Montieth

This has some possibilities for making a LeTourneau style land train for exploration. http://imgur.com/l4RtgXM

So, a couple of points. My real life hobby is Military vehicles. There are, in the US service a number of aframe type tow bars of various weight capacities. They attach to a towed vehicle at two points and can handle a single axis of motion (up down) off the front of the towed vehicle. The towing vehicle connects to the towbar with its towing hook which swivels and because its a pintle hook on the towing truck, the eye on the tow bar can pivot left right snd up down so it has three axis of movement. Towing a disabled truck, like a 2.5 ton truck towing another can be done with thhe a frame and has the advantage of getting some automatic steering at low angles due to caster of the front wheels of the towed truck. Trailers work out to two main forms in rough terrain service in MVs. Tag trailers which have a fixed structure presenting a lunette eye to the towing vehicle's pintle hook and 5th wheel configurations. There are also, to some limited use, wagon trailers. Wagon trailer are very hard to back up as you have two pivot points. Tag trailers work well with part of the load on the trailer's wheels and part on the towing vehicle's axles and, unlike more common ball type hitches you see on civilian stuff, the Pintle hooks are good for FAR higher load ratings. (tens of tons vs hundreds or thousands of pounds). Articulated vehicles like a MK48 LVS might be a thing for your towing mechanisms. Note how the front power unit has 4 wheel steering but the whole vehicle is articulated and the rear trailer unit's wheels are also powered. In Military service, the trailer units CAN be swapped out but it's about a 30 minute process as you have to undo bolts and clear some hydraulic lines. You generally want articulation in one or two axis with articulated vehicles where the rear unit is also powered. Another example with a different axis of articulation is the Gammagoat. I've driven one of these a bit as a friend has one. The rear 'trailer' is not a trailer and is in fact also a steering unit. The articulation you can see in the link allows a rolling difference and a pitching difference but not a yawing difference. Depending on some things, a yawing difference can force the cab to turn over if it ALSO has a rolling function to the joint. The Landrover 101 FC truck had a possible powered trailer in prototype format which was found to push the truck over in some situations, so the powered trailers were not used.

Getting rare and expensive metals cheaply will be a boon for technology and development. Aluminum used to be more expensive than gold. Now, due to refining techniques that were not around until electric arc furnaces, aluminum is used in everything, imagine large aircraft without aluminum....

That'd be great. It'd be a proper education for the ignorant that if you have a technological society with machine tools to make high tech equipment, you can make your own arms.

100 people, over 4-6 months produce how much fertilizer?

I think it's arguable that you don't need to build the MASSIVE thing on the ground. You build smaller units that can build the parts to make the larger components needed. A factory to build the factories as it were. Power is available. Arc Furnaces are the way to go. Where you have elemental metals and not oxides, you have ready access to the materials and easy smelting/forging. I don't know where we are for printing PV cells though with materials printers yet...

Depends on the stability of the soil, what you have to dig and a number of other conditions. If a large trenching machine can be assembled on site...then you have an easy way to get sub surface habitation.

Musk said it would take several tanker launches to get it set for the transburn. "It'll go up multiple times, anywhere from 3 to 5 times to fill the tanks of the space ship in orbit. And then once the tanks are full, the cargo has been transferred....and we reach the march rendezvous timing, roughly every 26 months, that's when the space ship departs."

If you can precisely land on a large concrete field, aka a hardstand, why move it back to a pad to launch? Why not launch from the hard-stand after servicing with field movable equipment?

Aerobrake to conserve the ∆V budget? Regardless, the craft are going to hang out in orbit for some time. Over what time it'll be is a question. I can't see them boosting the ITS spacecraft with full crew and passengers only to have them sit waiting for the next transfer window..

The ITS isn't disposable. When they return from Mars do they hang out in orbit and get prepped for the next mission or do you bring them back to earth? I would think the former. If that's the case, you've got to get crew and materials up to them. Do they go up on the tankers in penny packets with the cargo loads?

Did anyone else get a mental image of Ikea style Flat Pack Habitats when Musk was talking about the unpressurized cargo section of the ITS? I also have to wonder, what quantity of material will need to be sent ahead in order for the first 100 or so to be able to survive and deal with any problems that might arise?

