mjl1966

So, when we think of going to some place like Alpha Centauri, we think "4 light years away". Implementations such as the Valkyrie from Avatar where the ship spends half the trip accelerating to near light speed and the other half decelerating start to sound feasible. But wouldn't we be facing the same problem we face with interplanetary travel? If we want to go to Mars, we can't just wait for it to come by for a close pass and then hop over to it. We *must* use a transfer orbit. There's no way around it. A transfer orbit is still going to be about half a full orbit around the sun. We *may* be able to shorten that up by intercepting at some point along the transfer orbit than the aphelion, but that's going to require a monster burn for orbital insertion. no free lunch. Well, aren't both sol and Alpha Centauri orbiting the center of the galaxy? Doesn't that mean you have to get there using a transfer orbit? Doesn't that mean that you're going to have to complete a large portion of an orbit around the center of the galaxy to get there? If you use the short orbit method, then you have to do a really monster burn for orbital insertion. I don't know what the numbers are, but I imagine the dV simply is not feasible. (I'm guessing you would have to use about the same amount of energy as would be provided by the potential energy of a proper transfer orbit. Math dudes, what say you?) And here's the real middle finger from the universe: the speed at which you travel along that transfer orbit is not limited to the speed of light. It is limited to the speeds dictated by the mechanics of the orbit itself, which are going to be much much slower than the speed of light. The orbital period of the sun is 225x10(6) years. This does not bode well for interstellar travel. Is there a way around this?

OK, now TAC is giving me fits. I have a waste container linked in. When I run "recycle" on hab, it complains about not having mulch. When I run agroponics, it complains about no fertilizer. So, first question is how is TAC waste converted to life support? Is a background process that we don't need to turn on or something else? Are mulch and fetilizer involved? If so, how do I make mulch from TAC? Also. the description of a hab module mentions machinery to use TAC, but then the wiki and this thread says machinery not required. any help appreciated.

Can't transfer crew from hap to agro. All connected by hubs and tubes and all powered up. When I click hab and "transfer crew" I can select a kerbal and module turns orange. I can mouse over agro and it turns blue, but the kerbal can't actually be transferred. But or missing step?

This was much better than your basic launchpad video. Extremely helpful! Payment sent. (as promised.)

If you can video the successful construction of a pack rat in situ on the Mun, I will donate to a paypal link for you. Seriously.

Nice idea. Utterly unbuildable in situ in 1.05. Neither the front chassis nor the front section (with headlights) will mount to a pylon in such a manner that they can then be attached to each other. The problem is the node on the pylon will not accomodate the necessary attachment points for the front chassis section and front section. Tried for two hours. Watched the video 5 times. Can't be done.

One word: homogeneous. All the comparisons to asteroids are invalid because an asteroid is a rigid body. Rigid body physics are mind-numbingly simple compared to fragmented structures such as the Death Star. A gazillion little compartments mean you have a gazillion vectors acting on them differently any time you do anything. It would not be dissimilar to being glued together by a bunch of docking ports. Once you realize a structure is an assembly of many different parts, the physics gets icky in a hurry. I would imagine any kind of real acceleration from a propulsion device would risk caving in the structure as momentum is not transmitted linearly but instead is distributed along a static matrix, most of which is not designed to take the kind of force it's getting. Walls are great for compression, not so much for torsion, for example. (Take that, Mom and Dad, I did too learn something in college BUT... it is very dramatic, which far outweighs the pesky details of reality. Remember: Star Wars is fantasy, not science fiction.

They flipped for it. NASA called tails on Mars while Soviets called heads on Venus. It wasn't until years later that they realized the actual outcome of the coin yielded the same result either way. Realizing how embarrassing it would be for a bunch of scientists to get tripped up by coin math, they elected to never mention it again.

I remember this!

Not to sound to Buzz Aldreny (who wanted to name the CSM and LM Alpha and Bravo), I would actually find it quite useful for the names to indicate size and thrust. I still have to check each one in the inventory to know how bit it is and what it does. It's a hassle. R-1.25-750, for example, would be very useful. R is for Randazzo, just to give it some zing. Or, if we use A, B, C, D for 0.625 1.25, 2.75 and 3.5: R-750A, R-1050B, etc.

