Nibb31

It's not the sail that's pushing the boat. The boat is being pushed by the wind that is deflected off the sail. It's acting like a thrust reverser on a jet engine. Nothing that contradicts our old pal Newton.

You don't need to target the docking clamp of the target ship. You just need them to touch. If the target ship is just zipping by, then you haven't yet reduced the relative speed of the two ships. You have to set the other ship as a target (you can do that in map view). Then, make sure your nav ball is in Target mode, point your ship towards the yellow retrograde marker, and burn until the velocity is 0.0m/s. This is rendezvous. Then you can proceed with docking by just pointing both ships in the appropriate direction, switching on ASAS on both ships, and just translate towards the target with IJKLHN (don't use the WASD keys). If you start going to fast or you find yourself moving away from the target, cut your relative speed to 0.0 again, as described above.

The LER wasn't really part of Constellation. There was no funding associated with it and no real plans to deliver it to the Moon. I suppose they would have landed it on a cargo Altair, but the height of the Altair (6 meters) would have made it difficult. This is just another one of the big problems with Constellation. It was a poor plan, and it's a good thing it was finally cancelled. The LER evolved into the SEV, which is a more promising concept with its LIDS docking rings. It can be turned into a small space station, an airlock module for a DSH, a free flying spacecraft, or a surface rover. For the moment, the SEV is also just a mockup and isn't funded either, but as a modular design, it would have fit KSP better than the old LER. There is still the issue of how to launch it and land it anywhere.

Planes are unstable because aerodynamics don't work yet. There really is no point in bothering with spaceplanes until KSP has a semi-realistic flight model.

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Of course it won't. It's like putting a fan on the back of a sail ship to push the sails, or trying to move your car by pushing against the back seat while sitting in the trunk.

You can't. You have to detach a part to rotate it.

You could just add wheels to your base modules and drive them around. Or you could go with Bigelow's approach and dock the modules in lunar orbit and land the entire complex.

You can use a telescope mode and point it to the ground. The LOD depends on the distance, so I don't think you will ever get detailed terrain, but artefacts should be visible.

This is what you can see with a really good telescope: Note that the ISS is moving fast, so ideally you need a motorized head on the telescope. If you have an Android phone, you can get ISS Tracker, which you can point to the sky and it will show you where the ISS is.

Thanks for that figure!

It's a bug. Not much you can do.

The Atlas V is nothing to phone home about either, esthetically...

Even if there is a 1% possibility that man-made CO2 production is causing a global temperature rise, shouldn't we err on the side of cautiousness instead of pretending that burning stuff is good? Let's look at the root cause of this. The only reason that a minority of people in the world oppose the general consensus on climate change is because they don't want to give up on their SUV, their A/C and their general comfort. The fact that this opposition exists only in the US is because that is where the global corporations who control oil and coal have the biggest grip on the political power and the media. There are many reasons we need to reduce our reliance on hydrocarbons. Climate change is just one of them, but there are many others. If the 8 billion people on Earth each burned as much oil per year as the average american, then it would simply not be sustainable. Pretending otherwise is just a justification for selfishness.

It's gone. MJ 2.0.8 uses maneuver node planner instead.

That was a Gemini capsule. Moonraker had Shuttles! (and was the worst Bond movie ever!)

My own tests showed that the first stage of Laztek's Falcon 9 needed something like 20% of its fuel to return to KSP after reaching 25000m. I tried to do the gravity turn as late as possible to minimize the return delta-v, but of course, that is suboptimal for the actual purpose of launching a payload. There is a compromise to make, and in the real-world the penalty is probably high once you add the flight-profile, the extra propellant, the RCS and the landing gear. For the upper stage, it was actually better to go all the way to orbit and to deorbit over KSP on the next time round. Of course that's with KSP physics, so the actual ratios don't apply to real-world physics.

I'm 42, and I certainly hope to be able to afford (or get my grandchildren to buy me) an orbital flight when I retire. I hope it will be on Dragon or a Dream Chaser, but if a Virgin suborbital hop is the only thing available, I'll go with it...

You will just be a passenger. I'm guessing that they will just want to make sure that you don't have a heart condition or some intense medical treatment, just like the certificate you need to practice most sports. The hardest situation you're likely to experience is the hangover from one of Branson's parties Corrected

100km is an empirical limit that was chosen because it's a nice round number. It has no scientific meaning. You still experience atmospheric drag at that altitude, you don't need an RCS for stability, and the "re-entry" is closer to that of a weather baloon than an Apollo capsule. Spaceflight isn't about altitude, it's about reaching orbital speed, and SpaceShipTwo is about 20000km/h short of reaching orbit. Anyway, to answer your question, Virgin's offering includes a week-long "preparation" for the suborbital flight, which will include a passenger flight in the Eve mothership, amusement park rides, fun simulations, a vomit comet ride, hangar tours, good meals, parties with pretty hostesses, lots of champagne, club membership, and ending with your 6 minute parabolic "space" flight. I'm pretty sure there will be some basic medical check or the obligation to provide a medical certificate before the flight, but that's about it.

I believe this is an issue with MechJeb and 90° mounted command pods. I had a similar issue.

MCT is just a very long term goal. Maybe in 20 or 30 years... but who know what the World will be like in 20 or 30 years.

Not only Tranquility... Node 2 and Columbus were also built by Alenia in Turin, as well as the three MPLM modules, the Cupola, and the ATV pressurized hulls. Chances are that when NASA builds the Deep Space Habitat, a large part of it will be built in Italy.

Yes, which is why Orion was to use LIDS, which hadn't yet been cancelled. Yeah, I know this is all confusing ! And yes, the main cargo requirement for the ISS is supposed to be ISPRs (International Standard Payload Racks) for experiments, which are dimensioned to go through CBM ports. Dragon's down-cargo capability replaces the Shuttle for bringing back these ISPRs. CBM ports are wider, but I wouldn't say they are "better". They just have different requirements. The fact that someone needs to be on-board the station to berth/unberth CBM modules with the Canadarm makes them unsuitable for an emergency undocking or for contingencies like returning a crew if the ISS was to be evacuated. This is why CBM ports aren't used for manned spacecraft.

The Shuttles used the APAS-89 docking rings that were fitted for the Shuttle-Mir program and are also fitted to the PMAs. LIDS (Low Impact Docking System) and its NASA implementation called NDS (NASA Docking System), were supposed to become an international standard that would facilitate international collaboration while improving on the old APAS system. However, it was mothballed for the ISS project in favor of Boeing's in-house SIMAC adapter. I'm not sure about the reason, but I think it was due to some disagreement with the Russians about the internal diameter of the docking adapter. The plan is for two International Docking Adapter rings (IDA) to be carried to the ISS (not sure how) and fitted to the APAS-89 rings of the PMAs. Then, the COTS vehicles (DragonRider, CST-100 or DreamChaser) will be equipped with SIMAC and dock to the IDA/PMA. Cargo vehicles will continue to use CBM and berthing instead of docking. Orion is never going to the ISS. Therefore it is not constrained to SIMAC and exploration missions could use the NDS/LIDS system. I don't think a decision has been made yet. Anyway, I have no problems with docking BobCat's Orion: