Gaarst

Here you are. FYI my current record is around 1:02.

Sure you can, if I didn't want people to use I wouldn't have posted it. For the car video, maybe? I'm using a laptop and don't have any recording software beside the Windows 10 Xbox thing, I'll see if I can get decent resolution and framerate but no promises. I'd be more in favour of allowing people to race their own car. Building is as important as driving itself and we get to see what people can come up with. That and people would complain about whose design we'd have to use. More severe restrictions on the car while still letting people build their own thing (basically what RL racing does) might be more interesting, and make for a fairer competition. I'm not sure what you would base these restrictions on because building a car in KSP doesn't have a single approach easy to regulate. I think some power, weight and safety restrictions could be fun to play around, but we'd have to see more entries from people to find what limits would be balanced.

Use Pythagoras. You have a triangle CSR (Kerbin Centre, Satellite and Receiver) which has a right angle at R (because tangent). So: CS^2 = RS^2 + CR^2. SC (distance of sat to Kerbin centre) is x + 600, SR (distance of sat to receiver) is 2500 and RC (distance of receiver to Kerbin centre) is 600. (x + 600)^2 = 2500^2 + 600^2. In the end the altitude x of the sat is 1970 km.

I have tried to come up with a few ideas for tracks, here's what I got so far: (I placed gates to see if I could go around the track and how fast, the line is more important) Monka: a fast track with lots of straights and some tight corners. (about 1:00) Monako: a tighter and slower circuit with plenty of low-speed cornering. (about 1:00) Northloop: a long track following the borders of the KSC, good for endurance and testing driver concentration. (about 1:30) They are all longer than the current track used (as in they take longer to go around) so maybe 6 laps will be too much for these. Also, a picture of the car I will be using for going around the circuits (save a few modifications), 95% stock as I am using a few of the smaller elevons from the Airplane Plus mod (I can swap them easily):

I'm having issues completing 1 lap without crashing, but 6 laps should be well doable with a bit more practice. Then, will the score be the best lap or the total time overall, or both?

Cool challenge! My twin-Juno F1-style car is currently lapping in the low 4x seconds with a standing start, that is when I don't clip gates or crash at the R&D Dome hairpin... I'm assuming flying start is OK since if you did more than 1 lap you'd have a flying start anyway? If so my best lap is in 39 something seconds! Pics when I don't forget to take some...

I get notifications on each post in this thread so pinging me to get my attention is unnecessary, I'll see your messages at some point. I was just away from the forums for a couple of days, I am updating your mods on the list right away! Edit: all done!

When/where exactly did you see it? I'm assuming the US by reading the thread so besides ruling out Russian planes, it may be possible to look at the air traffic at that moment and find it.

Adding to the list of mentioned mods, there is also this one:

I have added a link to the cmpl.txt file containing the spreadsheet contents in raw text for those who don't want to use the spreadsheet. It's hosted on Dropbox since it's 1200 lines long and I fear it would make the thread buggy. If you can't access Dropbox, I can send you the raw text itself.

Categories sorted alphabetically is the best I can do and did. You mentioned you didn't have access to file sharing site, I take DropBox and the like is out? Raw pasting then?

@mikegarrison How does this look? (Keep in mind the forum page width limit messes up the spacing, but it all should be properly aligned when on a wider editor) Edit: the forum editor seems to mess up the newlines when copying from it, I can upload a .txt file formatted properly if you want. Edit2: right now it is sorted alphabetically, but I can sort it by category if you wish

I'll look into it, and try write a simple script to do this, probably this week-end. I have marked you as the owner of TMO and added ROC to the list!

What exactly do you mean by snapshot? Something like all the entries in plain text? If so, writing a script to extract the contents automatically should be within my intellectual capacities.

Considering that some people appear to have issues with using the Google Docs spreadsheet format or are intimidated by it, I am considering adding a quick tutorial on how to use its filtering and sorting options to make using it easier for everybody. Anyone interested by such a thing?

Yeah I understand that this is a problem for you, however for me (and I'm hoping for people who can read it) the spreadsheet gives more options than a massive text list on one post. I never really thought about people who wouldn't be able to read it (Google docs should work on any browser and there exists offline spreadsheet editors such as LibreOffice as mentioned above). If you really want to access it I probably have a backup of the old library format that I could PM you, however be aware that it will be quite outdated; I should also be able to extract the raw text from the spreadsheet and paste it into a text tile, but formatting will be horrendous and links lost. As long as I am maintaining this list it is very likely it will remain on a spreadsheet format, but I'll try to think of alternative solutions for people in your situation.

