Halo_003

No love for us East Coast players? Over 1k hours here.

You never notice how lame KSP's stock sun is until the sun flare mods get broken.

I would kick some butts for the ability to use ion engine clusters with RCS controls.

Derp, good call, wasn't thinking of that.

Why would they need a diameter change to use CH4+LOX? Also, do you know by chance what temperature they're using for the LOX?

Additional warning: Be safe and don't get SWAT'd if you take up the challenge here. Especially if you're in America.

That looked for the most part to be a bunch of old dudes in the video. Should be fine regardless of age, but for RC planes that big I'm pretty sure it would take some sort of license.

I should have put that in, RSS is Real Solar System for KSP. I would have attached the Excel file but I'm not sure how frankly. Very interesting! I have a few questions though: How would I run the program you made for me? (Thank you!) I have Matlab but haven't ever used it. Or, how would you do it in Excel? If for I wanted to compare switching the first stage to run on LOX/Methane, how would I figure out the amount of CH4/LOX? Is there an easy way to do that? Why does changing the mass ratio of the first to second stage affect it so much? Currently 21.3% is assigned to second stage, and the remaining 78.7% is the first stage.

Hi, this may or may not be the right place. I'm making my own fuel tanks for use in RSS, just for fun really, but I'm trying to work out the math behind it. So I have it set up in 2 stages, both LH2/LOX fueled, at a 6:1 mixture ratio. I'm assuming 95% of the volume in each stage is available volume for fuel, which is sort of a guess. I'm using 381s ASL, 455s VAC isp. So each tank is a 6' radius cylinder. Stage 1 is 140' height, stage 2 is 40' height. I figured out volumes etc, and worked all of this out in Excel, I just want a math check to see if I'm doing this right. Assumptions: ISP @ VAC: 455s ISP @ SL: 381s 95% volume of each cylinder is available for fuel storage. (referred to in Excel as Efficiency) Stage 1 height: 140' Stage 2 height: 40' Stage radii: 6' (both) Went from liters to kgs of fuel by multiplying by density of O2 and H2 (1.1417kg/L O2, 0.07078kg/L H2). Used volume ratio of SS ET to find amount in liters of each fuel per stage. (72.81% volume is H2, 27.19% volume is O2) The +5000kg, +10000kg, etc relates to payload capacity. Am I on the right track here? To simplify the math some I just used SL ISP for Stage 1, and VAC ISP for Stage 2. So this would result in a maximum payload of less than 10,000kg, or am I missing something? If yes, how could I modify it to reach a 20,000kg payload to LEO? *SS kg/L refers to the weight to volume ratio of the space shuttle ET just as a sanity check.

No worries, sorry if that came off harshly, it's just one of my earliest memories and I take it very seriously.

edit: removed

Why ask the question if you aren't prepared to hear the answers? I typically just put 4 Vernor engines at the top of the first stage.

Wouldn't the hours and days part depend on orbit inclination? If it went to a polar orbit it could be just a few hours couldn't it?

The moon will be the first one, as a proof of concept for one on Mars IMO.

IMO, priorities should be: Unity 5 Stable 64 bit Long term purpose/mission for rovers/orbital probes Refinishing rocket parts like the jet part treatment. Antennas I am totally okay with pushing antennas back, I have RemoteTech to use in the mean time. There's no mod for 64bit and Unity 5.

I'm curious what the big advantages of multiple engines (clusters) are over singular big engines. Let's say for example, Falcon 9 uses 9 Merlin D engines, Delta IV uses a single RS-68A. SpaceX explains that more give them the engine out capability, plus it lets them land. However, it introduces a lot more points of failure over the singular RS-68A in the Delta IV. What do you guys thing is better in general? Single big engine, or a cluster of smaller ones?

Ah gotcha, I thought what you were talking about deorbiting the entire ship to land on Earth between every mission. I didn't realize you were talking about landing it on other bodies, that makes a lot more sense. Unless public perception changes significantly I don't think we will ever see NTRs used on/around Earth though because of the average person's fear of anything nuclear.

Why would you want the ship to reenter at Earth? Something like the HERMES wouldn't reenter, it would stay in orbit when not transiting. Or are you referring to something like the Orion capsule here?

I have two questions. 1. How would you store antimatter? Would it basically go inside a normal fuel tank which has supermagnets added to it, ie a magnetic containment field? 2. Is there really a need for a navigation module? Ideally you want to cut weight where possible, so I think it would make sense to have a single command and control center, all of your systems are likely to be digital anyways, so have a computer control the ship's path/acceleration/systems, etc.

High contrast version: Sorry for my horrible arrows lol.

I never said it made sense. I said I could see it happening. It doesn't have to make sense to be possible, and I doubt the type of people I'm referring to would look at it that way.

I was thinking about this recently actually, I think what a Mars colony/base would offer is freedom. A lot of people are displeased with the political climate on Earth, the problems on Earth, etc. I could see early Mars colonists being like the early settlers of America, leaving to escape what they see as political/religious/whatever tyranny.

So does it make sense then to over engineer and spend extra on it in order to future proof it for more missions? My thought was if you do it right from the first time and make it upgradeable as possible, then you ultimately save money over the long run versus building a specialized ship for each and every mission. Sort of a spend $200 billion on it now, and save $400 billion over the next 10 years kind of deal. The ship in the movie actually lined up well with what I expected it to look like based on the book, except I expected more radiators and less solar panels lol.

I kid you not, at the high school I went to we spent exactly half of ONE CLASS covering the space race in Modern World History.

What a sad article, brings back some of my early childhood memories. It is fascinating though.