lajoswinkler

Kron 2 has successfully accelerated beyond 2nd cosmic speed and now it's leaving Kerbin. 7 Kerbals aboard, eating snacks and pushing random buttons.

Oh wow, this is... wow.

Finally, the ship was assembled. As I use FAR I still haven't accustomed to, my carrier rocket was overpowered. Rendezvous before establishing orbit was planned and executed manually. During the coasting phase, I've transferred the leftovers from the boosters into the central first stage, and upon arriving to the ship there was still a bit of fuel left so I've dumped it to facilitate docking. Korolev cross. End configuration. All what's left to do is to strut it and use the second stage to push it some 750 m/s.

It's gonna be mighty interesting when it blows up.

Where is that implication? I don't remember any. Looks more like your wishful thinking. Present the facts. Too bad I can't find the info on this. Even since the imbeciles restarted the franchise and added pixie dust trails behind ships, and Google became a smartass which thinks it knows better than the person searching, it's quite difficult to find it. I recall very well (and I've checked it by watching TNG), those trails vanish out of existence as soon as the ship drops out of warp. I've never seen those trails coalesce back into background stars. As there is such thing as interstellar particles and they're hitting the warp bubble or the shields or whatever imaginary thing there is in the series, ionization is expected given the huge energies the situation would carry. That, plus the fact the stars can't visibly move at the speeds involved. What you did was a strawman argument. You've presented the idea that those trails are stars, and then you attacked it and condemned the memorable part of the franchise as something stupid. When explaining stuff, first pick up the facts, then draw conclusions, not backwards.

You've forgot that any atmosphere gradually dissolves with height. 0.3 Pa on average, yes. That plus the integration approach would show that what NASA says is correct. There can be no stopping with New Horizons even if it had a shield.

Those light strikes were never advertised as stars, but specks of interstellar dust glowing because of ionization. So, a straw man you have made. *yoda*

Really??? I thought there was someone screaming inside while holding the camera! (°o°)

This is an amazing footage. I can't recall anything like this in this detail. Pay attention to the camera's compensation to the extreme brightness of the ionized trail. Earth below, which is very bright, is almost washed away when the camera compensates, and even then, parts of the trail are burned white, indicating sensor saturation.

What I meant to say was that if the atmosphere was thick enough to allow such aerobraking, we'd figure it out by star occultations. We know it does have a very tenuous atmosphere, yes. Hopefully we'll see more nitrogen clouds than on Triton. More like a bit above 90 km. There is no way a probe going as fast as New Horizons could get caught in such small planet's orbit using such tenuous atmosphere. It would certainly deflect its trajectory by a small amount and it would bleed off a fraction of its relative speed, but that's it. We have no means of stopping the probe, unfortunately.

Nope. Pluto can't have anything more than a whispy atmosphere and that's during the "summer". Pluto is very small and thus it can't hold it. Also, very cold so most stuff is just frozen on the ground. If its atmosphere was of any use for aerobraking, we'd probably detect it by star occultations. What Pluto must have is something similar to Triton. Few pascals at most, during summer. You can't aerobrake a passing probe with that. It would take a long time before a low orbiting probe would decay let alone an object with tremendous speed.

Good idea with xenon, but isn't Kerbal xenon denser, just like anything else in their universe? (except styrofoam asteroids)

I've finally designed the ship and started launching its parts into orbit. This rocket carried the command module and the core module for the centrifuge together with Jebediah, Bob and Bill. Bob strutted the crucial part of the ship to avoid any surprises. You can see Eve with Gilly, then Duna and Moho in the distance. Next two launches were the ones that added centrifuge's arms. A Moho lander has been added, too. It is equipped with many useful instruments which will be left on the surface. It is a composite vehicle, with a descending and ascending part. I've actually docked it while the ship was spinning at 0.5°/s, just like in Interstellar, but at a much lower rate of rotation. For some reason the accelerometers don't register the spin, but the spinning is perfect. Maximum speed, determined by eyeballing, was 45 rpm. Next launch will be the largest one for this ship and it will carry the nuclear thermal propulsion module.

There was such curve with me, too. You'll love it, I'm sure of it.

