King Arthur

I point to the Hubble Space Telescope (and the other Great Observatories), Kaguya (aka SELENE), Hayabusa, the trio of Mars Rovers Spirit/Opportunity/Curiosity, Deep Horizons, Voyager 1 and 2, Cassini-Huygens, and the many other robotic/unmanned missions past, present, and future to tell you that people can in fact be inspired by space exploration even today. I for one grew up seeing the beautiful and mesmerizing pictures of the universe taken by Hubble and I was heartbroken when NASA said they were not going to service her following the Columbia disaster, but you know what happened then? Everyone, from school kids to Average Joes to space enthusiasts to scientists and engineers all around the world, all clamored for NASA to service her, and NASA finally decided to go for it because we collectively came to the conclusion that it was "worth the risk". Risk aversion? The best contingency plan NASA had was to send another shuttle (Atlantis!) which very likely would have the same problems as Endeavour if any problems occured during Endeavour's mission to Hubble, but NASA went for it anyway because Hubble was worth saving, and today Hubble is returning the favor by bringing us many more stunning pictures that continue to inspire us. Do you want a non-US example? I point to Kaguya and Hayabusa. For the course of their missions, they were center-stage in Japanese news and the stunning HD videos of Earth taken from lunar orbit by Kaguya was the hot topic of the day. When Hayabusa encountered hardware problems regarding her ion engines that might possibly jeopardize the entire mission everyone was worried, and everyone was utterly jubilated when Hayabusa successfully completed its mission and came back safely to Earth; she also gave us a final, parting gift in the form of a B&W picture of the Earth that she took right before re-entry, the picture couldn't download completely in time and it came out incomplete, but I'll be damned if that wasn't one of the most thought-provoking pictures of the Earth I've seen yet. So yes, people can be inspired by space. We want to explore space. We desire to learn about the universe. The question is how we go about it, and there is no denying that robotic/unmanned missions have so far been just as inspiring and thought-provoking as manned missions to the Moon have been. EDIT: Oh, and remember Voyager 1? Just recently Voyager 1 sent back data about the magnetic fields outside of our solar system that was surprisingly not how we expected the magnetic fields out there to behave. To think that Voyager 1, launched so long ago, is still sending back information about our universe that we didn't know is just mindblowing and amazing.

Decouplers/separators are sturdier than the senior docking port and also quicker to operate because you can stage them (latter is a non-issue if you action group the docking port, of course).

Taking my picture above as an example, in that picture I am "behind" my target (the station of whose orbit is highlighted) because I am located physically behind my target relative to my direction of travel (in this and in most cases a counter-clockwise orbit). To better visualize this, take a stick and hold it straight in front of you with arms outstretched. Pretend that the tip of the stick is your target, and that you are the orbiting body (such as Kerbin for example), and then spin yourself counter-clockwise. Now pretend that there are a lot of other ships and whatnot orbiting around you, anything that is to the right of the stick is "behind" your target and anything to the left of the stick is "ahead" of your target. Amusingly enough, what MJ does there is in fact precisely what you need to do to get a rendezvous setup and accomplished. The "218km" orbit you are propelled to is the phasing orbit and that is MJ choosing a different orbit from your target's orbit so that you and your target fly at different speeds, flying at different speeds means that you (and MJ) can then plan a Hohmann transfer where it is most appropriate to get a rendezvous. Your phasing orbit doesn't need to be 218km, that's just what MJ calculated would take the least amount of time overall to get you to a rendezvous with your target. The "+/-20km" phasing orbit I mentioned earlier was simply my take on the phasing orbit and both ways (among others) are equally legitimate in their executions. The "flopping back and forth" that MJ does when killing relative velocity is basically MJ pointing your ship towards or against your direction of travel relative to your target, and is also what you need to do to reduce your relative velocity to zero. While MJ might be inefficient with fuel consumption, its rendezvous autopilot is something that MJ highly excels at performing with great accuracy and safety, and everything MJ does there has a logical reason behind it. It might not appear to make much sense initially, but once you understand what MJ is doing there you'll realize that MJ is a lot smarter than it lets on.

I do apologize for the busy-ness of that image, I took that picture from my save game (only one that has ships flying) which was the quickest where I could demonstrate a Hohmann transfer. I did try and clear out as much clutter as I could. Regarding the question of whether my target will be there, notice the "Intersect" blips near the apoaps of my Hohmann transfer and how it says "1.1km", that means that when I am at that point in my orbit my target will be 1.1km away from me. With dilligent placement of when to start the Hohmann transfer you can get that interception distance down to 100m or less.

