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I have bested myself, behold MEGA CURTAIN 3. The greatest rocket ever wrought by the hands of mortal man, its 87 main stage liquid rockets are fueled by 598500 units of rocket fuel, it is capable of lifting entire space colonies into any orbit you can think of. Even bob smiles during most of the ride. Built using Wobbly's rocket parts 1.09 and SDIR. No other mods, no cfg edits. it uses over 200 struts to maintain its shape during the ~20 minute main stage burn length. It was banned from main production after the loss of a vehicle removed most of Kerth, Kerstraila. Remember the fallen. P.S. I run two 6970 graphic cards, with 16gb of DDR3 ram and this beast brings my frame rate to its knees.

Here's a 12 minute video I made which shows how to get into a circular orbit at a specific height and back again: I hope it's useful. Here's the description that is shown in the video: Getting the crew where you want them and back: 1. Get into a low orbit 2. Make the orbit circular 3. Get to the desired altitude (using a Hohmann transfer orbit) 4. Get back to about 50 km (using a Hohmann transfer orbit) 5. De-orbit 1. Get into orbit -Launch -At about 10 km slowly start lowering the nose in the desired heading (in this case 090). -The horizontal speed should be at least 2349 m/s at 40 km. 2. Make the orbit circular -Likely you're now going up in an epiliptical orbit. Calculate the orbit-speed of the altitude you expect to be at at apoapsis (highest altitude relative to Kearth). -If you overshoot try again at the new apoapsis. 3. Get to the desired altitude (using a Hohmann transfer orbit) -Calculate the speed needed to reach the desired altitude -Example: Altitude 60.000 m -> 300.000 m (altitude of ISS) Required acceleration 2312,8 m/s -> 2484,4 m/s At apoapsis accelerate -Example: An apoapsis of 305.690 m requires 1980,6 m/s for the orbit to become circular. 4. Get back to about 50 km (using a Hohmann transfer orbit) -Going to a lower orbit enables landing to be more precise. It doesn't take extra fuel since the burns involved are 2 deceleration burns. -An altitude of 50 km allows you to overshoot slightly without entering the atmosphere. -Example: Altitude 305.200 m -> 50.000 m Required deceleration 1974,9 m/s -> 1805,6 m/s At periapsis (lowest altitude relative to Kearth) decelerate. -Example: A periapsis of 48.790 requires 2332,7 m/s for the orbit to become circular. 5. De-orbit. -Use your remaining fuel. Made by Atreides Youtube-channel: EagleNED Programs used: Kerbal Space Program v 0.8.5 http://www.kerbalspaceprogram.com/ Kerbal Space Program Calculator v 0.8.1 (by Warringer)

No time for love. Desktop thread. I usually use Ubuntu 10.04 with a heavily modified (to remove lolbloat) GNOME 2, but at the moment I'm on my XP vidya gaymen rig. I usually manually cycle between around 200 or so wallpapers I have in a folder somewhere whenever I get bored of the current one. If asked, I'll post original, but I can't be arsed to right now, so here's my desktop. And yes, that's some rainmeter in there. Also WinAmp.

I've been thinking about the 2m and 3m tanks and engines also. These are the numbers I've been toying with: LFT- Wt-Fuel stock 2.5 500 HH77 Orange 3 600 Double 5 1000 2m short 6 1500 2m full sized 7 2000 3m large 8 3600 with the thrust and burn numbers on some of the engines adjusted so: LFE-wt-thrust-burn stock 2 200 8 GG-M4 2 300 14 M-50 2.5 400 18 TK-31 3 600 26 EX500 3 500 20 EX600 4 600 30 EX800 5 800 40 EX1000 5 1000 50 2mBertha 2 750 32 BigF2M 3 900 36 3m quad 2 1350 54 BigF3M 6 1200 45 (some of the weights haven't been adjusted yet) What about a 'scale' factor'? The realistic weight/fuel and thrust/burn are all divided by the same number Istead of having a 3m tank with a capacity of 11,000 and a weight of 55, you might divide those by three, and instead of having a 3m engine with a burn of 244 and a thrust of 6100, divide those by three also. For the 2m parts, divide by 2 instead of 3.

48000 km seems WAY too close, maybe 200,000km... Man if only someone could stick this in the game .

