Neil1993

You pretty much named the reasons why. The fact is, if the job can be done better, more reliably and more efficiently with one motor, then why use two? in most cases, the equipment needed to make a multi-stage work just adds too much weight and complexity (if it's a rocket's like the ones we're playing with). That being said, Mississippi state used a 2-stage rocket this year to propel their Advanced category entry to 23,000 feet. It was glorious

How would that be integrated? researching something makes all parts lighter by an arbitrary amount? Or how about ability to choose the material used in a part, sometimes at the expense of strength (so ability to manage the strength-to-weight ratio of components). Honestly, the material we used for the fuselage is so strong (Stronger than some steels) that we really didn't need to put too much effort into making sure things were structurally sound while still being light.

We're actually hoping to make a less powerful rocket. One of the defining characteristics of our design was the amount of composite materials used (excluding the payload which had to be heavy and the motor). We want to bring our composite design to the next level so that the next rocket can be light enough to switch down to a smaller motor yet still be able to meet mission objectives.

A rocket blowing up is nothing to be ashamed of. They were trying to build an advanced hybrid engine and, even for the pros, that stuff is pretty hard to get right. Just look at what happened to SpaceX recently. They'll learn from the launch and the next time they fire it up, they'll probably be winning some awards.

The rocket was a full 2.96 meters in height (or roughly 9' 9") and 0.104 meters in diameter (roughly 4"). Hopefully we can have a video this weekend, complete with epic music and even more epic footage. We're waiting for the competition to release footage they took with a drone before we finalize it. You bet we are! The competition takes place every year and we've already started on the next design.

I apologize for my absence from this thread. Things at work and school got real busy, real fast. It's probably going to end up being freebuild for now.

There actually was a team that was sponsored by KSP and I think they did just that (but I'm not 100% sure). Unfortunately, their flight was appropriately Kerbal-esque. This is a to a video of their launch. Hopefully, it'll be out in the next few days. We're still putting it together.

I attended the 10th Intercollegiate Rocket Engineering Competition 2 weeks ago and we finally got our rocket in the air! (This also explains why I haven't visited these forums in a while) We launched to an altitude of around 10,000 feet (+/- 1000 ft) and the only problem we experienced was a sensor glitch in the commercial flight computer which probably resulted in an erroneous altitude reading. We used an advanced carbon-thermoplastic airframe which was made via automated fiber placement and advanced honeycomb fins. Overall, pretty good for a rookie team. The success is probably due to the fact that we have Captain Falcon on the nose.

You couldn't buy the whole paper since we haven't sent in our final research yet (The IAF allows you to submit abstracts for conferences even if the paper is incomplete).

You'll have to wait a bit. The conference is this coming October! (we'll probably have KSP 3.0 by then XD)

So here's what I found in the (e)mail this morning: I'm going to get flown over to Isreal for it!

Not possible. There is always more Space Exploration to be done!

They've already made the release of KSP 1.0 a national holiday?

I don't think cardboard would hold up under that kind of acceleration. XD I would seriously recommend that the OP take a gander back to the drawing board. A considerable amount of research would serve him well.

First few were G to I (-ish). The last I built with some colleagues and it was close to M. In the near future, I'll be doing analysis of parts for hybrid and solid motors on sub-orbital sounding rockets, but overall, I prefer working on air-breathing propulsion. I was thinking of path deviations in terms of OP's potential sugar motors too. A professional motor with APCP would be more reliable but would require an electrical ignition system.

Not always. High winds (like those encountered at higher altitudes) will still push the rocket around. And the real problem is the ignition of UNRELIABLE, AMATEUR-MADE, rocket motors (if we're being specific to the project here). Material ejecting from the motor or thrust that isn't perfectly aligned on the longitudinal axis (These are some very common problems with these kinds of motors. Again, from experience) at motor start could cause significant path deviation.

It's generally not a very good idea to use more than 3 stages on rockets without active control (from experience). It almost always results in the rocket going off course, which is something the FAA definitely wouldn't be very happy about.

Where this specific simulator falls short, I couldn't say. It looks like it's more of a promotional device for use at conventions, and, in that department, it's probably totally fine. However, if you wanted it to be a better simulation, you would need to have a simulated hood that you could go open and yell at every time it breaks down (jk jk)

I couldn't agree more. The current vehicles designed by LowBudgetSpaceprogram lack the craftsmanship and efficiency to survive any kind of actual flight. As well, from what I've seen, his propellant preparation methods lack in any kind of safety precautions. I would recommend turning to model rocketry. It requires a relatively low budget, provides procedures and motors that would reduce risk to your person, and will get you much better performance on a much shorter timescale.

On a halfway related sidenote, I was doing turbulence tuning with some evaluation pilots from an airline the other day. It was basically 2 hours of the scariest (most fun) landings imaginable. The turbulence was as high as possible and we all had to be strapped in to keep from being thrown around.

As someone who has worked with solid propellant and has also very nearly lost eyebrows, fingers and other body parts to said propellant, I would say, don't make solid propellant engines if you can help it! I'm working with a team that's building hybrid engines and consulting for an Indian company that's doing suborbital launches with similar technology and I can say that it's not only more efficient, but way safer too. Also, I like Upsilon's idea with the weather balloon. Myself and some bros were looking at something similar, but not with a rocket and with some kind of air-breathing propulsion. More than that, I don't want to say (it's a surprise!)

I didn't know about this until I saw this thread. Looks like I'm late to the party again Any idea why something like this would be cancelled? Just from the trailers, it looked as if it had a fair bit of talent and resources invested in it.

Again, the problem with the occulus, which I've already pointed out, is that it's unlikely to ever be qualified as one-to-one flight experience. By one-to-one flight experience, I mean one simulator hour counting as one hour in an actual aircraft. Pilots still need these hours before they're allowed in real commercial jets.

You'd be surprised how many simulators some companies buy. Some of the bigger players could buy up to 10 at a time, and I know my company ships anywhere between 20 and 50 simulators a year. Wildlynx is right. Current computer technology might be a long way from perfect (and it seems like your FMS is even further) but computers and AI have the advantage that they do not have to be re-trained constantly, the improvement that you give one can be given to any other and they retain any improvements made (if you want to replace a human with advanced skills, you have to train another human).

This is a very interesting discussion and I don't know if it's right for this particular thread ...but what the heck! Let's do it anyways! Computers already do a whole lot of things better than humans, a lot of which is the boring sorting-through-tons-of-data type tasks. But programs are becoming good enough to replace other jobs (see the self-driving car or IBM's Watson). This can be very good, since robots can make things safer and more efficient, but at the same times, what is the point of humans?