Nibb31

Wikipedia is your friend: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ares_V http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Space_Launch_System

If you're implying that the Evil Soviet Union killed many cosmonauts without letting the West know about it, you're wrong. There is absolutely zero evidence that they kept any space-related incidents secret, and all of the archives have been opened up since the Cold War. The accidents that did occur have been pretty well documented (including the worse of all, the Nedelin Disaster in 1960). All of their launches are accounted for as they were tracked and monitored by Western intelligence agencies. We now know practically everything there is to know about the Soviet space program, including the full biographies of Russian cosmonauts, the accidents that did occur, the ins and outs of the internal politics, the testimonies of the scientists and engineers, and the detailed designs of their rockets and spacecraft.

Why would you want to haul 50 tons of wheels, wings, hydraulics and generally useless hardware to the Moon and back, especially when all that junk is really only useful for the last 15 minutes of your mission? To send a shuttle into a lunar trajectory, you would first need to get the Shuttle with a fully fueled external tank into LEO. A fueled ET weighs 760 tons. Therefore you would need a rocket capable of launching 830 tons into LEO, which is the equivalent of 8 Saturn V rockets. Of course, you can't glide on the Moon, so you would have to modify your Orbiter to VTOL, incluing new engines and landing gear, which would make it a whole different spacecraft. You would also have to replace the TPS with something else. The tiles were made for reentry from LEO, not for lunar reentry. And don't forget about comms, supplies, avionics, etc... None of that was capable of going beyond LEO. It's just a totally stupid idea. However, NASA did have plans to use the Shuttle to return to the Moon. It would have basically carried a LM and an EDS in two flights, docked them in orbit, and let the LM fly to the Moon and back. Another Shuttle would have retrieved the LM and the crew and brought them back to the ground.

This is how you get into the Munar orbit, and how to use manoeuver nodes: 1- Launch your Mun rocket into Kerbin orbit. 2- Open the map and create a manoeuver node somewhere on your orbit. ...a- Pull the Prograde handle of the manoeuver node until the plotted orbit reaches the Mun's orbit. If you go too far, just pull the Retrograde handle to bring it down. ...b- Grab the middle of the manoeuver node and pull it around the orbit until the Ap of the plotted trajectory creates an encounter with the Mun. ...c- Adjust the Prograde - Retrograde handles of the manoeuver node until you see the Pe around the Mun at your desired altitude. 50km is a good start. ...d- Switch back to the main view (or pull up the navball in Map mode) and point your ship towards the Blue marker. The gauge on the right of the navball indicates the delta-V that you will need to spend, the estimated burn time, and countdown to the manoeuver. 6- Warp until you reach the manoeuver node (watch the countdown), and burn for the time indicated. Stop the burn when the Delta-V gauge reaches 0. You are now en-route to the Mun. 7- Warp to the Mun's SOI. Once in the Mun's SOI (when your blue orbit is around the Mun), you can adjust your Pe again. 8- When you reach the Pe around the Mun, point your ship retrograde and burn until your orbit is circular around the Mun. Congratulations, you are now orbiting the Mun. Or you can do it like us old-timers did before we have these new-fangled navigation nodes: 1- Launch your Mun rocket into Kerbin orbit. 2- Warp until the Mun rises on the horizon. When it does, point the ship prograde and burn until your orbit intersects the Mun's orbit* 3- Warp to the Mun's SOI. Once in the Mun's SOI (when your blue orbit is around the Mun), you can adjust your Pe again. 4- When you reach the Pe around the Mun, point your ship retrograde and burn until your orbit is circular around the Mun. *- This tip works for all Planet => Moon transfers, although some might need an inclination change. As you can see, getting anywhere in space is about changing your orbit. This sort of transfer is called a Hohmann Transfer. Nothing ever goes in a straight line in space.

Current Mars probes use high altitude aerobraking without a heatshield, but they do multiple passes over several months. That isn't very practical for a manned mission. More time in space means more radiation mitigation (heavier shielding) and more supplies.

Isn't this thread dead yet? I believe the OP's question has been answered over and over by now.

It only makes things easier conceptually. It doesn't really make rendez-vous easier if you are doing it properly.

Is it related to the fuel transfer or does is it just a matter of mechjeb disappearing after undocking. If seen this happen too, but it usually fixes itself if you save and load (F5 then F9) or leave to the Space Center and come back to the flight.

If all you have to offer is "I think" in a forum where most of us follow these things pretty closely, then it might be better to refrain from posting. At least look up Google or wikipedia before posting nonsense. Constellation was cancelled (the Ares rockets and the Altair lander), but work on the Orion MPCV continued and it is flying unmanned next year. It should be flying on SLS in 2017.