My only complaint is that putting tiny liquid engines on the large fuel tanks works way too well. One large fuel tank, powered by 4 small liquid rocket engines will still be going at 200,000m.

i've found a glitch in the passive radiator. i'm using the version 1 pack, so maybe it's already fixed, but here it is. i call it the SSTEV-BA. or Single stage to escape velocity-bass ackwards. 18 of the 'passive radiators' around a sunday punch solid booster. apon launch, the rocket flys about 100 feet, then flips over to point the capsule at the ground, and despite the solid booster going full blast, continues to accellerate up at a good 4-5 meters per second squared. when the solid booster runs out, the accelleration just gets higher. i let the the SSTEV-BA run for 3 hours while i was at class, and it had reached 600+ kilometers out, with a velocity of 200,000m/s..and still climbing. so..what the heck?

All of the above assumes a lightsail craft of the same mass as the VASIMR craft. What you miss is that the thrust can be applied to a much lighter payload. The laser craft doesn't have to carry any reactors, and requires a tiny fraction of the thrust to achieve the same acceleration. Rather than massing a few hundred tons, it can be a few kilograms. It might take more power to exert a newton of thrust, but the same result will be achieved with on the order of a hundred thousand times less thrust. The laser craft has no power density requirements...you could run it off hamster wheels if you stacked enough together, because the power source stays stationary. VASIMR carries its power source, and current power sources are really just not good enough to let it reach its potential (though they're plenty good enough to put it to work as an orbital tug or bulk transport craft). No, VASIMR can't (usefully) run on such a small solar array. We're putting a small, low power one (200 kW) on the ISS soon, complete with battery pack to charge it up so we can actually run it, in pulses for a few minutes at a time. VASIMR scales up well to high powers, but realistically requires nuclear reactors (or beamed power) as a power source. If you're just throwing a few kilowatts at it, you may as well just use some form of ion drive, it'll be lighter and perform better. A 10 MW beam could push a 1 kg sailprobe at 0.067 m/s^2. After a month, that adds up to 175 km/s, while still within 1.5 AU distance, without playing any fancy tricks like doing the boost during a solar flyby (like a beam-assisted H-reversal trajectory). All you need is a bigger aperture to increase effective range so you can keep accelerating. All you need to increase acceleration is total power...power density and energy density are irrelevant. A 10 MW 50 metric ton VASIMR craft with 50 kW/N will get 10.5 km/s in that same time period. Improving overall delta-v significantly without making it far slower means squeezing more power and more energy out of a given mass of reactors, radiators, and other power systems. It'll take a lot more where it's going, but it isn't winning a speed race.

Well, here's my masterpiece of stock parts: Behemoth I (yeah, I'm really imaginative with names, right?). Influenced by the Soviet designs, this thing has a reasonable amount of thrusters in a big, wide first stage (although more like multiple small ones), and (design-enforced) ring of SRB's as the second stage. It is designed to deliver the final two stages to orbit of 100-200 km in altitude, depending on how much of the fuel of the third stage is used. Payload capacity to high kerb orbit is fairly good, and this type could easily be used in construction of a space station or staging for a long range mission. The fourth stage is a CSM type spacecraft, capable of quite a bit on its own, including full re-entry and soft landing (theoretically). It also includes a decoupler for the capsule, of course, so the command module can land independently as well (as long as it has been set on a descent with a re-entry burn BEFORE de-coupling - many a kerbal has found themselves helplessly floating in their tin cans after accidentally de-coupling the service module before re-entry burn, while on stable orbit). Operators are advised that the design of this ship is suspect to harmonic oscillations accumulating in the first stage tri-coupled thruster prongs, which can cause damage as the parts, uh, bang against each other if the amplitude of oscillations becomes high enough. This will likely cause asymmetric thrust, and recovery is unlikely. Problem is exacerbated as the fuel decreases in the top fuel tanks and larger mass is concentrated on the tips of the prongs, without mass further up to attenuate the oscillations. Therefore, as the first three tanks are empty on the long prongs, it is adviseable to reduce thrust to 50-66% for the remainder of the first stage burn through. Transition to horizontal flight is not advised until late at first stage burn, as large deviation from zenith will likely cause uncontrolled pitch-down and termination of the mission at best case. Before de-coupling the first stage prongs, it is adviseable to initiate a slow roll to clear the first stage faster from the way of second stage burn. Second stage (solid rocket boosters) should be fired at about 30-45 degrees pitch-up attitude, allowing the craft to gather horizontal velocity in preparation of orbital insertion. Third stage with one LF engine and four fuel tanks will be sufficient to enter orbit with fuel to spare (unless heavier payloads are used). Typically it is adviseable to end the initial ascent burn as the third stage has two full fuel tanks left, then wait until vector indicator is at about 5 degrees up from horizon to initiate orbital insertion point, which will be fired until the VSI settles to +-15, preferably as close to zero as possible. Additional correction burns will be possible after this. Third stage can be left on orbit if desired. Final stage (CSM) is capable of performing both re-orbit burn and soft landing. Typical fuel distribution would be 33-50% of fuel for de-orbit burn and rest conserved for landing.

