AloE

& for those of us not traveling to today's total solar eclipse centerline we can watch the eclipse in KSP with the help of Kopernicus, Module Manager, RSS, Scatterer, EVE, RSSVE & Principia: 2020 December 14 Total Solar Eclipse & some fun additional ways to watch: Live Stream: NSO h-alpha network

@hypervelocity 2 weeks until the next new moon & total solar eclipse...this screenshot is for you...I hope you make it to the path of totality on Dec 14...maybe with a nice pair of binoculars since the rare minutes of complete totality are the one time that a person may "safely" view the "sun"...well, the corona & prominences, that is...without regular solar filters (see details at NASA solar viewing safety page link). After the 2017 total eclipse, I really had hoped to visit Argentina & see this one myself :-) Fortunately, Principia will enable me to enjoy the view in KSP...minus the magic of the temperature drop & amazing corona & pink prominences...

@scimas Thank you very much for sharing all that work! Just tried your 2015 .cfg...I pulled a few vectors from jpl horizons to spot check your numbers, loaded it in KSP 1.9.1 & took a few screenshots of astronomical events...looks great! with scimas' 2015 initial state vectors .cfg (KSP 1.9.1)

admittedly kids might like that idea, perhaps even better than squishing dimples in 'Bennu marshmallows'...please overlook the abysmal technical approximations & limitations of terrestrial kitchen materials ;-) We did consider that the large presumably ridged 'boulders' like this tower might have better hand holds & relative mass ratio for EVA 'climbing/handrail' activities...I still have not figured out how to make a good height & normal map...Bennu is really a tricky size for KSP...eventually I hope at least to have a 10x model that looks at least similar to the Bennu Trek... Earlier publications regarding particle ejections: Why Is Asteroid Bennu Ejecting Particles Into Space? (link jpl.nasa.gov ) & open access article collection regarding particle ejection for easier visual study of particle motion induced by TAG, here is a gif of the last part of the same video (again the source video: https://apod.nasa.gov/apod/ap201103.html )

The sequence released on APOD shows a nice bit of the particle motion with a good shadow angle: Bennu tag particle ejection: [the nature of the 'soft dimpled looking' craters especially near the equator ( link: trek.nasa.gov/bennu ) has been of interest since this past summer... while looking at the Bennu Trek with some children and talking about this mission...(& the idea of rubble pile asteroids hitting Earth's Moon, etc. ) & wondering about a person in an EVA suit (or similar stone, etc.) moving near Bennu ,who might experience a ballpark order of magnitude 'weight' of about the same as one pea or raisin on Earth... led us to wonder, if there are no ices, or magnetic, or electrostatic, or other forces affecting the surface of Bennu to bind materials, how 'loose' behaving might be some areas of the surface if that 'hypothetical EVA person' tried to grab hold of something in order to 'pretend' to walk while floating around...]

yes, I had intended the word in terms of its meaning of motion of the stacked gif images i.e. "the technique of photographing successive drawings or positions to create an illusion of movement when the film is shown as a sequence." i see how the phrase is unclear especially in context of the recent simulations. Thanks for adding the clarification

I very much look forward to hearing about what did get collected & more views of the disturbed sight & those ejected materials as the craft backs away... some nice time lapse animations! https://www.asteroidmission.org/?latest-news=osiris-rex-tags-asteroid-bennu

I've not studied the entire RealExpansion suite yet to see what it does in all cases...but for the portions of RealExpansion that add celestials...those also should be able to be made to work with Principia so long as the correct data is pulled to make entries to patch the gravity model & initial state in order to tell Principia where each is & where each is headed...one by one for any & each additional celestial added via Kopernicus beyond default RSS...so I am all for a shared doc (google sheets or whatever) of data for the elements to paste into a patch .cfg for each body of interest as that data is pulled... Pulling the proper initial state vectors should be relatively straight forward via HORIZONS using the info in my post you referenced (e.g. ICRF frame, Solar System Barycenter (SSB), solar_system_epoch = JD2433282.500000000 etc.). I remain unclear where to get appropriate orientation & rotational data for bodies not included already in this document: https://astropedia.astrogeology.usgs.gov/download/Docs/WGCCRE/WGCCRE2009reprint.pdf (related note: The reference frame & epoch used by Principia for RSS is different from what RSS pulled to define its orbital elements in the .cfg files it feeds to Kopernicus for each celestial...this is why I only use RSS in combination with Principia = the celestials are actually very well placed [& rotated which requires fixing some RSS textures e.g. for Mercury & Io, etc] so that eclipses, conjunctions etc are very close to actual times if one keeps in mind that KSP does not account for light travel time for visual observations i.e. for basic astronomy in Kerbal one needs to keep that in mind if the distance is far e.g. viewing Jovian moons from Earth).

likely easiest way then would be if you happen to know or can ID a real star that is near where Whirligig World is located...(or if there is not one, maybe I can figure out how to tell SE to go to a specific set of coordinates...or scroll to a specific distance from the Sun in a specified direction...etc...)

