Zephram Kerman

Ah that's brilliant! Thanks for doing this.

Make sense. Very interesting. Maybe I'll deliver Sniffer4 to a northerly launch site and run the experiment again from there. But unfortunately RL will delay that for a while. I'd be very interested to see someone tackle this, too. ATM, I have no idea how fast I should be flying. I like to adjust the turn so that I can keep full throttle until MECO.

I attempted a similar test in 1.0, before the patch came out. Dropped a little rocket from 150km straight down. The poor thing never did reach terminal velocity, except maybe for the last few seconds. So I did a similar experiment with a little rocket, the Sniffer. I wasn't aware of Graphotron, but a friend suggested VOID, so I used that instead. Sniffer1 took measurements in 0.90, Sniffer2 repeated them in 1.0, and this morning Sniffer3 flew in 1.02. Here's a graph of the results: After reading lots of complaints about "Squad reverted back to the soupasphere in 1.02", I did not expect the actual density to look like this. It's a bit hard to see, but 1.0 and 1.02 have practically the same density profile all the way up. (There are subtle variations, probably due to time of day.) The bigger differences is between 0.90 and 1.0, where the density actually increased except near sea level. So I think this means the perception of changed density is due to other related changes of the drag model, etc. (Your data would have been used for this, but VOID measures density (g/m3) while Graphotron measures pressure (Pa). Instead of fumbling with conversions, I just made the third test consistent with the prior two. I can supply raw data and/or selected data points if anyone wants to see.) Very nice vid, by the way!

This. Somewhere in the dusty archives, there was a challenge thread that came to the same conclusion. Sure wish I could find it now. Well, the basic idea was preserve that horizontal velocity because hovering uses fuel. Lower your orbit so Pe is just beyond your landing site, then follow retrograde and suicide burn. Just like the Goddard Dilemma for ascent, but reversed.The Apollo landings did basically the same thing, but with TWR much lower than any of us have patience for!

Does STS5 have a name yet? She sure is purdy! Unfortunately, my DSL is, um... "fully Y2K compliant". Twitch is unusable for me because it sends only the highest bit rate. YouTube may be unfashionable nowadays, but it does accommodate my rusty old interplumbing by allowing speed selection. Could you perhaps repost some of these to YT?

Very nice. Got it. Thank you!

Where can I find VOID 0.17? I'm enjoying the current version for my 1.0 game, but I have an idea that requires it for 0.90.

My "compressed work week" starts in 12 minutes. So, for me, KSP 1.0 day is in 96 hours. No spoilers, please! Mwahahaha...

I wish we could see one of those pin style maps, with a little dot for the vague location of each user.

Landing a capsule with only air brakes and no parachute would be... yeah, "challenging". They become less effective as speed gets slow enough to survive touchdown. So it would require very many of them, to the point that the craft is actually a parachute made of airbrakes. However, doing that with wings, well that happens every day.

Sounds like maybe the C key. That switches modes between angle snap to free angle. Free mode is very nice for offset too.

I would buy that for my nephews, and they are both getting married this year. Hopefully you train him to tell people he is 2.5 years old, not 2 1/2. Now that's kerbal!

Flashy.

I believe this is why we never see any traffic from KSC2: all their rockets hit the tower and explode. Oh yeah, remember when there were no landing gear? That decoupler/fin arrangement was the only way. Think I got the idea from StreetLampPro.

Found it in GameData/Squad/Parts/Utility/largeAdapter. Seems to me it should have been in /Structural, maybe that's why you didn't find it.

Makes sense. Although a simpler way would be to put all your brakes on one action group, then open and close them as needed during the maneuver. Your way would work too, and probably look more interesting too. Normally I do this with wings, by changing pitch to control drag, a-la the space shuttle. But a small capsule could use air brakes to get a similar effect. Cool!

All aboard the nostalgia train! Back in my day, the moon looked like this: and we were grateful! (We still are!) Yes, that's my second landing. My first looked quite a lot like yours, Bandock and Dizzle. Quite the emotional roller coaster, to finally touch Mun, knowing there "should" be enough fuel to get them home, everything worked, and.... no. Here's the contraption that got us there: Pretty sure it needs more boosters! Those are both dated Feb 14, 2012. So, version 13.2, I think. To me, the most important thing about these shots are all three crew are in their traditional places. If you look closely at the loading screen 2001 easter egg, you'll notice they are arranged this way.

Columbia, your SCA is a thing of beauty! If I were you, I would consider 1.0 to be a clean break, and make a final release of the 0.90 version for posterity. The 1.0 version will certainly be quite different and not backwards-compatible.

Welding helps a lot with CPU load, by reducing physics calculations. However, it does not help with GPU load, because the renderer still has to draw all those parts either way. Help is helpful, depending on where the bottleneck is for your system.

A polar base is really handy for solar power; simply orient your panel straight up and let it rotate to follow the sun all the way around the horizon. Also, a polar base can have "easy" access if you plan ahead. To get there from munar transfer orbit: make the encounter Pe close to zero, then burn north or south until Pe is just over your base. To leave, simply launch directly into the retrograde direction; no orbiting required.

The ground model has saved me from so many mistakes! I haven't ever bothered to put it on the launchpad, but just build the finished design in the VAB only. Usually I skip the paper sketch, but not always. In a story, the ship was designed on a yellow sticky from Bill's office, and the dV map was drawn on a napkin from the KSC cafeteria: I really wanted to add a coffee cup stain, but was interrupted by lazy.

That's great!

Legos. Definitely Legos. The two companies, communities, and their visions have so much in common. A set of Kerbal bricks definitely needs to be a thing. This is The Nerd's Kerbal X, my favorite. But there are some other attempts too.

I tend to make most of my landers double as rovers. They simply land on wheels instead of legs. That means I can keep a moderate amount of lateral velocity at touchdown. Also, it helps immensely with precision maneuvering for base construction. Whatever engine it used for orbital maneuvering is usually plenty to assist with touchdown.

Juuuust in case... although I'm 99% sure you of all people would already know this... By strategically dragging the ship around, you can build things 3x the size of the VAB. For example: Being "mod averse", I'd rather finagle around with techniques. But, there's always Snjo's Hangar Extender.