And I do think I agree with you because I think we are saying about the same thing. My suggestion for dihedral is so that the higher foils are out of the water and generate less lift. You're right that if you have a wide stance, they will get out, but for a narrower wing a bit of dihedral helps (dihedral also helps in that even the submerged part of the foil will generate less lift if it is at an angle). The thing about dihedral causing conflicting forces makes sense but it's a high speed thing, I haven't reached the point where I am building supersonic hydrofoils, and it looks like neither has Fahmi. Basically what I said. Vertical surfaces don't have lift (a bit of buoyancy but whatever) so they don't mess up your balance but they generate drag (more so if you are yawing) at the back. I didn't really think about it but yeah passive wings at the back do make more sense than simply moving some of your lift to the back. I don't want to be that guy, but could you post a craft file here? I'm now in the mood to make hydrofoils, and since you appear to have more experience than me with these I'd like to see your craft. Also I don't have KSP on Steam, that too.

Hydrofoils are impossible to truly balance and a "basic" water wing will be unstable at some point. What you can do is shape your foils so that your craft rotating in a direction gives negative feedback so that they naturally counter-act the rotation. For roll this means some dihedral, yaw means vertical foils at the back (mind the roll they may cause), pitching means having a 'main' foil towards the CoM and a smaller one towards the back, acting as a plane tail (you want more pitch moment towards the back); dihedral may help for pitch as well but only if you have significant AoA built in your foils. Even with that hydrofoils still require a lot of tweaking, there's no magical answer and they are a lot harder to get right than planes.

Starting trials, and looking good with a 13:19 time for the driving part (starting from the Dessert runway spawn, not the official start) with a few stops on the way to quicksave (and quickload because I still can't drive this thing without flipping it). That's an average of about 100 km/h over the whole course! I already know I won't be attempting to beat records in the flight categories since it is too big to fit in a Mk3 bay, so I won't be able to shield it from drag. And since I don't like to spam engines, it will be a nice slow cruise to the starting point.

Who would have thought the thing I'd spend more time on for a driving challenge is aero? The parts where the car is on the ground are actually the easy ones... Anyway, I am making good progress! I (hopefully) have a fixed design and it's just tweaking from now on... also learning how to drive... and how to not roll it. I'm using a full-stock buggy-styled vehicle (name suggestions welcome) powered by a single Juno, plenty of speed for a bumpy course; a pic of it flying somewhere in the hills behind the KSC: Top speed is 43-ish m/s and I intend to use all of these speeds in the desert, so suspension, ground clearance and stability have to be on point. My worst fear is still seeing it slowly sink into the ground before inevitably exploding... Nothing worse than losing 20 minutes of driving to that.

I'd be interested (mostly since I already have a buggy that I have driven to the temple). If it is timed I think only the driving part should be: it's too easy to just spam Whiplashes on a cargo plane, going fast on rough terrain requires more thought. More stages would be cool but there aren't really any landmarks close enough to a launch site to make a proper stage. I have driven up the southernmost peak of the mountain range west of the KSC (60-ish km drive, 4900 m climb and you can find paths that are never steeper than 20°); this makes for a more strategic stage as you need both speed and good climbing ability, as well as good range, but terrain seams get a lot more frustrating. And it's easily an hour long drive. While we're at it, if you have a flat track to take a F1-style car I'd also be interested (mostly since I already have one that I have driven in circles around the KSC for too long).

Have just done 250,000 km on a stable/non-exploding path. As long as you keep the heatshield towards the Sun you can make an infinite number of passes (no ablator used, they are just here for radiation shielding and insulation, not dissipation). The solar panel stabilises around 92% heat and is the critical part, I've made a new version where they don't stick out as much but haven't flown it yet. Edit: under 100,000 km with the updated version

Thanks! I'll be happy to see you back at it! In the meantime all the best for your other projects.

How much experience do you have in model rocketry (or engineering)? It's good to have ambition but if you try too much too quickly you will become discouraged at how hard everything turns out to be, it's better to take baby steps at first and temper your ambitions. This goes for writing a new programming language from scratch and for building a complex liquid fueled rocket. Meet up with your closest rocketry club, have fun with solid fueled rockets, mess around with Arduino/RPi guidance to get the grips of it, and make your way up slowly. I have awful news for you: as others have said above you need good mastery of other languages before even attempting to write your own, which will involve massive amounts of coding anyway.

Space Shuttle Engines had some, unfortunately it has last been updated for KSP 1.1.x; the author is still around but the mod seems abandoned.