Kulebron

Hmm. 5 or more intakes per engine? or per all engines? 20/5 = 4. Ok, if I'm abusing it already, I'll go further

What about energy vs impulse problem? Energy expended grows quadratically with exhaust speed, or impulse. Basically, the more Isp you want to extract, the more energy you need to spend. This makes good Isp of this propulsion quite impractical, because you need bigger energy engine and this eats all the gain.

Asparagus is simple if you attach pairs of boosters, not 4 or 6 at a time. Then you can use symmetry to add pipes correctly and clone the pair after that. After cost was added, it became rather impractical to expend many engines which are expensive.

I guess opening KSP, going to tracking station and zooming to the Sun counts, but what's .25 Olny? never heard of such a gun. Seriously, please, write a good description, and give it someone to read. We can't even understand what the challenge is.

Going to sumbit an entry in a week maybe. Another question: if I have 5 jet engines, 20 intakes, and in high altitude I turn 4 engines off, flying off a 1 engine and still 20 intakes, does this count as airhogging?

I liked Xacktar mentioned above. The kraken gun was hilarious. And this guy makes great short tutorials that were useful in space plane building for me. - - - Updated - - - I liked Xacktar mentioned above. The kraken gun was hilarious. And this guy makes great short tutorials that were useful in space plane building for me.

Danny. Period. I watched a few vids of Manley and learned to dock with his tutorial. Rest of channels that I found are BORING: half an hour and watch the entire building process? Are you kidding me?

@J.Random, no that's not what they said. They said "nominal" and meant their part was ok. Let me translate one quote from there (I keep closer to literal translation): I guess if they saw any telemetry, it would have been mentioned. "They have their own equipment that could have failed." So this means nothing, and is just a bad PR guy who makes irresponsible statements.

Is this a joke?

Just as I said earlier in this thread: launch pad just slightly damaged. 2 lightning protection masts are destroyed, the service mast/transporter frame is charred, and probably some piping is torn. Although, concrete structures may have suffered heat damages. But the rocket did not destroy neither the pad, nor the exhaust box. I guess, this pad was designed with this kind of thinking: if a pad crash occurs, structures may be damaged, and they'll take the most cost & time to restore. So why build big structures to protect props that will not be needed untill the next launch, or if you can just keep dangerous stuff off site? I wonder if any of those tanks contained anything. APU trucks were on site at the moment of crash, probably because they're insured, and if lost, a the next flight will take much longer than getting a new APU delivered.

Can the -30°C..+30°C winter/summer cycle create fatigue in alloys that withstand huge temperature gradients and quick heating up to like 1000°C?

The reason to use solid fuel is exactly to fix what you speak about in paragraphs below, the complexity of manufacturing and running a turbopumped engine. Aluminum solid fuel does not need to be pumped in at the pad, needs no cryogenic equipment. The engine has reasonable specific impulse (300s) and a very good TWR of 2, which allowed this Hochmann transfer-like ascent. It makes a suboptimal vehicle (about same payload fraction as Soyuz), but the entire lifecycle becomes quite cheap. I read about Antares rocket and am impressed how they made things simple. Basically, they took Korolyov's philosophy and pushed it to the limit: a suboptimal vehicle, but leaner overall lifecycle. OS has built a very simple launch pad, assembles the vehicle horizontally (needs smaller and lighter hangar, just 10 m high rather than 60..70 that French built for Soyuz in Guiana), quick horizontal transportation and deployment, short pad dwelling. I guess the rocket is rugged enough to fly in stormy weather. (Soyuz has launched TMA-22 manned spacecraft in snow storm when airports usually close.) Here's a remarkable innovation: on Soyuz, the transportation clamp helps to erect the rocket and then is removed. On Antares it works as service mast as well. Another innovation: just another interstage instead of special clamps in the bottom. Also look at rollout videos, they used commercial cooling and generating systems (small size allowed that too) and just attached them to the main carriage. That makes sense: need another ground APU, or maintenance? Just call a dealer. I wonder when they start launching commercial satellites. Looking at the launchpad, I think I'd make another step: a disposable steel pad column with integrated pipes (or 3d-printed concrete one?). If something falls on the pad, just take the other one and replace it

As I look at the pad fire stills, the pad does not look severely damaged, more than that, the platform and exhaust tunnel are intact.