I don't understand how ore can be useless. The most immediate useful application that comes to mind is leapfrogging. At first glance, doing something like going to Jool via Duna seems inefficient. It takes a lot less dV to just go to Jool from LKO. But, what if you set up a basic fuel colony on Duna? There are ways via mods to set up a colony that is self sufficient. At that point, every gram of fuel you refine on Duna is free return on investment. That being the case, all I have to do to get from Krbal to Jool is put up enough dV go get to Duna, which is way cheaper than the total dV for Jool. Once I get to Duna, the rest is free dV. Same argument for mun: all you need to go anywhere is dV to get to the Mun. From there, dV is free. Even if not totally free, I bet the dV mined from Mun and Duna is cheaper in the long run than dV purchased on Kerbin. This becomes useful if you're objective is to establish and grow permanent colonies Or does the math totally break down somewhere? My retort here is conceptual, not analytical. All this brings to mind an idea for science. Right now, the only reason to go to Duna is to go there. But what if each planet had "special" science that is necessary to unlock certain branches in the tech tree? Hmmmm.......(Or am I the hundredth monkey on this?)

I take it the different modules differ primarily in aesthetics? i.e - both the nap and gym modules actually do the same thing - house Kerbals, but no difference otherwise. Just making sure I'm not missing a feature.

"very much a work in progress." ANY 8 bit music. I mean, seriously, what's that all about? Did you even own a Gameboy? "kraken" "SQUAD announces IPO" "War" in any context relating to KSP. Yes, I'm wearing tie dye today. Problem? "MechJeb has reached End of Life and will no longer be developed." "moar" "app" (No, you can't run it on your PC old man.) *click* *click* *click* KER-SPLASH!

O H H E L L NO. There would not be enough Wellbutrin to save me.

Am what's that? #Randazzo

Thanks cxg! That helped a LOT!

stock. no, plenty of juice. (first thing I checked). I have a single chute at the base of a staging faring on top of a MK1 pod. (The top part of the fairing holds a docking port) I think it has something to do with the staged fairing base. If I just put the chute right on the pod, I'm good to go.

I remember when it was just the VAB and tracking station. And they looked like they were on a video golf course. I don't remember if there were even any mods. I really like the path the game has taken. It's evolved beyond just a sandbox while still retaining its core functionality as a sandbox. I'm insanely impressed with the modders in this community. Squad made the right move in supporting mods from the beginning. (zero cost value add = win.) Why do I keep playing? I dunno. I struggle with the game, even after all these years. I have yet to venture beyond Minmus. Most of my ships arrive on station missing something important like a KIS drill. Or supplies. Or a way to deorbit. I mean, I am really bad at this! Even so, I think it's the sense of discovery. Those planets are way the hell and gone out there and hard to get to. We've come a long way in 4 years. A very long way indeed.

Exact same setup each time: MK1 capsule, interstage fairing on top, parachute on bottom node. I can launch the EXACT SAME SHIP three times in a row, and at least once I am guaranteed to kill a Kerbal. Problem is simple: I move the parachute to the bottom of the stack, pull the ripcord at 1000 meters and cross my fingers. I will either hear "click click click" as I frantically tap the spacebar or that satisfying ruffle as the chute actually opens. Even if I manage to right click and actually click the "deploy chute" button, it simply will not open. It's not shredding, tearing off, etc. It simply either opens or does not, under the exact same conditions, with the exact same craft. Anybody else seen this?

How do you dock? I've tried mating passive to active in both orientations (flat to bulkhead, flat facing out) and all they do is bounce off each other. What step am I missing? Cool mod, but 4 hours and no dock is getting.... frustrating.

All good stuff. Thanks fellas. I've trimmed back to the mods I only absolutely must have. There's only 39 of them. The biggest fix was uninstalling texture replacement. That gave back a good 500M. At this point, game starts at 2.7 and creeps up from there, so I just manually restart when it's around 3.4G and I'm getting ready something important. I still need to talk to Steve to see if he has any special ideas. Meanwhile, I guess we wait for Unity to get it together with memory management.

I don't have a whole lot of helpful specifics, but thought this is something the community might want to look at. Basically, there is a memory leak between the interior of the VAB and elsewhere. When I start out in the VAB, with the current mods I have installed, KSP is taking about 3G of memory. That's a lot to begin with. After I work on something for a while, it's up to just under 3.5G. So, it stands to reason that the additional memory is taken up by parts I'm using to assemble my craft. However, when I leave the VAB, memory is still hanging in at ~3.5. In fact, it goes over 3.5 while loading the main facility screen and then drops back down to where it was in the VAB. Going all the way back to the main screen doesn't even help. Once the memory use goes up, it doesn't seem to come back down. Assets are not releasing memory when they go out of scope. Bottom line: memory is not being cleaned up between the different levels. Is this a Unity thing? A SQUAD thing? A mods thing? I don't know. But I do know that it just makes an already delicate memory problem even worse.

Discovered you have to activate the control icon in the add-on toolbar.

:cool:

I don't get it. I put on a 2.5 plate and it holds - one engine. I don't see how to cluster. Yes, I'm being serious here. What am I missing?