1greywind

Interesting. Do you know, that Energia had asymmetric first stage boosters placement? This was made to compensate CoM change from payload that was mounted on side of second (LH2/LO2) stage. Check this picture: http://polkovnik2000.narod.ru/images/jpg/enerp.jpg

Overview: Description: This is mobilde protform that can be used to launch any kind of rocket. The limitation is rocket mass (up to 50t) and weight distributio - very top-heavy rockets are not recommended. Platform has crane with 8 reaction wheels and balancing fuel tanks that works as counter-weights. Basic operations is very simple: put rocket on platform's decupler (empty upper stages fuel tanks - you will pump fuel to them after crane is in vertical position). Drive to launch site. Break connection between platform rover and crane by decoupling small docking port (by right-clicking or action group 1). Raise 2 landing legs on rover part, that holds crane from turning. Switch to crane and rotate it to vertical position. Raise crane's legs to make sure it will not move after rocket liftoff. Pump fuel from balancing tanks to rocket. Launch! Platform has interrior with 2 ladders for access from ground and to upper deck. Download includes stanalone platform and platform with mounted 45t 3-stage rocket with upper stage (1-kerbal lander) capable to reach Moon (with return), Duna, etc Jool (one way). Parts count: 251 (all stock) Dry weight: 60t (16t - fuel in balancing tanks) Maximum launch weight: ~50t Max speed: 12 m/s (on flat surface) up 25 m/s (downhill) Max slope: 25 degrees Crew: 2 kerbals Projections: (made with help of "Exploded ship view" plugin! best editor plugin ever!): Operator manual: GALLERY During field trials I've drove as far as 50 km from KSC to West mountains and have launched rocket to Mun from 2953 m attitude! Saved as much as 400 m/s of second stage dV with that bonus: DOWNLOAD LINKS Self propelled launch pad 3-stage mun rocket on mobile lauch pad

It doesn't. Zoom into Jool system and you'll see that after Jool encounter your trajectory makes encounter with one of Jool moons. Map view shows only few first trajectory segments (separated by SOI change), by default it is 3. You can change conic patches count in settings.cfg - CONIC_PATCH_LIMIT or some mods (PreciseNode for example) can do it on fly.

This all looks like plot to save PTK-NP project from cancelation. Rogozin and Komavrov (head of Roscosmos) have shown PTK-NP model to Putin few days ago and have talked about it like prjoect currently in active development (witch is no very accurate - project was on low gas for at least year). It is sad to say, but PTK-NP realy have no porpuse for missions on low Earth orbit (it can't beat Soyuz as crew taxi) and only reasonable mission for it is Moon's orbit or some near earth object.

Who is talking about "more details"? Are you communicating with some voices behind the walls? The gifs I provided only shows more suitable PROJECTION. They are made from this rotation sequence: http://dawn.jpl.nasa.gov/multimedia/Ceres_Awaits_Dawn.asp frames from NASA gif animation were projected onto sphere, viewpoints camera was fixed relative to sphere surface and new animation exported.

Guy, who made this gif has few more: http://novosti-kosmonavtiki.ru/forum/forum11/topic2349/?PAGEN_1=57 He say's he used some advanced image processing techniques to make them (I'm not sure that I understand how exactly he made them).

Cropped, enlarged and animated gif:

I've heard many times that americans don't understand russians to the point that we are more like species from different planets, but now I see real example of this.

I can recommend North pole as landing target: Weird place where Jool is looming behind horizon and the other moons dance around.

You can add a ring or two - and I urge you to setup lighting system, so rings will be highlighted in night! This is my 2 segments, 3 rings station at night for example:

Done some ladder climbing exercises on my SSTO Very Heavy Tylo Lander:

Today we had a party on Laythe North pole: Weird place. Jool looming from behind horizon, other moons flying low around and sun shining really low.

Today we had a party on Laythe North pole:

I wonder: will spring release of third contraption produce pseudo force in orbit? May be this is new kind of Kraken drive?

My personal favorite: Delta II 9 SRB's fireworks:

To be more accurate: they installed probe core upside-down. And SAS did that it should: flew rocket "up" as it senses.

It takes about 4 hours and 30 minutes for the radio signal to travel 32.29 AU.

What do you mean by "better"? In terms of "test of time" Vostok was better due to large and modular construction. First Vostok-based space craft was launched in 1962 - it was Zenit spy satellite. Vosktok derivered crafts are still in use today: Bion (Ñøþý) and Foton (äþтþý) space crafts are direct descendants of Gagarin's Vosktok space craf. In terms of "engineering system design" Mercury was better design in comparation with Vostok: first it had the controlled reentry, second, it had backup retro engines.

And on more serious tone: Expected launch rate of Angara-A5 is about 1 per year up until construction of second launch pad on Vostochny cosmodrome (~2018). It is known that production of 3 Angara-A5 vehicles are ordered until the end of 2016. There is also possibility, that manned version of Angara - Angara A5P will see green light for use with PTK NP (new russian spacecraft) and thus increase launch rate. Main user of light Angara-A1 will be russian military - they need it as replacement for numerous light ICBM based ELV (Rokot, Kosmos, etc) that will phase out of use around 2016-2018. Same for heavy Angara-A5 - it's main role is to launch russian spy and communication satellites to GEO from Plesetsk. Proton will remain main russian commercial heavy workhorse for next 20 years. I'm not sure that even then it will be discontinued completely.

Well, I'll try to push the thread back to rails: Look, Russians have other version of Angara:: Nice table decoration I think

Image bomb incoming Russia's ministry of defence has released multiply good photos of Angara A5 (btw cyrilic domain names are terrible):

Another liftoff video:

Angara-A5 liftoff:

Another TV footage: http://www.1tv.ru/news/techno/274476 no launch video, but good overview (starting from 2:05) of Angara A5 on launch pad.

Huh, guys, I was very sleepy and missed with launch date, Fixed now Official report says about successful launch First video footage of launch (0:44 makr, very short and dark): http://tvzvezda.ru/news/vstrane_i_mire/content/201412230924-c54t.htm