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Hi guys, this is my first post here and my first KSP video. I hope you enjoy.

After trying 13 times, I finally land a F9 on the drone ship! I have to say, it is REALLY HARD. Good job SpaceX .

I really like this idea. It sees like something logical that could happen. What do you think? what changes do you think should be made? http://marsbase.org/contents

There's pretty clearly a large scorch mark below the engines, and now that SpaceX will be recovering F9s regularly, ASDS's will need to be constantly repainted. Any thoughts?

Hello , I did the mission of CRS- 8 and suggest that you evaluate the result of the work . Yes, mistakes have been and I will correct them in your next video Sorry for mistakes. English only learn and try to write correctly.

This is my idea for a space exploration road map. Not all of it is politically plausible. 2016: Orion program replaced with with the integrated space exploration vehicle, or ISEV program, which utilizes orion and a privately developed DragonRider with Orion life support and a service module in addition to a trunk. DreamChaser selected for ISS crew delivery, in addition to other spacecraft. BEAM on station, with good results. Bigelow begins developing a module to fit the dragon trunk. 2017: Commercial crew delivery begins. Exploration sats deployed. 2018: Insight launch, SLS test flight to the moon, Falcon heavy test flight, ExoMars launch, dragonlab in service, Nauka delivered. Mars cubsats delivered. OSIRIS REX mission. JWST. 2019: Falcon 9R flight. 2020: ARM vehicle launched. Bigelow station alpha on orbit. 2020 rover. 2021: em1, Taingong 3 construction. 2022: Lunar orbit station begins construction to support future moon bases and deep space missions. Probe to Apophis. Mars exploration landers/ rovers.Luanar base tests asteroid equipment. 2023: Europa clipper launch, Jupiter cubesat network, includes lander cubes. 2024: deep space mission from lunar station, flies to asteroid.Phobos satellites.Saturn titan submarine. 2025: SpaceX starts work on Falcon X. ULA starts work on Vulcan, ACES and ZEUS. 2026:Skylon test flight, Deep space mission.BA2100 launch. Shackleton crater outpost construction begins. 2027: Falcon X launch. NTR MTV construction begins. Taigong 3 finished. 2028: Deep space mission. Skylon comes into service. 2029: Phobos hab launched, supplies launched. 2030: ISS decommissioned. Skylon begins space station construction, International and corporate collaboration allow a 2nd MTV, with a centrifuge, to be built. 2031: Phobos mission. 2032:Moon base is enlarged. 2033:Mars supply run, Falcon X heavy, falcon XX in service, Phobos return. 2034: MTV 2 finished. 2035: MTV Embarks on mars excursion. Humanity becomes an interplanetary civilization! 2036: Venus landers sent. 2037: 2nd mars mission launched. Previous one returns. 2038: Space exploration becomes a huge business. Preparations are made for venus mission. 2039: Mars missions launch and return. 2040: Venus mission. 2041: mars outpost established, MCT Constructed. 2042: SpaceX begins mars colony construction. 2050:FUSION!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! 2055: Space Elevator. I will be adding details and more events later, but for now, what do you think?

NASA scientists say we could colonise the Moon by 2022... for just $10 billion. What are we waiting for? FIONA MACDONALD 22 MAR 2016 Quote: All of the papers in the special edition of New Space are freely available online for you to peruse and use to plan your future in space. Get dreaming, because it's closer than you think. "It is time to go back to this Moon, this time to stay," concludes the journal's preface. "and funding is no longer the main hurdle." http://www.sciencealert.com/nasa-scientists-say-we-could-colonise-the-moon-by-2022-for-just-10-billion

http://www.marketwatch.com/story/it-would-cost-only-10-billion-to-live-on-the-moon-2016-03-17?siteid=yhoof2 The gist of the article is that it is analysis stating that if we really wanted to, for about $10 billion, we could have NASA set up a moon base much like how our Antarctic stations operate. It would do this through using spaceX rockets to get there, modified Bigelow Aerospace modules for the habitats, and a few other cost saving moves.

http://www.orlandosentinel.com/news/space/os-expandable-living-space-for-astronauts-heading-to-space-20160318-story.html Bigelow Aerospace is finally getting to send up their module to the ISS in or about April on one of the SpaceX launches which SHOULD include some form of landing attempt. I am pleased to see this day. Anybody got any additional info on the module in question?