Over the next 30 years, it will likely be Orion, which is designed for direct re-entry from lunar orbit. However, I can't help thinking that we should stick to affordable LEO taxis for the launch and reentry role only and design spaceships for space only. Trying to perform both roles with a single vehicle is like designing an amphibious car. It's going to be designed around compromises which will make it impractical. We could do with a reusable lunar shuttle/lander. It would refuel in LEO (or rather dock with an expendable stage) and rotate crew/supplies from a LEO Dragon. Then it would transfer to the Moon, to the lunar surface, and return to LEO again for another trip. This would allow a semi-permanent base on the lunar surface. Not going to happen in the foreseeable future though.

No way that was even remotely possible. The Apollo CSM generated electricity with fuel cells, which uses propellant. It was limited to a week or two of life support, that's about it. It would have to be a different spacecraft for longer trips. Plus, the Saturn V might have had enough dV for an interplanetary flyby (but I doubt it), but with orbital insertion burn around Mars or Phobos, and a Mars departure burn at the end of the mission would be out of the question.

I think the question was actually "how do you get to the Mun" rather than "how do I build a rocket to get there". This is how you get into the Munar orbit, and how to use manoeuver nodes: 1- Launch your Mun rocket into Kerbin orbit. 2- Open the map and create a manoeuver node somewhere on your orbit. ...a- Pull the Prograde handle of the manoeuver node until the plotted orbit reaches the Mun's orbit. If you go too far, just pull the Retrograde handle to bring it down. ...b- Grab the middle of the manoeuver node and pull it around the orbit until the Ap of the plotted trajectory creates an encounter with the Mun. ...c- Adjust the Prograde - Retrograde handles of the manoeuver node until you see the Pe around the Mun at your desired altitude. 50km is a good start. ...d- Switch back to the main view (or pull up the navball in Map mode) and point your ship towards the Blue marker. The gauge on the right of the navball indicates the delta-V that you will need to spend, the estimated burn time, and countdown to the manoeuver. 6- Warp until you reach the manoeuver node (watch the countdown), and burn for the time indicated. Stop the burn when the Delta-V gauge reaches 0. You are now en-route to the Mun. 7- Warp to the Mun's SOI. Once in the Mun's SOI (when your blue orbit is around the Mun), you can adjust your Pe again. 8- When you reach the Pe around the Mun, point your ship retrograde and burn until your orbit is circular around the Mun. Congratulations, you are now orbiting the Mun. Or you can do it like us old-timers did before we have these new-fangled navigation nodes: 1- Launch your Mun rocket into Kerbin orbit. 2- Warp until the Mun rises on the horizon. When it does, point the ship prograde and burn until your orbit intersects the Mun's orbit* 3- Warp to the Mun's SOI. Once in the Mun's SOI (when your blue orbit is around the Mun), you can adjust your Pe again. 4- When you reach the Pe around the Mun, point your ship retrograde and burn until your orbit is circular around the Mun. *- This tip works for all Planet => Moon transfers, although some might need an inclination change. As you can see, getting anywhere in space is about changing your orbit. This sort of transfer is called a Hohmann Transfer. Nothing ever goes in a straight line in space.

No. Ion engines have very low thrust.

Green is the prograde/retrograde vector (the direction of the line on which you are travelling, your current orbit) Purple points to and away from your target, when a target is selected. This is only useful for docking (and marginally for rendez-vous). Blue points to the vector of the next navigation node. You can't use it for navigation, because there is no such thing as a straight line in space. You will never go anywhere by burning in a straight line towards something. That's a common misconception. Space navigation is all about modifying ellipsoidal orbits. For interplanetary/lunar navigation, you have to use the map and navigation nodes.

Turn off mapping during the launch and switch it on again when you reach orbit.

Golden Spike doesn't have NASA backing at all, let alone funding. NASA isn't enthusiastic about building moonbases. In fact, the moon is pretty much off of NASA's roadmap. They have no plans at all to return to the Moon. And the only plans they have with Bigelow is the closet-sized BEAM module that is flying to the ISS in 2015. It takes 10 to 20 years to implement just about any large aerospace project, and given that nobody is actually working on any lunar landing hardware, it will be a looooong time before anyone goes back to the Moon. No they were not. They were standard issue nylon flags from a normal government supplies catalog. Close Guantanamo and shutdown the NSA already ;-) No country is perfect, and if the Chinese are willing to spend money on space, that that's great news for everybody interested in space.

That's a damn good question. They had 3 suits on board (2 were for lunar and contingency EVAs, the third was a lighter one for the CMP in case a contingency EVA required to depress the CM). There was a thread about this on NSF. The answer on that thread seems to be that they would have been too warm in the suits without hooking them up to the recirculation fans (for which they had no power to spare) and the sweat, while being dehydrated from water rationing and being in a cold atmosphere, would have made things worse.

