Is Kerbal Space Program possible in real life?

[RenegadeRad]

How the heck are you guys so experienced in aerospace  I wish I could be too... but I'm more towards other sciences. Is there anyway I can learn some basics? It is really interesting...

[Kryten]

 

10 hours ago, RenegadeRad said:

How the heck are you guys so experienced in aerospace  I wish I could be too... but I'm more towards other sciences. Is there anyway I can learn some basics? It is really interesting...

I'd say one of the best ways to get a feel for real aerospace is to just go here and start reading;

http://forum.nasaspaceflight.com

They have pretty strict rules on going off-topic and general post quality, and have quite a lot of users who are directly involved in the aerospace industry. A good place to start would probably be here; the story of the origins and design process of the Pegasus launch vehicle, by the lead designer of it. Will teach you more about rocket design than any amount of messing around in KSP.

[PB666]

16 minutes ago, Kryten said:

 

I'd say one of the best ways to get a feel for real aerospace is to just go here and start reading;

http://forum.nasaspaceflight.com

They have pretty strict rules on going off-topic and general post quality, and have quite a lot of users who are directly involved in the aerospace industry. A good place to start would probably be here; the story of the origins and design process of the Pegasus launch vehicle, by the lead designer of it. Will teach you more about rocket design than any amount of messing around in KSP.

you mean the culture of a free lance rocket engineer. Watching spaceX will tell you

Steps. 1 - 2. get a launch vehicle that is reliable

Step 3 get an in-space deliver vehicle

Step 4 build your payload out

Step 5 go pray at every temple, church, mosque, .... you can find

Anyway that was 1986 and that was pretty much the game. 

2nd only trust launch execs who drive around in 15 year old chevies impalas or toyota camrys with 200,000 miles on them. Alternatively ford F150s flleetside extralong bed regular cab, camper/tool package on back, in which can be found a bunch of pieces that are going back and forth to the testing lab, several toolboxs, maybe a lincoln arc welder as a back up. 

[Kryten]

He's not freelance, he's one of OrbATK's department heads. The rest of your post is pretty much gibberish.

[PB666]

6 minutes ago, Kryten said:

He's not freelance, he's one of OrbATK's department heads. The rest of your post is pretty much gibberish.

same thing, until you have a strng track record, you're a novelty.

 

[RenegadeRad]

So who's right and who's wrong?

[PB666]

Just go back and review all the news reels from the 80s and 90s from small privately funded rocket companies, most of them are long gone. Fallovers were the lingua franca. Some BMW driving hotshot hier grandstanding through a sales meeting, I would have done my research before I wasted a redeye ticket for the meeting, BTDTMO.  Space has alot of appeal, its just like the restauarant and recreation industries, but there are alot of failures..   Nobody ever talks about the fact that certain industries are a hell of alot of groung work, much more taphsn is apparent from a media oerspective. To survive you got to put your nose on the ground and pay your dues. Nobody ever talks about wanting to start a grabage truck manfacturing company, or a tractor manufacturing comoany. Oh 'im going to launch my new oil field restoration equipment company'. 

Oh hes . . . . . . OrbitalATK, idolize, idolize, idolize.  I didn't really get why Kryton posted that here, it really gave no greater insight than showing some paranoid grandstanding fool does not no how to manage his potential clients. 

[Kryten]

Orbital basically invented commercial space in the US, all the previous attempts had been pretty miserable failures; you would not have SpaceX, Blue Origin or any of the others without Orbital leading the way. You can certainly learn a lot more from their history than from a guy who speaks in horribly tortured car metaphors.

[PB666]

1 hour ago, Kryten said:

Orbital basically invented commercial space in the US, all the previous attempts had been pretty miserable failures; you would not have SpaceX, Blue Origin or any of the others without Orbital leading the way. You can certainly learn a lot more from their history than from a guy who speaks in horribly tortured car metaphors.

And the point of the link was? Devoted to the discussion of engineering or Meta-space relationships?