Pictured is a Hohmann transfer that MJ calculated for me (I was too lazy to do it by hand ), with my ship orbiting at 150km and my target (a space station) orbiting at 300km, both circular and equatorial. Once you perform the Hohmann transfer, your orbit will be roughly following the predicted orbit in the dashed line and you will notice that my orbit crosses paths with my target's orbit somewhere near my new apoapsis (if you were to start from a higher phasing orbit rather than the lower phasing orbit I am in this would be your periapsis instead). What I and MJ do following the Hohmann burn is that we coast to the new apoaps/peripas and then burn there to reduce relative velocity to the target, done right I (as well as MJ) can bring my ship to a stop very close to my target from where I can then move on to docking or whatever.

I fly most of my rendezvous maneuvers on autopilot with MJ 2 now ever since starting a new save in 0.21, but back in 0.20 and MJ 1.9.8 (MJ back then didn't have a rendezvous autopilot!) I flew all my rendezvous manuevers manually by hand and managed to nail most of them once I got the basics down. What I did was the following: 1. Align inclination/plane. 2. Get into a circular phasing orbit that is 20km +/- from my target's orbit depending on whether I am ahead or behind the target. If ahead, 20km higher; if behind, 20km below. 3. Close to within 200km of my target to prepare for setting up a Hohmann transfer (note I am still in my circular +/-20km phasing orbit). 4. Place and perform a Hohmann transfer at the appropriate point in my orbit via manuever nodes (I eyeballed this, only thing to do here was practice; also note that I am well past and closer than the 200km distance mark from my target now) such that the transfer places my closest approach with my target at 100m~500m (yes, I was precise about this). 5. Coast to my new apoaps or periaps that intercepts my target's orbit following Hohmann transfer burn. 6. When I am 2.5km out from my target (read: when the physics engine loads on my target!), I burn pro/retrograde relative to my target as appropriate to reduce my relative velocity to my target to 1/100 of my distance (ie: 2km out? 20m/s. 500m out? 5m/s). 6a. I continue reducing my velocity appropriately at 100m and then 10m distance intervals as I slowly close in on my target, I also performed midcourse corrections as neccesary with RCS and/or engines. 7. At roughly 100m out, I reduce relative velocity to 0 and then initiate my docking manuevers. When I was in my last days playing 0.20, anxiously waiting for 0.21 to come out and also move up to MJ2, I was performing rendezvous manuevers that sometimes placed me <50~80m out when I had finished and had got the whole thing down to a routine. I let MJ fly my rendezvous nowadays, but it feels confident to know that in dire times I can always take manual control and fly safe; and having learned all this myself, I can say with confidence that everyone can in fact learn to rendezvous if they invest honest time and effort into it. EDIT: And if all else fails, have MechJeb plan and perform a rendezvous with a target. What MJ2 does is roughly what I was doing by hand in 0.20 except with more priority on lowering time spent rendezvousing rather than saving on fuel. MJ can teach you what matching inclinations is, what a Hohmann transfer is, what a phasing orbit is, and how you reduce relative velocity to zero better than any video or written tutorial can if you have an open mind and are willing to watch and learn from what it's doing.

Actually, the original date for decomissioning of the ISS was slated for 2016 but was pushed back to 2020 to make up for the severe delays the ISS suffered during construction. It's anyone's guess whether the ISS can garner enough public, political, and financial support to keep flying beyond 2020 though, assuming the station is still spaceflight-worthy. Many conditions have to be met and achieved before manned spaceflight becomes actually practical, some of these would be: * Inventing cheaper, safer, more economical and reliable ways to lift payloads (both manned and unmanned) into space. * Inventing lighter, more economical, more sustainable, possibly even self-sustaining means of life support for crewed spacecraft. * Inventing faster means of travel through space. * Graduating spaceflight technology in general from a "every launch is a test flight" stage to "every launch is routine" like commercial air travel is today. Astronauts, scientists, and engineers all around still say spaceflight is not routine despite us launching so many rockets annually and for so long, and they are completely right. * Finding a justifiable reason for human presence in space (sadly, the "Earth is not permanent" argument is not noteworthy enough for most of us). We are constantly proven to ourselves that robots are more than adequate for exploring space and performing scientific research there, and quite possibly even in terms of industrial endeavors in the future. I am under no notion that the Earth is permanent, if we humans don't manage to "kill off" the Earth and/or we manage to live long enough then ultimately the sun will eat Earth whole as it undergoes its last stages of death turning itself into a red giant. However, I am also under no false belief that we have what it takes technologically, financially, politically, and willfully to be shooting off such utopian ideas like a Moon colony or Sci-Fi-style large-scale space stations or manned missions to Mars and beyond. Take the ISS for example. The ISS took the combined technological and financial prowess of the world's greatest spacefaring nations/blocs (USA (NASA), Russia (Roscosmos), Japan (JAXA), and EU (ESA)) to launch and construct the ISS, and we still only manage to keep just six people (and this is under ideal conditions) living mid-term in LEO with a heavy reliance on resupplying from Earth. Meanwhile, we continually find it hard to keep justifying why we keep sending people into space when our life support system technologies are so inefficient and ineffective, our launch vehicles so primitive on the grand scale of things, and when manned spaceflight can do absolutely nothing that unmanned robotic missions can do already with substantially greater safety and reliability combined with far cheaper costs all around. In fact, I bet that if we took the time to develop robots capable of handling and monitoring scientific experiments onboard the station (and this is actually relatively easy to do compared to landing rovers on Mars and doing science with them), we would likely quickly find that we don't need to keep a crew of humans on the station at all. Overall, we lack the justification, the technology, and the finances to sustain any substantial form of human spaceflight, and with the advent of how successful robotic spaceflights have been we also no longer have the will to send humans to space because of one single question: Why?

