Kerbin Dallas Multipass

@K^2 Parts of it do seem to leave earth/moon gravity system http://forum.kerbalspaceprogram.com/threads/48694-Strange-Asteroid-J002E3 I understand this as a hypothetical discussion and agree with you thus far that it causes no measurable change (as I posted above), but I'm skeptical that it causes no change at all.

Even if the Saturn V was .. like ... huge? The size of the moon for example?

@FenrirWolf thanks

If you put stuff at those points it appears to "stay" there. Meaning the distance to both bodies (in the picture Earth and Sun) always remains the same. In this case "stay" is relative to Earth - the stuff will rotate around the sun once a year just like Earth does.

So, you're saying my idea is impractical? Damn!

If you're really cool you install Minecraft on your smartphone and build the Apollo computer with redstone...

There are no perfect orbits in the universe. Everything is elliptical and wobbly, Nothing will last until eternity. Earth is subject to all sorts of quite significant forces and changes. There are tidal forces, pressure by solar wind, loss of mass by blown away atmosphere, gain of mass by captured asteroids and probably even aerodynamic drag since space is not a perfect vacuum. Similar for the sun: It is blowing vast amonts of matter into space and therefore changes mass which influences earth's orbit. Compared to these forces a saturn V is... well.. .undetectable. Even if you launch billions of them without returning anything to earth

Imperial is international standard in aviation. Russia, China etc changed the flight levels in their airspace to feet in 2011. All modern planes use imperial only instrumentation. The only exceptions are barometric pressure and in some cases weight citation needed To my knowledge the French and the Germans used two different versions of a design software causing all sorts of conversion errors.

Nope, but I believe you are intentionally trying to misunderstand my post. The shuttle design fully lies in the responsibility of the US and it was the US taxpayer who funded the project. Not Liechtenstein, not humanity. I'm explicitly stating that in my opinion neither Soyuz nor the Shuttle are good solutions. I'm saying though that if the US had opted for a less flashy and more efficient design we would see bi weekly launches from Cape Canaveral to a much larger international space station. With a system capable of launching Hubble like payloads. The cost-inefficiency of the shuttle can be seen as a design/concept flaw that finally made this pretty dinosaur become extinct.

I think the fact that USA operates ~half a space station but is unable to launch humans into space shows that the shuttle was a wrong step, wrong idea, wrong concept. America got bored of manned spaceflight after playing golf on the moon so they needed something that looked awesome and futuristic and made spaceflight look like a commute - and scare the evil communists a bit. The fact that Soyuz is still flying is also quite outrageous. 1960s foolproof minimum design that somehow survived the collapse of the soviet system. Hey, nice job, but isnt it a shame that this AK47 design is the state of the art of rocket science in 2014? I don't think the shuttle is good, I don't think Soyuz is good. USA could have done better, USSR/Russia did OK if you consider the circumstances. I do not doubt that either space agency could have come up with much better solutions given proper decisions and sustained funding.

If you have trouble finding out the name of your mainboard and you are running Windows you can take a look at CPU Z http://www.cpuid.com/softwares/cpu-z.html See if the asus website finds something under that name.

That video is pretty cool and sort or precisely explains my level of understanding of gravity or space-time. I do understand that disks of matter rotating in the same direction HAVE to form once we have a spinning motion going. From then on I understand how matter can clump up in sub systems of orbits. But where is the origin of this kinetic energy? The professor in the video explicitly states that he has to give those marbles a sideways motion. Thats the bit im puzzled about.

Galaxies, stars, planets, moons. They all rotate around a center and(or) are in a rotational motion themselves. The universe itself is not rotating (or is it?). So what is causing this? If I take a cloud of matter in space and all the laws of physics, why does it begin to rotate? Why isnt the stuff falling to dead center of gravity? What determines the angle of rotation? I just dont get it

I like the Jello salad/project Orion comparison. It's deep.

I never really understood why anyone would take a plane into space. Except for the coolness factor. Now if I really wanted a return vehicle that can land on a runway I'd do things differently. I do not understand why the wing and control surfaces are exposed during the entire trip. Why not design extendable control surfaces similar to variable swept wing designs such as the F14? The actual surfaces would be hidden inside the main fuselage during launch and reentry and only get exposed for the atmospheric glide and landing. Oh, and I wouldnt put people on it unless it had at least rudimentary take off go around functionality and a parachute driven crew escape system.

Nuclear first strike weapons systems like this one were quite popular during the cold war and are pretty much designed to hit the enemy completely out of the blue

Nice MechJeb landing!

burning now!

Descent will begin in 15 minutes

Well. Yea, you need staging to get anywhere in space. I understand that. Asparagus staging requires multiple boosters and multiple tanks. The concept is to feed the fuel inwards and drop outward boosters as quickly as possible. But why would you drop an engine in the thickest atmosphere? It's exactly where you need the fat first stage engines. Why not drop tanks instead? Tanks are much lighter in RL but they do have enormous drag (if stacked sideways) RL. Not so in KSP. Basically.. if you want a more powerful rocket IRL you just make it taller and a bit wider and you add some boosters. Going lateral like we do in KSP would make no sense at all.

Those are called boosters and I do not dispute their use in spaceflight:) On earth something like "reverse asparagus" makes more sense. Hey the Space Shuttle used it, thanks for supporting my point

I consider asparagus staging in KSP a clever "exploit". I don't see why it would make sense in RL other than increased flexibility. I mean, seriously. Why drop the tank AND the engine?

1. A too shallow angle can cause the capsule to skip, or bounce off the atmosphere 2. To my knowledge this skipping is mostly an aerodynamic effect. The capsule is trimmed in such a way that it creates a bit of lift in the early reentry phases. The capsule sort of self-aligns and surfs down slowly, keeping reentry heat relatively constant (i do not know if the apollo capsule had RCS or torque to help out) 3. Center of gravity and total mass is important in this calculation, so it sounds plausible that Houston wanted them to put some ballast where they were supposed to put the moon rocks. 4. Yes, but this could take several orbits. We're talking days or weeks here. Not much help to the astronauts.

Manned spaceflight is dangerous and I personally do not believe it will become routine like civil aviation any time soon. This seems to be fine with the astronauts and all the people involved, so I don't see any ethical problem. I think however that the dangers should be better communicated - to the people in charge and the public. The Space Shuttle program is (imho) a bad example since it was "marketed" as a commuter ride into space (hence the name shuttle I assume). At the same time the safety systems were laid out quite patchy and real improvements were only implemented after major incidents.

When they talk about fuel removal in Fukushima they are referring to the 4 spent fuel pools, not the 3 molten cores. The fuel rods in those pools are undamaged.