GigaG

So I'm sure we all know of the SLS (known to anti-abbreviation people as the Space Launch System), NASA's upcoming MOAR PAYLOAD rocket. Now, a lot of people think it is a bit useless, being that the only current payload is Orion, which is rather roughly planned for now. (I think the SLS can be good if it is used wisely and reliably and can launch spacecraft that can give us great scientific results.) At the risk of discussing the "Big Bad P" (politics), what do you think the future holds for SLS? I think the future of SLS kind of hinges on the success of its first flight in 2018 (recently delayed from 2017), considering that is the only planned flight before it begins to carry humans. Luckily, we have the opportunity for ground testing and computer simulations, not to mention that the SLS (particularly the core) is based on already-flown technology. (Although I'm kind of suspicious about throwing away SSMEs, I'm guessing that the RS-25E that will be used after the current stock of SSMES rests in pieces in an ocean will be cheaper.) If NASA can succeed in getting the public interested and the SLS can demonstrate success for its first flight, then NASA might have a good shot at getting a decent beyond-LEO program. Of course, other missions are also proposed things to be put atop this monster of a rocket - a Europa probe would have to use a gravity assist trajectory with the Atlas V, AFAIK, so the SLS is being considered. Not to mention Mars sample return. I hope that those fly - again, the launch of these in the near future depends on the 2018 flight succeeding. So what do you think the future holds for SLS?

The fairing popped off a while ago in the animation and seems to show some sort of satellite.

Double post for update - Animation of core stage jettison (really first stage jettison, no boosters IRL) - the animation seems to be the wrong kind of rocket, but the event sequence matched up with the fairing so it might be synced. But is the event sequence for this rocket or the other variant of Long March in the animation? I can't read the text - it is probably Portugese which I don't know and the video is lower quality and barely legible at all - so I don't know if there are any references to boosters.

Double post (EDIT - or not) for reasons of unrelated topic - they just showed booster jettison despite the fact that this rocket actually has no strap-on boosters AFAIK.

It has a "sequence of events" to the left side... don't know if that's live or prerecorded and timed.

It seems to be an animation... showing the wrong type of Long March nonetheless.

The launch time is 3:26 UTC, right? Anyways, somebody should record this obscure launch with a screen recorder. I'm not sure if I can reliably do so on the first and only try (fullscreen issues with screen recorders, etc.) Whether this launch succeeds or (God forbid) fails, I'm guessing there won't be much video of it released - China is fairly secretive, and I don't know much about Brazil's space program's online presence. Anyways, I have the stream running in Chrome with the VLC Media Player plugin. IE doesn't work for me with Windows Media Player, at least on Windows 8. (I have one of the newer versions of IE, IDK which one.) The audio sounds jumbled when they talk. It was clear for a bit and now sounds all jumbled. You can tell that somebody is talking.

Doesn't the LES attitude control system use a solid fuel gas generator and vents to direct thrust sideways if needed? I thought it said that in the press kit.

^The escape motor is a series of smallish, but very powerful solid rockets. They have to be reliable and very powerful - I've heard they produce a short burst of thrust more powerful than the Atlas missile that propelled John Glenn into orbit. On another note, in KSP, the escape tower is similarly powerful relative to other rocket engines - it has 750 thrust, IIRC, more than a Skipper.

Orion is designed to be partially reusable (although it will probably just be parts, I guess - the ocean water from the splashdown will not do anything good to the structure), but considering that this is essentially a prototype outfitted for unmanned flight, I doubt much of it will go into future Orion flights. If, God forbid, the Delta IV Heavy blows up during launch, having an abort system would do little good - maybe it would alleviate a small bit of sadness, but is that worth so much money? On another note, I wonder if the escape tower is filled with dummy weight like water, metal, etc. to simulate the weight of the solid fuel that is usually inside.

What do you call specific landforms on planets? Here are some of mine- Resource for you to look at planets- http://www.kerbalmaps.com/ -I call Eve's largest ocean the "Swamps of Eve." From orbit, it looks like a straight ocean. From maps, it looks like land, but if you change Kerbal Maps to "Color Relief" or "Slope", you will see a shallow ocean covers this area. It is shallower than most oceans and has many islands and "sandbars." It should be called something like the Great Swamps of Eve, as it is much deeper than your average marsh. -The Africa-shaped peninsula containing the KSC has the name "Esserbia" in my mind. If that doesn't make sense to you, think... SRB! Do you have any personal location names?