There's one case when you can have about 3g quite evenly, even with current aerodynamics: on a return to Kerbin from Mün or other planets, you can plough down to 29-30Km, still high, but get moderate Gs, then flare a bit to 35-50Km flying at about 1700 m/s, then descend again, hitting about 3g again, not more. In this case, the very eccentric orbit lifts you instead of a lifting body.

Why did this flash stop in a fraction of second, and how a destroyed turbopump allowed +/- nominal thrust?

^^ Good observation. Watched and saw this flash too, much higher than engine bells. Could it still be pyrobolts that attached the rocket to the pad?

That bright flash is lens own reflection, I checked it twice, there were no actual flashes on top. Also, some smoke on the left could be tank safety valve at work.

Sure. Well, the commenter meant that Soyuz is more reliable. Let me post an image of reliability comparison which really chaged my perspectives: smoke size = total launches last 10 years orange smoke = failures in last 10 years red circle = failure rate The most failing are, left to right: Proton (6,45%), Zenit (6.1%), Dnepr (6.25%), Rokot (13.33%). Some American rockets, despite a couple of spectacular explosions, have a very good record.

This is not stupid, because the commenter, even jokingly, was discussing success/failure rate, and I've kept the same, I edited it to add more on topic info.

Can't but quote this Youtube comment: (Well, TBH, while Soyuz has good reliability, Proton is actually worse than anything, and failures in different places mean it's terrible manufacturing. Constant failures mean it's terrible management.)

There's no reason to reject the entire engine model just because of common sense feelings, like they're old, they have bad history, etc. This is a question of engineering and testing. Even if the relationships between the states are tighter, didn't Aerojet get a licence to produce new NK-33 (AJ-26) at home?

Sorry to hear this. Is the launch pad damaged? Was the payload critical for ISS?

You pull high Gs because of ballistic reentry, basically the stronger braking speed is, the steeper your ship dives into the atmosphere, and this in turn increases the braking force even more. On takeoff you avoid this (either high drag or high Gs) because you usually don't have enough thrust to do this. It's really hard to make a rocket this powerful and still keep it practical. In real life, G loads top at 4-5 just before staging, and reentry is not ballistic, the capsules glide a bit to have a moderate acceleration all the way down. Last ballistic reentry I can remember: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Soyuz_TMA-11 Saturn V ascent profile: Also, Soyuz 18A had an unusual abort: the 3rd stage failed, when the ship was very high above the atmosphere at almost orbital speed. When reentry started, the orientation radar couldn't lock correctly in those conditions, and turned the capsule to glide down rather than up, increasing G loads higher than those of ballistic reentry, up to 21.3 g, according to Wikipedia. Captions: (left) Lift force prolongs breaking, lowering the G loads. (right) Lift force increases braking, raising G loads.

I think Streetwind meant liability avoidance, or simply "cover your ass" culture. You cancel a launch, to not get sued for _launching when there was a theoretical chance_ of hitting that civilian. I'm not sure where the reasonable margin is here: pushing forward at any cost eventually leads to disasters. I totally understand the annoyance with this liability avoidance. We can buy a crappy plastic child playground with terrible lumisincent colors, because it's certified, and can't make one of wood on our own, because certification is hard as and costs like a space launch. Not that you can't build and install it, you can, but if a child scratches his knees to blood on your playground, it's your fault, and on the crappy colored one it's his own fault, all because of a certificate.

Terminator 4 is much more spectacular than the first one. The Terminator (1) is a boring theater drama movie.