All right, so I had been noticing the low impulse on the SuperDraco engines on the Dragon V2 and surmised in another thread that adding attachable vacuum exhaust extenders could bring the impulse high enough for the Dragon V2 o serve as the second stage all on its own. That's probably not going to work. But I thought of something that would. The Dragon V2 will carry 1,388 kg of onboard propellant. However, the crewed version can accommodate 7 with its 10 cubic meter volume. If the crew were reduced to two and their living size was increased by 50%, this would free up 5.7 cubic meters of space for an auxiliary internal tank. The propellant combination used for the SuperDraco engines is quite dense, at 1200 kg per comic meter. So that is an extra 6.84 tonnes of fuel. Add 200 kg for the tanka to the vehicle dry mass and assume your two-man crew and their consumables mass 1,103 kg (a third of the nominal payload capacity for the Dragon), and you end up with a non-fuel mass of 5.5 tonnes and a loaded mass of 13.7 tonnes. With the 336 second specific impulse, that's a dV of 3.01 km/s. What's that good for? Well, Falcon Heavy was originally quoted at 53 tonnes to LEO, but with the Full Thrust modifications this will probably come up to about 10% higher, or 58.3 tonnes to LEO. LEO to the lunar surface is a dV of 5.93 km/s; the Falcon Heavy should be able to drop off around 15 tonnes to the lunar surface as a crasher stage. So a FH can lift a retrofitted Dragon V2 to the moon and then allow the Dragon to return to LEO (or simply Earth aeropcapture) under its own power. Thoughts?

Crunching a few numbers, just for fun, and I was looking at the SuperDraco engines on the Dragon V2. Their quoted ISP is really, really low...like, monopropellant low. If the SL impulse is 240 seconds and the SL thrust is 68,170 N, then the mass flow at full thrust is going to be about 29 kg/s. The quoted vacuum thrust is 73,000 N, so this corresponds to a vacuum specific impulse of 257 seconds. But that's crazy. The NTO/MMH hypergols used for the SuperDraco engines should have a SL specific impulse of 288 s and a vacuum specific impulse of 336 s. What gives? At first I thought that perhaps the pressure-fed SuperDraco engines were running with a lower-than-ideal chamber pressure. But they have a chamber pressure of 1000 psi, which gives the expected ~280 s SL specific impulse according to this chart. Apparently the SuperDraco engines have really, really underexpanded nozzles to allow deep throttling. This got me thinking. If SpaceX designed attachable nozzle extensions that mounted to the outside of the Dragon V2, the vacuum specific impulse could theoretically come right up to 336 s. The combined thrust from the eight SuperDraco engines would be a little over 760 kN. The thrust of the single Merlin 1D Vacuum engine in the Falcon 9 second stage is 934 kN...just 22% higher. The crewed Dragon V2 masses an estimated 9,200 kg including onboard propellant, full cargo capacity, and the trunk. The second stage has a dry mass of 3.9 tonnes, a specific impulse of 340 seconds, and 92.67 tonnes of fuel. So the second stage can deliver almost 7 km/s. Pretty impressive. But suppose we equip the Dragon V2 with nozzle extensions, raising its vacuum isp to 336 s and its total thrust capacity to 760 kN, and replace the entire second stage with a drop-away NTO/MMH tank feeding up to external couplings on the Dragon V2. We can assume a tank dry mass fraction of 4.6% for that propellant combination. If the total mass being lifted by the first stage is kept the same, then the tank will contain 92.13 tonnes of fuel and you end up with a dV of 6.74 km/s without using any of the Dragon V2's internal propellant. The first stage should easily be able to manage an extra ~200 m/s and still RTLS. So you have an almost fully reusable launch system with only a single drop tank being discarded. And sure, I know that NTO/MMH is expensive and toxic. But surely it's cheaper than throwing away a Falcon 9 second stage with each flight, right?

Here's my overview of SpaceX's SES-9 mission, launching tomorrow.

