sgt_flyer

That's where the need for much more effective and compact energy storage arises once we get that, we'll be able to use electric engines much more for transportation (and current full electric cars with 200km of autonomy aint enough) (although even if we can go full electric, will come a day where we'll have to find a renewable way to replace the various materials we use (plastics and minerals)

Yup, but generation IV reactors won't be ready for commercial use for quite some time - although prototypes of several of those technologies exists since quite some time We'll still have to deal with the old generation nuclear power plants anyway (and in the end, develloped countries can't really let go of nuclear technologies - japan had to restart it's nuclear power plants, and a good chunk of europe produce or buy nuclear electricity (france produces something like 1/5th of EU's energy - 85% of France electricity being of nuclear origin.

yup, that's the main problem of most 'renewable' energies - Solar panels only works at full power during a sunny day - and Wind turbines only works when there's wind. (and contrary to a stupidity i heard from an ecologist, who said 'when there's no sun, there's wind - you can very well have neither or both - and that's not really predictable (not a good thing for factories who need reliable power sources ) in order to be able to use these renewable energies in a sustained form, you'll have to add a way to store all this energy to be able to reuse it when needed - and that's where the main problem lies current capacitors technologies simply can't be built on such a scale... one renewable energy which is Extremely predictible, is tidal power - now, that's predictible and can operate almost regardless of weather conditions (it's effects varies through the strength of the tides, but you know it in advance ) you simply need to check your tide tables, and you can determine how much energy you'll get on any given day we need a breakthrough in energy storage if current renewables energies are to be used like that. else, for heliosats to work, you'll need to clear the orbits of debris - or maintain a workforce able to patch up those heliosats (and a way to beam down the power which will not be disturbed / diffracted by the water within clouds) now, regarding current nuclear technologies, the main problem is the use of solid fuel rods, which causes several problems : as soon as a small percentage of the fuel rod has been transmuted through the nuclear reactions, the remaining unspent fuel cannot sustain the reaction anymore (cause your neutrons have a good chance of colliding with used fuel) - so we end up with massive amounts of 'hot' fuel rods with mixed fuels inside, which are very hard to 'clean' and reuse. (and end up creating a lot of nuclear waste) second problem of solid fuel rods, is that it limits a lot the maximum temperature we can let those reactors run. (else the fuel rods would melt / break - which is baad ) the results of this, is that nuclear reactors typically use low efficiency steam turbines - so a lot of the reactor's heat is lost (unless you can use cogeneration on that - which would require factories or cities built around it... naaah ) . (nuclear still remains a quite formidable source of heat though - requiring only minimal amounts of nuclear material to produce as much energy as a fossile fuel based power plant.)

Hello, here are the infos for the upcoming ESA IXV February 11th launch Planned launch time : February 11th, 13h00 GMT (08:00 AM EST), with the livestream starting 15 minutes before the launch. you'll be able to watch the launch here http://www.esa.int/Our_Activities/Launchers/IXV/Watch_IXV_launch Edit : Replay of the launch : http://www.esa.int/spaceinvideos/Videos/2015/02/Replay_of_Vega_liftoff_VV04_with_IXV the payload is ESA's Intermediate eXperimental Vehicle , designed to test reentry systems develloped by ESA. the vehicle is a pure lifting body reentry vehicle (no wings) controlled by two flaps at the rear. it's fitted with a whole bunch of sensors to record and transmit the gathered reentry data. - it will make a parachute landing at sea, with 4 flotation baloons keeping it afloat after splashdown. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intermediate_eXperimental_Vehicle the launcher used is ESA's VEGA light launcher. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vega_%28rocket%29 it's a 4 stage rocket, with it's 3 first stages being all solid stage, with a pressure fed hypergolic 4th stage. the launch is going to be a suborbital flight - Vega will accelerate IXV to get reentry speeds, altitude and atittude similar to those experienced from a LEO reentry. Feel free to discuss this upcoming launch here

Will be interesting to see how this works

If feasible, my 0.90 recreation of Sputnik http://forum.kerbalspaceprogram.com/threads/109961-0-90-Sputnik-8K71PS

