Nibb31

Well, when it comes to choices, just about everything in life is political. The reason there actually is a debate is mostly political. If we just sticked to scientific facts, we would already be driving solar powered cars and there would be no economical crisis.

MechJeb 2.0 is great for planning manoeuvers, and the new version allows you to fly those manoeuvers manually instead of using the autopilot, which is what many people complained about. The idea of using manoeuver nodes is great because you can actually see what MechJeb is doing and learn from it and perform the manoeuvers yourself if that's what you want. ORDA is still much better for the docking part; and MechJeb 1 is still better at landing.

Amateurs were capable of photographing the failed Phobos-Grunt probe in 2011. Those pictures were actually helpful in analyzing the cause of the failure: http://www.space.com/13774-skywatcher-photos-russian-phobos-grunt-probe.html There are also some amazing pictures of the ISS taken from ground telescopes: http://weinterrupt.com/2009/03/the-international-space-station-as-seen-from-earth/ And Mir: http://www.satobs.org/telescope.html Imagine what a government can do with their telescopes, or just by turning a KH-12 spy sat around to look at any other sats that are passing by.

Indeed, fusion power has always been "in 20 years", even 50 years ago. It's a bit like a manned Mars missions or Lunar bases in that respect. Nobody really believes it any more. Add to the fact that it usually takes 10 to 20 years to build a new nuclear power plant, once the technology is available, so at best we are talking about the 2050's for operational fusion power. And that is only if civilization can survive another 40 years on fossile fuels with 10 or 12 billion people while maintaining an economy capable of doing a decent level of scientific research and actually building that fusion power once we get there. I have the feeling the system will have broken down well before then.

Nobody has advocated using Orion alone on expeditions. It's designed to ferry a crew of 4 to the Moon and back or to dock with a DSH and SEP tug for longer exploration missions. Listen, I'm no fan of Orion, but Dragon is not built for BEO operations. It's as simple as that. For BEO exploration missions, it lacks: - The delta-v to return from Lunar orbit or an Asteroid, - The consumables and supplies for longer missions, - The radiation and thermal shielding, - The deep space communications and nav systems, - EVA capability. Sure, you could modify Dragon to have all this stuff, but it would need extensive modifications to just about every part of it and a new service module. Once you're done, you will have a cost and mass equivalent to Orion, and less room inside. I'm sure SpaceX could do it if NASA pays for it, but NASA is paying for a LEO taxi with different requirements, and that's what Dragon is. Orion is designed and built with different requirements. Where I agree with you, is that I'm not sure that those requirements make much sense. NASA has always had an obsession about building flashy new hardware with lots of capability and worrying about the actual mission later. However, the differences between Orion and Dragon are like between a Toyota Land Cruiser and a Mini. One is good for off-roading, the other is good for cheap commuting.

Deep Space in NASA-speak is anything beyond the Van Allen belt. The Moon is Deep Space, and Orion is designed to go there. Dragon or the Shuttle were not. Your Deep Space exploration vehicle is the DSH. The Orion is needed as a lifeboat for the DSH. But yeah, I agree with you that the whole SLS/Orion project is wonky. I would have rather preferred to see a reusable exploration vessel (DSH attached to a SEP tug) that would brake into LEO and use a COTS taxi for crew transfer. The whole plan of staging exploration missions from EML-1 or EML-2 sounds more like a justification of Orion than an actual mission requirement. A bit like the modular ISS design (or space station Freedom) was a justification for the Shuttle rather than a rational way of building a space station. But at any rate, you still need a deep space capsule with high-speed reentry capability and high delta-V for abort modes in case something goes wrong with your star cruiser and it fails to insert into LEO on its way back. I don't think Dragon has that capability, or at least it wasn't designed for it in COTS. Orion is one component of a larger system. The problem is that with SLS it is the only component with an actual budget.