No, you just need to give it a small jolt to start the rotation at a rate of one revolution per orbit (like in diagram and it will keep on spinning at the same rate without drawing any power. There's no drag or friction to slow down the rotation so it will just spin forever. It just needs a bit of adjustment from time to time, but that's nothing a reaction wheel or small thrusters can't handle with very little power.

Real satellites add a rotation factor that is synced with the orbital period, just like the Moon.

I have another example where FTL breaks causality. Imagine two space warships: "Argonaut A" is equipped with lasers and a cloaking device, but when the lasers are fired, its position is revealed. "Battlestar B" is equipped with FTL torpedoes but can't see "Argonaut A" as it approaches. Now, "Argonaut A" detects "Battlestar B" and fires its lasers at it. Lasers travel at light speed and inflict some minor damage to "Battlestar B". Some crew members are killed. "Battlestar B" immediately retaliates by firing its FTL torpedoes at the source of the laser fire. Because they go faster than light, the torpedoes can actually hit and destroy "Argonaut A" before it fired its lasers or even detected "Battlestar B". The consequence of this is that we have a causality paradox: "Argonaut A" is preemptively destroyed by "Battlestar B"'s torpedoes, while at the same time "Battlestar B" was never even aware of the threat and still has its torpedoes on board. Any civilization that can manage FTL can also manage this level of time travel, because going back in time is a corollary of going faster than light. Once this happens, all sorts of paradoxes are created with causality, which is why I think FTL is impossible and even undesirable. It becomes the ultimate weapon where any threat can be annihilated before it even exists and the result would be that you wouldn't even be aware that such a threat ever existed. Let's take this a little further. Imagine that we have FTL travel and we stumble upon a belligerant species on the other side of the galaxy that wants to destroy us. We could just send some sort of bacteriological weapon or virus on an FTL probe that wipes out life on their home planet millions of years before they even evolve into becoming sentient organisms. The result would be that we would never encounter them in the first place or even be aware of their existence. Rinse and repeat this a couple of times, and what would the universe look like to us? We would probably be scrutinizing the galaxy and wondering why we can't find any evidence of other forms of life... Sounds familiar?

No, you wouldn't simply bounce off into solar orbit. I think that when they refer to skipping away, what they really meant was a dip into the atmosphere that would be too shallow to slow down the CM enough to bring the apogee of the orbit into the atmosphere. What would happen is that they would go through the atmosphere in a straight line and come out on the other side for another orbit. Depending on the severity of the error, the next orbit could take from several hours to several days (potentially travelling back to the Moon's orbital distance). This would have been catastrophic, because once the SM was dumped, the CM had very limited batteries and life support, a couple of hours max. Another orbit would have brought back three dead astronauts.

The AN-225 was designed to carry loads on top. The landing gear is too short to put anything underneath.

Actually, I find it quite interesting and a lot of good information has been brought to the thread. We have done our best to keep it civil and everybody seems to have an open mind, so I would be disappointed if the mods closed the thread.

