Wahgineer

At this point, it sounds like jeb will have the last laugh: since such a massive amount of personal, materials, and expertise is needed, it would be stupid to let the companies to continue to compete. It would make sense to combine KSA, KIS, and rockomax as soon as possible. Now we just need a background story for Kerbodyne (considering the ... LARGE presence that they will have in the market).

Except: the physics engine can't have multiple gravity sources overlapping (they can be inside of each other, but can't affect each other.). Also, if the game is to be realistic, then why should we have it where every star is grouped together? Wouldn't that destabilize the system? I would find it fun if we could tell STL people where they can shove it. (I have ideas on how to balance FTL, but I digress).

It's like handling any other flammable gas (including O2): with extreme caution.

Is this...Dead?

Aggressive Texture Manager

Hydrogen? Expensive? You can get the stuff from water! Heck, you can get the Lox from water, too! If anything, Nasa should work on a cheap way to separate water into it's base components. That way, it can make its own fuel AND make the integration of fuel cell car infrastructure easier.

With China, it'd be a case of it's inefficiency catching up with itself: They'd land a man on the moon, then the U.S. would take the bait and head for Mars. China would attempt, but it's extreme inefficiency, as mentioned earlier, would catch up to and decimate it. It's economy would experience a recession, business's would freak, then pull out, further damaging the Economy and further causing companies to freak. Then they'd look around and: oh, look, the U.S. has a large, educated population eager for work. Why not try them out? Companies move in, give U.S. boost, boost attracts more companies, gives further boost. Of course, though (and I'm willing to admit), I could be entirely wrong.

Oh. Now that i realize it, you're right: i imagined them running head on. Please excuse me for such a stupid mistake (not sarcasm).

how could he get the Nobel prize then? They don't award it posthumous.

since the fuel is moving in an asparagus ring, doesn't the fact that each tank is paired with another one affect it? While one tank is pumping fuel from right to left, the other tank will be pumping fuel from left to right (since one side of the stack is an exact mirror image of the other side.) This fact means that any torque/force created by one side will be canceled out by the other side. So both sides are right: the pumps will exert torque on the rocket, but since fuel is flowing in opposite directions on either side, the forces will cancel each other out automatically.

Why is it that almost everyone here hates the new Star Trek movies/ships? The new Enterprise blows the other one out of the water (literally and visually), the Vengeance looks and is bad***. What some guys need to come to terms with is: it's Abrams' reboot, let him do what he wants. So far, he's done well. Just because the new ships don't fit into scale with their predecessors doesn't mean they should be completely disregarded. He (Abrams) started his reboot with a paradox that completely and totally changed the course of ST history, so don't be surprised if he goes completely off of the beaten track. He's not trying to amend to the previous generation, he's trying to present an old, worn out story for the new generation to enjoy, which requires massive changes. Also, rewritten star trek is better than no star trek.

4338: The Rail tunnel caves in under the great weight of the mountain. 4340: The Microverse is accessed. The Kerbals aim to go through and research this heavily shrunken down universe.

But in times past, those where people on EARTH, with access to food, water, lumber, oxygen, etc. If they wanted to get back home, all they needed was a navigator and (maybe) some people who knew a enough about boats to construct a vessel. With Mars one, there's no way of getting home, and if there's a failure, they're done. The funny thing would be is that, while in transit, two NASA vessels using a VASIMR make the trip in a third the time, one drops off a crew, waits, then returns. The second vessel remains in orbit, with a sign on it saying: "you owe us 23.4 billion and 17 years of effort for caring about you dumd***es."

Is it just me, or does this seem like the trigger for the starting gun of space race 2.0? (U.S. vs China?)

So, anything new planned for this mod? Like engines for plain rockets with an off center payload (ala Energia)?

klockheed martian space shuttle engines pack, the rest of KSPX, revamped mk1, 2, and 3 fuselage parts/cockpits, 2.5 meter bi, tri, and quad adapters, as well as 1.25 penta, hexa, hepta, and octo to 3.75 meter adapters.

