helaeon

Not really joystick but xbox style gamepad (and it's fairly awesome for this) Triggers (edit config for axis 2) - Inc Throttle. Bumpers - Roll Back - toggle RCS Start - toggle SAS Right stick - Pitch & Yaw. Right stick click - Translate Forward Dpad - translate up-down, left-right Left stick - camera control Left stick click - Translate backward Y - precision control toggle X - cut throttle A - Brakes (on my dropship I set the action group to toggle my nuke rocket engines so I can get a lot of power momentarily if I need it) B - Stage I've been having trouble getting the controls to work predictably for Kebals on EVA but still working on it. I set the stick axes so it turns the navball the way I expect. So, if I push up on the right stick on launch that would turn my ship north, right to the east, left west, down south. Then the bumpers rotate the navball around the heading marker.

I think you don't want to have specialization of the kerbals take away items from the game, but act as a new feature or enhancement. You don't want it to feel like the game is fighting you with arbitrary things. Any Kerbal can man the lab and it works just fine just as it does now. Scientist kerbals (or those with a low stupidity stat) increase transmission value of science as they can "speak science" and clean experiments faster. You can still do what we do now and suffer no penalty. Engineer Kerbals can restore to working order any part that has been damaged or broken. (Most parts will remain somewhat repairable by any Kerbal, just as now). Smash your engine on landing? Scotty Kerman can replace it. Of course there would need to be some kind of limit or balance to that. With the new reputation & contracts system coming up. Civilian kerbals can be taken on flights to add cash or fufill a contract (these would be one time fliers that need to have one regular for each 1-2 civilians). There could be a class of Kerbal that is like a CDR Hadfield that adds bonus reputation/prestige from flights. No idea what to call that class. Maybe all of these are a tag that is added so as kerbals are randomly generated there is a chance to add extra flags, and for each flag there is a lesser chance of another being added. Additions, new features, new missions, new things to do rather than making regular flights a chore because you don't have any kerbals with the right stat to make it behave normally.

I've been using F5-F9 immediately after making a KAS connection of some kind. It solves a lot of problems and is somewhat essential to get KAS to work properly. If you do it that way though it's just a step, it's not like you're REALLY reloading a save, you're reloading the physics engine so things work as intended. If you take a kerbal on EVA up to a science instrument you can right click on it and there will be an option to take the data. Then that kerbal will carry the data to the next ship. If you have science samples stored in a command pod you can right click on it with a nearby kerbal and take those experiments using the pop-up menu. The Mystery Goo and Materials Bay sometimes require you be VERY close, like you can even be touching it and it still thinks you aren't close enough to the center of mass to activate the right click menu.

Realize that what we're doing isn't working and we probably don't know enough to make good choices about what to do next or what might work. 1. research the properties of the neutron along with the strong and weak nuclear forces. 2. begin research into alternate ways to do nuclear fusion besides particle colliders. - This would also assist with fusion power research. Neutron stars have already been mentioned, figuring out how to do that on a small scale or if it's even possible would probably be a good avenue. Back to fundamentals rather than more of the status quo, with more power, more money, and more time. All getting the same results. The LHC is not well suited or designed create new elements. And it's entirely possible that the way we've been making new elements using particle colliders is a poor way to go about it and isotopes of those may exist that are more stable but we don't know enough to even know if that's true. I know that current methods cannot supply enough neutrons to use as glue to make super large nuclei they think might be in the island of stability, so that gets into the alternate ways of nuclear fusion. Keep in mind too that the island of stability is wholly theoretical and may not actually be a thing. The periodic table as we know it might be it, lead might be the heaviest stable element period. So, start a project to prove the island of stability is non-existent because trying to disprove a theory as written is when you start to find new physics. Science is about using observation and to find out about where we are wrong about our understanding and where our models fail - so we need to make new models that work. Its not about proving how smart we are.

Instant DL. This is a great idea!

Mechjeb does do what you want. You would set up a very precise maneuver node (mechjeb has a window for you to do that too). Then tell it to execute that node. The only thing that trips it up is if the burn is slightly off and your craft is heavy or doesn't have much turn authority it will stop the burn to turn towards the drifting node then start again. Also if the craft is too light and on RCS sometimes it will **** out when you try and get mechjeb to hold a specific orientation. MechJeb also has tools for use in the VAB and SPH to help you evaluate your designs by TWR, and Delta-V before you even launch them. Add in one of the RCS assistant mods and you've got a pretty good engineering setup.

I'm saying this as someone who has read a lot of applications, performed a lot of interviews (and been interviewed), and has a 4 year science degree (biochemistry): I say avoid any reference to video games or simulations in a recreational environment. There's a lot of prejudice about games in general and the perception of gamers. It sounds to most, especially people much older as "I'm good at Call of Duty so I'd be awesome in the Army". There are a lot of things that reality makes you deal with that Kerbal does not and those things are absolutely critical. You don't want to come off as a know-it-all or that you've been there done that, when really you have no idea. I'd go off of the KerbalEDU idea and frame it as a teaching program to introduce middle or high schoolers to these basic concepts. Then your Kuriosity mission is about showing what is basically involved in this and what you expect the students to learn about basic spaceflight and how difficult the real Curiosity mission really was, even if simplified in the game. It's not about learning physics from Kerbal then, it's about using your current understanding to enrich others. Bonus points if you actually make your lesson mod for KerbalEDU that can be used in the release. Apps with "I did this project for real and people are using it or enjoying it right now so can you; take a look" is a huge huge plus if done well. Then your application is "I've done things with what I already know, if you teach me more I will make even better things in the future". Use what you've learned so you're not starting at zero and can show a grasp of basic concepts, but that you have full understanding they are very simplified and very basic. The app is more about showing you have potential rather than that you already know everything. This is actually a big mistake made by a lot of students and new employees. You don't and shouldn't know everything when you first start and if you think you do or that you're supposed to you're going to be much harder to teach and train.

