DerekL1963

Thanks Streetwind!

Is there a mod to reduce/eliminate crew costs? Thanks!

That Proton has been flying like that has no bearing on the effect on performance of the Saturn I/Ib, especially since they different greatly in gross configuration, never mind the fine details. Had the Saturn I/Ib shared the same engine as Thor (it didn't), it wouldn't even have been able to get off the ground. (Thor's engines produced about 2/3rds the thrust of the H-1.) And costs are only one small portion of the equation - performance matters. Performance matters a great [word that would get me banned] deal.

Not only expensive, but rather mediocre in performance for the cost due to the Rube Goldberg first stage. There's a reason why NASA replaced it with Titan.

The Russians produce Grand Schemes for future space activities on a regular basis - to date pretty much none of them have progressed beyond a press release with some pretty graphics. That hasn't stopped the credulous from taking them at face value though.

This isn't about fairness. This is about fanboys desperate for any coverage in order to validate themselves, augmented by further validation via denigration of anyone who doesn't believe as they do. It's a toxic syndrome often encountered in the science and space fanboy communities.

This actually came up on the AROCKET list recently, and it turns out that "bog standard" commercial methane (the stuff you can call and delivered tomorrow) contains a number of nasties that can cause problems in the cooling channels.

The reactors flown by the Russians are horrid little things - they have some very dodgy safety characteristics due to the "unique" design of the control rods.

Actually, the cross-range capability of the Shuttle was used on practically every landing. Even though it was never used for once-around, it proved very handy indeed - here's a PDF from NASA showing the crossrange use for every flight through STS-88 in 1998. (Note that the cross-range of the "tiny wing/straight" version was somewhere around 250-300 miles.) Well, to start with - there is no such thing as the "original" shuttle design, there was a broad range of concepts examined at various stages, and then discarded for one reason or another. In particular, the "tiny wing" version you cite was on the very of being abandoned for two main reasons; First, it's low density made it very, very sensitive to cross winds. (In only about a quarter of the conditions the actual Shuttle landed in could this version have landed.) Second, the shock waves from those wings impacted directly on the fuselage. (Or, in other words, they directed a blowtorch of re-entry plasma onto the fuselage.) The delta wing design with a long chine running forward to the nose emerged as a solution to this second problem. In addition it brought along solutions to other problems - the increased surface area lowered thermal protection requirements, and the lowered wing loading made it easier to fly. The delta wing also increased safety because the cross-range capability that came with it widened abort and landing windows. All the DoD did was push NASA in a direction it was already leaning in.

Your space Navy may well face such birds *at* Jupiter - and Mars, and Earth, and in carefully chosen Solar orbits. If you've got the money and technology to build a significant space Navy, the cost a fleet of a couple three dozen detector birds is essentially in the rounding error.

The Radex 1212 is an uncalibrated consumer grade unit - some variation is to be expected.

(Image snipped) No, not really. 99.99% of the effects usually associated with a nuclear weapon are the result of the interaction between the energy released by the bomb and the surrounding environment (atmosphere, water, earth) or with the Earth's magnetosphere. In free space, none of these things are present. You'll get a flash maybe a few dozen nanoseconds long (with the peak being a dozen or two at best, rising and falling very sharply) as the energy released (mostly in the form of gamma rays and hard x-rays traveling at the speed of light) travel through the bomb debris (the physical remnants of the explosives in the primary, the weapons case, plus the delivery vehicle) and then it'll all be over. You could stare right at it with the naked eye from a dozen kilometers away and you'd never notice it. (Though you'd want to be further away or heavily shielded to escape the effects of prompt radiation.)

If you watch the video, the gyro in the demonstration doesn't actually rise - it rotates about the pitch axis of the support structure. The appearance of moving perpendicular to the (assumed) plane of precession is caused by the actual vector of precession (after the force is applied externally by the demonstrator's hand) being different from the planes the movement of the gyro is constrained to by those supports, so some of it comes out in the pitch plane, some in the roll plane.

GoSlash, you're going up against one the most sacred beliefs of Space Fandom - that manned spaceflight is the One True Path to the Salvation of Humanity. But, you and Beowolf are correct, manned spaceflight is all but irrelevant because the problem isn't one of getting there, it's one of surviving and being self sufficient (economically as well as technologically and in terms of material goods). For the foreseeable future, all manned spaceflight can produce are aquariums, and it's pretty easy to predict what happens to an aquarium when the owner stops paying the bills and feeding the inhabitants.

That's exactly what I'm see when I test - the expected behavior. Big tanks, small amount of radiator area - red hot radiators. Tiny probe core, large amount of radiators - stone cold radiators. (Actually 329 odd K.)