Quote

A merger of Orbital Sciences Corporation and the defense and aerospace divisions of Alliant Techsystems (ATK) was announced on April 29, 2014. The two companies had collaborated on several previous projects, including the use of 400 ATK rocket motors in Orbital's launch vehicles.^[3] The deal officially closed on February 9, 2015. ATK's sporting-goods division spun off to form Vista Outdoor on the same day.^[2]  - wikipedia

Orbital ATK did not exist until 2014, don't give us that bunk.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Orbital_Sciences_Corporation

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pegasus_%28rocket%29

Quote

The Pegasus is an air-launched rocket developed by Orbital ATK, formerly Orbital Sciences Corporation. Capable of carrying small payloads of up to 443 kilograms (977 lb) into low Earth orbit, Pegasus first flew in 1990 and remains active as of 2015. The vehicle consists of three solid propellant stages and an optional monopropellant fourth stage. - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pegasus_%28rocket%29

Note that this is 8 years after the company formed. Like I said, its alot of hard work.

 

Edited May 25, 2016 by PB666

[Kryten]

 

1 minute ago, PB666 said:

And the point of the link was? Devoted to the discussion of engineering or Meta-space relationships?

Try reading the post it's in, where I explain it.

1 minute ago, PB666 said:

And the point of the link was? Devoted to the discussion of engineering or Meta-space relationships?

Orbital ATK did not exist until 2014, don't give us that bunk.

He was one of the first people in Orbital, which you'd know if you followed the link and read on like I said instead of generating paranoid gibberish.

1 hour ago, PB666 said:

Oh hes . . . . . . OrbitalATK, idolize, idolize, idolize.  I didn't really get why Kryton posted that here, it really gave no greater insight than showing some paranoid grandstanding fool does not no how to manage his potential clients. 

Seriously, what is this even supposed to mean?

[PB666]

3 hours ago, Kryten said:

Orbital basically invented commercial space in the US, all the previous attempts had been pretty miserable failures; you would not have SpaceX, Blue Origin or any of the others without Orbital leading the way. You can certainly learn a lot more from their history than from a guy who speaks in horribly tortured car metaphors.

More idolatry, presumption and supposition.

After rereading the TL:dr link i realized there are some grains, describing how they chose an otherwise obsolete airframe that happened to config for a launch vehicle.  but grains you could have easily cut and paste and given a framework, like why Orbitals predecessor decided to go with a airfoil launched platform versus a verticle launch platform. We dont need to sign Ceasars praise or know every single polical backdrop. 

The other 99% of what the engineer might want to know is missing, like why they chose an ATK engine, how they decided to build the frame, how was the flight dynamic controls made, why certain materials were chosen over others. 

The thread is about the difference between the game and real life. It sounds to me like 'we didn't want NASa to launch, we didn't have SpaceX' and as you correctly point out all the private non-US contract companies were not robust. As a consequence they chose a lower cost launch platform. Cost is not engineering. 

 

[wumpus]

22 hours ago, PB666 said:

Cost is not engineering. 

You *really*, *really*, *really* don't want to have to be in the all hands meeting when the Chief Engineer has to remind the crew that "COST IS A SPEC".  I wasn't part of the project that lead to that outburst (and most of the members soon wouldn't be part of the company), but took it to heart.

Note to newer engineers.  Being under budget is great, but don't expect anyone to care how much under budget you are.  There is probably at least one spec that could have been better tested/designed/proven that is ever so slightly risky.  And that risk is more important than the degree you went under budget.

[PB666]

33 minutes ago, wumpus said:

You *really*, *really*, *really* don't want to have to be in the all hands meeting when the Chief Engineer has to remind the crew that "COST IS A SPEC".  I wasn't part of the project that lead to that outburst (and most of the members soon wouldn't be part of the company), but took it to heart.

Note to newer engineers.  Being under budget is great, but don't expect anyone to care how much under budget you are.  There is probably at least one spec that could have been better tested/designed/proven that is ever so slightly risky.  And that risk is more important than the degree you went under budget.