I'm sorry, but it's not our job to do the research for you or for any other people who question the veracity of accepted historical events. Ever since the Moon hoax web sites started cropping up, there have been web sites devoted to debunking those theories. Like this one, which answered the points that you brought up back in 2001: http://www.apolloarchive.com/apollo/moon_hoax_FAQ.html The problem when debating these issues is that each time you debunk a wacky claim, hoaxers come up with another hoax. This is simply because the burden of proof lies on the person making the hypothesis. Extraordinary theories require extraordinary evidence and it's impossible to prove a negative. Now, I'm not claiming you are a hoaxer. You seem to have a more open mind and I think you are genuinely puzzled by some of the things that you have seen and are just curious about the explanations. However, this is a sensitive subject, for reasons that I have already discussed. If you have studied radiation, then you should know that radiation tolerance levels are measured in Sieverts, which is a cumulative value that measures the concentration of ionizing radiation absorbed per unit of a material's mass. In other words, it depends on both the level of radiation that you are exposed to AND the duration of the exposure. It works a bit like a photographic film, where the exposure depends on both aperture and speed, or like a sunburn. As long as you don't bask in the cosmic rays for too long, you should be fine. The Apollo astronauts didn't spend enough time exposed to high cosmic radiation to be negatively affected. Similarly, the vast majority of the "liquidators" at Chernobyl haven't died from cancer from the cleanup work because although the radiation levels were high, they were only exposed for short periods. To sum it up, there is zero evidence that the Apollo astronauts couldn't have survived the trip. Not a single peer-reviewed scientific paper has ever been published with that claim. Yet there is ample evidence that they could, because most of them are still alive today to tell the story, with their medical records, photographs and all the documentation, archives, and published scientific results from the Apollo project. To put it another way, on one side of the scales there is your own personal hunch on a subject where you have no real expertise, and on the other side there is the word of thousands of direct witnesses, many of whom are scientists, engineers, military and intelligence personnel from all over the world, and literally tons of documentation, science publications, and historical evidence. Do you see the disconnect here? Yes, because a lot of the physics involved are unintuitive because our experience as human beings is mostly limited to our specific environment. The same is true for quantum physics or relativity. Most of it is unintuitive and demonstrates unexpected results. It's a bit like KSP. Stuff like orbital rendez-vous is pretty hard to explain to a new player because it is unintuitive that you need to decelerate to catch up with your target and to accelerate to let it catch up with you, yet that's how it works and we have to explain it over and over again, because it's that hard to believe. There is nothing wrong with not knowing what to expect, but phenomenon like how rocket plumes affect dust on the Moon are simply not areas that you or I have any daily experience with, so we are simply not equipped to argue about it. However, when you see something that doesn't fit your expectation, the most logical reaction should be "there must be something going on here that I don't understand" rather than "someone must be playing tricks on me". The former is healthy curiosity. The latter is mild paranoia. Personally, my usual first reaction is to pull up good old Wikipedia and have a quick read about the subject. For example: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Health_threat_from_cosmic_rays If there actually was a swap of personnel, why would they need to fake any pictures of the lunar surface? If you accept the fact that they did send men to the Moon, they did openly talk with them during the missions (the communications were monitored by foreign agencies after all), they did leave stuff on the surface, and they did bring back rocks, then they were also quite capable of taking real EVA pictures and only the pictures from inside the vehicles would have needed to be faked. Even if they did fake these pictures and they did actually put the LM in the middle of a Hollywood sound stage with a crane, do you really think they would have forgotten to dig a crater underneath the LM if that is what they expected? Do you really think they could have got everything perfectly right in those pictures and movies except for that one single detail? Have you ever seen a large budget science fiction movie that didn't have at least dozens of glaring mistakes or impossibilities? Even Kubrik's "2001" has dozens of glaring errors in it, although it was state-of-the-art in the day and folks from NASA contributed to make it as realistic as possible. The Manhattan project was kept secret for all of 4 years, and even though people didn't know what the goal was, they did know that they were working on a secret project and they did know about the compartmentalization and the reasons for it. And it was all fully declassified decades ago, and so have all of the other government secrets from the Cold War era, including the U-2, SR-71, Hexagon... even though these projects contain information that even today, we wouldn't like some people from getting their hands on. The F-117 or B-2 were kept pretty much under wraps for a decade each, but there were still leaks and it was public knowledge that there were secret stealth aircraft projects going on. People who work on classified projects know that they work on classified projects, and so do their families. Usually, when asked decades later, they don't hide the fact that they worked on classified government projects even if the project is still classified. Governments can keep a project secret, but it's hard for them to hide the fact that there is a secret project. If only because the decision to keep a project classified as top secret involves a lot of people at the political level. If there was any secret around Apollo, they couldn't have kept the secret (or even the secret that there was a secret) for 45 years in the current information-driven world. People who were working on the project would have known that there was a secret to keep, they would have been aware of any compartmentalization or areas where they were not allowed to ask questions. The Soviets would have noticed that the communications were not coming from the Moon, that the orbital tracking data did not match up with NASA's claims or that their were anomalies in the published photographs. Yet not a single NASA employee has ever mentioned that there were parts of Apollo that were secret and no foreign government has ever stated that something was fishy about their observations. This is why people get defensive when you bring up stuff like this, because basically you are calling all of these people liars. There are many people who have an interest in space who lurk on these forums, including some who might work at NASA or whose parents might have worked on Apollo. You are portraying these thousands of people as government spooks who are still today actively lying to the general public, when they are mainly motivated by noble dreams of science and exploration. If you even looked, you'd be surprised at how open NASA is about everything, how much documentation is available, much more so than any other space agency. It is far from a covert organization and there is simply no evidence that anyone has ever been covering up anything.

Yes, but again those capabilities made no sense. For a repair or retrieval, you spend months training for EVA operations, developing procedures and flight rules, fabricating special tools and fixtures. You need to pay lots of highly qualified engineers for several months to do that sort of thing, and then there is the risk that something goes wrong during the mission and you lose the satellite or even the crew if you're unlucky. There is also the extra cost and mass when building the satellite in making parts repairable or adding provisions for retrieving it, which is wasted if everything actually goes well. It will practically always be more cheaper to just build and launch a new satellite. Building a couple of replacement Hubbles would have been much cheaper than flying 5 servicing missions.