Hello ! Here's a sputnik 8K71PS i fully remade for KSP 0.90 Still with a full launch pad to accomodate the rocket The album : now, some stats The rocket with the launch pad stands in at 841 parts. now, for those interested in stats (and some will ask me ^^): liftoff mass / twr: 182 tons / 1.48 TWR just before the four boosters flameout : 102 tons / 2.74 TWR Core stage just after separation (162 parts with Sputnik) 42 tons / 1.42 TWR core stage just before flameout : 15 tons / 6.28 TWR Operations : once, physics kick in, wait a few seconds for the rocket to settle down. activate ASAS - stability assist put the throttle to 0 Stage once to fold down the service arms. stage to activate the engines, and increase gradually the throttle to full before staging to release the rocket correct as needed before the G turn to keep the prograde marker vertical inflight, i would suggest to do a Pitchover of a few degrees at around 4000 / 5000 meters, then follow the prograde marker (either with the Prograde ASAS or adjusting yourself in stability assist) as Kerbin isn't earth, i leave it up to you if you want to try to throttle down to circularize in one burn, or shut the engines and coast to apoapsis to circularize i've added two reaction wheels along with some batteries to help you correct the rocket's attitude for circularization Here's the file, for those who wish to try it http://www./download/nckguloj6l998pi/Sputnik_8K71PS.craft Have Fun !

Their current belief is that the thruster 'pushes' against a 'quantum' particle plasma - those quantum particles getting in and out of existence, a closed object would still be able to produce thrust (the particle ceasing to exist before hitting anything else in the engine which could result in a reverse reaction - now, to get proof of that and prove those theories, that's another problem

L By reading the article, i think it's because they are on low budget, and they have to regularly replace the RF capacitors they use (and which are regularly damaged by the hard vacuum of the test chamber (potentially overheating or pressure containment failure if those things contain liquids or gases)- guess those components were never designed with spaceworthiness in mind to begin with ) Now, we should let them continue their tests, they want to increase the thrust output to be able to replicate the experiment elsewhere - once they can reach replicability with independant testers, that would be the time when it becomes truly something to look after

Hint : kerbals can walk onto several extended landing legs placed side by side without falling through

@magnemoe The OP was not talking about the IXV, but abiut the CAD rocket design visible in the last few seconds of the video This specific design shows boosters with control fins and flyback engines. Another interesting point of this concept would be that those boosters use methalox engines - there's not a lot of infos on ESA's research on methalox engines. Although an old paper do tell they are doing researches on it, alongside staged combustion cycles. http://www.esa.int/Our_Activities/Launchers/First_hot_firing_of_European_staged-combustion_demonstration_engine/%28print%29

weeelll, if i rebuild a Saturn V, it will be WITH one of my custom animated launch towers (like the one i previously made for my mini Saturn V soooo i'll need to be careful with part count )

Well, one of the key problems is KSP's mk1-2 pod 2.5m diameter - based on this one, we have the scale ratio : (apollo CSM : 3.9m diameter VS KSP's 2.5m - so a 1.56 ratio) we need a S-1C/SII with a diameter of nearly 6.5m, and a S-IVb with a diameter of 4.2m. - the whole scaled down rocket would stand up to 70.8m making rounded stages of this size will either give you a terrible mass ratio (using empty 3.75m tanks for the bodywork really kills the mass fraction), or you'll end up with a ton of parts if you want to make it rounded Sooo, i'll keep tinkering with avaible designs, but unless i find something adapted, i won't work a lot on it (now, i'm quite eager to see how squad will do their planned fairings - that could help us a lot with lighweight bodywork

one of the things i spent a lot of time tinkering with, would be My old Transport Erector Launcher Munrocket (sadly, the changes to the landing legs did not help ) i also like a lot my various custom animated launch pads (maybe my masterpiece so far on this mini Saturn V - note : the new Aero parts killed it too - it used the old stock control surfaces as fairings )

now, the main course ! So, here's a little trick made possible with the new rotation and offset gizmos in the editor Breakdown of the technique : use the offset tool to 'move' a part (it needs to be long enough - the offset gizmo cannot create a 'gap' between a part and the part it's connected to by itself - once your part is 'fully' outside of the origin part, you can't go much further) - however, the offset tool also moves the rotation gizmo with the part - and the rotation gizmo can be used to turn a part 180° to create this gap. (note : at this point, if you try to reuse the offset gizmo on the rotated part, the offset gizmo will automatically remove the gap) here's a small commented image album to illustrate how it can be used direct link to the album : http://imgur.com/a/cKTUm#0 now, if you want to use this technique in the reverse order, it's also possible - though you may want to use the select root tool to your payload once you made your gap Have fun ! Regards - Sgt_flyer

