Nibb31

Getting home is far from trivial. Next step is coming back with a larger ship, set up a base, and a rover and perform crew rotations. You can also get the ISAMap Sat mod and start searching for Easter Eggs and other artifacts of interest...

Try using mainsails with orange tanks for your first stage radial tanks. In an asparagus arrangement, firing 5, then 3, then 1 engine, you can orbit some truly heavy loads.

Frontier Elite had semi-realistic space combat too, in that it was all about vector thrusting around your target, which made it really complicated... It was more like medieval jousting, where you spent most of your time changing your vector to hit the target (who luckily also wanted to hit you, otherwise it would be impossible), and the actual fight, where your vectors crossed and you were in range, only lasted a few seconds. There were no orbital gravity physics though, only vectors.

Instead or modifying the fuel tanks, modify the engines. If you give them an Isp of 10000, they will be superefficient and not need much fuel. Of course, it pretty much negates the point of the game by removing any sense of achievement, but well...

Can't you simply rotate the crew tank with Shift-A ? It is superior because it actually has a hatch and ladder. The reason it is off center is so that the hatch doesn't interfere with any landing legs, RCS thrusters or radial parachutes that you might want to attach symettrically on the capsule or just below it. It is a great idea.

Star Wars is actually a pretty bad example. The dogfights were inspired by WWII movies, and were made to look good on film, a long time ago, in a galaxy far far away, where the laws of physics are not at all the same ones we have. First of all, dogfighting is a thing of the past. Nowadays, jet fighters launch their missiles from 50 to 100km from their target. The winner is usually the plane that has the best radar system. Also, the F-22/F-35 are probably the last generation of manned fighter aircraft. Why would you risk a pilot by putting him in a plane, when you can put him in a control room and remote control a drone? Drones are becoming more capable than manned aircraft, with a longer range, longer loiter times, and they can take higher G loads in manoeuvers. This is also true for space fighters. Why would you use a manned military spacecraft to fire a weapon when the weapon can be the actual spacecraft? It is cheaper and safer to just fire a missile rather than to launch a manned spacecraft to fire the missile and return safely without being hit in return. Something like XSS-1 isn't as sexy as an X-Wing, but it would probably work better. Now, If you've played KSP, you know how hard it is to rendez-vous with a target. In our case, the target is usually a space station or a satellite, that is passive, and wants you to dock with it. Now imagine how hard it would be if the target was changing its orbit in a random direction every 5 minutes. You simply couldn't reach it at all. Modern ASAT weapons are usually air-to-air missiles that have been modified to target a stable military satellite in a predictable LEO position. It is assumed that enemy satellites will not have time to detect the weapon or to try to evade it. The best solution is probably a high-power laser system. This could potentially be able to burn a hole in a satellite in a couple of seconds. It's easier to hit the target, because you can aim for where the target is NOW rather than where it will be in 10 minutes. You don't need the power to blow up the enemy satellite. All you need is to burn a hole big enough in its solar panels to cut the power or in its tank to make it outgas and lose control. The problem is that these lasers are big and heavy and expensive, which makes them impratical to send to orbit. It is probably more efficient to fire them from an Aegis cruiser or an airborne platform, like the (cancelled) Boeing 747 YAL-1 But all in all, this would all make for a crappy movie, so lets enjoy Star Wars for what it is. Mindless entertainment.

It lacked IVA, it lacked an EVA hatch, it was textured with an alloy wheel, and it was way too small. Plus, you've got to admit that it had a bit of a silly shape, not at all aerodynamic. All in all, it had to be completely redone, so they might as well have just got rid of it, so they replaced it with the Mk1-2, which is superior in just about every way.

It uses IJKL.

@Climberfx: Can you please stop using that weird font in your posts. It makes them difficult to read. Thx

Don't upload to the forums, it's notoriously broken. Upload to something like mediafire or dropbox and post a link in the forums.

The N-1 and Energia-Buran were integrated horizontally and erected on the pad. Horizontal integration can be done in a traditional hangar and the diesel locomotives are pretty standard equipment. Vertical integration is limited by the size of the VAB, and the crawlers are expensive and difficult to maintain.

No. Many of our current laws are inherited from Roman law, which really doesn't have much to do with Christian dogma. So basically, what you are saying is that Christians behave only because they are afraid of going to Hell. Without that fear, they would steal, lie, kill and rape. Ok, but that doesn't really make we want to be friends with any Christians. I know quite a few atheists who are pretty decent people and who aren't afraid of going to Hell. You don't need fear to be a good person. I'm an Atheist, and so are my Children. They are nice kids, not because they are afraid of being punished (either by me, by society, or by some kind of divinity), but because I have taught them the Golden Rule: One should treat others as one would like others to treat oneself. There is no need for religion just to have morals. The Golden Rule is common sense.

I think that the Moon doesn't have sufficient gravity to make a gravity-assist manoeuver worthwhile. You would probably use more propellant to get to the Moon than you would save.

It depends what you want to do with a man once he's up there and for how long you want him to stay alive. I would think that Mercury-Atlas is just about as small as you could make a spacecraft if you want any chances of survival after a few hours in space. The Mercury capsule was only 1.3 tons (including the astronaut and consumables).

