codepoet

Just tipping in to say thank you to @Papa_Joe for keeping CLS on the road and up to date with 1.1. Also I am delighted to see that kerbalism is making use of the CLS concept to link various life support / environmental factors to the design of ships and stations, which is something I always hoped would happen. I remember the old days of sticking a monoprop tank on top of a mark2 capsule before topping it off with a docking port. These days no-one with even think of doing such a thing!

I just wanted to chip in and thank you for your work on this mod.I am so pleased to see CLS being used as I always hoped it would be - to enhance mods that deal with life support, psychology, comfort, environmental factors and so on. This is some awesome work. Thanks

I was wondering about the interstage. As I recall on earlier flights (v1.1?) the interstage fairing was expendable, and I recall that one made the news when it washed up on the Scilly isles. However please photos of the recent barge unloading show the interstage still attached to the first stage. Am I reading that correctly?

So I have always wondered about this - does the re-entry burn occur to slow the rocket down before it enters the atmosphere, in order to reduce the effects of re-entry, or does it occur during reentry to that the propellent gases impact with the atmospheric gases ahead of the rocket protecting the rocket from being struck by the atmosphere at high velocity?

Oh. OK, I will get ti fixing it when I have a day off. Thanks for the heads up.

So there is nothing that needs fixing? Good stuff - carry on everyone

I am a bit behind the times. I did not realise we were talking about a new part. I am sure that PapaJoe will be along to update this mod as he feels is best in due course.

Way back in the original CLS thread (I think it might even have been the original WIP/development CLS thread when it was first being cooked up the first ever debate about what should be passable and what should not suggested that the Mk1 had an integrated heatshield and therefore should not be passable. Take a look back at the threads and you will see the debates that were had back then. (linked from the top of this thread)

Sounds like a silly argument about strengthening the legs. It seems that on this recent landing (jason3) the leg did not break, but failed to operate correctly. Now it occurs to me that the really interesting question is - did the leg fail to operate correctly because it was somehow damaged due to the effects of reentry? That would be an issue for SpaceX. They know that the legs can work from the grasshopper tests (or whatever grasshopperv2 was called) However those tests did not simulate the effects of reentry on the legs. We also know that is is possible for the legs to survive reentry because on the last two flights 7 out of 8 of the legs operated correctly following reentry, However perhaps they need to adjust the design to mitigate a reentry effect that has so far caused a 12% failure rate. This is a specific example of the whole "what is the point of inspection of the recovered stage?" debate. They will want to inspect the recovered stages to see where components are affected by flight and reentry in particular that will result in a elevated probability of a component failure, even if that failure has not yet occurred and cause the loss of a stage. By adjusting the design to reduce the chance of failure they make the vehicle more reliable. It is way more subtle than just "fire it up again, does it work?"

Thanks for this.I will try to get it fixed sometime, but can't make promises that it will be super-soon.

I wonder if anyone is aware of a dataset that would allow us to plot the total annual mass uplifted to LEO globally each year. I would be interested to see how that has changed over time.

Surely after a while the data that is gathered from post flight inspection will allow the development of a maintenance and service plan that means total inspection is not required. So consider your car. The manufacturers provide a service plan that say how often the oil should be changed, how frequently to check the brakes, when the cam-belt needs to reset / replaced etc etc. You do not strip down the car and rebuild it every time you drive, however you also know that if you do not take you car in for regular serving it will eventually fail. When you do take it in for servicing the engineers only do the checks and replace the parts that need doing - based the data that has been gathered from previous inspections. Now you might well be thinking "but this is a rocket - if my car fails I just have to wait for a tow, if this fails someone could die." However this stuff is all done to maintain aeroplanes at the moment, and it works. With enough experience and data I am sure it could be similarly done with rockets in order to manage the risks to the same sort of levels that the aviation industry does. I have said it before, but I think that SpaceX and only will really hit the big time when they start manufacturing rocket cores that they sell to others who operate them. If service and maintenance has become routine as I described above by then, then that work can be quantified and carried out by an agent too. Other parties might well get into the business of owning and operating the launch and landing pads. Such a scenario would really loosen up the market, and free SpaceX and their competitors to really develop the technology rather than worry about mission control.

v0.1.2 released. Release History: 0.1.2 * Rebuilt for KSP 1.0.5 * New control box model (Thanks Skalou) * Semi transparant markers (Thanks Skalou)

I am sorry that you had some build and packaging problems. I had a little packaging script that I used to use, but it never got into github, so it did not occur to me that you did not have it, Anyway it sounds like you I found your own solution, so we are all sorted for the future.

Because Skalou is awesome and has created a fab model for the part for this mod, I am going to give this mod a bit of a shake to get the dust out of it and make a release for 1.0.5. Thanks so much for the support. It might be a couple of weeks though as I can't see when I am going to next have a day off (worked on my day off this week, with no less than 6 funerals to deal with!).

[quote name='Papa_Joe']When I took over support of CLS, there were pull requests for certain parts. in some, there were questions regarding realism and playability. I do not recall if these applied to you, but If a pull request was open for awhile and codepoet had not acted on it, I chose to "leave it be". I will contact codepoet regarding the outstanding pull requests and determine if any action is needed. Thanks![/QUOTE] Don't feel restricted by me - if Papa-Joe thinks that the pull is good, then I hope he will pull it. If I remember, something were not pulled immediately because I suggested that the contributor ask the mod developed if they would like to support CLS natively. But if that has not happened then bu all means ship the configs with CLS itself.

I think this is a debate that has been had right from the first couple of pages of the first CLS WIP thread when it was being developed - balancing "realism" with playability and providing options for player choice. I was always an advocate of the idea that the modder who produced the part in question should be the one to make decisions about what they intended to be passable. However players are the ones who have to play the game, and if they want to play it differently, then perhaps they should be able to. I don't suppose there is a perfect solution - everyone wants kerbal "their way". There are things I would like to be different about the base game and loads of other mods, but that does not mean that is what everyone else wants.

Have some rep - 'cos you're awesome.

It is not the amount of time from the event - the problem is presenting an alternative outcome. It would be hard on the bereaved to have an alternative reality where their loved ones were saved playing out on cinemas. This however is all way off topic.

Given that in reality they all died, I am not sure that such a film would be seen as being in the best of taste.

I understood that the CRS contracts were based on the amount of upmass. So NASA do not loose out if the upmass of the vehicle is small as the contract would require more launches. A more capable vehicle would be able to complete the contract with fewer launches, but that does not give NASA more upmass. Correct me if I am wrong.

Oh yes, I am sure that all of the various capsules could be launched on top of a variety of boosters (in a very kerbal way ), but of course the details are in the work to develop the hardware, launch site support etc to make it possible. The point is that Orbital will have done that work, so they will be ready to go with a ULA or their own booster.

I wonder if Orbital are going to end up with a system that can launch on either their own booster or a ULA booster. That might be a lay of redundancy that would be attractive to NASA (if one of the launchers is grounded they can still fly using the other) and could be an unexpected silver lining from the current failure.

This looks like just what I need. Is it possible to create notes associated with each craft? Can notes be authored in the VAB? What I want to be able to do is to record various optimised ascent parameters etc for each craft that I have designed, so when I use it I do not ned to remember the best way to launch it.

I have been wanting to use KWRocketry with RO. I installed both via CKAN, but the nodes on the engines do not seem to be in the correct locations. Is this a known issue? Is it an RO thing or a KWRocketry thing?