DerekL1963

As to the first claim, being a military pilot in the 1950's was a fairly dangerous way to make a living - Armstrong is one of thousands (tens of thousands?) to have piloted a plane that "killed other men". (Sometimes many of them.) As to the second... absent citations, I call bovine exhaust. That makes the nonsensical assumption that at the time he was assigned as backup Commander for Apollo 8 it was known for certain that Apollo 11 would be the first landing (as opposed to further testing of the LM in a repeat of 9 or 10). Nor is there any evidence that the Administration (or even NASA HQ for that matter) meddled in flight crew assignments. Basically, whoever is peddling that nonsense is full of unprintable words that would get me banned from the forums. The only person who knows for certain why Neil Armstrong was assigned to Apollo 8 (and subsequently to Apollo 11 by rotation) is Deke Slayton. And to the best of my knowledge he took his reasons to his grave. With only a few exceptions he was fairly reticent about his reasons for crew assignments.

The Russians have announced any number of plans over the last thirty odd years. Very few have produced anything more than a press release.

What mod do those modules come from?

Nit: The USAF has used liquid fueled final stages (actually a PBCS) since the MMIII (LGM-30G) was deployed in 1970. The Navy absolutely loathes liquid fueled missiles, so US SLBMS have always used a hot gas powered PBCS. (First flown on Poseidon in 1971.)

Pretty much this. Give players a list of ticky boxes to tick off - and they'll soon see that as the only "right and proper" way to play the game. (Due to the conditioning from other games where progress/ability to "win" is linked to achievements.)

The level of oversight in commercial aircraft, which are private transactions between private companies, is a minuscule fraction of that for government contracts. You're not up on the program then. The whole point of the Commercial initiatives (Crew and Cargo) was to reduce costs by purchasing on the open market and reducing red tape and paperwork. 0.o Seriously? Both you and Mike need to read NASA's own page on the topic. https://www.nasa.gov/content/commercial-crew-program-the-essentials/#.U_ung_ldUn3

No, they don't have to - they chose to. Thereby taking the whole point of the Commercial Crew program (saving money by reduced government involvement and oversight), wadding it up, and throwing it in the trash... All to no good end because there is absolutely zero evidence of safety problems requiring an investigation.

What kind of antenna were you using? Pix of your probe would help. Bad news is, yeah, if the probe is already landed you're going to have to launch a relay or a better designed probe. In a case like this, I'll often use one of the RA series mounted on the top of the probe or just cut to the chase and mount a relay on the cruise stage.

Swap to a different window... I usually catch up on the forums or social media when doing long burns. I've also done dishes, prepped dinner, etc... etc... Use KAC or MJ to pause the game or chop the throttle.

True. But it's also reasonable to point out when posters are grasping at straws, hand waving, and ignoring elephants in the room. It's also reasonable to bring discussions out of the clouds of the tangentially relevant and onto the factual and actually relevant. This isn't about Musk smoking pot. (Any excuse would have done, even being a little tipsy.) Nor is it about safety. (Safety is already well covered in the contracts and the human rating process.) Those are just fig leaves for the real reason - which is the "P"-bomb that we're forbidden to use on the forums. Commercial Crew is... not universally popular among legislators, and let's leave it at that.

Not that I don't think the investigation is dubious - but folks aren't reading the article or paying attention. They aren't investigating SpaceX and ULA - they're investigating SpaceX and Boeing. The target here is the Commercial Crew Program, which doesn't have a launch record.

NASA has been dodging/covering up Soyuz safety issues ever since the Shuttle-MIR program. As they say, nothing new under the sun.

Am I the only one that's bothered that official KSP Twitter account (https://twitter.com/KerbalSpaceP) basically links only to the Reddit forum and never to the game's actual official forums?

Active on my main drive... AS and ASH_OLD are version set up for working with airships. (For my Airship Adventures posts, see my sig.) KSP Mods are downloaded mods, filed by game version. KSP Screenshots are copies of the screenshots from versions on my backup drive. (Mostly for reference to old designs.) KSP on my backup drive... J5 is a 'special' install with just the mods I used for my Jool-5 run. Versions prior to 090 (back to 025) were lost in a hard drive crash as I hadn't been very good about making back ups.

Not holding my breath. SLS has some... powerful patrons, and NASA Associate Administrators don't have that kind of budget and contracting authority.

Not to worry, we've all been there, at least four times. And welcome to the forums!

That looks like one of Angel-125's station parts... But where did that solar array come from?

My system is built around a mobile miner carrying a converter that fills it's tanks with LFO and then boosts into Minmus orbit with a load of ore. A tug then carts the ore to a depot/converter station in Mimus orbit. At the depot it can then be refined into LF, LFO, or mono... and then dispatched around the Kerbin system as needed.

Converted the skycrane I posted yesterday into a fully fledged atmospheric EDL system. Used it to land rovers on Duna and in Kerbin's desert's and drove them about for a bit. Then I finally remembered to download the Persistent Trails mod so I could make cool shots showing the paths the rover took.

While solid boosters can't be shut down, they can be made to produce zero net thrust - which amounts to the same thing in the vast majority of cases.

Why do you only "dare" to barely turn it up at all? (Seriously, that statement makes no sense. Turning it up has no significant effect unless you have a potato computer.)

Since public interest is currently barely a skosh above absolute zero... I seriously doubt any failure that doesn't involve the death of an astronaut or passenger will have much impact on public interest or any other significant lasting effect. The folks you want to avoid annoying overmuch are the folks that pay the bills (private customers and governmental funding bodies). The former doesn't really give a rat about whatever speculative technologies fail to pan out so long as they can still buy rides. (Especially since they aren't footing the bill.) The latter doesn't give a rat either, unless it's hardware or speculative technology they paid for. There's a lot of talk here about hype trains and hating particular vehicles... But that's nothing but a tempest in the closed bubble universe that is space fandom. In the real world, there's not a term strong enough to express how utterly and completely irrelevant space fandom is.

To fix this, you can open your settings and turn up the ambient light boost.

o.0 I didn't say anything about a Terrier and a nuke... As far as waiting out long burns, I have a computer that multitasks. I'm currently on the forums while MJ drives a rover across Duna. That's what the "fore by throttle" setting on your RCS blocks are for. Turn that setting on, firewall the throttle, turn your RCS on, and you're set.

Honestly... I'm not even sure I understand what you're asking. It makes no sense to combine Poodles and nukes, and how much oxidizer you have at the Mun is... not at all relevant if you're launching a rescue mission from Kerbin. (I think that's what you're asking.) Not to mention, there's no single "most efficient" combination... It's going to vary with the weight of your vehicle, how long a burn you can tolerate, etc... etc... All solutions ultimately start in the hangar. In this scenario, it's particularly important because you need to substantially increase the ratio of fuel:oxidizer tankage to avoid lugging around oxidizer that you won't be using.