Sources please. Pulling numbers out of thin air doesn't have much statistical significance you know. Most of the incidents that were attributed to the mysterious causes have been debunked BTW. Some of them never happened, others were misreported, others happened in other locations, and others were easily explained accidents. It is one of the most crowded traffic areas in the World. There are literally hundreds of giant cruise ships, container ships, airliners, that travel through the area every day. Statistically, it is actually safer than other areas in the World.

Personally, I make a distinction between belief and religion. - Belief (or lack of) should really be a personal thing. Everyone should be free to have the spiritual life that they want, as long as it doesn't interfere with other peoples lives. It should never interfere with society, science, education, or government. Some people need a spiritual life, while others don't, and this should be respected. - Religions, on the other hand, were all created by Man to control the masses. There have been thousands of religions through History, each one claiming the be The One. The fact that religion is mostly something that you are born into, where the God that you worship depends totally on where and when you were born, proves that there is no universal truth in the matter. It proves that religions were created by men to create a unity for their social groups and exclude others by dehumanizing them. They are political tools of control and power that were created and developed by kings and leaders, and live on on as some kind of outdated tradition. If there was some kind of omnipotent deity that wanted us to believe in him, then it would be quite easy to arrange. All he would need to do is appear in the sky to all of us (not just some Chosen People), show everyone how powerful he is, and how he wants to be worshipped, and that would be the end of all the religious conflicts that have plagued Humanity. There would no longer be any doubt, and there would be one single universal religion. However, if there is a God, then he created me as an Atheist. Which makes him a pretty twisted personality, doesn't it? Personally, I'll go with the classical paradox that proves (to me) that there can be no such thing as an all-powerful benevolent God: If God is all-powerful, then why does he allow evil and purposeless suffering: a) He doesn't care that we suffer => In that case, we shouldn't care about him, he is not worthy of worship. He wants us to suffer = Then he's a cruel bugger, and not benevolent, therefore not worthy of worship. c) He can't stop evil/suffering => Then he's not omnipotent, therefore not worthy of worship. Now, what does scare me, is Christians in the US who are becoming more of a political power, interfering with science, education, and government.

It wasn't a decision, it was an uncontrolled deorbit due to orbital decay. Skylab did not have any propulsion to boost itself, and NASA was in a gap with no manned spaceflight capability, like it is now. There were no Saturn rockets left, pads 39A and B were being converted for the Shuttle, and the Shuttle itself was late on schedule. There was also no budget to develop an unmanned spacecraft to boost the station because at the time, it seemed stupid to spend money refitting old 60's technology in orbit, when they were designing this new Space Shuttle that could fly to orbit on a weekly basis and build a new larger station for a fraction of the cost. The plan was that Skylab would stay aloft until the second or third Shuttle flight in 1982, but NASA underestimated the orbital decay factor and Skylab's reentry occured earlier than planned in 1979. The Shuttle was also late on schedule, so there was no way they could have saved Skylab. And then there is another factor; Skylab and Shuttle didn't use the same air pressure, so they would have needed extra resources to design a specific airlock, like for ASTP. It wasn't in a great orbit for Shuttle operations and there was also a lot of outdated and broken equipment, and most of the consumables were empty and the tanks weren't all designed to be replenished.

You need pics and download links. Otherwise, the thread should go in add-on development.

There are no fairings in the stock parts. You need to download mods to have them. NovaPunch, KW Rocketry, and a few others.

The cost of keeping one Shuttle active would be more or less the same as keeping the fleet. The bulk of the cost of the Shuttle program was the workforce. You have to pay the hundreds of highly skilled technicians and engineers, the administrative support personnel, the facilities, the equipment, the computers, the spare parts, etc... every year, whether you fly once with one Orbiter or 10 times with the whole fleet. It is still much cheaper to hire a few seats on Soyuz than than to maintain one Shuttle. If they had maintained the Shuttle program, there would be no money to develop any new systems.

Yes, but only MechJeb 2 pre-release. ORDA does it too, but slightly better IMO.

Since space frigates are pure fantasy, I see nothing wrong with magic keeping them in the sky. But if you really want to, we can pretend that our balloons are made of indestructible unobtanium. Or we could just fill the star frigates with lighter than air unobtanium gas.

What you are mentioning is called the Coriolis effect, which is a side effect of artificial gravity that is induced by spinning. We don't have much experience with these ideas, because we can't simulate the various levels of artificial gravity. It is expected that the Coriolis effect caused by the spin might cause motion sickness and various undesirable effects that might be more detrimental on the organism than the benefit of the artificial gravity itself. To reduce the Coriolis effect, you want to make the diameter of the spinning vessel as large as possible and the spin rate as slow as possible.

The devs have said no, because KSP is a space simulator, not a ship simulator. But there's no reason why it can't be part of a mod pack.

Elon has stated that his plan is for both the first and second stage to return to the launchpad, although this would effectively require a lot of delta-v. They do have a launch site in Texas, which would put the ballistic trajectory somewhere in the Gulf. It might be easier boost forward towards Florida or the Keys rather than back to Texas.