Kerbin Dallas Multipass

Yea. Totally agree. It should be a design decision to use that sort of propulsion, and the downside should not just be low thrust and slightly higher weight. It should be big and heavy and clumsy to make up for its outstanding ISP. Then we can increase its thrust to futuristic levels and all be happy XD

I dislike the LV-N from a pure gameplay perspective. I almost never use it because I dislike how it affects gameplay. -Sitting through 38 minute burns is just boring. Not my definition of playing a game. -Always having spare dV do do practically any mid-course correction is not very challenging. -Landers that are unlikely to run out of fuel and can basically hover cross country from biome to biome - well, slamming down the capsule with the last drop of fuel Armstrong style is more exciting. And one more reason to build a cool rover. -Using the same engine for most everything beyond LKO is a bit boring as well. I think this is a really good idea. Nuke engines should take significant amounts of time to spool up, then have a really powerful thrust and then again take long to spool down. A burn time of a few minutes would catapult your ship on any trajectory, just not very precisely. Would require to take along extra chemical rockets for the precision work. The LVN would do the "heavy lifting" in terms of interplanetary dV and would only be good at that and nothing else. I could imagine this would make the game better.

KSP has an awesome community. Sure there are disagreements. And different people playing the game differently. But if anyone thinks this community is flawed because of a chromosome statistic... well, I cant help ya.

After 2y 341d Jeb, Bill and Bob (all in the picture) return safely from Dres. It's a long story. Boy that was fun.

Too busy flying to Dres atm XD, perhaps i repeat all 3 tests tomorrow to get comparable numbers (my setting was kinda random) I invite everyone to get gpu-z and do the test (sensors tab in gpu-z shows "memory used") and post their respective video/main ram figures so we get a general idea.

I think you and your system will be perfectly happy if you spend ~100 bucks on a new video card;)

1 gb is probably enough for KSP in its current state. I just online shopped for a new graphics card the other week (got the gtx 750ti) and I couldnt really see a price difference between 1 and 2 gb versions, so It's not really a question. Future versions of KSP or its framework (unity/dx11/opengl) might eventually make better use of graphics card memory. Forcing dx11 on the game shows that it already kinda badly works.

Thought i'd leave this bit of data here: Memory used (gb), measured in taskmanager and gpu-z. Loaded the same savegame and measured at the point where all the buildings are displayed. ksp.exe: ram: 2.59 gpu ram: 0.48 with forced d11: ram: 1.92 gpu ram: 1.48 Interesting to see that the graphics card utilizes a whole gig more of its ram in dx11 mode. My machine has 4gb ram and my gfx card has 2gb ram

The live shot of the 2nd(?) stage nozzle heating up irregularly and glowing was kinda fascinating. Such a shame they cut away to humans moving their mouths and nodding at each other(seen that before)

They have a ~40 min launch window starting at :43 past the hour

Live coverage http://www.ulalaunch.com/webcast.aspx

I was asking myself how practical, how technically feasible and how economically viable a space program would be if it completely relied on existing medium payload launch technologies. Let's say I want to put a man on the moon and do the other things, namely having a lunar base, putting a man on mars and such fancy stuff. Can this realistically be done with the current (soon available) fleets of Delta Heavies,Falcons, Arianes and so on? We are talking payload capacities of perhaps 15-35t, so how challenging would it be to design and assemble larger space ships in orbit from these smaller modules? -Are there technical problems that would have to be solved? -Would such modular designs be much more complex to plan and lay out compared to larger chunks of payload (120+t) -Would it be cheaper than a dedicated heavy lifter system such as the SLS or would the increased complexity and logistics (all that docking and EVAs to attach struts!) eat up most of the economic advantages? -Other limitations that would make a heavy lift system a "must have"? What would you regard as a minimum payload capacity required for a manned moon or mars mission?

Well I beleive it is widely accepted that minor gravity pertubations can seriously disturb the orbits of asteroids in the asteroid belt and comets in the oort cloud. Not much deltaV is needed to make the objects slingshot around their neighbors and simply increase the probability of obects falling towards the sun. I dont think your explanation of dark matter is concurrent with the current definition.

Saw this "Dark matter 'slingshot' could send lethal asteroids crashing into Earth" http://www.foxnews.com/science/2014/04/29/dark-matter-slingshot-could-send-lethal-asteroids-crashing-into-earth/ You may want to read this is about the Nemesis Theory http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nemesis_(hypothetical_star) And yea I linked FOX to spice it up

The point is that today's livestock is fed with soy beans that come from industrial farming on irrigated land (and often imported from overseas), not from patches of land that are unusable for other farming. This land could indeed be used to produce food for humans, which does not necessarily have to be soy beans.

http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Apollo_11_lunar_module.jpg Edit; Not identical but very similar

@Brotoro Cool, thanks!

@Mattasmack That proves my point I don't see why a capsule with a rotor would not be able to convert downwards speed into forward speed. It's the same principle after all. If adding weight to the actual rotor blades helps autorotation landings... lets put weight on them! Rocket fuel! Let's store the rocket fuel for the last few meters of descent in the hollow blades. This way we get full benefit of autorotation all the way down and we get slowed down to a relatively slow speed. Then we fire the rockets in the blades to get a perfect landing. We get away with much smaller blades and less weight because the effects combine. We also still don't need a tail rotor because both autorotation and rocket powered blades are torqueless.

Wondered how long it would take the Moon to fall down. How would I look up such a thing on this interwebz thingy? Or do I have to do the maths myself (don't know how). This silly and hypothetical question popped up in my head. I would have guessed it takes a couple of days or maybe a week, but the moon is so far out that earth's gravity is only something like 44mm/s². So this could take a while longer.

I'm not convinced but I know too little

Seems to work without forward motion as long as there is enough altitude

The thing is, every helicopter can perform an unpowered autorotation landing in case of an engine failure. I guess it would be possible to design a landing system without any power source or energy storage.

My question is: what is the benefit? 100+ points for being cooler and more controllable. But on a scale of a space project there are some questions: -Can the vehicle land at pre-defined bases after return from orbit. The whole concept of shooting wings into orbit is that you don't have to do all the expensive search and rescue stuff usually involved in parachute landings. -Is it worth the payload? Parachutes are like 20 or so kg each. I'll have three please, just because I can. Rotor system is probably not competitive. -How is this all controlled? Do we need a whole helicopter avionics system (manual and robotic) and re-entry proof sensors and all of that to make it happen? -What is our backup system? What about parachutes? -Is it scalable to higher payloads? (it's even worse than parachutes isn't it?) I don't buy it but I demand more artists impressions.

First German in space was East German Siegmund Jähn in 78, the third non US/Soviet. Merbold flew 5 years later.

I'd like to just leave these here: