RuBisCO

This is great! I just made "mercury" as as alternate to xenon gas, I made it 20 times as dense as in-game Xenon gas (really only 5 times as dense as Xenon liquid in real life), so a xenon tank can hold 20 times a much fuel but also weighs 20 times more in wet mass.

NASA started off with a perfect combination of political will and government-corperate cooperation, and got to the moon in under a decade from the goal being set with an excellent booster rocket that managed 4000-8000 adjusted dollars per lbs to orbit. Afterwards it all collapsed because of political stupidy combined with nasa engineer in a euphoric high from the moon landings thinking they could do anything without considering cost or reality. Politics killed the Apollo program and NASA in a state of abject delusions put all its hopes and dreams on the space shuttle program, a program that really should have been put on the back burners until the technology was ready like by the 1990's or even 2000's to build a 2 stage fully-reusable rocket. The cooperate contracts really started bleeding nasa dry with request that the space shuttle use ATKs boosters, could luanch military payloads into odd orbits, etc, trying to turn the space shuttle already overbearing task of reusability into a swiss army rocket that appeased everyone, resulting in a design that appeased no one. Really the space shuttle should have started out as a much more limited reusable upper stage place on a standard Saturn I, Saturn downgrade or Titan rocket that would have revealed problems like the cermic thermal tiles being hell to manage and thus future designs using much stronger-easier to manage metal alloy tiles or even spray/plaster-on ablatives ala Space X. That knowledge would have allowed for the creation of truly excellent space shuttle with all the teething problems solves before it was designed and built. Ok yes woulda-shoulda-coulda, what is the lessons to learn so a mistake like the space shuttle does not happen again: - Politics can't be trusted: it worked once but now all it manages to do is create one bloated contracted-out program after another, the space shuttle then Constellation now SLS, each one an increasing degeneration of the former created by lack of money conflicting with goals too grand. The solution MAYBE to let corporations build it all for NASA, like SpaceX, this of course depends on if SpaceX can really deliver, so far they have, and may prove that single contracts with minimal sub-contracting is the solution to space travels cost problem, perhaps if SpaceX rally does deliver on their price promises they will have proven that the whole problem with space travel costs had nothing to do with space travel its self and everything to do with contract lawyers and lobbyist raping NASA and the government for every dollar they could thrust out. - If it works don't replace it: This was a lesson most definitely not learn, not even after Mike Griffins jaring speech on how we should have stayed with Apollo. The Constellation program for example had the appearance of being a shuttle derived booster but in fact almost everything was changed out: bigger wider fuel tank, longer boosters, new engines, original upper stage, etc, etc. Instead of created a Direct style or Shuttle C rocket using as much of the shuttle parts as possible (and thus least money and time) that would have had a reasonable launch capacity of 75 tons to Lbs, thus tripling the lift capacity without having to pay the expense of refurbishing a shuttle, they set out for grander goals that was guaranteed to go beyond their pathetic budget, they wanted lift capacities beyond Apollo, a whole family or rockets before they even had the ones working, etc, the result was perpetual delays and over costs and rightful termination. Now they have returned to a more shuttle derived design but its too late, no infrastructure from the shuttle program remains, might as well build a whole new rocket now!

Yes yes it always irks me that the nuclear engines consumes standard rocket fuel. But don't forget all the other pros and cons of fuel besides ISP such as density and boil-off. H2 can provide great ISP but at the sacrifice of having to use huge fuel tanks to carry around a fuel that has the same density as cotton candy! Also fuels like LH2 have a high boil-off rate, so a mod that wants realism would need to have cryogenic fuels like LO2 and LH2 slowly depleting from the fuel tanks even the engine is off and perhaps even a cyrogenic module that needs plenty of power to reliquify these kinds of fuels to prevent boil-off.

No no no this is not a hindsight issue this a common sense issue: you don't drop BILLIONS of dollars of infrastructure to build it all over again just because on paper it will be better. That like having a working car but throwing it away, spending several years saving and buying a new car that ON PAPER is superior to the old one, in the mean time you throw away a perfectly good car and spent several years without one. Agree I got a huge SSTO ROCKET, NO JETS, NO WINGS, just straight up to orbit and back landing on landing gear with/without parachutes, that lifts ~20 tons to 100 km orbit, it works, can carry awkward loads, I named it the "Elon Musk Express"