Given that it launches to LEO more or less empty of fuel and needs tankers to bring fuel AND presumably the cargo/food stuff and passengers, the safety of the launch of the large craft is probably not the issue. You're not going to launch 100 people to orbit and have them twiddle their tumbs while you move CH4/O2 to orbit along with food over the 2 years to the next Earth/Mars transfer window. So, I suspect its more: 1. Launch ITS craft to orbit. Perhaps with a basic command crew but I don't see why that would necessarily be important. 2a. Launch Dragon craft and cargo craft up with crew, workers to get the ship loaded and setup for the transfer window. 2b. Launch ITS tankers to fuel and stow the heavy bulk for getting the ship ready for the transfer window. 2c. Launch Dragon craft with passengers for the trip to mars. 3. Window arrives and ITS space craft performs ejectionburn/transfer burn to mars.

Add a tool or set of tools allowing heavy things which are close to be pulled into place? I can use a screw jack or a chain ratchet binder to shift 10 tons of vehicle easily enough.

Suggestion.. How about a mission plan/notes page one can scroll theough that conatains things like action group settings, notes for things to do, etc. It would pick up out of a specific text file that one could edit within the game or externally for keeping track of key things for a given rocket or craft.

I guess the CLS mm*.cfg file in the structural parts folder works but doesn't affect the hexport docking module in the utilities folder. I found this with a station I put together and tested further on the ground with a variety of parts. I can reproduce tomorrow if you'd like.

I found an issue with CLS and the HexPort Docking Module. It apparently does NOT allow passage. Making a MM_CLS.cfg file in the DSEV/Parts/Utility folder with the following: Apparently solves the issue.

OOh, so we can do this now!

1st. I've been using TAC LS for a decent time on my latest foray into KSP. I was head down with Dwarf Fortress for nearly half a year of free time (when not on other free time things). Now I'm back to a Mun Base and a bunch of other forays around Kerbin to build up resources in a pure science game and using TAC LS for all the stuffs. Enjoying it immensely. Good on you and your helpers for maintaining it to this point. As to your thinking issues, have you tried any hobbies that are more physical that leave your mind to wander? Metal working perhaps? Canoeing, something that's fairly repetitive but outside the norm of your normal work. I find when I'm doing those sorts of things or other tasks like wiring an armored car project or something that esoteric though works well.

Isnt part of the mass value for propellants based on density? Rock being rather more dense than liquid and gaseous fuels, would that not have a great deal of thrust then?

Regarding the hydrogen component of the recycling (and/or generation) for LS materials, is there a storage machanism for H2 aside from the basic converters that produce it from atmosphere or ore or electrolysis? I ask because the pie quarter fuel cell requires H2 and I'd like to build a reserve of H2 for powering it. Also, is there a way to make a given hab set closed loop while on kerbin so as to test the ability of a given hab structure to work without extra O2 input from the Kerbin atmosphere?

Place a set of the quad thrusters at the front and back for max effect on the moment arms for rotation. Put another of the single port thrusters around the CoM for the tanslation function. Each set gets its own action group.

I've been running a Science Campaign for the past two weeks and I wanted to thank Mihara, MoarDV and alexustas for their work on the IVA functionality of what makes RPM work so well. Also to the various folks who've done work on the M1 Lander can. I've been working my missions to/from the Mun with almost all IVA work and it's getting quite good. There are just a few things I cannot do without external views. I have some things I'd like to see in the Mk1-2 pod but I'm not going to bother with that at the moment. I just want to say thanks. Every time I safely return Bob, Jeb and Bill to Kerbin by using IVA views nearly exclusively, it's such a wonderful and very immersive feeling.

I am going to submit that this may not be a bug but a feature. Real life computing (among other things) is sometimes like this. Perhaps there needs to also be a percussive maintenance capability along side the unplugging it and reinserting/plugging/powering it step. As a future request, can we get Bill hit it things with his wrench? Perhaps even have said percussive maintanance have the net effect of power cycling the object struck?

Placement of the thrusters close to the Avionics ring of the service module doesn't actually have the effect of redirection of the thrust when it impinges on the avionics ring, it just should. The angled thrusters seem like a decent compromise but I dislike loss of 50% of the forward/aft thrust due to it being off axis in it's desired velocity effect. Sorry, I'm being excessively picky...