sojourner

Lower your perapsis then circularize when you reach perapsis = higher orbital speed. Do the reverse to lower orbital speed. Functions already available in the maneuver planner. Or do you need to rephrase the question?

Is that command pod you modeled 1 part or 2? It looks like command pod plus a service module.

Not if you still want it to be reusable. A raptor engine would provide too much thrust to allow landing. Unlike KSP, real rocket engines can only throttle in a narrow range of about %70 to %100. At %70 a raptor would still be providing enough thrust to lift the Falcon first stage off the ground.

^What was it?

Of course he's seen Bigelow modules. But the devil is in the details of the new modules outlined in the article. Plus, it's a new article posted today.

Hey Porkjet, thought you might find this article interesting: http://www.nasaspaceflight.com/2014/02/affordable-habitats-more-buck-rogers-less-money-bigelow/ Especially the Olympus carrier module towards the end of the article.

Are you using the latest dev build of the dll?

To further clarify, SpaceX hasn't actually said Raptor will be used in conjunction with Falcon 9 at all. The most we know about Raptor is that it is in development. Their exact plans for it are unknown. It's all pure conjecture at this point.

Probably not so thick. a static fire on the pad is going to leave more residue than a stage coming in to land.

I think it just means that connections will be stronger. I doubt it will affect the "tree structure" of how ships are built.

Elon has actually referred to it as F9r.

Never said they should add everything the community asks for, just that they should gauge what's popular with the players based on mod popularity. For example, Mechjeb has over 300,000 downloads from spaceport, Kerbal Multi Player has just over 6,000. Which functionality would be more popular with the player base if added by Squad?

Maybe Squad should use the popularity of certain mods to gauge interest into what direction the game should go in. Then again, if they did that, a mechjeb style autopilot would be in the game by now.

Why on earth would they consider mining outside the scope of the game? It's one of the things I've been waiting for since I first bought the game. A reason to actually build bases.

They test fired the engines. engines burn RP-1 which is very sooty.

Why do all this when they can just return to launch site? All of that infrastructure adds cost and complexity. They've already done the math and decided that RTLS works from a fuel cost stand point.

Yep, those are the real legs in deployed position.

First pics of Grasshopper-2.

^ I take it by "no mods" you really mean "no parts"? If so, what problem are you having placing the ar202 part from the control parts? It surface attaches to anything you build. If that still isn't good enough, look through the thread. there is information on how to edit the part.cfg files of your command pods to include mechjeb functionality.

Try Kerbal Joint Reinforcement, it may help.

I would go at least 200km for 2 reasons. First, it gets you far enough from Kerbin to reduce framerate drop from rendering the planet. Two, you can use a higher time warp above 160km.

It's simple really. Our entire universe is a simulation being run on a computer. The slit experiment just exposes a flaw in the simulation.

Some fair points. The thing is, while it may not expand the market much or soon, SpaceX's lower prices will certainly let them grab more market share, forcing other companies to become more price competitive. It could also cause a paradigm shift in satellite operations. Right now, a company has to schedule months/years in advance for a launch and pay 10's of millions for the opportunity, so naturally, they invest huge amounts of time and money on each payload to maximize that investment. Now, what if they could schedule a launch a mere month in advance for as little as $5 million? (a figure Musk once mentioned as a goal) How does that impact satellite development cycles and cost? It's too early to tell how things are going to work out, but damn it's some of the most interesting stuff the industry has seen in a while.

The difference is that SpaceX is trying lots of innovative things using tried and true technology. How bleeding edge is an RP-1 engine? A space capsule? A 2 stage rocket? Their not trying to develop some SSTO using never before seen engines/tanks/thermal protection with impossible mass fractions. As to other points, yes, the "rule of fifths" makes sense to the satellite operators, but you can't apply it the the launch operators for the reasons I previously listed. There actually isn't anything in NASA's contract that says SpaceX has to provide new hardware for each mission currently. Now NASA is SpaceX's biggest customer, so are they ready to take a chance on using refurbished hardware yet? no. But it will most likely happen before the current cargo contract ends. I think you'll be surprised by how little manpower reusing a first stage will take once things become operational. No doubt it will take hours/days to inspect/turn around, but it won't take the literal army of people that STS required. Assuming things go incredibly well and landing attempts go without a hitch from day one, when will we see the first re-use? I would guess at least the first 4 to 6 landed stages will end up back at the factory for complete tear down/engineering analysis with maybe the last 2 of those going to McGregor and fired on the test stand then on to Spaceport America for test flights ala GH-2. Oh, and Elon wants legs on the next CRS mission launching on March 1st. He wants to land that stage back at the cape. If the FAA gives him the go ahead. If you guys really want to read some good info on SpaceX (and anything space related) I highly recommend this forum: http://forum.nasaspaceflight.com/index.php?board=45.0 The posters there are predominantly in the industry and have some great insights.

Your numbers here are way off. SpaceX from the start has designed Falcon 9 to minimize the "standing army" involved in launch operations. Your "rule of fifths" has also counted the payload twice (satellite bus and payload) when payload is actually separate from launch costs. So really, SpaceX is dealing with a rule of thirds. manpower/fuel/hardware, in which fuel is negligible. So any significant reuse of hardware, assuming that the hardware doesn't have to be nearly rebuilt each time (like the STS) will result in very nice reductions in cost to SpaceX/the customer. The whole design ethos of SpaceX has been "cost effective" as opposed to "bleeding edge". If they overcome the few remaining hurdles to first stage recovery they'll be in good shape to lower launch costs.