Yeah, I guess that's pretty much what it would look like.

http://www.nasaspaceflight.com/2012/09/future-pad-escape-options-slidewires-roller-coasters/ Guiana doesn't have the infrastructure to support manned flight. You would have to redesign the existing pad (interrupting the current launch schedule) or build a new pad for the manned launches. You need a new launch tower, crew preparation facilities (accomodation, medical infrastructure, suit preparation infrastructure...), and the aforementioned launch escape systems. You would also need to man-rate the Ariane. Although early designs were for manned vehicles, Hermes was cancelled in 1992 and Ariane design turned towards unmanned commercial flights. The redundant systems and safety provisions for manned launches were removed and would have to be redesigned from scratch. Ariane V doesn't have the payload capability to launch Orion to anywhere else than LEO. I don't know how you figured that Ariane could launch an Orion to the Moon. The future Ariane 5 ME will have a LEO payload of 23.5 tons, which is approximately the mass of a fully-fueled Orion, so it won't be going anywhere without a second launch and a rendez-vous in LEO with an EDS and a third launch with a mission module.

I agree that it's pork, but at least it keeps the engineering capability alive. With no manned space program, you would have thousands of unemployed aerospace engineers, and after a few years, you will have lost the skills and the technological edge to restart a manned program even if you wanted to. Compared to a LEO crew taxi, Orion has extra shielding and a beefier heatshield which is capable of Mars return velocities. It is designed for longer flights (21 days) and longer in space storage (Soyuz is rated for 6 months docked at the ISS, which makes it unsuitable for a Mars flight for example). The long duration flights are made possible because of consumable storage space, but also mundane things like a toilet or a galley, which the COTS taxis don't have. It can't perform any missions on its own though. It is designed to be attached to a Deep Space Habitat for anything worthwhile. Unfortunately, there probably won't be any budget left for a DSH once SLS is up and running.

It is immensely costly. Not only a launchpad, but either a whole new VAB or a lot of conversions to the VAB, which might not be compatible with SLS. It would also need with new fuel handling and storage facilities, because Ariane doesn't use the same rocket fuel as US launchers, and a new crew escape infrastructure... Why would they do all those conversions? What would the flight rate be for an Orion on Ariane that would justify the investment? If they really wanted to launch Orion to LEO on something else than SLS, then there is Delta IV Heavy. The installations already exist and it will have been tested during the OFT-1 flight. But ultimately, there is no reason to launch an Orion to LEO, except for maybe a single emergency contingency flight where lives are at risk and for which cost is irrelevant. In that case, they will launch it with whatever they have available, which would be an SLS. So your idea might look cool on a powerpoint slide, but it has absolutely no merit and serves no actual purpose.

Ejecting at 21000ft from crashing space capsule can hardly be called an EVA.

Urban legend. http://www.tfcbooks.com/teslafaq/q&a_001.htm

You could do the same with multiple stages and no hacked parts.

Do you have to edit cfg files of fairings for this mod to work, or does it automatically detect them? If so, does anyone have an example of the cfg edits that have to be made to fairings?

An SSTO is not necessarily reusable. A multi-stage spacecraft can be 100% reusable and a SSTO can be expendable. To be reusable, an SSTO would need a deorbit engine and some way of landing safely (parachute, wings, retrorockets...) which would eat into the payload mass, and quite probably take away the SSTO capability. In effect, an SSTO launcher will always have a smaller payload capability than a multi-stage launcher. In most calculations, with current materials, the payload mass fraction is so low that it really doesn't make sense to build one. For example, the Titan II first stage, with no payload, could be SSTO. The same would have been true for the X-33 or the VentureStar, if they had flown. There really isn't much point in an SSTO other than bragging about it being an SSTO.

Yes, it's a cannon. The difference is that instead of a expansion of gasses caused by detonation pushing the projectile out of the barrel, the projectile is accelerated through some other means. This is usually a series of electomagnets around the barrel that switch on sequentially, which pushes the (magnetic) projectile out of the barrel.

There's a difference between opening your mind and being gullible. Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence. In this case, there is no evidence at all, so it isn't even a matter of belief. It's pure fantasy. People like these fantasy stories because they want them to be true. They make life more interesting and give you a sense of importance because you think you know something that most people don't.