I'm going to call attention to this. It seems like an interesting challenge. I probably won't do it, but I'd love to see if anybody could go interplanetary by jet power. Laythe and back... sounds like a job for Scott Manley! (Although Joolian escape velocity done indirectly from a moon using jets seems like it would be much harder than the already-unproven task of getting out of Kerbin's SOI using jets... if Jool had an oxygen atmosphere, maybe it would be easier.) On another note, I believe there is a bit of an exploit where jets or intakes "store" intake air and can be fired in space briefly if the jet or air intake is shut off with air in it (forgot whether it is jet or engine.) Just saying, it might be a problem to enforce prohibition of this kind of glitch. On yet another note, if that glitch does work, I wonder if anybody could go to Minmus and back using only stored intake air after leaving Kerbin.

Double post due to separate content- They say they are a mile from Pad 31, which I believe is the pad that Soyuz TMA-15M will be launching from. Wow, that's close!

Now there is a report that they are playing that music to the crew and it also tests the communication systems. (Sorry for double post, but I wanted this to be separate.) EDIT - Aningaaq beat me! Looks like it isn't a double post after all...

^Yup. Several times.

Back in the early days of the Space Race, a lot of rockets failed. Like, a LOT of rockets. Owing to the lack of complete coverage in the 1950-60s, many of these explosions went unfilmed, and even more recent explosions are hard to find (or hard to find certain angles of.) Of course, the hardest launch failures to find are the old Soviet launch failures - it is difficult to find complete launch videos from the early Soviet space program, let alone a failure! I don't even know how so much footage from the N1 got out (and I still wish there was more!) Failures upon orbit were covered up as satellites, and rockets that failed on launch rarely received a designation at all (the US did this too, to some extent - I think Vanguard TV3 and Pioneer 0 were post-failure renames, although I'm not sure.) As for the Soviets, I think they destroyed much of the N1 footage that they had. I still wonder if, to this day, there are surviving tapes of old Soviet-era launches collecting dust in some government building that nobody has bothered to dig up. Some of these failures were downright spectacular and detailed descriptions exist. One Soviet Luna mission launched in 1960 failed in a particularly unusual manner, more reminiscent of a KSP staging error- http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Luna_E-3_No.2 Wikipedia quote- "Luna E-3 No.2 was launched at 16:07:41 UTC on 16 April 1960, atop a Luna 8K72 carrier rocket, flying from Site 1/5 at the Baikonur Cosmodrome. The Blok-B strap-on booster reached only 75% thrust and broke away from the booster almost immediately at liftoff. The launch vehicle then disintegrated, the strap-ons flying in random directions and exploding as they impacted the ground. Meanwhile, the core stage flew for some distance until crashing into a salt lake. Considerable damage to launch facilities resulted from this mishap. Prior to the release of information about its mission, NASA correctly identified that it had been an attempted circumlunar imagery mission." The background of this launch is interesting and rather hard to find. In an unusual schedule another identical Luna flight (Luna E-3 No.1) launched the day before from the same launch pad (according to Wikipedia.) That one failed at high altitude in another error that sounds like a tweakable catastrophe from KSP - the upper stage fuel tank was only partially filled! Wikipedia quote- "Luna E-3 No.1 was launched at 15:06:45 UTC on 15 April 1960, atop a Luna 8K72 carrier rocket, flying from Site 1/5 at the Baikonur Cosmodrome. The Blok E upper stage cut off prematurely because pad crews had accidentally filled the RP-1 tank only halfway. As a result, the spacecraft failed to achieve orbit. Prior to the release of information about its mission, NASA correctly identified that it had been an attempted circumlunar imagery mission." Some places identify the launch date of No.2 as April 19 - the time is known to the second, however. No matter what day this flight launched on, it is still a fast turnaround time. I wonder if this was planned or sped up once the first probe failed. Anyways, does anybody know any more information about these spacecraft? I really wish there was video of the latter incident due to its sheer unusual-ness, but alas, there is not AFAIK. (I also hope nobody was hurt at the site, of course.)

