J.Random

Dummy payload (comm sat mockup) to GSO.

Oh, this is beautiful. Thank you.

I wonder if that experiment will work with all parts (including reaction wheels) having the same mass.

I'm quite sure it doesn't. All the torque is simply summed up and applied at CoM.

What good would that do?

You don't need to balance reaction wheels.

Also, heavy, which adds to pricey part.

Do you take resource (Machinery) cost into consideration?

Free camera. (Inside current position/velocity frame, of course)

Not necessarily. They may just be worried that noone will insure their launches again until they step away from "40 years old russian engine refurbished and refit in Ukraine and (at times, explosively) tested by AJR".

Well, Orbital guys suspect turbopump. So, either defect of the pump itself (I guess burn test should've shown it), or something (extraneous particle?) in the fuel, right?

I don't really know if there were any issues with engines after successful burn test before. Were there?

Remember the guy with fan inside the box?

AFAIK, they also did a test burn. 40 seconds, no ka-boom. And I'm quite sure "x-rays and such" are done both before and after the test burn.

So, no actual mesh mirroring, just part rotation? You're making spaceplane panda sad.

This is one very... soviet picture.

I think this thread should be sticky. Fixes for stock bugs are way too important to lose them on Nth page of the forum.

See what I've meant previously? Nominal, nominal, nominal... UNTIL.

That's not how doublespeak used by (any) officials works.

Well, yes, that's what "nominal" means, isn't it? It's always "nominal... until": "engines were nominal until plane has collided with the ground" or "engine was nominal until some bolt was cut off". There's always "until" - unknown at the moment. It means only that something has happened. My guess is that it was intended as an answer for the claim that Orbitals overthrottled the engines: I've read somewhere that NK-33 were certified only up to 106% throttle, and there's "108%" (Flight Control?) comment in the video.

You were not being sarcastic, Kryten, just disinformative. They didn't say everything was OK with engines. They've used the term штðтýыù рõöøü - regular mode. It usually means engines weren't over- or under throttled and they were operating inside their designated operation margins. Until they blew up, that is.

For lightweight solution - what cvod said. Only it doesn't touch planet atmospheric ambience, only vacuum ambience. Driving a rover at Kerbin/Duna/Eve at night, you will still see everything without problem, I think.

No. Remove ALA (or set it to default values just remove it, they're incompatible) and install Planetshine. It (a) reduces ambient light when you're in the dark ( adds reflected ambient light when you're over lit side of the planet. And it's configurable. PS you will also probably need Texture Replacer with dark skybox (Oinker's, for example). Default skybox is kinda gray-ish.

Try Planetshine.

I wonder why they didn't allow automatics to execute the launchpad withdrawal maneuver.