OK, I got a chance to run through the base (LV-N) configurations. With Sundiver, it's now possible to build a vehicle that remains cool enough to maneuver significantly near peri. (Though providing enough D/v to do will be a challenge, but one outside the scope of this discussion.) Braking into orbit on Moho's dayside was quite doable. With the Quad Adapter, Duna level burns were straightforward enough but Jool level burns required more careful attention to thermal design. (I should have written down the burn times for these.) You now have to pay attention lest you overburden your vehicle with radiators (it was difficult to have "too many" before) but you can still blow yourself up if you don't install enough. Even when you have "just enough" radiators, there's still a noticeable performance hit (D/v) that you have to account for. With the reduced number of radiators required, you now have to pay more attention to where they're located as well. TL;DR version: While the previous version was playable, this version (_X13) is vastly improved and more balanced in that it's harder to shoot yourself in the foot (though it's still possible) while more options are available for players that are into optimized designs.

That made a huge difference. A quick test shows that LV-N powered "toss a hundred twenty tons to Jool" monsters will still be challenging, but more modest payloads (on the order of an orange tank) to Duna are much less nerve wracking. (A good place to be I think, Jool should be a challenge.) I'll recheck the base configurations as soon as I can, I'm especially curious to see how the Sundiver performs near peri. Also, if Heat Control is (AIUI) intended to be installed separately, shouldn't the folder be renamed to be in line with the other NF mods?

Me either... the more I work with LV-N based designs, the more apparent it becomes that while it's doable with the current values, there is a pretty narrow window between "low T/W, blows up because of extended burn time" and "enough motors to hold the burn time down but barely enough space mount enough radiators to avoid blowing up".

I really should have been less sunny in my original report... I only tested a limited set of conservative configurations. Anyhow, this is the last of the 'extreme' cases that I can think of - though 4 LV-N's attached to a TVR-400L Stack Quad-Adapter is actually a pretty common configuration. The goal here was stay clear of the red zone (temperature gauges nearly maxed out) at the end of a trans Duna injection burn. It took several iterations to get there, but the secret sauce turns out to be a FL-T400 or FL-T800 tank for thermal mass, and a quad of XR-2000's which serve to keep the main body cool and pull heat from the quad adapter and thus from the aft tanks. Unless someone comes up with another one, I think these three (Moho, Sundiver, Quad-adapter) represent the most extreme cases the average player will usual encounter and they can all be handled easily without spamming or excessive performance degradation.

Over coffee this morning, I realized why my tests with _10 seemed so easy, and with _11 so hard. In _10, I tested what I assumed would be ruling case, my heavy Duna tug with either multiple LV-N's or one monster LV-NB... but that vehicle is based around a 2.5 meter hull and has a much larger thermal mass. The Moho probe and the Sundiver are based around 1.25 meter hulls. Anyhow, a successful 20 minute burn (out near Kerbin) and a successful Sundiver (survived and was able to gather low Kerbolar orbit Science at a peri of 900Mm); In reality, looking at the temperature overlay and gauges, in a "real" game (as opposed to sandbox testing) I'd be sore tempted to toss on a couple of additional XR-500's as near the end of the burn and at peri there were a number of components operating just shy of redlining. Overall, it still seems balanced, it's easy enough to build a vehicle with sufficient performance and thermal controls if you pay attention.

Followed up tonight by full up tests with NFEX_4_11 and an actual craft (stock other than NFEX radiators) braking into Moho orbit on the dayside (one of the two longest burns and worst thermal enviroments the average player is likely to encounter). Doable, but it does take attention to thermal design and the vehicle's available D/v (as piling on too many radiators causes too great a performance hit). Working as intended I suspect, and it feels balanced. For reference, the vehicle used for the test; Four radiators worked, but I went back with eight because the four radiator version seemed marginal thermally. Tomorrow, sundiving into low Kerbolar orbit for sweet, sweet science. (This version failed sundiving during the long burn (out near Kerbin's orbit) to lower the Pe.) Too tired to work that problem tonight, after I hit "submit" and have a smoke, it's bedtime for me.

Actually, I like seeing the total cooling capacity - it gives a nice easy number to compare radiators and make a quasi-intelligent selection.

Did some testing of NFEX_4_10 with various configurations of LV-N's and the monster LV-NB (from KSPX) last night. Seems to be a reasonable balance, the radiators are heavy enough to give a noticeable performance hit (accounted for easily enough by either attention to your design or MOAR BOOSTERS!!), but perform well enough that you don't need to spam them in mass quanta to keep temperatures within a decent range for any normal burn length.

Modular Fuel Tanks. (1.0 upgrade in progress.)

That's on the order of a full ton just for the outrigger engines on my standard tug - about 3% of it's max standard payload. That's not a marginal hit at all.