In nearly every way the space shuttle was inferior to its predecessor: the Saturn V. It was less safe with not escape tower, crew on the side rather then top of the highly flammable/explosive fuel/ox tanks, large solid fuel boosters. It could only haul a 1/5-1/6 of the cargo to orbit and could not bring cargo beyond LEO. Worse off either with or without development cost counted the Space Shuttle turned out to be TWICE as expensive per lbs to orbit as the Saturn V. Sure had the space shuttle worked as promised with 50 flights a year per shuttle and all, then its cost would have been low enough to make it worth it but as it turn out it did not fly much more per year then its predecessor and because it was a far more complex and costly machine ended up costing more. How the engineers and adminstators at the time could claimed such turn over and safety was possible with the shuttle was possible is amazing: it was either a bold face lie or pure unadulterated delusion, or most likely a combination of both. Richard Feynmann's comments post Challanger is all to clear on this: "For a successful technology, reality must take precedence over public relations, for nature cannot be fooled." By the end of the Apollo program they had already made Apollo capsules that could have held 5 people, potential 6 (at the sacrifice of cargo) and studies to enlarge the capsule to hold even more. Saturn V could and did launch a space station, and just 5 of such launched could have assembled a station of weight equal to or greater then IST, compared to 50+ shuttle flights! There was even plans to make a skylab II by reusing a S-II stage of the Saturn V after depleting it of fuel to get to orbit to make a habitable 10 m in diameter gigantic space station that would have weighed over 100 tons and had the habitable volume of over 4-5 skylabs or 2 international space stations! There was much study into making downgraded Saturn V that would have skipped on the second stage, and reduced the number of engines on the first stage to 4 or 3 depending on engine upgrades and had a lift capacity of ~45 tons perfect for launching a Apollo command module plus +20 tons of cargo to orbit. Such a "Saturn IV/III" could have hauled modules to a spacestation just like the shuttle. In fact the only thing the Saturn V could not do was return large amounts of cargo from orbit, a capacity which was not needed much anyway, unmanned Apollo could have returned 1-3 tons of pressurized cargo but no unpressurised cargo. In exchange the Saturn V could (did) haul mission straight to the moon and could have thrown 45 tons to earth escape, potentially to Mars. Upgrades to the Saturn V F1 engine was already available by the end of the Apollo program that combined with extensions to each stage could have raised the life capacity from ~120 tons to 137, 145 and 160 tons to LEO or over 60 tons to Earth Escape. Even LEO capacities beyond 200 tons with solid fuel boosters attached were examined and optional all that was needed was the funding. Thus a whole family of rockets could have been built off the same assembly line with a range of capacities that could have fit different mission, many of which far beyond anything the space shuttle could have done. All that was needed was instead of wasting the money on developing and building the space shuttle, focusing it instead on keeping the Saturn V assembly alive and diversifying it functions plus continued manned exploration of the moon and beyond, for the same price! So in short the space shuttle ruined us, it was the wrong decision to drop billions of dollars in infrastructure invested in the Saturn V to gamble it all on the space shuttle, we lost that bet, all of humanity in fact. The space shuttle convinced everyone that space travel for humans is too expensive and too unsafe, robotic missions have faired better but will ultimately lead to the obsolescence of humans in space and thus trapping humanity on earth forever until our eventual extinction. Because we did not build an initial foot hold in space for humanity over the last decades, we may never now. thus quite possible the Space Shuttle is the greatest failure for humanity EVER.

MechJeb 2 has worked very well for me, except the rover autopilot. It on rare occasions works but only for a short range, heading controls go all hey-wire and the rover starts driving in circles, speed control works even less often for me. Also someone brought this point up a few pages ago but gravity slinging would be a nice option for future mechjeb in which it can be ask to find the right launch trajectory to fly by a moon or planet and use the gravity of that world reduce or gain speed towards a final target. Of course that would be very calculation intensive because it has to look at the orbits of 3 bodies (target world, intermediary world and the ship) that and the wait for many worlds to line up for a swing would by a long one: the voyager program took advantage of a once in 500 line up of the outerplanets, Galileo though used several rather crazy swings passed venus then earth again to get to Jupiter with very little fuel consumption.

Yep that worked perfectly, I love you!

Is there a mod that allows for attitude control to be lock such that one specific side of the space craft is always facing the sun? Would be useful for solar powered ion engines. If warping 4X Physically with mechjeb smart sas the ship loose track of the sun even if it keeps locked on target: in short mechjeb Smart SAS can't control all 3 axises at once, only 2... is there a mod that can?

So I made it to Pol, landed a kethane miner with KAS wenches to transfer fuel, attach it to a fuel transporter to refuel my ship in orbit and KABOOM! Some kind of weird bug were if I push the dock mode in KAS the miner explodes in a continuous explosion that is both epic and horrifying, I fooled around with it trying to prevent this, I turned off the SQUIDs tried, connecting to different ports the best I could get is the explosions stopping with the wenches and drills blasting off the miner. I tried replicating it on Kerbin but it won't happen there.

When building a rocket it always requires a starting pod, is there a way to change out that starting pod with another? Say I have a rocket design that using Command Pod Mk1-2 but now I want to swap it with say a Probodobodyne OKTO2, is there a way to do that? Is there a way to merge rocket designs such that I can build several rockets and several types of lander and them merge them together at will?

