Brotoro

I've also used RAPIER engines on the SSTO rocket shown below (named the RASSTO), and they worked great for that application. This rocket was designed to ferry crew from Laythe surface to Laythe orbit (refueled in orbit), but I initially tested it at Kerbin and it managed to (barely) fly to Low Kerbin Orbit and back. It carries four kerbels in a Hitchhiker can. The ship uses two ram intakes for each of its four RAPIER engines. The initial boost was done in air-breathing mode, of course (and I didn't experience the overheating problems at slow speeds that I've had with regular jet engines on SSTO rockets). The gravity turn was begun fairly early so that horizontal speed could be picked up while in jet-powered mode…but I didn't try to fly this long distances horizontally like a spaceplane. By the time I got it to flameout altitude (21 km on Laythe), it was flying at about 50 degrees from vertical and had about 550 m/s of horizontal speed. Then I switched over to closed-cycle mode and flew the rest of the way to orbit on rocket power. The ship reached orbit with 540 m/s of delta-V remaining…so way more than needed to rendezvous with the space station. The ship lands using parachutes and a little jet-assist. Because it has its fuel in orbit (the opposite of what you'd do on Kerbin) it is heavy when it lands. The side tanks are tweaked to have less oxidizer than liquid fuel to account for the fuel used during the air-breathing phase. The RAPIER engines are particularly good for this application because there is no need to have other rocket engines on the ship...and the rocket engines required for this application would be fairly hefty ones (like two or three LV-T45 engines) …this is a rocket, not a spaceplane that only needs a little push from its rocket motors to make orbit. That's a lot of weight saved over my previous SSTO rocket design that combined jet engines and LV-T45 engines. Plus, this leaves the base of the rocket uncluttered so that an inflatable heat shield could be added there if reentry ever gets deadly (I did tests a while back with an inflatable heat shield on my SSTO rocket, and it was difficult because all the jet and rocket engines needed to be located radially instead of having the rocket engines in the center as I was used to doing). So…I quite like the RAPIER engines for this application.

Rescue time! I had to rescue the first crew I sent to Moho as well.

No. This is where you keep making your mistake. Measuring the distances to stars within our Galaxy does not depend on Hubble redshifts or any assumptions about the homogeneity or isotropy of the universe. Our Galaxy is gravitationally bound and is not expanding apart with the Hubble flow, so any prejudice you have against Hubble shifts doesn't enter into this problem. Also, the Virgo cluster is so close to us that this missing mass is still a problem because the Hubble correction is very small. Also, we have a number of methods for measuring distances in our Galaxy that do NOT depend upon annular stellar parallax (in case you have some prejudice against that method for measuring distances because it doesn't fit with some concept you choose to cling to despite contrary evidence). We can measure distances using nearby moving star clusters in our galaxy because of the expansion of those clusters and the motion of the Sun (not the annual motion of the Earth around the Sun); we can measure distances using binary stars; we can measure distances using expanding supernova remnants such as the Crab Nebula; we can measure distances by looking at the luminosities of stars with the same spectral type and luminosity class. In practice, of course, we use the method of annular stellar parallax because we get higher precision from those measurements, but the other methods agree. And none of these depend on any assumptions about the homogeneity, isotropy, or value of the Hubble constant of the universe. This is in our own backyard, cosmologically speaking.

You keep using that word. I do not think it means what you think it means. Our Galaxy rotates too rapidly to be held together by the gravitational attraction of the amount matter we can detect. Dark matter is a proposed explanation for the missing mass that would provide the extra gravitational attraction needed to keep the Galaxy together. Other explanations could be possible (such as gravity having different strengths on larger distance scales than it does on short distance scales), but the Earth being your special reference frame is not going to fix the problem. Similarly, the motions of galaxies in the Virgo Cluster and other galactic clusters are too fast to remain gravitationally bound if the cluster only contained the matter we can see in them. And that situation wouldn't change if your chose Tau Ceti as your special reference frame.

I don't think a lot of these names have a chance of approval by the IAU.

...but by changing time, you eliminated most KSP players from ever existing. Bummer.

"What is this machine, and when can I get one?"

You people and your color vision.

Ah. K^2 gets it said faster because he is more succinct.

I can write a system of equations and physical laws based upon the assumption that my head is the center of the universe. This simply makes sense, of course, because all of the observations I have of the universe are based on what comes into my head. My head always stays perfectly still. As my mighty legs move, the Earth rolls underneath my stationary body. When I want to look off to the side, my head, of course, stays stationary while you and the rest of the objects in the universe rapidly zip through 90-degree arcs. Sure, I can do that. And if K^2 feels upset about this because it makes him feel less special, he too can write a system of equations and laws that describes the universe with HIS head at the center (probably with fewer math errors than I'd make). If fact, just so nobody feels left out, we can ALL write systems of equations and physical laws for our own personal egocentric universes that are all equally valid. But why would we want to? What do we gain? I certainly don't want to have some engineer building bridges (that are going to slide under my stationary head) having to use such a cocked-up set of equations (too easy for him to make mistakes that could result in the bridge failing and causing the very massive Earth to suddenly rush up and smack my head). Rather than argue over which of our 7 billion heads is REALLY the center of the universe (because, really, what are the chances that it's mine or yours, right?), it is more useful to understand that the universe doesn't really care who thinks his head is in the center (and all the equations are simpler, and we get safer bridges, and the scientists have an easier time figuring out the rules of the universe so that the engineers can then go on to build us cooler toys). I could write a fudged up set of equations and laws based on the assumption that our Sun is the center of the universe, with all the wackiness that that would entail. It might be embarrassing to try to explain why the two hundred billion stars in our galaxy all seem to have a different opinion of where the center of things is (all being distributed around some center point 8.33 kiloparsecs away from me in the direction of Sagittarius), but I can continue to feel superior in seeing that they all go pirroetting around us in an obviously subservient fashion as the Sun rotates. But why would I do that? Why would I want to to argue with the hundreds of billions of equivalent opinions of who's in the center when there is a simpler, easier system to use? Unless I was just dead set on ME being in the center as a starting assumption for some personal reason. And let's not even discuss the arguments between all of the billions of galaxies that think THEY are in the center of the universe…because some of them are really obstinate and won't give up their opinion on being special no matter how long you talk to them.

