The Hawk

FWIW, I'm also running RemoteTech and didn't have any problems with collecting data from the Central Station or experiments. Transmitting might be an issue, but having my scientist run the experiments and then collect the data worked fine. I did notice that the Central Station seemed to be somewhat particular about where you're standing to get access to the right-click menu option to run the Central Station test. That said, I also had explosion issues. (All of this was done on Minmus on the Lesser Flats.) Attaching rather than placing the experiments prevented them from flying away, but didn't do anything to stop explosions. After a couple quickloads it seemed to consistently be the surface gravimeter and surface magnetometer that would explode upon being attached. The ion detector attached to the ground fine, but exploded when I tried to attach a plug; then the plug exploded when I moved it. The other experiments worked fine. If, as suggested above, these are collision mesh issues, I have to think the experiments could be tweaked somehow to avoid the problems, since some of them seem to be working normally. (Wish I'd read about the concrete base workaround before I left Kerbin, though. ;)) One other problem I ran into that I didn't see anywhere else -- in the VAB and SPH, I wasn't able to drop the solar panel into any KIS container. I don't know if that's a known problem or not. I took along a couple of batteries and attached one to the area where the girder is supposed to go; none of the experiments failed to work, so I guess it was OK. I didn't see any way to monitor the power setup so I'm not really sure if that's working as designed or not. If the experiment package having adequate power (rather than just being plugged into the Central Station) is a current or intended feature, it also occurred to me that it might be nice to have some way to attach the entire setup to a rover or lander so that it could draw power from the main batteries. Maybe just an outlet part that could be attached through KIS/KAS to a vehicle, like the connector ports, and into which the plugs could go. Just a random thought. Overall, an awesome mod and I really love having something for Bill to do on our Minmus explorations! Thanks for all your work!

I'm not sure where from, but the Atmosphere Analysis seems to have acquired Lake biomes which Thatmo doesn't have. Not going to mess with it.

Capt and Eudae, congrats on the release of Neidon's moons! I've been waiting for a Triton analog for a long time and Thatmo looks like just what I had in mind. Are all the science defs done for these two, or are you going to be crowdsourcing them again?

Yeah, called Thatmo. (No, but seriously, a Triton analog was confirmed some time ago.)

Unfortunately, if this is used as the basis for a mod planet, KSP only knows of a sharp boundary between gas and liquid; there has to be a sea level somewhere, and the game needs to know when you've transitioned from "flying" to "splashed down". But the goal is for there to be land and seas, not merely seas of liquid hydrogen at some suitable density of the fluid; as I say, if that's the case, it might as well be a gas giant. Well, 394.5 atmospheres is about 40% of the pressure at the bottom of the Marianas Trench, and there's life at the bottom of the Marianas Trench. The bigger issue is probably temperature, and whether life is capable of developing in such an atmosphere at all. But the presence of life is not terribly important to the concept. I have, but a fluidic atmosphere is really not the goal, merely a consequence of the parameters outlined above. Those can be changed.

Well, the goal is to have solid terrain on which a landing and return is at least theoretically possible even if exceedingly difficult (otherwise it may as well be a gas giant). I'm not married to the above figures if they conflict with that goal. It seems to me the way to accomplish that is either reduce the overall mass of the atmosphere so the pressure is reduced, or increase heavy elements in the composition of the atmosphere such that supercriticality is not an issue. The Venusian atmosphere is said to be a supercritical fluid at surface level, and indeed the temperature and pressure there are well above the critical point for CO2, but it still seems to function substantially as a gas and did not prevent probe landings on the surface (though obviously the temperature was a pretty significant problem. ) I confess, though, that the thought of an atmosphere on the tender edge in terms of pressure, such that below a certain altitude there are "seas" (as KSP conceives of them) of supercritical fluid, with "islands" of higher terrain in the gaseous portion of the atmosphere, is interesting to me.

Question: I ran a successful Jool-5 back in October-December of last year, under 0.25. Unfortunately, it's taken me months to write up (partly due to life, but largely due to needing to document what was going on in 643 screenshots). I just finished that project today, only to discover that the Challenge has shifted over here. Soooo... should I submit it here, subject to the rules that would have been applicable back when it was done, even though it wasn't a 1.0 attempt?