I'm well aware of how telescopes work, and retinas, too. As I've said, with out own pair of eyes, nebulas are boring. Considering their images are what people think of space, space really mostly looks boring.

These photos (false color IR and enhanched visible) are very cool, but it's important to use a cold shower - the nebula doesn't look like that do a human eye. Using our vision, nebulas are usually so dim they're invisible, and already pale, featureless, ghastly puffs or blobs. The closer you are to them, the less visible they are because they're so incredibly large. From far away and using technology we see them as something opaque and colorful. In reality, you couldn't even see you're in one. They are that big and better than any vacuum we can produce on Earth. Space isn't that nice.

I don't use CityLights part of EVE. They flicker and ruin my framerate. Clouds are enough for me.

Maybe not. http://arxiv.org/abs/1103.6140

Second ship is being made, this one with a serious addon - a centrifuge. Bill is sick and tired of having to exercise every day. Destination is polar orbit of Moho, so the emphasis is on the thrust to weight ratio. There is obviously no heat shield, so a great deal of mass is gone. The centrifuge system has a lower mass than the heatshield. This is a prototype, but most of the changes will be with the propulsion module. Kron 2 will be assembled in orbit from 5 parts: 1) core module (future station above Moho) and command module 2) propulsion module (with detachable engine/s) 3) & 4) centrifuge arms 5) lander+ascent vehicle; a small rover is optional There are accelerometers on the centrifuge arms to measure the G-force. Special thing about Kron 2 is that once the mission reaches the end it will detach and leave the centrifuge and then dock to the propulsion module to get home. A great deal of ÃŽâ€v will be saved that way, and Moho will get a large orbital station. The lander will dock to the station.

Too late for that. Old installation is completely gone.

FFS, enough with this "necroing!" BS... Are we supposed to open cloned threads just to engage in conversation about a cartoon? Geez...

It would happen at the end of the large mission I've terminated, couple of kilometres above ground, before the capsule lands down. Total system freezing. There was never an error log, IMHO because the system crashed so badly it couldn't even write it. I had to shut down the computer by pressing the power button. Since then I've did a total reinstallation of KSP and updated every mod I use, so if it happens again, I'll check if Texture Replacer is responsible for it.

I recommend using more screenshots. Make it comic-like. People generally don't like walls of text. Good luck with your future missions!

I might, but I don't know how that mod will behave on my system. Also, I'll have to redesign the ship if it needs to reach a whole another stellar system. This configuration can reach every part of Kerbol system and come back. It might be able to reach another system, but it couldn't return back, and I'm not leaving anyone behind. Thanks. It's something Texture Replacer added, I guess, but I had to remove it because it was making my whole system crash upon returning to Kerbin. Anyway, the mission has come to an end. After a permanent measuring station was established, the trio removed everything from the lander and made an ascent. Laythe was just in the right place at the right time for Jool to cast a shadow on it. Luckily, the lander has plenty of energy storage. Rendezvous and docking were done efficiently and elegantly. After the transfer of crew and resources, lander was left in polar orbit. Tylo, as much as it's difficult to visit, is a great helper when it comes to flinging ships out of the whole system. This first mission ended with providing the evidence to shut the pieholes of every DRE basher on this forum. With almost no effort I've managed to smack the capsule back to Kerbin without any engine braking or gradual aerobraking or slowing down using Mun. DRE was on hard mode. It was a direct interplanetary collision with periapsis at 25 km above Kerbin's sea. It's all it takes - to choose the right periapsis. Immediatelly upon touching the atmosphere at staggering 4888 m/s, plasma appeared and the detached ship soon started to spin and break up. The heatshield held perfectly. Highest G-force was 7.5. The capsule survived with Kerbals intact. My only two regrets were to throw a 2.5 m NERVA into an inhabited planet and the fact I could use the lab as a part of the station at Laythe, but instead I've hauled everything back (with still some 1800 m/s left). Next design will have more details.

Exact same problem here, plus it would totally crash my whole system (hard reset needed) so I've removed EVE completely, but all in vain. The problems were gone when I've removed Texture Replacer.