Try turning off your lights, they look pretty but they also stress the physics engine more than you'd think.

Not at all, you have all the information you need for full instrument docking in a stock environment: * Relative velocity to target. * Distance to target. * Angle, orientation, and your vector relative to your target on the navball. Basically, line up your ship so that it is parallel to your target docking port, line up your target reticle and your prograde vector, keep speed under 0.3m/s, and go in for docking while performing minor RCS thruster burns to correct any deviations along the way. I've gotten to a point where I fly by the navball even in complete daylight, trying to eyeball everything visually is just too inaccurate.

Three words: Lack. Of. Practicality. We can dream all we want, but if something isn't worth the money (and manned spaceflight has steadily proven itself through the years that it isn't, unfortunately) then it simply isn't happening.

I've had entire stations literally topple over from phantom forces/rounding errors before around the Mun, which is vastly different from the seeming "orbital spin" you describe that is actually quite normal.

Space Station Archangel (300km*300km equatorial Low Kerbin Orbit): Space Station Artemis (150km*150km equatorial Low Munar Orbit): Space Station Diva (60,000km*60,000km equatorial High Kerbin Orbit waiting for Duna transfer window, docked with resupply vessel at bottom that has since undocked and departed): Space Station Diana (en route to Minmus, transfer/ascent stage (orange tank) located aft which will be disposed of later in the flight): Eclair Space Telescope (700km*700km equatorial Low Kerbin Orbit): Chronologically, Archangel was launched and constructed first on essentially a blank check (and lots of public Kerbal support!) to serve as the primary base of operations for all vessels, stations, and satelites operating in Kerbin's SOI. Archangel is now also home to the Kaguya I and Shizuku I manned Munar orbiter and lander respectively, which are the first manned craft to achieve those feats in this space program. Original Munar mission plans called for Kaguya I to be splashed down on Kerbin and Shizuku I to be abandoned in Munar orbit, but Kerbals all around demanded that the two vessels be preserved in commemoration of their achievements and KSC found them a new home as permanent station modules on the Archangel. Artemis was launched and constructed in LKO shortly after Archangel was finished and was destined to be the new (and first!) Munar station, along with a mission objective of being cheaper to construct than Archangel; ultimately Artemis was roughly 50% the total cost of Archangel sporting somewhat reduced (but still impressive!) capabilities. Diva was launched and constructed after the Artemis was finished with the primary goal of traveling to Duna with a 5-man crew and payloads designed to build up on technologies useful for future interplanetary travel, having finished construction she is currently awaiting her transfer window in HKO (the high orbit chosen to save on fuel for the transfer burn to Duna). Diva herself will remain at Duna following current mission plans, the 5-man crew is currently slated to return to Kerbin using the docked Saber-class orbiter and one of the two landers (Saber can only accomodate 3 while a lander can accomodate the remaining 2 crew members). Diana was designed as a monolithic station (drawing inspiration for her design from the real-world Salyut stations) to save on cost, unlike the modular design of the three prior stations, and was just recently launched and currently en route to Minmus following a rendezvous with a Saber-class orbiter carrying her crew of 3. The Diana featured in the screenshot and currently on its way to Minmus is actually the second iteration of the station, the first Diana suffered RUD due to a lack of enough struts and excessive thrusting of the engines; fortunately this incident did not result in loss of her crew and the problem areas were quickly addressed and the station relaunched which brings us to the present. The Eclair Space Telescope was designed and launched in one piece as this space program's first (and as of yet only) space telescope to grace Kerbin's sky. While technically not a station, it is classified as one by the Tracking Center and the EST itself was designed with in-flight servicing in mind featuring a docking port for visiting spacecraft to dock with. The scientific finds by the EST have served to enlighten and inspire Kerbals everywhere not unlike the real-world Hubble Space Telescope that the EST drew inspiration from.

