Nibb31

Modularity really only makes sense if there is a purpose to assembling the parts in another way. I don't think that each individual spherical tank has much purpose in a different configuration as what they were intended for. So basically, I would stick to the classical tank+engines configuration for each stage.

ESA has no plans for a manned spacecraft. They are investing in DreamChaser, so you might see ESA buy a couple of ISS tickets from Sierra Nevada for European astronauts. Another possibility is to stick one on top of an Ariane V, but a manned Ariane V would require lots of pad modifications, which will be hard to justify this late in the program.

Have you tried rebuilding them ? or just detaching and reattaching the parts ?

Before the DoD got its grubby hand into the STS program, Max Faget was the guy in charge, and it was leaning towards a reusable TSTO design with stub wings. It was nicknamed the "DC-3", because of those wings. On some of the iterations, those wings were retractable. http://www.astronautix.com/lvs/shuledc3.htm Type "Faget Shuttle" in Google and you will find all sorts of pretty pictures of the "DC-3" concept. Take it all with a grain of salt though... There's no reason to believe that Faget's shuttle wouldn't have had the same problems that the actual STS had, or even worse. It probably wouldn't have been capable of reaching orbit at all.

For Apollo, the navigation was all done on the ground. The computer on board the spacecraft was called the PGNCS and was pretty basic. The PGNCS knew its position through inertial measurement and could be recalibrated with a star tracker (a sort of sextant) that the astronauts pointed to a specific list of stars. However, the main way of knowing where they were was provided by ground stations that used radar and telemetry to locate the spacecraft. By extrapolating between two points, you can easily calculate the orbital parameters. For manoeuvers, mission control typically sent them then equivalent of our KSP manoeuver nodes: point the spacecraft at the correct angle, then burn full trottle (the SPS wasn't throttlable) at a specific time for a specific number of seconds. These instructions were sent by voice, the astronauts typed the burn parameters into the DSKY (the AGC's control panel), and the computer handled the rest. During Apollo 13, there was a famous moment when then they had to perform a free-return correction burn with the LM engine while the PGNCS was powered down to save power. They pointed the spacecraft in the right direction by using the star tracker and burned manually with a stopwatch.

And of course, at the time, everybody at NASA knew that the advertised launch rate was intenable... It wasn't less efficient than intended, because it was never really designed to launch 50 times per year.

What are you having trouble with? 1- Assemble the CSM. 2- Add the LM decoupler frame underneath it. 3- Assemble the LM, starting with the docking cone going downwards. 4- Add the SLA underneath the LM decoupler. 5- Add the S-IVB, the interstage, the S-II, the interstage, the S-IC decoupler, and finally the S-IC. 6- Arrange your stages and set your group event keys appropriately, and you're set.

The whole point of Mars One is that there is no MTV. It uses a Falcon Heavy because it's the only thing available (Soonâ„¢) and (maybe) affordable. The Falcon's upper stage is empty by the time it gets to Mars and it doesn't have enough delta-v for orbit insertion. It's on a collision trajectory, so that the Dragon only has to burn for landing. You'd need a much larger vehicle to be able to perform that burn and have enough dV to return to Earth. There is no such vehicle and there won't be before several decades. Also, landing a DCPS on Mars surface is far from a trivial task. The biggest thing we have ever landed there is a 900kg rover, and that was launched on an Atlas V. Besides, ISRU is TRL-3 at this point, so no way can you rely on ISRU technology for vital functions.

I fail to see what's amusing about it.

Although the military requirements did nothing to make things easier, the real reason the Shuttle didn't work as intended is that paper rockets always work better than real ones. Engineering and physics will always make things harder. This is a rule for all aerospace designs. They always end up overweight, overbudget and underperformance, which is why you always need to include margins in your basic design. This is also why things like Skylon are a pipe dream, because on paper its margins are so thin. Once you start cutting metal, testing always shows that things are less efficient as planned or that structures need reinforcing, or that a system needs more redundancy, etc... Once you've cut into your payload fraction, then your design no longer makes sense. Any of those SSTO and TSTO designs that you see labelled as "Shuttle alternatives" were also based on thin margins. Once they would have entered the detailed study phase, all sorts of fundamental flaws would have popped up and they would probably have ended up with a similar compromise as what we got in the end. None of those alternative designs would have worked in real-life because a reusable spacecraft was such a tough nut to crack with 1970's technology, and still is.

There is already a complete thread just below yours. Please research before posting: http://forum.kerbalspaceprogram.com/threads/75141-Interplanetary-WAR!

Exactly. It will be a very long time before any benefits of living permanently off-world outweigh the cost, if ever.

We don't have many cities underwater, on mountain tops, or in Antarctica. The reason is that they are not very hospitable places to build a city. I have no doubt that we will have manned outposts and research stations, maybe small mining settlements if we're lucky, but I doubt we will ever have the need to build cities on other planets when we have plenty of room here.

It is under severe gravitational stress, which explains the shape. In fact, it looks like pretty much like what a drop of water would look like if it was stabilized in an orbit around a gas giant.

We already have Cassini there.

The advantage of a tank that is available is that it is available. You have the tooling and the industrial process in place to build more. Having to design a new tank from scratch is a disadvantage.

We don't know if partial gravity is a problem or not, so it's a bit premature to start planning on megastructures to solve what might not be a problem. I suspect that even a small amount of gravity is enough to allow the body to function normally. But it needs proper investigation.

If it's egg shaped, then Occam's Razor dictates that it's more likely an egg laid there by a giant space chicken.

The reason for using clustering for the Saturn 1B first stage was simply because Jupiter and Redstone tanks were available. It was a quick kludge that carried a serious mass penalty, but it did the job. Sometimes the best tool for the job is the one that you have rather than the one you need to build from scratch.

Be careful, we are comparing apples to oranges. The Soyuz OM+DM is functionally equivalent to the Apollo CM only, so they are quite close in terms of habitable volume and mass. If you want to compare the CSM+LM with its Russian counterpart, it would be the LOK+LK+Block D complex.

Yes, the EVA suits had to be carried back to orbit, because: - They were needed to transfer for a contingency EVA to transfer to the CM if the docking failed. - They were needed on the J-missions (Apollo 15-17) for the SIM bay EVA on the way home. - They were also needed for "critical" phases, including reentry, in case a depressurisation occured. But mostly: - How would you open the hatch to throw out the EVA suits without wearing them :-P

Agreed, but the Soyuz OM and DM weigh only 4 tons together. The Apollo CM and LM together would weigh nearly 20 tons. To lift both of them, you would need an escape rocket 4 times bigger and heavier than the one used on Apollo, i.e. over 32 tons instead of 8 tons.

Wow, I didn't know they actually bothered retrieving the forward heat shield. ETA: It seems that the Apollo 4 and Apollo 17 forward heat shield were the only ones recovered. Apollo 4 was because it was a test flight and for Apollo 17 only because it splashed down right next to a recovery helicopter (which probably caused some distress to the crew!)

The forward heat shield was the "parachute cover" at the top of the capsule. It had to be jettisoned to deploy the parachutes. The main heat shield stayed attached, as can be seen on all the CMs that are now in museums.

By definition, cardinal directions are really only relevant in a 2D environment, or by projection, a spherical surface. In a 3D environment, you need to add the Z-axis. In space, your are always moving. You don't travel from a location (X,Y,Z) to another location (X',Y',Z'), but from one orbit to another. Therefore, an actual location in space, corresponds to a set of orbital orbital parameters (Eccentricity, semimajor axis, inclination, epoch...) rather than coordinates. So I would imagine that thinking terms of cardinal directions makes no sense in space.