Step by step how I generally set up rendezvous and docking using mechjeb and NavyFish's docking indicator, I'm also using enhanced navball. I am using the dev build from the 17th, but I think all of these things are in the .23 release version. It's semi-manual so all things you can do yourself, but mechjeb makes it way easier and faster as it can figure out the timing rather than you dragging a maneuver node around your orbit and to keep the ship oriented so you have less things to think about and your RCS balancing isn't such a huge deal (though it helps because you can make bigger movements without a problem) I used to hate hate hate docking by the way. Learned how to build single stage lander-return vehicles so I didn't have to dock in Munar orbit. Now I dock something about every day, sometimes several times. 0. Set your destination vessel as your target. (You can do this after circularizing too and is generally when I do it). 1. Get into an orbit that is circular and has a different altitude than your target, and on a similar plane. The more difference in altitude the faster your initial closing speed will be, closer the plane the less delta-V you need for rendezvous. Docking with my space station at 200km I try to set a 75-85km orbit from launch. 2. At the first AN or DN after circularizing, match plane with target. (MechJeb can set this node for you. All of these operations are in the maneuver planner. Smart A.S.S. is it's own window.). There are reasons to do this after the next step, but generally I find it's less complicated to do this first. 3. Set Mechjeb to Hohmann Transfer to Target, it may be several orbits until you catch up with your target or it catches up with you, but you'll have a node for the correct time and how much to burn. 4. Set Mechjeb to Match Velocity with Target at closest approach. This should put you within about 100-500m when the burn is complete. This node will cause map view to show that you're no longer going to have a good rendezvous, it's wrong, once the burn is complete and you delete the node you'll see a new intercept point that is going to be the same or less than your distance now. 5. Right click on the docking node on your craft you want to use and select "control from here" 6. Open up Mechjeb Smart A.S.S. and set it to TGT mode, and select TGT +. Also look to see that your NavBall is in Target mode (you can change it by clicking on where the speed is. This will show you your relative velocity, although without a direction symbol). 7. Give your engine just a little tap when facing the purple marker (or with RCS translate forward) to start closing in. You'll see what is usually the prograde vector move towards the purple target spot, use your RCS to translate left or right, up or down to steer that green marker to the purple one (yes more forward will bring it closer but your closing speed should be 1 m/s at most). You'll see that up-down and left-right move the green marker on your navball similarly. It doesn't have to be perfect at this point so save your fuel by not doing little adjustments. At this point it's also good to have SAS on incase your RCS is misbalanced. 8. At 100-150m you should be able to see the docking port you want (if not switch to the craft you want to dock with and turn that port towards your other ship if you can), right click on it from your docking ship and pick "select as target". At this point NavyFish's docking indicator will pop up. Turn SMART A.S.S. to "PART -" also under the TGT button. Your ship might turn quite suddenly. If you want to save some RCS fuel turn RCS off and let SAS do that action before you click PART- 9. Ignore your NavBall and watch NavyFish's indicator. Use only the distance and speed indicators here, ignore any others. You could make this thing full screen and the docking would work perfect if you pilot it correctly (provided you don't collide with anything). Again you can drive the green prograde looking cursor using your RCS up-down, left-right controls. You'll see 2 intersecting green lines, drive the cursor towards that intersection. Now they'll start to move towards the center, when they are about there move the green cursor to the center also. If the green lines start to diverge from the center move the green cursor in the direction the green line is going once it goes center move it back. Mechjeb will handle your directional rotation as long as PART- is on. Still keep your closing velocity under 1 m/s. 10. Once aligned translate forward so you are closing at about .75-1 m/s. Once you are within 50m slow down to about .25-.3 m/s. The magnets on the docking port may start to slide your ship around as they meet up, that's okay don't fight it or try to correct against it. Usually if that's going to happen it's within 5 m or so if you're dead on with your alignment you won't notice it. Now you're docked! There are more advanced things you can do, but once you get the above down you'll probably start to figure those out on your own. MechJeb works best as an assistant to help you do things that would involve a lot of dragging of nodes or way too much flying all over your keyboard. MechJeb's auto dock is good to watch to get the general idea, but if you tell it what to do step-by step it does a way better job using far less energy, and you can do that final alignment and actual docking WAY better than MechJeb can, but using Smart A.S.S. helps a ton to simplify it as you don't have to worry about your rotation orientation to the destination docking port. With very large ships... then the thing do to is go much, much slower and think about your movements so you don't over-correct. One reason you may not be able to dock those monsters is you're going too fast (I just re-built a space-station so went through this myself), so instead of .3 m/s do like .1 or .15 at contact so the crafts bounce less. Also wait to really have any closing velocity until you are aligned. Hopefully that helps you or someone else having trouble.