That is what made me realize: this game is going to be awesome!!!

A plethora of old/broken rovers/probes around a planet isn't going to save mankind if a cataclysm threatens the Earth. We've sent up four rovers to Mars, with a fifth one on the drawing board. Meanwhile, advances in propulsion will allow us to travel faster with more efficiency. Manned flight doesn't just make you feel good, it isn't just romantic, it isn't just a priority on a list: it's necessary to our survival. We've been using the same rockets for 40-50 years, and it's starting to show: The Soyuz is only good for carrying crews to the ISS, which will fall out of the sky in roughly 5-10 years. The shuttle (finally) retired, the Saturn V's are museum pieces. Sure, there is some risk in developing the SLS, but it's a risk we have to take. Nothing, not even the Falcon 9 or Falcon Heavy, will be capable of carrying the hardware necessary for a Mars mission into orbit. As far as I know, the concepts for the Manned Mars Mission hardware are already here, easily adaptable to the SLS. It's just a case of testing, refining, and building them. A voyage of this proportion has never been tried before. There will be risks, there will be uncertainties. The SLS is just one on the rode to Mars, just like its ancestor, the Saturn V, was on the road to the moon. To shelve the SLS (and our chance to go to Mars with it) just because it's 'too risky' is an idiotic mistake to make.

Did you see the asterisk? That's called a footnote. Go down to the bottom of the page, find the sentence with an asterisk in front, and read it. Then you'll understand my point a bit better.

I like to play by the numbers. It's nice to know "hey, at least my rocket will get to orbit" or "my rocket is plenty strong enough to lift itself". To say I don't play the game the way it is intended is rather ignorant of the fact that the game is intended to be played the way you want to play it. Do you like numbers/hard data? Go ahead and get KER if you want. Want to build jet powered race cars that fly apart at Mach 7? By all means. Like many people have said before, you really only need dv for interplanetary travel. Building a simple, one man orbital rocket is extremely easy; building a vessel bound for Eeloo is a totally different story. Also, a simple launch/return window chart would be nice. I'm not saying it shows you the Delta-V, or how to get their, just that the best time to go is on this day of this year (Showing it in ten year increments. Every time a launch window is passed, the next farthest date is loaded and the oldest deleted.)

The SLS is not a purpose built rocket. It wasn't designed to carry a specific payload, it wasn't designed for a specific mission. It was designed to except payloads of any kind to any destination beyond LKO. It is an economical failure if used for the ISS, which is what NASA is trying to shy away from. NASA is done wasting it's time, money and resources on repeating experiments in LKO and sending countless rovers* to Mars. It's ready to start picking up where it left off nearly 50 years before, on the threshold of Man's greatest dream to date: a manned mission to Mars and beyond. The SLS is a step in that direction. Also, NASA didn't want to back itself into a corner with an overly specialized launcher (like the shuttle). *I'm not saying that the Mars rovers are useless, just that they can only do so much before it becomes impractical to use them.

I think that the best way to handle this is with a compromise: keep the lights, but sink them into the runway. This way, we can see the lights, but they aren't in the way. The aerospace testing grounds sound like a good idea*, as does multiple/longer runways. *I just had a picture in my mind of Jeb driving an SRB-powered general lee off the ramp on the end of a runway, which also has a aircraft carrier style catapult for those really stubborn aircraft.

Guess what the SLS is. (hint: compare the Saturn V and the SLS side-by-side.)

Yes, it should be added. Don't want to spoil the personal fun of guesswork? Then don't use it. What we could also use is a simple launch window chart: it shows a list consisting of each planet, with a simple chart showing the year and day in which each launch window opens/closes. It also shows two launch windows: the departure window from kerbin to x planet, and the return window from x planet to kerbin.

How is the moon a useless military asset? It's close to earth, it has a low gravity (easier to launch a missile from), resources to support a base, one side always faces the earth, and it is visible from any point on one side of the Earth for hours on end (if they can see you, you can see them, you can target them.).