thorfinn

Yep, the Ariane should be listed at 21 tons. UR-500 lifts 22 tons (when it works, LOL. ) (No offense to Russian friends intended ) It appears that the ECA version of the Ariane does not improve the performance to LEO over the baseline 90s version, and that's why it's not used for the ATV - I guess that the thrust to weight of the hydrolox upper stage is too low?

Better than Atlas balloon tanks? Really? Seems strange to me....

Soyuz isn't heavy lift - the Protons are, though. (Everyone and their dog already mentioned Energija). Ariane V should make into the list, the previous ones were in the class of Soyuz more or less. Also, to do the Shuttle justice (and to explain why Ares V seems so overpowered) you could mention that the true "throw weight" to LEO of STS was 100 tons - 24 in the cargo bay plus the weight of the Shuttle itself ) I guess that the striking difference in sizes is due to the very low density of hydrogen - and all Falcon stages are all based on LOX/Kerosene.

Yes, if you have experience with "classic" mechanical aircraft, it would be quite disconcerting at first. Stunt plane, yes. Fighter jet... not anymore? From a NASA Dryden publication about the F-16: "The longitudinal control law is a blended pitch rate and normal acceleration command system (...) Lateral stick inputs are translated into a limited roll rate command". This article from a magazine by a US Navy pilot describes in great detail how the F-16 and F-18 fly, and there are very significant differences both from one another and from classic flight behaviour. And I've heard the VTOL control laws of the F-35 are so ridiculously user-friendly that helicopter pilots have actually remarked that it's cheating Fighters actually fly with envelope and load factor protections on nowadays, so the pilot can yank the stick regardless of the current underslung loads. I assume that there is a manual override button available. You could argue that it IS "training wheels" permanently on: I guess that the military wants them so that the pilot can concentrate on situational awareness, working the radar and ECM sets, and generally not getting shot down. I suspect that Airbus civilian FBW descends quite directly from French experience with the Mirage 2000.

The protections operate at a higher logic level too, you'd just omit them Overspeed protection just means "IF (airspeed > (Vne - V_margin)) THEN pitch up F(airspeed) degrees", stall protection should be something like "IF alpha_normal(stick_pos, airspeed) > Alpha_prot THEN alpha_command = alpha_alternate(stick_pos) ELSE [...] "... see http://www.airbusdriver.net/airbus_fltlaws.htm

For your flight simulation project, don't you think that approximating the Airbus "normal law" should be adequate? In normal law stick forward/aft requests a load factor (AoA command compensated for IAS, I'd say), stick left/right commands roll rate, and the turns are auto coordinated - that last part you already accomplished, right? Operating above that you have stall protection, overload and over speed protection, et cetera. This doesn't give altitude and velocity hold, but I think that it's more similar to what a layman would expect. Also, I think that the time constants for speed control (vertical and horizontal) are just too disparate from those involved with maneuvering to do both things well in the same system, if you want that feature it should operate at a higher logic level.

.....I didn't take control theory, and this thread seems full of people who did; I'm going to be very cautious With "command[ing] the attitude setpoint", do you mean that stick displacement translates to angular displacement from the currently locked attitude (could be called "angle command"), or that stick position commands a proportional angular velocity? ("rate command" as they called it at NASA)? Both solutions have their strengths, actually I'd like to have choice between both: rate command should be good in space (especially with reaction wheel control, might be a bit thirsty with RCS) and fair in atmosphere with both joystick and keyboard; much better than what we have now for flying planes with the keyboard, I think. Angle command would be great in space for powered landing (locking to the zenith and flying helicopter-like), and also great in atmosphere with sticks if it auto-locks to the prograde direction - becoming "AoA command", which should make a lot of sense for planes.

This might be the root cause: http://bugs.kerbalspaceprogram.com/issues/290

What else could Anime Jeb be, in a space program staffed by way too many females?

Nice. And I'll admit that it was also an excuse to post Coach on this thread

The pictures are very nice, but don't you think that you should have some more men besides that one copilot in a background? I mean, if this is the anime version of KSP (done by studio Fantasia, I presume), it's quite likely that we know how the Jeb of this world looks like.... (....are you going to tell me that he already succumbed to radiation poisoning, and that it's his grave in the 11th picture?)

