Nibb31

Getting into polar orbit only requires a small change during the LOI burn. However there were other constraints that made a near-equatorial lunar orbit desirable. For example, they wanted to land with the sun behind them, for better visibility. The landing sites also had to be properly lit, and had to face the Earth. The biggest requirement though was that an equatorial orbit is safer, because you have your free-return trajectory if the SPS engine fails to start (or if you do an Apollo 13) and you get one TEI window every orbit whereas things are much more complicated if you are on a polar inclination.

SSTO is pointless. What's important is the operational requirements, not the number of stages. You probably mean a reusable vehicle, but a reusable multi-stage vehicle has a much better payload fraction, and is easier to achieve, than a single-stage to orbit. And don't even get me started on the stupidity of carrying wings all the way to orbit and back. However, reusable is only economical if you have a high launch rate. A high launch rate requires a viable commercial business model and there isn't one yet because we haven't yet done the exploration and science to find out if there is a viable commercial business model. A reusable will always be more expensive to build than a cheap disposable vehicle. But if you want an expensive vehicle, you won't have the money to develop payloads for the vehicle in parallel, so you end up with a Space Shuttle that has nowhere to go and no money to build a Space Station. Been there, done that, and going the same route with SLS.

Mass production is also the rationale behind Ariane 6. The first and second stages use identical solid boosters (3 on the first stage, 1 on the second stage). They are aiming for over 10 launches per year, which requires 40 units per year. Vega and Ariane 5 will use variants of those boosters, and so do the French ICBM M51. SRBs are hard to design, but pretty simple to make, so these should turn out being pretty cheap to produce. SpaceX actually has a bit of a contradictory plan. On one hand, they are pursuing mass production of Merlin engines, claiming to be able to churn out 400 Merlin engines (or 40 Falcon 9 core stages) per year. On the other hand, they are actively working on reusable first stages. But mass production goes against reusability, because the cheaper they can actually produce those Merlins, the less viable a reusable Falcon becomes.

Most launches have contracted to private operators for decades. There is no fundamental difference between SpaceX and ULA. And Virgin isn't going to LEO anytime soon.

What makes you think that?

It takes 4000m/s of dV to transfer from LEO (~200km) to GEO (35786km), and therefore the same amount to go back. In comparison, it doesn't take much to move from GEO to the graveyard orbit (>36000km).

Would it be possible to make a version with flat 2m ends so that we could integrate them Fustek modules ?

It will take a while, which is why international law requires that GEO sats must be boosted to a graveyard orbit at their end of life. If you were to leave it there forever, it becomes a hazardous debris in a very crowded and strategic location, which will make the entire global space industry very angry.

Do you think you could add the ability to fire landing rockets at, for example 15 meters AGL ?

There's a difference between "ringing endorsement" and "not bothering to contradict science fiction technobabble". IMO, that Adam Roberts quote is quite presomptuous.

You don't need to blow up a sat to disable it. Modern ASAT solutions (as described in my previous post) don't cause debris.

[Citation needed]

Whatever you do, you can't get around that pesky F=ma equation. Therefore, extreme amounts of kinetic energy will always be required to achieve orbital speed. You will always need an extremely high power energy source and a means to convert that power into thrust. There will always be inefficiencies in that conversion. You will always need some sort of consumable to be expelled if you want to produce thrust and you will always need to carry that consumable with you. We might one day manage to pack high energy into small packages. We might even make those packages relatively cheap. But I doubt that such packages will ever be available to private individuals because of safety issues and the devastation that they could cause if they were misused. How would you feel if every car on the road had the explosion potential of a tactical nuke? In the meantime, high output energy sources require heavy equipment. It's as simple as that.

Why would space engineers waste weight and risk messing with heat dissipation by painting a logo on a heat shield?

Because a car's tank fuel of xenon can't be converted into the amount of kinetic energy that is needed to push a 100t payload to orbital speed. F=ma. Newton sucks. The kinetic energy required to accelerate 100 tons to 8km/s is 3,200,000,000,000 joules or 3.2 Terajoules. That's just for the payload. You also need to move whatever device is necessary to produce that amount of kinetic energy and usable thrust (i.e. the rocket itself), which in most cases will have to weigh several times the mass of the payload.

Not really. They are pretty cheap for what they do. The problem is pesky physics. You have a payload, and you want to accelerate that payload from 0 to 24000km/h. However you look at it, it's always going to take a lot of energy and that is always going to be expensive and complicated.

I'm finding the wobble on this version much worse than on the previous one in 0.21.

You don't need the source folder. You must copy the mod into your GameData folder.

The US has modified SM-3 missiles that can be fired from an Aegis cruiser to shoot down satellites, but missiles are really too messy to be used effectively as ASAT weapons. They can cause too much collateral damage. Your best bet as an ASAT weapon is some sort of small orbital manoeuvering platform equipped with non-destructive weapons. Which incidentally, seems to be akin to what the MiTEx experiments were about. They could be prepositioned at strategic inclinations with enough dV to rendez-vous with their targets close enough to use their weapons. As for the weapons, you would haver either: - A high power laser that could burn a whole through the enemy sat's propellant tanks: The gas venting through the hole would put the target into an uncontrollable spin and deplete the propellant. - A paint ball pellet gun or a black goo spray gun. These would mess up the optics and sensors and disable the solar panels of course, but black paint would also cause the components to overheat and fail.

ESA would probably pay for the tiles, and you might be lucky to keep a piece of space memorabilia. Cool.

GOCE isn't exactly a "giant" satellite either. It's only 800kg, which is ligher than most small cars these days.

If you're sure it's been asked before, then why didn't you look? The advanced functions aren't available until you unlock them in the tech tree.

LEO To GEO requires 4000m/s. That's a lot of dV to pack into a 3U cubesat. I don't think it's even possible with an ion thruster. You also have to include provisions for disposing of a GEO sat. They have to move to a higher orbit at end-of-life, which means even more dV.

Maybe they preemptively destroy anything that might become a threat later. A bit like eradicating a small tumor before it turns into a generalized cancer. Because maybe it takes them hundreds of years to reach another solar system, and it that time, what appeared as a low level civilization has time to evolve into an interstellar threat. This would explain why, although science and statistics suggest that there is a large number of planets that could support intelligent life, we have found no evidence of life or intelligent activity anywhere in the universe.

Even with fusion powered spacecraft, there is still the possibility that the light speed barrier is impossible to break. Unless their perception of time is vastly different from ours, it is likely that any alien species will find interstellar travel just as impractical as we do. Of course, if they are beings that have a life span of 1000 years, then an interstellar hop would be just like a month's journey for us, but the fact that we don't see fusion-powered alien ships flying around our solar system suggests that interstellar travel might not so widespread.