Unfortunately, absolutely nobody has a single clue what we're even developing SLS for at the moment. The goal keeps jumping back and forth between LEO, Mars, Moon, or an asteroid, and there doesn't appear to be a definitive "Kennedy moment" coming any time soon where we firmly decide on something and stick to it. Pardon the offtopic, but I felt the question needed answering as it's a legitimately very important question that those of us here who are Americans should be asking ourselves.

I've noticed that the Mun is excessively prone to rounding errors and phantom forces on objects in its orbit for some odd and as-of-yet unknown reasons, stations spontaenously spinning at the Mun aren't an unusual occurence at least from my experience. Here's what I suggest you to do mitigate it: 1. Turn SAS on after orienting your station. 2. Dock quickly but safely, you don't want to take time with docking here lest the station starts spinning again.

Given the slew of problems with reaction wheels from that same manufacturer that NASA has experienced or was witness to, as well as having problems with control authority systems failing in general (read: Hubble Space Telescope gyroscopes), one would think NASA could do something right for a change. Alas, I guess the one good thing to come out of this is that remaining funding meant for Kepler can be released and rerouted to other projects once Kepler is officially killed off. Sad to see it go, but with no way to get astronauts there to service Kepler (and I'm sure Kepler wasn't designed with in-flight servicing in mind anyway), unlike the cases with Hubble, the only remaining choices are to either scrap the mission or try and drive a car that have two broken wheel assemblies.

Note: Assume all my orbits are circular unless I state otherwise. My LKO parking orbits vary from 80km to 150km depending on the weight of the payload and mission objectives, my 150km parking orbit is by far the busiest space lane and it's also riddled with spent ascent stages and fairings that Jeb could make a space junkyard. My space stations orbit at 200km while undergoing construction before going to their final parking orbits or other-worldly destinations. Space Station Archangel, the primary space station orbiting Kerbin and watching over all Kerbin-based vessels (including other stations) and satelites, is orbiting at 300km. The Eclair Space Telescope is orbiting at 700km. Personally I consider anything between 80km to 1000km to be LKO. The 75km orbit is far too close to the atmosphere so that orbit is very seldomly used unless I am launching some very unusually heavy payloads.

My primary go-to heavy launcher (which has lifted in excess of 60t~80t at times) is composed of a core comprising 1x Skipper + 6x LV-T30s and six asparagus boosters comprising 1x Skipper and 3x LV-T30s. The Skipper is flat out amazing.

@flyin_ruski: I can at least verify that the F-35 is in fact seeing significant delays and/or problems in development of its software, it's mentioned everywhere (Aviation Week, for example). I can't say one way or the other on the other problems mentioned by runboy398, but I'm going to assume the worst (it is the F-35 we're talking about here!) and assume the others are correct as well.

I didn't read through the entire topic, so pardon me if I'm repeating anything here. Is KSP for an older audience? Nay, I say KSP is a game for players of all ages. You only required to learn the basics of orbital mechanics and physics (and maybe some math) to be able to play KSP in a meaningful way, and the only skill/trait you are required to have are patience and perseverence.

The Mk1-2 Command Pod is an obvious reference to the Apollo Command Module, while the Command Pod Mk1 is a reference to the Mercury capsules. It really felt at-home seeing them when I first started KSP.

The only orbits I try to keep debris-free are those orbits used by my space stations, otherwise I just leave all my spent ascent stages in whatever LKO parking orbit I enter into. Currently breaking 100+ flying debris and going up at an astronomical rate.

The underlying cause is actually with KSP itself. You will notice if you fly the manuever node yourself that the node will start to wobble around towards the end of the burn (starting from ~0.3m/s left as you said), MJ is simply trying to follow the node as it wobbles due to reasons completely unrelated to MJ itself.

Actually, following the inclusion of an IVA for the Hitchhiker in 0.21, you can in fact use a Hitchhiker as a point of reference for controlling a vessel by IVAing to one of the crew members inside. Much like how IVAing to a crew member inside a manned command pod switches control reference to that pod, the same thing happens with the Hitchhiker.

Generally speaking, most orbital manuevers are better done at a higher altitude if you're flying there as the associated slower velocities mean you spend significantly less dV than you would at lower orbits.

Except that the only time I actually got confused with the docking ports was when I first got KSP (it was 0.20.2 then) and was just beginning to understand how docking worked. I can't speak for everyone obviously, but since then I've had not one in-reverse senior docking port because I actually pay attention to the parts I'm laying down.