Plus long vol? 1h30 environ, peut-être 2 heures. a 12 minutes j'étais à 10 km/s en ascendant et a quelque 200 km d'altitude, puis j'ai largué les moteurs de décollage, me suis retourné et ai laissé mon moteur a ion me décélérer pour le retour (mon but étant d'atteindre 100 000 km, puis de revenir et d'entrer en atmosphère avec une vitesse de 10 km/s). C'était un presque succès: le 'presque' étant une marge d'erreur de poussée de 2%; la fusée n'était pas perpendiculaire à la surface et ca m'a donné un drift latéral qui m'a fait raté Kearth de 2000 km. Comme j'avais une vitesse de 10 km/s (qui devenait maintenant une vitesse qui m'éloignait), je n'ai pas eu assez de carburant pour revenir et ai dù abandonner cette mission.

oh come on, at least 200,000 tons of payload on one ship, with speed up to 0.1c and riding on nuclear blast ? Orion concept is fucking awesome. NSWR is cool through, along with Project Daedalus.

For the people wanting desktop versions of the art posted by Riess; although he has said he will publish some, in the interim I have modified the currently published version to produce 16x9 and 16x10 ratio wallpapers. Album Here You'll find the following in the album: - Original Scaled up 200% - Two versions of the scaled image per ratio: - Unmodified - 'Mod1' Leveled/Focussed (to make a better wallpaper)

I've been messing around with the liquid fuel rocket, and I changed some of the velocity and fuel consumption values, as well as all the UI names / descriptions. But whenever I load up the game, it sticks at the loading screen. // Kerbal Space Program - Part Config // LV-TX Liquid Fuel Engine // // --- general parameters --- name = liquidEngineHP module = LiquidEngineHP author = Jack // --- asset parameters --- mesh = liquidEngine.DAE scale = 0.1 texture = liqeng_tex.png specPower = 0.1 rimFalloff = 3 alphaCutoff = 0 // --- node definitions --- node_stack_top = 0.0, 7.21461, 0.0, 0.0, 1.0, 0.0 node_stack_bottom = 0.0, -7.27403, 0.0, 0.0, 1.0, 0.0 // --- FX definitions --- fx_exhaustFlame_blue = 0.0, -10.3, 0.0, 0.0, 1.0, 0.0, active fx_exhaustLight_blue = 0.0, -10.3, 0.0, 0.0, 0.0, 1.0, active fx_smokeTrail_medium = 0.0, -10.3, 0.0, 0.0, 1.0, 0.0, active // --- Sound FX definition --- sound_vent_medium = activate sound_rocket_hard = active sound_vent_soft = deactivate // --- editor parameters --- cost = 950 category = 0 subcategory = 0 title = LV-TX Liquid Fuel Engine manufacturer = Jack's Compressor Shop description = The next advancement in the LV-T series, the LV-TX. The LV-TX is a high-powered version of the original LV-T. Designed for long-distance space travel, or stratospheric drag races, this is the best engine for Speed Demons! // attachment rules: stack, srfAttach, allowStack, allowSrfAttach, allowCollision attachRules = 1,0,1,0,0 // --- standard part parameters --- mass = 2 dragModelType = default maximum_drag = 0.2 minimum_drag = 0.2 angularDrag = 2 crashTolerance = 7 maxTemp = 3600 // --- liquid engine parameters --- maxThrust = 200 minThrust = 0 heatProduction = 500 fuelConsumption = 8 // thrustVectoringCapable = True // gymbalRange = 10 What's wrong with it? (this is the reverted version I think, with only the descriptions and UI info changed.)