rhoark

It would be nice if there were some centralized place to find and peruse images of successful, stable FAR planes.

I chalk it up to "dramatic compression", ie the reason TV shows and movies don't show people sleeping, driving cars, etc. in 1:1 real time when nothing interesting is happening.

I've been using ECLSS with the rebalance and Universal Storage for a few days. No problems yet.

If you want a replica specifically of the NASA shuttle, there's Tiberdyne's (old) and Component Space Shuttle (unfinished). If you want a shuttle in the more generic sense with very Kerbal aesthetics, there's the Kerbin Mini Shuttle. If you want to build a shuttle from your own imagination using more discrete parts, get B9 and Shuttle Engines. (I also highly recommend using RealFuels and Ferram Aerospace for such a project as well.)

Start your approach further out, throttle down lower, and do some S curves.

I was initially excited for career mode to provide more purpose and objectives to the game, but it turned out to mostly stand in the way of doing cool stuff. I think it was a mistake to treat the tech tree as a teaching tool for new players. It holds a lot of things back too long out of a paternalistic fear of confusing players. I still play in career mode to make science instruments functional, but with all parts moved to the start node. The interesting progression not with what parts you have, but what you can do with them. Building out my RemoteTech network, refining aerodynamics with Ferram and procedural wings, automating more things with kOS, and honing my IVA skills are what keep me coming back for more. Compared to those challenges, just having all the parts unlocked doesn't feel like cheating in the slightest.

The part in parentheses does not at all represent a user's obligations under GPL3. Creative Commons Attribution works the way you describe.

If you really want a low-G reentry, wings are the answer.

I'm doing something like this, entirely apart from the stock resource system. As a physical simulation, flow follows pressure gradients, not requests.

The shuttle launched with crew in the mid-deck, which is why ejection seats were only available on the initial test flights with a 2-man crew.

J2X was not canned, it was shelved because its finished far in advance of any rocket to put it on. Its computer will be retrofitted to RS-25's later this year. Block I and Ib SLS don't use J2X because its inferior to RL10 for deep space. RL10 is lower thrust / higher ISP. It's using J2X that would make SLS a LEO rocket. You'll see it if/when SLS launches space stations or a multi-part mission assembled in LEO. Don't forget Tsiolkovsky. If you want to go far, you have to build big - exponentially so. Right now there are niches for rockets that are big and rockets that are frequent, but probably not a rocket that is both. For SpaceX cost is a primary figure of merit, and it does well at that. SLS is different - its about capability. That doesn't mean cost is ignored (its cheaper per kg than Delta IV Heavy), but that the costs that scale with n constrain the design less when n is small. If the shuttle taught us anything, its that reusability is expensive, both in monetary and technical budgets. To recap: the further the destination, the bigger the vehicle. The bigger the vehicle, the less frequent the launch. The less frequent the launch, the less reusability makes sense. The less reusability is required, the more capable the vehicle. The more capable the vehicle, the further the possible destination.

NASA's trade studies disagree. A manned mars mission will likely use 3 SLSes, so you're looking at a minimum of 9 EELVs. That's before you account for how the smaller volume limitations impact the design of each module. Each component connection also means 4 months of practice in the buoyancy tanks.

Here's another one for you: procedural text decals.

And the reverse? Sentar in CE?

Thanks for pointing out Alskari's stuff, but its more scifi than I want. I guess I can put some of your ports on the ends of a 6S compartment.

It looks like Nothke worked on something similar in 3.75m last year. http://forum.kerbalspaceprogram.com/threads/29031-0-23-Hollow-Structure-Hulls?p=358339&viewfull=1#post358339

That's the difference at a high level overview, but I mean technically. Is CE a front-end or a totally different plugin?

What is the difference, technically, between PlanetFactory and CE?

I mean having an interior accessible on EVA.

It's the right wing itself that's doubled. Squad bug as far as I can tell.

Sorry if this has already been discussed, but has anyone investigated the possibility of kicking textures out of RAM entirely until a part that uses the texture enters physics range?

Jeb would totally design a ship where the crew hatch opens directly into a vat of nitric acid.

Find the lights in B9 and only copy them into your GameData directory.

If you want to retexture planets, use a mod called Universe Replacer.