( http://spacenews.com/nasa-offers-more-details-on-cargo-contract-decision/) As we all know, SpaceX, OrbitalATK, and Sierra Nevada were awarded cargo contracts for ISS resupply, using their Cargo Dragon V1, Cygnus Extended, and Dream Chaser Cargo. NASA has now come out an explained how the 3 companies were selected- proposals were evaluated by price, past performance, and mission suitability, with price being the most important, followed by mission suitability, and then past performance. Of the 3 companies selected (Boeing and LockMart gave proposals too, but their proposals were rejected) SpaceX had the best score of the three companies selected in mission suitability- (922/1000) followed by OrbitalATK (880/1000) and Sierra Nevada (879/1000); meanwhile, all (including Sierra Nevada, apparently) of the companies selected got a "high" rating in past performance (NASA is being very secretive for some reason this time around...) However, things get more notable when NASA evaluated the companies by price (though all were considered reasonable). NASA evaluated their price score on the amount of pressurised cargo delivered per $ (this is the most important type of ISS cargo, and is common on all cargo resupply spacecraft); assuming each company delivered half of NASA's ISS cargo per year. OrbitalATK offered the lowest price per kg, followed by Sierra Nevada, then by SpaceX, who offered the highest pressurised cargo price per kg. Of course, this is slightly misleading- OrbitalATK's Cygnus can only deliver pressurised cargo (along with disposal capability for ISS trash), while Sierra Nevada's Dream Chaser can bring pressurised cargo, 500kg of unpressurised cargo, and ~3000kg back to Earth for return (along with disposal capability). SpaceX's Dragon can carry only ~3000kg of pressurised cargo, lower than its competitors, and ~3000kg of unpressurised cargo (however, the ISS almost never needs that amount of unpressurised cargo capacity), and brings ~3000kg back to Earth (the Dragon cannot dispose of ISS trash by burning.) However, this is still notable- SpaceX quietly agreed to deliver more launches for less pay than its fellow awardees with CRS-2. According to the official who made the final decision on who was awarded the CRS-2 contract, stated that the higer costs by SpaceX was due to the production and size of the Dragon V1 (cargo Dragon); having two production lines for crew and cargo Dragon (required due to the need to use different ISS ports for crew and cargo) along with an oversized rocket (due to Falcon 9 upgrades- it may be a good idea to revive Falcon 5, Elon) and small capsule volume (thus, able to carry less cargo- both Cygnus and Dream Chaser can carry more). However, NASA still belived the 3 companies met or exceeded their requirements, and thus, awarded all of them a contract. NASA has also confirmed Boeing and LockMart were the only others to submit CRS-2 proposals, but offered little information to why they were not selected.

I have the SpaceX launch pack mod and so far it looks and runs great, no complaints there. However I am having issues with the payload fairings. I cannot seem to get the fairings to work at all. When they are next on the staging I hit space bar but they just stay there and also remain in the staging menu, and the rest of the staging just continues as normal. When I load an existing pre packaged craft like the Falcon 9 that the mod comes with it only has 1 (half) the fairing so I usually add another one, not sure if that's the issue or not but the one that it comes with does not seem to place it self with symmetry, so I have to add the other half manually. Could someone that has this mod please shine some light on how to get payload fairings working?

Hello everyone! I recently obtained some files and were told to look after them, so here you go! I myself haven't done any of the modeling or texturing But I did do a lot of config editing. Mostly rewriting RP configs, names, discriptions, etc... Download Link: Dev Release. Still kinda funky. If the Mods take this down because license issues, I'll need help understanding how to do that... Credits: Myself- Pretty much nothing! @DECQ- Falcon 9 Models and textures @MeCripp- Helping me figure out how the hell stock fairings work License: Haven't quite figured this one out yet either... Advice? Do I even need one?

So, I'm curious about how smart it would be for the world's space agencies to collaborate on building a Hermes style transport ship for manned Mars exploration(picture below). My thought is, if they all get together, splurge and build a highly efficient/designed to last ship where the computer systems and electronics are easy to replace, then it could also likely be used for beyond Mars exploration missions. Such as a flyby of Venus, etc. Yes it would be required to overengineer some systems and to include a nice buffer on the amount of dV onboard, but I was curious if otherwise it makes sense to do it this way? Am I totally off base here or does that actually make a decent amount of sense?

I always predict that ULA projects were a complete waste of money. But with so many senators and generals in their pocket, I always imagine that they could fight for a niche at least for 5 to 7 years more. Now these days is not even sure what would happen with ULA in the next 2 years. They were ok since 1990 with 800 millions each year from the Pentagon just to maintain infrastructure and then extra money for each launch. But spacex appeared from nothing and in few years make the ground tremble. Until that point all ok.. ULA still had their friends.. But with the ukraine-russian mishap, now US wants to ban russian engines, which are the ones that ULA uses because they never bother to design their own engines. Now spacex gain its certification to deliver US defense cargo to orbit and ULA did not submit any proposal for the next launch. Many politics are in rage against ULA with all the millions they give to the company and now they don't even bother to find a solution. Now ULA may lose the whole contract which will mean a huge % of their income. If we take all that plus the fact that the new vulcan rocket is still very behind falcon 9 capabilities, its near future is uncertain. Too bad for ULA fans. Source: http://fortune.com/2016/01/28/pentagon-congress-spacex-competition/