Well, we could have a "soft" meter: it does not forbid anything, but warns you about how complex your ship is for your system. (How about Werner von Kerman on a corner of the screen in the VAB looking more and more uneasy as the complexity rises? )

Harv already checked that when he first gave a spin to Kerbin - I remember a screenshot with day length set to about 30 minutes and stuff flying off the space center by itself Seeing Mesklin quoted on the first page is nice: anime fans might also remember Hecatonchires, the prison planet from Outlaw Star. And yeah, we need something like these somewhere in the system

That will be true for decals also? (I know, it's a "more on that later".) And does the code read a 32-bit PNG just disregarding alpha information, or it doesn't read those at all? LOL, I love the Mirror Kerbin symbol But nevertheless, I think I'm still a Feddie at heart. A very early feddie, also.

Yeah, "rover" obviously, got the words mixed up.

I mean, it's big for a relatively light rover like that. The Lunokhod descent stage was way smaller, and that was the 70s: I suspect that it has a big growth potential...

Damn, it looks like a subscale LEM descent stage...

...KSP meets Stratos 4? ^___^ This one, I hadn't foreseen I'm very sorry for the data loss....

Wow, this is a treasure. I have a couple things to ask, but I'll wait until I have acquainted myself with this. Just one thing for now: you say that there isn't much room for ramjets or similar engines because the mach range is a bit constrained on Kerbin, and this is true. But, have you considered just lowering the speed of sound to, say, 250 m/s? Everything is "scaled" on Kerbin anyway...

Best. Typo. Ever.

Yeah, molten salt reactors are a nice idea. The attractive part is the relatively mild thermal management problem after a serious failure - the history of nuclear accidents demonstrates that decay heat is probably more dangerous than reactivity excursions. Those, we learned quite fast to prevent and control, and barring Chernobyl-scale incompetence they don't seem a realistic problem to me anymore. The fact that a PWR cannot be left unattended after shutdown for weeks, THAT is a serious worry. But, to be honest, there are some nasty corrosion problems with molten salts, nothing impossibly hard I believe, but not easy either. Plus, the reactor by necessity has a built-in reprocessing plant inside... and that will be both an engineering problem and a political one. (Politics will probably be the worst. Until we collectively acknowledge the rising water and suddenly change minds, as humanity usually does...) I'd like to see some Russians working on MSRs, they have a history of being quite good at metallurgy and solving some problems that western engineers studiously avoided. Anyway, you people who like learning about nuclear power can lose hours and hours on the U.S. Department of Energy fundamental manuals (1 and 2 about nuclear physics, plus others) They are kinda military in style, focused on job training with lots of examination questions, not really science textbooks; but extremely interesting, nevertheless. Also, the very important looking U.S. govt logo on the front page But first, check out the old and venerable TRIGA reactors. They will never be much use for power generation, but good old Freeman Dyson and the other guys who built them made some real marvels of applied physics. A reactor that can be safely operated beyond prompt criticality, in a university environment, designed when Elvis was a young rising star.

Are you counting early mornings too, not just evenings? I didn't do such a thorough check, so I believe you are right and i had just a small sample, unless that detail makes the difference. (btw, did you write the programs yourself or used some cunning utility?)

I saw two passes this summer while in the country. Very closely spaced, actually, just two days apart... that's why I looked for that site, after the second, I was surprised to see it come around so quickly. I think I understood that places at midway latitudes will see a bunch of passes in a couple of weeks (it must fly over in that kinda 1-hour window after sunset) and then nothing for some months. On the other hand, it's been years since I saw an Iridium flare... the first time was quite startling: "I didn't think that spy satellites used the flash" has become a family joke since that night

You know, if given the choice, I might prefer riding on a vehicle that has demonstrated the ability to save its payload on a number of occasions instead of one that has never failed so far, but neither proved that it can survive failure...

Compared to Earth, launches on Kerbin have higher gravity losses, and also quite high aerodynamic resistance losses in the first few kilometers. The optimal trajectories differ significantly.