CatastrophicFailure

Wow, yeah that does look pretty well done. Maybe even some heat discoloration on the landing legs.

What images? Linky plz??

Chapter 56: Summoned, Sentenced "Major Kermanova reporting as ordered, sir!" Valentina snapped a crisp salute. "Put your hand down, relax, this isn't the military," Gene sighed, "have a seat, please." She did as he said, taking a seat before his desk in a way that felt oddly reminiscent of her encounter with the Kommissar, and yet, completely different. Gene seemed to take a moment to gather his thoughts, one hand rubbing his temples and shading his bloodshot eyes from the harsh fluorescent light above. Valentina used to opportunity to quickly run her own eyes around his office. On the wall behind him, between two large windows looking out on the launchpad, was a massive group photo of the current Kerbonaut Corps, all smiles posed before a mockup of their Orbiter and upper stage in their shiny metallic pressure suits. Nearby was a much smaller picture featuring a dozen or so rather overwhelmed looking faces clad in blue. Valentina guessed this must be the first fledgling class of new cadets. Below it was room for many more frames. The utilitarian, white-painted cinderblock walls were festooned with all manner of stylized space art. Sleek painted rockets roared past enormous ringed space stations, or towards more exotic destinations like Duna or the moons of Jool. Mixed in were more realistic renderings of space capsules and satellites. She even noted several Ussari works, including the all too familiar portrait of... Sergei. One wall was mostly empty, just a few old-looking photos of Gene with some Kerbals she didn't recognize, all looking very happy, but oddly cropped. In the center of them all was a single framed picture, a different image of the same young, smiling Kerbal from the case in the bar, the one no one would speak of. Engraved on a small brass plaque beneath it, she could just make out the words AD ASTRA PER ASPERA. Gene's desk was covered in neat, ordered stacks of papers and thick binders. Just in front of Valentina was a gold-colored model of a conical craft she hadn't seen before, but for the moment, she returned her attention to Gene, who seemed to be recovering. "So," he said, suspiciously neutral, "how's the hand?" "Is sore." "I see. It says here," he pressed a finger to a paper on the desk, "you had another altercation with Dean." "DД." "And punched a wall." "DД." "And cracked it." "D--what?" "There's a crack. In the wall. Just a small one." She gaped at him for a moment, then snapped to attention in her seat, "I humbly accept whatever discipline you deem fit, sir!" "Stop doing," he waved his hands at her, "that." Gene leaned back and sighed, putting his hand to his temples again, "this 'Dean' thing has got the be remedied," he said to no one in particular. "He is d-... d-..." she fumbled, "what is word? Difficult." "Yes, he is," Gene breathed, leaning forward again, "but he's really not a bad guy, once you get past his ego. Which, unfortunately, is huge..." Valentina opened her mouth to say something, but didn't get far. "...so I've scheduled you two some flight time together." Her mouth now fell open, before she snapped to attention again, "sir, yes, sir!" "Stop that," Gene said emphatically, then more softly, "look, I'm just trying to help everyone get along here. No one here can challenge Dean in the air, but from what I've heard, maybe you can. Show him a thing or two. Find a chink in that armor." "...armor?" Valentina said, confused. "Figure of speech. Anyway, I have the two of you down for a block of time tomorrow afternoon. If you can earn his respect, I think you might just see a different side of him," Gene gave her a hopeful, not-quite-believing-it smile. Valentina returned one equally as awkward. "Um..." she foundered, seeking a distraction, "is new spacecraft?" She pointed to the golden model on the desk. "Yep, that's DUOS," Gene looked relieved himself, and handed her the fragile-feeling bit of plastic, "the latest in cutting-edge KSA technology. It will be our own foray into performing rendezvous and docking in space." Valentina kept a polite smile as she turned the model over in her hands. It bore a very passing resemblance to Zarya, but could certainly not be called a copy. It looked like little more than an upscaled version of their conical orbiter capsule mated to an overly large fuel tank and engine, which she suspected was actually the last stage of the lifter. She also noted, it did not appear to actually have any sort of docking port. Or even any place to put one. "Just a prototype, of course," Gene said, as if reading her mind, "once these early bugs are sorted out there's plenty of room for improvement." "Er... bugs?" "Figure of speech," he said, rubbing at the wide, flat spot between his eyes, "I'm sure you've heard about Rockomax's um, difficulties. Just normal development snags, that's all. They have another test flight scheduled from their west coast facility tomorrow, actually. I'm sure everything will..." Gene stared at her, as if not sure where his own thought had been going. He returned to rubbing his temples, "wow, I'm talking a lot..." Valentina looked at him, concerned, "are you all right?" "Oh, I'm fine," he said with a half-hearted, dismissive chuckle, "just the challenges of being the Flight Director. We're in a good place. Burdous's flight was a great success, just have to get over this one little hump, now." Every recent Rockomax launch had failed, every one that wasn't crewed, that's what someone had said. Could he not see the obvious? Or was she just being paranoid? Rockets were tricky things, after all, prone to failure from the tiniest flaw, and the entire program here seemed far behind the Union's. Ironic, since so much of the Union's hardware came from... The thought evaporated, as another flash of distant emotion wandered through Valentina's mind. She pushed it away, and wrenched her attention back to Gene, "still, uh, you should get rest. You do not look well." "I'll be all right," he grinned weakly, his eyes seemed to have grown redder in just these few minutes, "no rest for the weary, after all." "But," she blinked, "it is weary who need rest, no?" "Figure of speech," he groaned. "Your speech has many figures," frowned Valentina, "like matryoshka doll." "Like m-what?" "Matryoshka doll," she gestured vaguely. "I have no idea what that is," Gene blinked, as if he should have, then shook his head, "maybe I could use some coffee..." He sighed, and looked back to Valentina, "you'll do fine tomorrow, and don't go easy on Dean either. Really show him what you've got. It'll be fine." They stared awkwardly at one another for a few moments. "Er, yes, you can go," Gene rolled his eyes, then clapped a hand to them, "and on your way out, do me a favor and kill the lights, please." She stood, saluted again, felt a bit silly, then went to the door. At the light switch, she paused a moment, wondering if perhaps she should punch it, but Gene probably just meant 'turn them off.' So many incomprehensible figures of speech here, like turning your hat in winter. Shrugging, Valentina flicked the light switch. The room didn't change much, with the late afternoon sun streaming in the windows as it was. Gene didn't seem to register it either way, he now sat with his face in hands, fingers rubbing his forehead. Valentina gave him another concerned frown, and quietly closed the door behind her. She made her way down the hall, out past the ever-smiling secretary, and through the legions of apparatchiks clacking away at their typewriters, to the elevator. Some things, she supposed once more, truly were universal. Only they didn't call them apparatchiks here, right? What was the word? Pencil-pusher, yes? That made no sense either, none of them had pencils as far as she could tell. The doors binged open, and she walked through the lobby and out into the stifling tropical sun with a headfull of thoughts.

