videos are about the worst method of conveying information there is. (Especially short snippets of factual information like those typically presented here.)

I'm finding it interesting to play with 100% occlusion and multiple ground stations.... low orbits (parking orbits) have gaps, higher orbits do not. I can go for relay constellation, but it only needs two birds and it's *much* easier to set up.

Simple. They're going to be extraordinarily expensive to develop and build and basically don't have any use. Kinda like the Senate Launch System.

No offense, but also having old eyes... my solution was to get new glasses. (Specifically, breaking down and finally admitting that I needed bifocals and a pair of reading/computer glasses.)

As low as 86k, there is 100% coverage if you're in a low inclination orbit. If you're in a polar orbit at 86k, there is one station each in the high northern and high southern latitudes but you still have blackout zones.

No, RemoTech is not CommNet - there may be some parts in common, but they work *very* differently.

Using MechJeb or Engineer Redux to monitor your orbital period, with a little practice (and tweaking your source of thrust to the absolute minimum) it's quite possible to match orbits within .01 second. Once you've done that (for Munar Lagrange point relays), I suspect you'll only need to check it once a century or so. I said it above, and I suspect I'll be repeating it a lot in the coming weeks, CommNet is not RemoTech. Your "flower" is designed to solve a problem that CommNet doesn't have - that of KSC being in 'shadow' because it's on the wrong side of Kerbin from your satellite's point of view. CommNet provides an equatorial belt of ground stations, so basically if you can see Kerbin you have connectivity to KSC. With CommNet and Munar Lagrange point relays, your "flower" is completely superfluous as CommNet will simply connect directly to one of those ground stations.

It's the whole "quietly working away"... Science (real science, as opposed to movie, KSP, and Discovery Channel "science") is mostly boring and repetitive. Boring and repetitive doesn't make the news. That being said, this is very cool.