Dang it! The battery is almost dead- https://twitter.com/Philae2014

^That blog post supports the "closer to the sun" theory, BTW.

The Philae Twitter just said- "I just started lifting myself up a little and will now rotate to try and optimize the solar power!" GO PHILAE! (It also sort of reminds me of using reaction wheels and landing legs to right yourself of a small-mid-sized body in KSP!) EDIT - New post- "Also my rotation was successful (35 degrees). Looks like a whole new comet from this angle:)"

I've heard isolated rumors that the probe might just be able to get enough energy to wake up near perihelion in August 2015. I'm skeptical, considering that I thought this lander would overheat in March baseed on what I've read. However, I guess that without the stress of running fully, it might be able to survive. Of course, there is also the "spending almost a year exposed to space" thing that the lander was not designed to do. As far as I know, upon nearly draining its batteries, Philae will not "die", but will go into hibernation. I'm guessing the little bit of sun it gets now will keep it "hibernating." If this is true, is it at all possible that we might see Philae become functional as it nears the Sun? I honestly hope that Philae will survive, but even if it doesn't it does not, it has given us plenty of data. There are reports that they have confirmed that they will try to "hop" Philae. It isn't that widespread of a report. I hope it works if they do this! http://www.theguardian.com/science/2014/nov/14/rosetta-philae-lander-hop-comet This same article also reports that the lander could wake up in the future. However, I am skeptical - again, I thought it was supposed to overheat much earlier, and also, it seems like the chances are slim for the probe to survive almost a year on the surface of a comet, barely functioning and not designed for such longevity. I'd love to be proven wrong, though. I wish the best of luck to ESA and the Rosetta/Philae mission.

On my BGN network, I've used my iPad 3 and (less often) my Phone 5S (and my former 4S, probably) right next to the microwave and I don't have major issues. I don't think I'm on 5GHz (the 4S can't use 5GHz anyways. and I think we had our current router before I got my iPhone 5S. though I may be wrong.) Do some microwave ovens contain their microwave radiation better than others? Do some microwave ovens have frequencies that don't interfere with Wi-Fi? Or am I just lucky?

I've noted the irony of the rocket failrue being similar to the N1-5L launch failure - a rocket which used the Antares engine's predecessor. Wasn't the second N1 launch failure caused by debris being sucked into a LOX pump, as J.Random might have been suspecting? (The first also may have had a debris-related failure.) Note that I highly doubt that this has anything to do with it - the original N1 engines got fuel filters installed after the disaster IIRC, and the Antares engines likely had all the improvements and then some. IIRC, the Antares engines were designed for the 5th N1 that never flew (can somebody back me up on this?) Here's how I imagine the Antares accident unfolded- -Rocket launches -Something happens, turbopump malfunctions. We see the rocket exhaust suddenly change color (Either this forum or Orbiter-Forum had a post which proposed that excessive LOX pumping could cause this.) -Entire engine explodes, destroying engine and essentially disabling other engine. This also may have ignited some of the rocket's fuel - the initial explosion is fairly big. The rocket loses almost all thrust and beings to fall. -Rocket trails fire as it falls towards earth. I believe that this is either the (likely damaged) second engine still partially burning or a fuel fire. -Range safety officer blows up rocket just before it impacts ground. Some notes- -The rocket had to have lost almost all of its thrust - it almost immediately quit climbing. The second engine was either shut down or damaged to the point of not functioning - I believe that the rocket would have begun its fall more slowly had the second engine functioned properly throughout the accident. -The second engine may have still been trying to work. Either this or a fuel fire, would explain why the rocket trailed fire on its way down. (I don't know if the sound stopped pre-explosion or not.)

^^The Space Shuttle SRB (which is the basis for the ones used on the SLS - I believe the first flights will use extended SRBs and eventually, new boosters (liquid or solid) will be made according to Wikipedia) has 80% more thrust than a Saturn V F-1 engine, so 2 F-1s is a bit more than a normal Shuttle SRB.

Why does it disable itself on Win64? Does it not work at all? Because if it does, I kind of want to use it. I understand the instability issue. I do not understand why you can't make people aware of it and make an "unsupported" build.

I cannot download the update from KSP's website. Something with their CDN. I really wish they had better servers, but I understand that they are a relatively small company.