Good luck! Moho can be a real mofo at times.

We find the distances to galaxies by a number of unrelated methods. For galaxies close enough to see individual giant stars, we can easily spot Cepheid variable stars. Cepheids have a correlation between their pulsation periods and their luminosities, so from how bright they look we can tell how far away they are. Similarly, we can use other 'standard candles' of known luminosity (with distance-luminosity relationships calibrated using methods that work in our own Galaxy and nearby galaxies) such as novae, star clusters, supernovae (especially Type Ia), and the Tully-Fisher relationship between the infrared luminosity and the width of the rotation curves of spiral galaxies. We measure the Hubble expansion FROM all these different methods. Also, objects that are very distant (such as quasars) not only have large redshifts, their spectra can also show absorption lines of from gas clouds of lower redshift, and gravitational lensing, caused by closer galaxies, which are separate indications that they are further away.

Dark matter has nothing to do with interpreting Hubble shifts as velocity shifts. Our Galaxy (and other galaxies) simply does not have enough visible matter to rotate as it does without flying apart. Similarly, the way galaxies in galaxy clusters can hold together with their observed velocities indicates that those clusters contain more matter than we can see.

The standard U.S. Space Shuttle design does not seem very useful in KSP, and is very difficult to get to work stock. So I use SSTO rockets to shuttle crew to my space station, and reusable staged rocket to lift payloads.

Cool. It looks like it's wearing diapers. Or maybe like one of those toys you can push over and it pops back up...until it surprises you and sticks out its legs

I feel all sticky. Thank you.

In my case, I quote that figure as a measure of how efficient my ascent profile was in multiple ascents. The more delta-V remaining, the less was used getting to space. This is not just the amount of delta-V available for orbital maneuvers, but also a measure of how over-designed the spaceplane is for simply reaching orbit with its current payload mass.

In my post I was clear that almost exactly the same plane design was used (with just the engines changed), so the intake to engine ratio is the same and has no effect on the difference in performance. Both planes have two ram air intakes to feed the single air-breathing engine. I found that the turbojet could operate at a higher altitude than the RAPIER with the same intakes.

I don't think the success of my turbojet SSTO spaceplane was the result of the Rockomax 48-7S engines. The rocket engines really did very little in getting the plane into orbit compared to what the turbojet accomplished. Using 24-77 engines would have given very similar results.

I was taking screen shots every 30 seconds (or more often if interesting things were going on), and I had MechJeb's orbit data and surface data windows displayed. I used those to enter the data in Excel for plotting. Yes, I expect there is some nice way to automatically capture and plot the data, but I have not looked into that.

I wouldn't say that RAPIER engines 'suck' at all, but I've gotten better results on my spaceplanes using the old turbojet/rocket engine combos. In my Longterm Laythe series, I have tested two spaceplanes in recent episodes (parts 23, 24, and 26). They are almost identical spaceplanes: One is the Ladyhawk, powered by a turbojet and four Rockomax 48-7S engines: The other (below) is the Raptor, powered by a single RAPIER engine: I am certainly not an expert at flying SSTO spaceplanes, but what I found was, first, that you can get a big difference in how well the spaceplane does depending on how you fly it (as is well known by those who fly spaceplanes). In my first test flight of the turbojet Ladyhawk, I reached Laythe orbit with 599 m/s of delta-V remaining onboard. In my second flight, I was cruising along at a higher altitude with the turbojet sipping fuel, and found the magical moment where my apoapsis was rising rapidly before I switched to rocket power…that flight made it to Laythe orbit with 2567 m/s of delta-V remaining. For the RAPIER-powered Raptor test flights, I first tried to cruise along at high altitude…but I just wasn't getting good results like that second Ladyhawk flight, even after 30 minutes of trying. The Raptor made it to Laythe orbit with 952 m/s of delta-V remaining. For the Raptor's second flight, I tried using the RAPIER at a lower altitude and higher throttle, and got better results, making it to Laythe orbit with 1467 m/s of delta-V remaining. So I think spaceplanes with the two types of engines need to be flown differently for best results (and I expect spaceplane experts could get better results than I did). As to HOW I flew the planes, the graphs below show the altitude, speed, apoapsis altitude, periapsis altitude, and scaled throttle and intake air measurements for the two best flights. First is the Ladyhawk (turbojet) second flight (2567 m/s delta-V remaining): And below is the Raptor's (RAPIER) second flight (1467 m/s delta-V remaining): Remember, these are flights done at Laythe, so the scale height of the atmosphere is 80% that of Kerbin's atmosphere (so I expect similar effects can be seen flying at correspondingly higher altitudes over Kerbin).

After all that work putting this into orbit, you could just send up a capsule module to dock onto that center Senior docking port. Much cheaper.

Good luck!

I recall a 3-part SSTO made from an X200-32 fuel tank, an LV-T45 engine, and a probe body. That was back before the days of needed electrical power for the probe, I think, so I'm not sure if a probe body has enough power for this anymore…maybe a solar panel part will also be needed.

Use the SelectRoot mod.