Fall break...helping Growing Epsom salt needle crystals...surprise...searching for saturation curves reveals a paper about possible key 'water' dynamics due to such hydrates in the low pressures near the surface of Mars: ."Magnesium and calcium sulfate stabilities and the water budget of Mars" a Red mars...'rusts' & oxygen left over from broken molecules hydrogen lost to space?...& how many oceans of Mars water may have been lost or are now stuck in salt hydrates... so now both growing crystals & dreaming ("being pestered"...lol) "when can we build a colony" of Kerbal Mars glacier mining activities with the help of NASA Mars Trek's "under dust glacier like formations" data layer, which shows some [see green dots] within 'rocketing' distance of Jezero Crater ('rocketing' distance, rather than flight distance, since even a U-2 spy plane's wings can not make enough lift in the ~7 millibar of atmosphere at Mars' surface, though maybe we get lucky for drone missions if the Mars Helicopter onboard the Perseverance Rover headed for Mars. actually works..)

I'd love to take a look!...I think this revision was post release of 0.9.6...might you be willing to post a link to the revised textures (and config file if that also changed :-)? Do you see that only in the Trappist system? I also have been seeing this behavior in TRAPPIST1 as home world system with Principia...

I very much appreciate the improvements with 2685/2709 & all the effort ongoing with 2400. Simply put: Thank you (*10n+1).

Now available publically in the Bennu Trek with 3D globe projection (& a >88 million vertices nexus shape model (nexus toolkit) ;-) now, how to add exploring Kerbals to such exquisite detail...lol...Thank you OSIRIS-REx team for capturing this amazing imagery. also a fun animation of particle ejections from Bennu in their recent news release...

I am tinkering with a personal port of a Trappist1e model (to work as a home system with Principia) & perhaps I've not rotated something or I've let something sneak through from the Kerbin template that I should not? Very grateful for suggestions...only seeing this 90 deg rotation of reddish scattering on an @Body[Kerbin] { } planet in the system...the ported scatterer data shows beautifully in this home system with all the other planets based on other templates. Here is the most key image: North Pole view with Sun towards upper left corner additional relevant images in this album: Thank you very much for insights & suggestions!

You might find the following articulation interesting regarding what is needed for kopernicus asteroids & Principia at this post. For myself, I've been considering improving the gravity model & initial state data for Ida & Dactyl for this mods kopernicus interpretation of them & see what happens to them over time in the nbody gravity model. ( I've also been pondering myself how to do a model version of Bennu since the amazing detail of the 5cm mosaic is rather remarkable )

I like the look of 1e KSC with KSP's "Celestial body visual improvements" ;-)

if you add an "asteroid" or any celestial that requires Kopernicus (i.e not as a KSP "potatoroid" asteroid 'vessel' or other vessel model)... then, yes that creates a problem if you have not also created a patch that tells ModuleManager to add the required parameters ( for this same new Kopernicus generated celestial body(s) ) to the respective Principia gravity model & initial state for the specific solar system you are using. For example, if you use "Real Expansion => Real Asteroids 1.2" , while it is discussed in their thread, I do not yet see a patch released by that modder for Principia & there is on that thread a June request for Principia support This mod uses Eeloo based Kopernicus bodies (you can see this in the config file in the screenshot in the second spoiler below). Again: that way of creating "asteroids" etc. will crash Principia if you add those bodies along with RSS without adding configs for them to the Principia gravity model & initial state...something like the configs shown in the spoiler below. These examples use a GitHub user "WC12366" posted zip that contains Principia configs for a bunch of minor bodies. In that comment's zip, Principia gravity model & initial state data is only available for Juno, Pallas, Ida, & Dactyl...so disable Gaspra & the other two for now.... here is a caution note & the two .cfg made from that data as a test which indeed KSP & Principia does at least load (e.g. see screenshot at the bottom of this post): also, here you can see Eeloo is used as a template in the configs: To get more experience you can study the required parameters for RSS bodies in the contents of: GameData/Principia/real_solar_system/gravity_model.cfg principia_gravity_model:NEEDS[RealSolarSystem] {...} GameData/Principia/real_solar_system/initial_state_jd_2433282_500000000.cfg principia_initial_state:NEEDS[RealSolarSystem] { game_epoch = JD2433647.5 solar_system_epoch = JD2433282.500000000 ... } There is a useful description in the Principia github wiki:: The principia_gravity_model configuration The principia_initial_state configuration also useful are the notes at GitHub: eggrobin's explanation: "pozine and orbital elements" via jpl horizons system (also & some RSSnotes ) & for the initial_state vectors: here are screenshots of the settings for jpl horizons which generate the values that match the numbers seen in Principia/real_solar_system/initial_state_jd_2433282_500000000.cfg = principia_initial_state:NEEDS[RealSolarSystem] {..} & notes about data sources for gravity_model in the comments: sol_gravity_model.proto.txt Interesting to see a celestial so small as dactyl (700 m radius for this model) ...

