King Arthur

Reading that article, I have to admit I hate where humanity is going. Seriously.

Minor thing, but she's actually called Space Shuttle Endeavour, her name uses the british spelling. Great thread, looking forward to more updates!

I assume that // is the designation for a comment line in the SFS save files. Use of // for comments in code is very common and is also used in the part CFG files that KSP uses. EDIT: Ninja'd.

It would indeed be nice to see something like the above in KSP.

1. I am uncertain as to what Delta-L is, Wiki's article on the subject at least seems unrelated to space manuevering. 2. As far as I know, yes reaction wheels consume electricity because they are powered by electric motors. 3. The "unlimited Delta-V" idea is on the assumption that the reaction wheels do not need desaturating; of course as you've said real reaction wheels do need to be desaturated at some point, so the whole "unlimited Delta-V" thing is more of a principle by itself.

^ Just for sake of clarification, I've never said I was "right" (Mercy brought up the "correct/incorrect" thing, so bring that up with him), I only said that I expect SpaceX and co to go south once the ISS is gone, and I am completely open to being proven wrong on this count if it wasn't obvious. Personally, I hope SpaceX and co will succeed as a commercial business and stay around for a long time since competition is a good thing, but as of right now one has to admit that they don't have much going for them at the moment besides their planned trips to the ISS. The current LEO delivery market is utterly dominated by the ULA and ESA, and other (government-backed!) space agencies like JAXA who have tried to make headway into this market have found the amount of entrenchment that ULA/ESA has built up to be quite the hurdle to overcome.

Pretty much this. While I've always been a space nerd thanks to my dad, KSP gave me an easy-to-understand crash course on orbital mechanics and what terms like "apoaps" and "periaps" meant. Very fun stuff to learn about!

"Roger roll, Discovery." Possibly one of my favorite lines from a launch of a space shuttle. Or in other words, just roll on your way up. If your rocket can't take a simple 90-degree rotation manuever you are doing something wrong.

As an avid LoL player, that was uncalled for. Anyway, the one good thing that came of this is that Riot was prompt and clear in explaining the situation (unlike Sony's PSN debacle, etc.), so while it is unfortunate this event happened I also respect Riot for being honest about what happened.

The ISS has simply not managed to grab hold of peoples' hearts like other successful space projects have done. When NASA announced that they were cancelling the planned Hubble Space Telescope servicing mission following the Columbia disaster, which would have most certainly doomed the HST given the situation it was in, everyone everywhere caused an uproar that finally made NASA reconsider that decision which culminated in STS-125 by Space Shuttle EndeavourAtlantis. On the other hand, absolutely nobody seemed to care that the USA lost its only direct way of accessing the ISS with the retirement of the Space Shuttle, and I daresay if the ISS were to be decomissioned today not many people would care even then. So already the ISS has lost the battle of earning the attention and adoration of the public. Don't get me wrong, I fully envision that certain forms of space exploration that have proven highly successful, such as space telescopes, interplanetary satelites, and extraterrestrial rovers (among other things) will continue and might even see funding boosts as they have always managed to capture the eyes and hearts of the public. The Great Observatories (Hubble, Spitzer, and Chandra), Kaguya, Hayabusa, Curiosity, Spirit/Opportunity, Voyager, Pioneer, Kepler, New Horizons, the list of highly successful, adored, and respected space exploration missions and projects go on, but unfortunately the ISS is not one of them.

Once the ISS gets decomissioned in 2020 (OPSEK is another story, but I suspect it'll get killed by Russia around the time of ISS decomissioning due to lack of funding), I don't see any successor or deriative/spinoff station (both government and commercial) ever getting into space again any time soon. We're already facing the very legitimate question of whether the ISS has been worth the money, let alone human presence in LEO, and if we cannot adequately justify the ISS then we most certainly cannot justify building more stations in LEO. As a consequence of the ISS going out and no justifiable successive stations foreseeable, I also fully expect companies like SpaceX and Orbital Science to wimper and die out since the only reason they are doing great at the moment is because they are being asked to haul cargo (and possibly people) to the ISS and nothing more. Satelite contracts? ULA (Delta IV/Atlas V) and ESA (Ariane 5) have those markets locked down with an iron fist if you ask me.

Research on what the Apollo 11 monument is perhaps? It's symbolic to us humans, but to kerbals that thing must look like what we'd feel if we found some alien monoliths. The Mun is also situated ideally to act as an outpost between LKO and HKO/deep space, Minmus is too far and LKO tends to be too busy for a border outpost.

Perhaps it's something that's so much in demand there's no pressing need for more debate? Either way, I would love to see this realized so my docking-OCD will be slain once and for all.

It's not so much "wrong" so much as it is that RCS is terribly inefficient and ineffective at thrusting inside atmospheres; it's sort of like using an LV-N at ground level on Kerbin, crap thrust and crap fuel efficiency.

4 ion engines were equipped on Hayabusa, which suffered technical and mechanical problems (which were addressed in various ways) during the mission. Hayabusa also suffered problems with its RCS thrusters as well as reaction wheels (the wheels being made by the same company that made the wheels on Kepler...), though ultimately she made it back to Earth with her mission completed successfully.

I would launch a nuke tug in a "pull" configuration to the station and then haul it to munar orbit to act as your station there. The monolithic (and thus sturdy) nature of the station makes it ideal for long-distance hauling.

As an amateur web coder/developer, "getting started with wordpress" saddens me greatly.

The ISS, which is a "manned spacecraft", uses both reaction wheels (more accurately CMGs) and RCS thrusters for attitude control. So the answer to the original question is yes, we do use reaction wheels and similar control systems on manned spacecraft. As for Apollo, I can't answer that unfortunately as I lack the information to give a proper and accurate answer. =(

I wasn't aware the Salyuts only had 2 engines, haha. Learned something new! I really have to get around to finding more info on the thrusters that the Salyuts, Mir, and Zvezda have, the passing mention of them on Wiki clearly has not done them justice

To my knowledge, Salyut 6, Salyut 7, Mir, and the Zvezda SM on the ISS all have thrusters on them to propel themselves/the station they're a part of. I too wasn't aware they had thrusters until I read about them on Wiki once upon a time, one can hardly see the thrusters in the photos of the spacecrafts! I suggest using the new radial Ant engines introduced with 0.21 to replicate them, in a 4-way symmetry arrangement clipped vertically into the shallow Rockomax adapter, the thrust the radial Ants provide is just perfect for the occasion.

The short answer is you need more struts. I always make sure to thoroughly strut my launch vehicles and I've never had them RUD themselves under both manual and MechJeb control. My current heavy launcher which has a max payload of ~80t to 75km*75km LKO (standard 40~60 to 150km*150km LKO) even has a perfect safety record, not a single failed launch to date.

Windows 8? Potentially great on tablets, utterly pathetic crap on desktops/laptops.

^ Text-field input is provided by MechJeb, so at least that is already possible if one doesn't have some vehement opposition to MJ.

I'd prefer that screenshots get saved under the individual save directories or at least organize the screenshots under the current directory by save game.

Until there is an alternative reliable way to immediately cancel an inpending RUD, kill spin forces resulting from phantom forces/rounding errors, or soundly killing rotation manually (SAS and MJ's Kill Rot are both crude at killing rotation) I can't say I'd like this to be implemented. Also, regarding time warping to kill rotation being a "cheat": The only person you're cheating is yourself.