Ah, back to normal. Two-fer weekend!

Put that in your vape-pen & puff it, Jeff Bezos. (Doesn't seem like the smoking type...)

Plane changes down low are terribly expensive. They do it near GEO altitude where it takes much less delta v.

It's like Woodstock for nerds

I'm thinking its maybe that fabric-ish flexible protective thingamabob that surrounds each engine. It's looked burned in other landings.

Um... Stuff's still on fire, yo...

Something.... Happened...? THEY DID IT AGAIN!

Nothing beats the F9 for pretty nighttime exhaust plumes.

My time zone math was not strong tonight, I nearly missed it! Might not have to stay up past my bedtime if all goes well (never get old).

328 tonnes, few hundred parts, 6 frames per second... and going nowhere except all around the space center still

Same setup I have, but mine doesn't look anything like that. My clouds look better but Kerbin... not so much. By chance, are you using the tweak many pages back to restore the "bumpiness" to the Kerbin system?

That Kerbin is flarping beautiful! How'd you set it up?

Unfortunate. It would appear that... the fourth wath not with them. I know, I know, I'll show myself out... Actually I'm hoping it gets bumped just one more day so I can watch...

Now, how does the recent adoption of supercooled propellants figure into all that? Wait, there's a white dragon now?

Fair enough, but now it's back to the previous discussion arc... can a Falcon upper stage maintain it's LOX supply all the way to Lunar space?

Naw, it's gotta be something closer to 2km/s at least, there's an awful lot of moon up there.

Hmm. Y'know, I think landing on the moon is gonna take a teensy bit more than that...

Aerodynamic dis-assemblies lead to some very impressive debris clouds... It's rainin' rocketshipparts! Halleluja it's rainin' rocketshipparts! Amen! CЯДP, ЯЦЙ!

Are there any stats on the D2s delta v?

Because you've got a surplus capsule nearing the end of its life span, a perfectly workable off-the-shelf system to deliver it, and someone offering you money to do so (why? University research, commercial exploration, Poland really can to the moon, who knows?) SEP...? Maybe Bezos starts to see some commercial success with his New Shepherd, and some other outfit wants a piece of that pie. Again, once you've got the hardware available at a greatly reduced cost... Same theme here... low-cost "immediately" available hardware with a demonstrated track record. If the Red Dragon works, and works well, I'm sure SpaceX and others will begin to find more uses for the platform. See @Rakaydos's comment above. Even if his numbers are rather, um, optimistic. As a parallel, there's tons of operations out there using old, surplus aircraft in ways they were never intended.

It seems to me once you've gotten that far, shutting off crossfeed early enough for the core to use enough of its own fuel is a simple engine management software issue. Even without doing that, I, and I'm sure many others, have designs similar to this in upscaled KSP, and it works quite well. Like @softweir said, once you've got the core that high and that fast, it adds much to the usefulness. On a different note, why would it not be good to have the boosters feeding directly into the core tanks instead of the engines?

Ok, bit late to the game here, um.... how did you manage this??