You can't really hide military sat as a commercial sat, because commercial sats are all very well known, designed and built by commercial companies, responding to public calls for bids, etc... Most commercial companies are proud to show off their new stuff, with guided tours and public invitations for customers and shareholders for the construction and launch of the satellite. An orbital launch cannot be hidden. It will automatically be picked up by sismographs and radar systems all around the world, and in the early phases of launch it is hard to distinguish an orbital launch from an ICBM. This is why military and commercial launches are always announced in advance, by NOTAMs (notifications for aircraft telling them to stay out of the area), and usually by matter of diplomatic curtesy. It's easier for the military to launch their military satellites. Most military satellites are publically launched with classified payloads. There is no way of knowing exactly what kind on payload is on board the rocket, but intelligence analysts track every object and can often figure out what it's used for based on the size, the orbit, how it manoeuvers, and any other intelligence sources. As for weapons, for a weapon to be operational, it has to be tested. Firing an EMP device, an orbital nuke (even just an inert reentry vehicle), or an ion cannon would be easy to detect. Again, intelligence agencies are pretty good at detecting weapon tests and knowing what technologies other countries have, as well as their operational capabilities. For example, everyone knows that the US has designed ship-based megawatt-class lasers (and even a Boeing 747 one), but they are not small enough to be launched to orbit.

Just like everything in the game, as long as there is no campaign, it's just for show. KSP is a sandbox game, so the main point of space stations (or moon bases, or rovers, or spaceplanes) is to enjoy building and flying them.

This is the problem. It's nice to have an opinion, but when the opinion goes against countless scientific papers from experts in the field, then you might want to rethink it. The vast majority of "scientists" that have been used to justify the global warming denial side of things are, like you, from completely unrelated fields. How would you feel if some experts in biology or economy published petitions that negating relativity or some other fundamental concepts that you have been studying for maybe 20 years? Unfortunately, the political pressure is on the other side, from corporations who have a huge interest in maintaining the status quo, especially in the US, where corporations have more political power than in other countries. So while you wait for more evidence (as if there wasn't enough already), those positive feedback mechanisms are accelerating the process and it might already be too late. http://www.slate.com/blogs/future_tense/2012/12/12/chasing_ice_video_watch_a_manhattan_sized_iceberg_calve_off_from_greenland.html But actually, it doesn't even really matter whether global climate change is man-made or not. It is measureable and the effects are already devastating. At worse, there is nothing we can do about it, but if there is even a small chance that we might be able to make a positive impact, we should be taking those chances because they can only be beneficial in the long run. At any rate, denial is not going to get us anywhere.

If you haven't even managed to escape the atmosphere, don't try to go to the Mun. There are lots of intermediate steps that you are going to have to accomplish first. First of all, you want to learn how to get to orbit. You need to nail down the basics of gravity turn, apoapsis, periapsis, orbital manoeuvers, inclination changes, and getting your ship back to the gound. There are tutorials on this. My main suggestion is to read/watch some of the tutorials on this site and on YouTube. As for your rocket, I'd say it is lacking at least one stage. Cut down that center stage, put a poodle on it, and use it as an upper stage. Add a large orange tank underneath it, with a mainsail. Drop the SRBs and use liquid engines instead. Read up on asparagus staging too.

If you use MechJab, it can do perfect pinpoint powered landings. No need for parachutes.

It's hard to see on your picture, but if it veers to one side when the engines are firing, then you have an imbalance somewhere. Are you sure that all the engines are on? Are the fuel levels on all sides identical ?

Funnily enough, the only place where you find deniers of climate change and peak oil is also the only democratic country where political campaigns are financed by corporations, including big oil companies. There is absolutely ZERO doubt within the global scientific community that we are facing huge problems right now, and it's not going to get any better.

If you have anti-gravity, then you wouldn't be bothering with manoeuvering and flying around. You might as well use teleportation and instant disintegration weapons.