First, a little trick i use to avoid complications when dealing with clipped parts (such as attaching to the wrong part, or needing to attach a fuel tank to a node inside an array of tanks without wanting to deal with the radial attachment) (i use this trick in my next post, but it's so handy i think it deserves a separate post ) i simply attach the part i want to use on a non clipped node, and then i radially attach an I-beam to it (or several, depending on the size of the clipping - can be used vertically to - useful to 'block' one of the two nodes of a decoupler for example) then, you detach the part with the I-beam attached - and click on the extremity of the i-beam so the mouse moves the group of objects from the I-beam instead of from the part : now, i can easily place my decoupler between these engines without worrying with part selection bugs

hey ! i built some of those too it's not that difficult if you know the trick. mulbin built his first one top down (you need to put some I-Beams coming from a decoupler at the bottom of one of the 4 fairings to the center of the rocket - so you can attach the S-IVB to it. - my first one (around the same time mulbin used this for the first time) was build from the bottom up - i radially attached the bottom most CSM fuel tank to a decoupler attached to one of the fairings, and built the CSM from the bottom up. - although any of those techniques makes those 4 fairings a bit harder to coordinate for a nice separation Now, for using the gizmo to create a gap, you'll end up to be limited to the length of an I-beam between the decoupler and the next object. (Basically, the gizmo cannot make a part go too much away from the part it was attached to) One way to circumvent this, is with the i-Beams point of origin (the rotation gizmo is always centered on a part's point of origin) - so we can attach the I-beam origin node to the decoupler (with the I-beam going inside the decoupler), then fully offset the I-beam - (so the 'attached' node is still the origin, but it's away from the decoupler by the I-beam's length. At this point, turn on rotation mode, and rotate the I-beam 180° - once done, you'll have a gap as long as the I-beam. (I'll try to post something about that in the construction technique thread) - the gap should be wide enough to fit most engines between the part holding the decoupler and your next object (basically, the decoupler is hidden in the engine, and stays with it, and the I-beam + gizmo is used to create a gap between the decoupler and the next object - so nothing except the decoupler will clip the engine, and it will not use it's attachment node. (The same technique will be great too for russian style open lattices )

it currently has 702 parts with the launch pad included, and without the launchpad, 457 parts. (rockets replicas are often part count heavy ^^) - and i may add the service arms for this version - so the part count of the launch pad might go up a bit (as the launch pad is unloaded once your rocket is 2.5km away from it, it doesn't affect too much performance )

WIP it was long overdue anyway for a Sputnik 8K71PS rocket compatible with the new wings Some stats : the boosters are 2.5m wide at their largest point, the core stage is around 2m wide at it smallest point - the top of the core stage is 2.5m. propulsion is provided by 4x MK55 radial engines for each boosters and the core stage, and 24-77 engines as verniers. the fuel distribution has been tweaked to get a similar TWR accross stages (the size is almost the same as the real one, but it's weight and thrust is scaled down - it can still get into Kerbin Lko with ease - it's roughly equivalent to 60% of the original's thrust and weight) should be pretty straightforward to upgrade with various upperstages

Nasa do use the waste heat of it's RTGs to help for the heating of it's probes / rovers. (probes RCS bi or monopropellant tanks needs to be heated at the correct temperature before they fire the thrusters - and some instruments also have specific operating temperatures. - when they have RTGs on board, they can use the waste heat instead of having to use electricity to do equivalent heating.

launch scrubbed - delayed for 24h - from what i heard, the scrub was due to high altitude winds.

a quick note regarding this picture of soyuz: you need to consider this specific train as a transport erector platform it is only used to transport the rocket from the russian's horizontal assembly building to the launch pad. china uses a Vertical assembly building with a Crawler style vertical rollout. http://www.universetoday.com/90464/shenzhou-8-rolled-out-for-blastoff-to-chinas-1st-space-station-on-november-1/ for soyuz, the various rocket parts are shipped to Baikonour using trains for final integration, but it's inside the sort of containers you can see in this article : http://voices.nationalgeographic.com/2009/11/07/russian_rockets_ship_to_guiana/ - this article is specifically dedicated to the transport of the rocket between the Samara rocket facility to Guyana, but they use the same containers for Baikonour - it's just that they put those containers on trains instead of putting them in a boat )

i'd say, let's see what we will have once the patch is ready regarding fairings - procedural and fixed sizes are not mutually exclusive. We could very well end up having only a few fairings parts, with the possibility to choose within fixed sizes and shapes like in KW rocketry but we would only need a few parts which can be tweaked (so less part cluttering) for ex : the fairing adapter can be only set to three base plate sizes, 1.25m, 2.5m or 3.75m, with the possibility for each to choose 'inline' or 'wide' configurations with a maximum height avaible for each base plate size.

i think you need to hit the karman line (100km) before getting back on earth to qualify as suborbital

C will still remain a set constant of speed as in, the speed of a non altered photon in vacuum, and anything other than photons will still require infinite energy to reach C. Now, it is well known that photons can travel at speeds lower than C, when in mediums other than vacuum. What they discovered is that 'structured' light photons (laser / lense beams) are slower in vacuum than normal photons. There already is instances where something can exceed the speed of the photons (though are still slower than C) in a given medium (like water) here's the result of such thing happening : http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cherenkov_radiation So, i can guess this won't change anything