If SpaceX gets its booster return down to a science, and Falcon Heavy performs as expected, then an interesting possibility emerges. The Falcon 9 v1.1 FT Stage 1 booster is capable of SSTO on its own, though without payload or capacity for return. If a Falcon Heavy was launched without any second stage, however, you'd end up with a nearly-full first stage in orbit and two empty strap-on boosters returned safely to the ground, ready to refuel and relaunch. A single Falcon 9 launch costs $61 million, with fuel accounting for roughly $200,000 of that. Thus, Falcon Heavy would allow SpaceX to put a nearly-full Falcon 9 first stage into LEO for marginally more than the cost of a single Falcon 9 launch. With a $1 billion investment, that would be no less than fifteen nearly-full Falcon 9 first stages in LEO. Strap them together and you've got a launch stack capable of a Brachistochrone transfer to Mars for a manned mission in a minute fraction of the Hohmann transfer time. A short transfer time means your consumables budget can be much smaller, enabling an even-faster transfer. Can't think of a cheaper way of doing it.

This addon adds a detail to create the Falcon 9 rocket, in principle that's all. Add-on was made in one night, on this if it is not working as it should not my fault, but your installed game, he could not break Thank Kickasskyle for his permission to use his models and textures (It was a long time ago), some textures of his handiwork. Add-on is based on the stock style, it has the ability to use add-on RealPlume. https://github.com/KSP-RO/RealPlume/wiki Some textures. License:https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/3.0/ DOWNLOAD. https://www.dropbox.com/sh/twpxp5ae0kdxb1k/AAAxGbFGjohIcB41an653b7Ea?dl=0

I was looking at youtube comments on a video (forget what though), and this person was talking about a Falcon XX with 400 tons to LEO and a Ultra Heavy with 1600 supposedly. I think he might have been exaggerating, but I found a source with designs for them. On the article it says that the Falcon X would have 125 tons to orbit and a Falcon XX with 140 tons to orbit. Discuss below, is this BS, exaggerated, or fact? I'd say exaggerated, 1600 tons to orbit is too much to be believable. Source: http://nextbigfuture.com/2010/08/spacex-talks-falcon-x-heavy-for-125.html?m=1

As far as I know there isn't a Dragon V-2 thread - unless it's buried from some post from last year (Which is incredible). Anyway... What do you think about the Dragons way of landing? Or its style? Do you guys think this is a true 21st century spacecraft? And while we're at it, what do you think about the spacesuits (From the "Dragon in orbit" video, and the picture of Elon wearing it)? Videos galore! Unveiling: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yEQrmDoIRO8 D V-2 hover Propulsion test: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=07Pm8ZY0XJI Pad abort test: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1_FXVjf46T8 Interior: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xjSb_b4TtxI In orbit: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a1EB5BQpm7w Flight animation: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Cf_-g3UWQ04 Dragon fly program: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QFx7se_D82I

"SpaceX’s Elon Musk is optimistic that 2016 will hold more landings, and fewer explosions,tweeting, “My best guess for 2016: !70% landing success rate (so still a few more RUDs to go), then hopefully improving to ~90% in 2017.” Rocket explosions are discretely referred to as Rapid Unscheduled Disassemblies, or RUDs, in the industry." http://gizmodo.com/check-out-the-wreckage-of-spacexs-almost-landed-rocket-1753894327

There are two YouTube channels hosting the event. Looks like they offer different views of the launch. Both are included below. Thankful for dual screens. Launch is scheduled for 1:42 PM Eastern.

Hey, I've made an overview video of SpaceX's Jason 3 mission, which is scheduled for tomorrow. SpaceX will attempt to land the first stage on the barge after their successful orbcomm-2 landing in December. Hope you guys like it!

What would a Mars colony have to offer in the way of goods and services? In the past, colonies have been established for economic, faith and political reasons. I am concerned with the first and to a lesser extent the last. On the issue of the first, there will be no gold, beaver skins or crops to be exported to Earth, so the goods will have to be of a different sort. Tourism might be a major player on Mars after the colony matures, but IMO, the number of people who would be willing to spend years of their life in transit and on Mars, and have the wealth to afford it, would not be large enough to support a large tourism scene. The biggest economic boon, at least at first, would be entertainment. The whole colonization project could be streamed live*, or scripted to and turned into a reality tv show (I would hate to see the crowning achievement of our species be lowered to that level). Of course, after the first few years the novelty and awe would wear off and the money flow would start to wane. These are just my initial thoughts, and I look forward to seeing yours. *At least as live as one can get with the time delay.