Help me, o wise forum sages! I have spent much of my long weekend reading up on super-earths (which definitely doesn't have anything to do with noodling an idea for a Kopernicus mod planet. ) Starting with Wikipedia's super-earth page, my concept was basically a world on the scale of COROT-7b or Kepler-10b -- in other words, at the upper end of terrestrial. Unlike those worlds, however, I was envisioning something far enough away from its parent star to not have lost its primordial hydrogen/helium envelope from ultraviolet exposure. I found my way to this paper, which contains this quote: "...if we assume a more typical low-mass planet with a 5 [Earth-mass] core, then to be 2.0 [Earth-radii] it would need 0.5% of its mass in a H/He envelope. This may not sound like much, but it corresponds to ~20 kbars of hydrogen and helium, ~20x higher than the pressure at the bottom of the Marian[]as Trench. Moreover, the temperature at the bottom of such an envelope would be >~3000K... We believe that such a planet is more properly classified as a sub-Neptune." Well, that's obviously more than I'm going for. So after ruminating a bit and consulting the tables in that paper, I decided on the following planetary characteristics: Mass: 4.2 MKerbin (2.222463306 x10^23 kg) Equatorial Radius: 1.5 RKerbin (900,000 m) From that I derived: Gravity: 18.308158834093 m/s^2 (~1.867 G) So far, so good. I also decided on .01% of the planetary mass tied up in the atmosphere. From that I derived: Surface-level pressure: ~39974624 Pa = ~394.5 atm Heady, but survivable by human-made craft, although compared to Eve's 5 atmospheres at sea level, getting back is going to be... challenging. I also arbitrarily decided on 3.5 g/mol for the mean molecular weight of the planetary atmosphere, on the theory that volcanism, and probably atmospheric processes, would dump some heavier elements into the atmosphere, but it would remain largely H/He. (I have no idea how realistic a figure this is, but compare to 2.07 for Saturn, 2.64 for Uranus.) Unfortunately, that's where my very limited command of physics hits the wall. I have no idea how to derive the density, (probably enormous) surface-level temperature, or volume of this atmosphere, but I am given to believe that without one of those three things I can't calculate the others. If I have to make up one of those values, I don't know what a good starting point would be. If I can get temperature, I understand I can figure out the scale height and, from there, a reasonable extrapolation of the height of the atmosphere. The other question I have is, what would conditions on this theoretical world be like? Given the described pressure and atmosphere (and whatever the derived temperature is), would the atmosphere still be gaseous at surface level? Would landing using stock parts even be feasible, or would the temperature be too intense (or would moving through such a thick atmosphere at any appreciable speed -- like that necessary to achieve orbit -- cause such significant overheating as to destroy the craft)? If landing is feasible, what about liftoff? Assuming the goal is to have a rocky surface (rather than one encased in a sheath of liquid hydrogen), what would the byplay between the described atmosphere and the surface be? Would the hydrogen be pulled out of the atmosphere into compounds? What impact would typical (terrestrial) levels of volcanism have on the atmospheric composition? Does that make my mean molecular weight way too low? At the upper end, would the atmosphere be layered (and if so, how)? How would the planet go about retaining its atmosphere? Assuming a distance from Kerbol comparable to real-world TNOs' distance from the sun, and therefore very cold corresponding temperatures of perhaps 12K-40K, would hydrogen liquefy and precipitate at some altitude? Or would the retained heat of the planet, and any geological activity, keep overall atmospheric temperatures up? Thanks in advance for your thoughts!

In a fit of pique, I went ahead and finished off all missing blurbs for the current Urlum moons over coffee this morning, mostly for Polta and Priax. Wrote a couple description 2's, as well. Hopefully they're all showing up on the spreadsheet succesfully? On another note entirely, I'm sure you guys have big plans for Neidon, but having spent some time reading about Triton lately, let me express my hope for a Triton analog. I've also been writing up my Jool-5 submission lately, and one thing I found made Joolian missions pretty easy was the ability to aerobrake into orbit around Laythe and operate from there. By contrast, a highly-inclined, and retrograde-orbiting (if such a thing is even possible) Triton analog would be a real challenge to get to, particularly given how far Neidon is to begin with. A tenuous atmosphere would also be fun (providing an extra lure for science, but not being much use for aerobraking or parachutes). It would also be neat if the Triton analog had perturbed other moons into unusual orbits (a la Nereid and its high eccentricity). Another thought is some small, extremely distant moons at the edge of Neidon's Hill sphere, a la Neso and Psamathe, which would be their own challenge to reach thanks to their small size and distance.

Ok, all good. I thought that might be it.

By the way, Cap, I noticed some of the categories seem to be missing (e.g., Wal has categories for the Gravioli Detector by biome, Polta and Priax don't). Not sure if that was intentional or not, but assuming it wasn't, should we go ahead and add rows for those? I also didn't see InSpaceLow and InSpaceHigh entries for the gas giants themselves, but those might be somewhere else.

Surprised there were not more takers for Urlum moon blurbs, so I started working on some for Polta. More when I get a chance. I also gave a quick edit to those that were there to fix a couple spelling and grammar errors, hope that's not presumptuous of me. It's not totally apparent from the screenshots or the info on the spreadsheet -- which is leading the orbit, Polta or Priax, and which is trailing? If Priax is trailing, does its "leading" biome thus face toward Polta?

It was actually the KSP Interstellar/Near Future Integration mod I had my eye on, since Near Future has a lot of appeal for me as well. My ultimate ambition would be to use Interstellar's FTL for actual interstellar travel, but none of the efforts to add star systems seem nearly as advanced as OPM (with all respect to the creators of those mods).

At the risk of being horribly disappointed about my grand plans, what worry do you have? I always understood Interstellar to add new parts to ease long-distance travel at the cost of creating a lot of infrastructure; since OPM puts something in those longer distances, it seems like they're a natural match.

You mean besides the little green men that are already landing there? Just a note to the OPM team to say you guys are doing incredible work and I am following this mod with great interest. I made an unwritten agreement with myself not to play KSP until 1.0, but when it drops I'm really looking forward to combining OPM with KSPI and exploring the outer reaches. Keep it up!