Principia does not work with exoplanetary systems...there is only a nice model TRAPPIST-1 patch made for SLIPPIST-1. RE: "RSS expansion" Principia only supports very specific celestial bodies "No other celestial bodies are supported, so if you do install pozine's pack, make sure you remove all other bodies: if RealSolarSystem is installed and unsupported celestials are found, the game will crash." (also note: those supported 'pozine's pack' celestials listed at that wiki link are now included in RSS by default.) From my message above...please see the procedure in the spoiler that verified proper KSP1.8.1 Principia RSS behavior via RealSolarSystem CKAN install just an hour ago or so...beyond that it would be better for you to request further help by creating a new thread in Gameplay Questions and TutorialsGameplay Questions and Tutorials (or send me a private message):

Since this appears to be a RSS/kopernicus/configuration related issue rather than Principia related...if you still end up with trouble after deleting & resetting up the RSS/kopernicus folders (I'm hoping you use CKAN in combination with manually verifying folders are fully removed) ...& would like some pointers, you are welcome to send me a private message...since I am working on getting Trappist1 working for myself in KSP1.9.1 this weekend anyway...

for clarity, in case someone else encounters this thread in the future...all that needed is the Visual C++ redistributable library = x64: vc_redist.x64.exe rather than all of Visual Studio. https://github.com/mockingbirdnest/Principia/wiki/Installing,-reporting-bugs,-and-frequently-asked-questions#windows-users "Windows users If you get the message "Dependencies, namely the Microsoft Visual C++ 2015-2019 Redistributable, were not found", well, you need to install the Microsoft Visual C++ 2015-2019 Redistributable." _______________________________________________ (However, & mostly for amusement, I will also include one of my favorite posts about windows .dlls by @Lisias ;-)

PML file is described in the instructions pasted below which come from the link pleroy gave you re: "Please follow the steps here and give us a PML file tracing what KSP is doing and what is happening on your machine.": fyi...Getting familiar with Process Monitor is worth the effort ;-) EDIT: also I was thinking...if you do not have the 2015-2019 x64 already installed...you could grab that & install it also & see if that helps clear up any .dll path issues: https://aka.ms/vs/16/release/vc_redist.x64.exe from: https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/help/2977003/the-latest-supported-visual-c-downloads (here is my list...I have a few picky old tools that seem to complain if I remove some of the older distributions...so ignore the clutter)

to add to scimas' insights above...in this case I would actually check several of the Fatal logs first to see if they are all the same type of crash... also, if you are using a windows platform AstroGrepPortable (lots of bloatware installer versions on the www...but the one that just downloaded for the link I added here showed as clean in VirusTotal...still make sure to check it yourself) has been extremely useful for me with troubleshooting KSP mods...I use it to search the KSP.log, .cfg files, MM logs, kopernicus, & principia logs all the time...those usually help reveal what is not playing nice together... For example, these mods in your list have me wondering...I would temporarily drag those out of gamedata, reload, & then see if you can successfully create a new principia based save...though for me crashes on save creation generally have been kopernicus related so will be interesting to see what is leading to your crash... Telemachus Reborn "A 3D navball (huge thanks to Lokaltog/KeRD for an awesome implementation)" Persistent Thrust - 1.7.5 "a plugin that allows propulsion systems to operate during timewarp" Precise Maneuver - 2.4.4 if that does not work, then the info logs are helpful to see what Principia was trying to process/create leading up to the crash...if you upload your principia logs to a google drive folder or something I could take a quick peak for you...

check the Principia logs for insights about the crash...those logs are in your %KSP181's root directory%\glog\Principia\ folder...I usually start with the error log...

@moar ssto is there a thread tracking observations of such terrain issues in 1.8.1+? Is this issue observed in any mods other than REX? If you log & eventually share a list of specific lat - lon of crashes with invisible terrain when you notice them on any TRAPPIST1 system planet, that would help me more easily attempt to confirm your observations using the Making History DLC to place test ships near those locations in both REX TRAPPIST1 as exo system v. TRAPPIST1 as the home system ( @AndrewDraws TRAPPIST1 system's worlds are just too beautiful to not enjoy them with the Principia TRAPPIST1 system n-body model ;-).

source: https://www.asteroidmission.org/?latest-news=asteroids-bennu-and-ryugu-may-have-formed-directly-from-collision-in-space " in a new paper published in Nature Communications, scientists from the OSIRIS-REx and Hayabusa2 teams argue that the YORP effect may not explain the shape [“spinning-top” asteroids] of either Bennu or Ryugu....Bennu, the target asteroid for the OSIRIS-REx mission, and Ryugu, the target of the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency’s Hayabusa2 asteroid sample return mission, are composed of fragments of larger bodies that shattered upon colliding with other objects. The small fragments reaccumulated to form an aggregate body. Bennu and Ryugu may actually have formed in this way from the same original shattered parent body." Rather amazing asteroids & missions...while waiting for the public release of Bennu trek, the similar Ryugu trek has just recently been released: https://trek.nasa.gov/ryugu/ Ryugu Trek (note: the image data is not currently as majestic as for Bennu)