In "SmartASS" is there a way I can get my ships to point toward the sun at all times?

MechJeb 2 has trouble landing on Gilly probably because Gilly terrain map is km above its "surface". Despite this it is possible to use MechJeb to dock with a base (or kethane miner) on Gilly without having to do any "Manuel" flying. Here how to do it: 1. Have a base/ship on Gilly already with a docking port on top, preferably have it relatively level and on a peak of a hill on Gilly (the only likely places to get close to level attitude) 2. Set mechjeb to land a ship at the coordinates of your base 3. Once below 8000 m have mechjeb "Match velocities" with your target base using Rendezvous Guidance. 4. Have mechjab "get closer", again using Rendezvous Guidance. 5. Repeat steps 3 and 4 until your ~100 m roughly above your base 6. Activate Docking Autopilot - to reduce monopropellent usage you can deactivate docking autopilot when you are directly above the base and use your engines to reduce fall speed again using "Match velocities" then reactive Docking autopilot when your just a few meters above. * Docking magnetism can pull a base off the ground, anyone know of some asteroid landing gear mod that hook on to the ground? Any-ways just switch to the base and have it fire its attitude control thrusters away from your approaching ship in the final second of docking so that its not pull off the ground.

I enjoy docking rovers and that wench/hoses mod. It just more hands on then fuel magically teleporting from one ship to another, also I get a kick out of docking rovers. I have a feeling they never planned for the docking modules to work like that, but it works really well and is way easier then docking float in space. Docking in space always leaves me sweating, so ever time a get a rover to dock I feel vindicated for all those times I failed to get ships to dock in orbit. Thank god for mechjeb now doing the latter for me or I would have thrown this game to the bin, oh by the way mechjeb can't handle rover docking but again no worries its so dam easy its a pleasure.

Well that was intensive... sadly I had already got a miner working before I saw all that. I just have a large fuel tank connected directly to a larger converter with a 2000 L Kethane tank above. I used the fuel balancer program to transfer to outer smaller tanks. I used a small docking port and simply drove up to a "fuel transfer shuttle" and docked on and transferred over via fuel balancer program. I noticed that even with 2 drills the converter outstrips the extraction by a wide margin.

Well I'll try the fuel lines because little docking ports between the converter and kethane tank to the outer fuel tanks did not work. Why is it that mono-propellent can be refueled and transferred without all these requirements but can't? I'm having some success so far at docking rovers with the little docking port, It turns out docking in 2D is way easier then 3D, but the docking ports needs to be aligned very well or else the wheels might explode by violent torquing up/down when the ports connect. So I guess I'll have my minner rove up to a fuel trucking rocket and dump fuel that way, now if I can just get my converter to produce fuel.

Ok but how to I transfer to another ship? I have a ship with drills, converter and kethane tank, side mounted fuel tanks and RCS fuel tanks. I can mine kethane, store it and convert it into RCS fuel, but I can't get it to convert kethane into fuel, it won't fill the fuel tanks, do I need pump lines going to those fuel tanks? I have it only a meter or two away from another ship but how do I get it to transfer RCS, fuel or Kethane to anotehr ship?

Hey I have 19.1 and am trying kethane 0.4.3, having some problems: their is no kethane controller menu and I can't transfer fuel or kethane.

The space shuttle program was a unmitigated failure and huge waste ot time and energy. Had we simply keep the Saturn V in production we would have a family of dirivative boosters that could lift 1-10 times a much (with Saturn V upgrades/downgrades) as the shuttle for as low as HALF the price per lbs to orbit as well as the ability to send manned missions to the moon and beyond. It was in fact within NASA budget to keep the Saturn V in production had they not had the space shuttle program. In short the space shuttle has held back manned space travel by 50+ years. And this is not some digbat on the internet opinion: Mike Griffin, former head of NASA laid is all out here: http://aviationweek.typepad.com/space/2007/03/human_space_exp.html "Further, let us assume that we had established a continuing program of space station activities in Earth orbit, built on the Apollo CSM, Saturn I-B, and Skylab systems. Four crew rotation launches per year, plus a new Skylab cluster every five years to augment or replace existing modules, would have cost about $1.5 billion/year. This entire program of six manned flights per year, two of them to the Moon, would have cost about $6.3 billion annually in Fiscal 2000 dollars. The average annual NASA budget in the 15 difficult years from 1974-88 was $10.5 billion; with 60% of it allocated to human spaceflight, there would have been sufficient funding to continue a stable program of lunar exploration as well as the development of Earth orbital infrastructure. I suggest that this would have been a better strategic alternative than the choices that were in fact made, almost 40 years ago."

I have difficulty getting this plug in to work. I extracted the files to their directories but when I boot up the game it stops loading as "EPS Large Battery" and the game never boots.