I know, but when we mix economics and politics, and we can also throw in patent law and international one-ups-manship, it really gets into the pedantic range. The whole thing about SpaceX was some Russian director thought Musk was a newbie and dreamer, so Musk took the engineering problem to heart, I wonder if that Russian director still has his job. In the long run better engineering beats penny-wise pound-foolish spending. If you say to someone, no 'Im just going to screw you at the highest cost your are willing to pay' which sounds like the case for Orbital attempt to bid out a payload launch, what you are in-fact doing is encouraging that person to either give-up, or if you sufficiently T them off, encourage them to engineer around you and your competitors. That is not wise risk management, for good sales you want your clients to develop  a trust with you so that you do not become or encourage their competitor(s). For both you see outside motivation to go-it-alone thinking, which usually fails, but can sometimes be spectacularly successful.  SpaceX and Orbital did (although in the case of Orbital the competition, as many of them did in the period, went flat). The person not to challenge is someone who can build an new car company in a very competitive US car market.

One of the critical mistakes I noted during college business classes (my premajor) was in economics they often treated the supply curve as fixed, but as we know in observing our economy is that workforce efficiency is almost always going up, that means that the supply curves are continuously shifting downward (generally by adding more features to product). Just about every calculation you make is based on a fixed curve (not line but curve as it also includes economies of scale and decreasing economies of large scale). That unfortunately feeds into the dreaded business cycle toward the end of the peak business become inefficient. On a global basis this flexes with the business cycle and other factors (such as material availability) but, key point, in any given sub-industrial sector, supply curves often step (take computer memory and costs). If you are a white swan economist and you are thinking oh, my supply curve is quite stable, and demand is high, therefore I will just jack-up the price in according to the supply demand intersection (such as pharmacueticals), you'de better be real sensitive to potential fluctuation in markets supply curve. Many companies handle this by undercutting prices in order to limit the competition. But in the long run no company is immune from outside innovations.

If you read specifically what Musk says, he thinks he can shift the supply curve down by 90% (I presume that to be NASA costs), not globally available cost. Not supporting that believe, just saying that from an economic perspective that is what is driving his decision making, he thinks he can beat the Russians and everyone else out of the mid-large size rocket game. More than anything else one meeting will not change your mind, but if you see systemic inefficiencies of various types scattered in different market places, and, you know the smell (bureaucracy, excessive pride and arrogance) of those inefficiencies before you see them then you might be inclined to probe the cost structure and see if you can see the inefficiencies. There is always a entry cost to be paid, space is not a lemonades and rockets are not cardboard stands, but in many industry that appear protected by entry cost, they expect that competitors will not succeed (at any cost), so that creates a systemic black swan risk. If spaceX makes it right the risk/reward ratio coupled with entry cost may be so high he effectively blocks new entries. I think he's about to hit a multiyear wall on production, but we have to see maybe what his long term expansion plans are. The only thing that is really critical, you either got to buy patents up or make and patent things that cannot be confused as patent infringement, otherwise you end up duplicating whatever failures you see in the marketplace but at a higher price. Along with this you have efficiency processes in production, those also have to be patented and continually improved, otherwise your competitors can just wait you out. Those patents however have value to your competitors, so its not a good idea to shift the supply curve as low as possible when you are well below the competitors price and demand is robust. 

[RocketSquid]

On 5/23/2016 at 2:07 PM, PB666 said:

4. Kerbins dont eat or excrement.

Well, we can easily fix the whole "Food" thing using a combination of careful genetic engineering and algae tanks.

[PB666]

35 minutes ago, RocketSquid said:

Well, we can easily fix the whole "Food" thing using a combination of careful genetic engineering and algae tanks.

Algae need mass. Its a deeply held secret that Kerbals don't eat algae.

[RocketSquid]

1 hour ago, PB666 said:

Algae need mass. Its a deeply held secret that Kerbals don't eat algae.

They are also green. This could mean photosynthesis.