Zeiss Ikon

I saw a fireball over northern Idaho back in 1980 -- greenish, bright, and traveling south to north. We figured then it was probably a satellite burning up after its orbit decayed. Those don't generally get bright enough to be visible in daylight, though, never mind to flare a camera sensor in daylight... @Vanamonde Average meteoric entry speed is something like 20 km/s, as I recall -- compared to ~1 km/s for an SR-71 going all out...

@nepphhh I have the Kerbalism RO config -- I followed the RO/RP-1 installation instruction page very carefully, after wasting a week of evening spare time and getting it wrong once. I'm now getting data, it just takes a long time to complete each experiment -- but as long as data from multiple flights is added together (it is) and I get the partial Science to spend before completing the entire data set (I do, for instance, 0.1x completed for Supersonic Flight Analysis was good for 2.5 Science points), so i can start R&D working, it works well enough. At this point, around January 1952, with half a dozen launches under my belt, I've got most of the temperature and pressure scans completed for the biomes around Canaveral, and for Space Low; telemetry similar, about 2/3 done with Superonic Flight Analysis, and after three flights on "Space Biological Science" contracts, about 2/3 of the bio sample data -- and I haven't even built an A-4/RD-100 class vehicle yet.

Are those small yellow blocks the Thuds are mounted on Lf/O tanks? If they aren't, the Thuds don't have any fuel to draw from. Fuel ducts will pull Lf/O from their supply end to keep tanks on their output end filled as long as there's supply -- but that assumed there's something for the duct to keep filled.

(1.7.3 RSS/RO/RP-1/Kerbalism) It's September of 1951, and we're at the height of the sounding rocket era. Meet Sixpence B. The initial vehicles in this save were Tiny Tim II (one guess what engine than one had) and Copper A, a 305 mm vehicle with a first-generation Aerobee engine burning Anline/Furfuryl with IRFNA. We got a couple contracts out of that one, but it quickly became apparent that it wasn't adequate to meet the contracts that were being offered -- even with no payload, it was only good for around 120 km. Fortunately, the R&D folks pretty promptly released an upgraded engine version, designated XASR-1, with a slightly shorter burn time rating, but nearly double the thrust. Even that wasn't enough to send instruments and payload into space proper, however, and early simulations suggested that the larger diameter of some of these payloads was part of the problem. Well, then, let's stage one to another, and build the whole thing to minimize drag as far as practical. Here's the result. Wups, looks like we're headed for Tampa (in fact, the payload section landed in the Gulf a couple kilometers offshore, and a similar distance north of Tampa Bay).

@nepphhh Yeah, but I've got a couple of those decision points where my answer is "yes, but I wish I were better at it." I guess that's what practice is for, but if I were a *good* money manager, I'd probably be living better in real life...

Well, for whatever it's worth, I found the buttons for activating the science instruments (in the VAB, even, though I presume that would be a mistake if you're running on batteries and need to take data for a contract after several days in flight -- like, say, a Lunar flyby). If they have buttons in the VAB, they can be bound to Action Groups, so I can manage my science collection. And even better, partial data nets partial science. After bankrupting my first save in the new install (bought one too many KCT upgrade points), I started a new one, and was able to see in the Kerbalism status window as the data added up in whatever biome my sounding rocket flew over. A minute, two minutes, and I'd get 0.1 of the available science. After a couple flights into the Upper Atmosphere, I was able to unlock the entire first (1 point) tier and start one or two nodes in the next. I'm not sure I agree with the Kerbalism model entirely -- reading out a thermometer or barometer is pretty much instantaneous, and the data you get ought to be pretty small -- a couple bytes, plus a short header, should be able to encode temperatures from liquid nitrogen up to boiling water (likely easiest to just send as Kelvins, in binary or BCD, and at this tech level 0.1 degree resolution is plenty). Same is true of the pressure readout -- zero to a couple hundred kPa, in tenths of a Pa (one Pa is close to a hundredth of a millibar, if you're more used to weather than physics) would be three or four bytes. My telemetry unit is supposed to be able to send 32 bps, or ~3 B/s (including start, stop and even or odd parity), and redundancy can stand in for error correction, just keep sending over and over. If you have four instruments, you queue their data in a preset order and sort it out on the ground (with 1950 tech, this would be effectively WWII radio teletype with frequency shift keying, or equivalent of modern 80m ham RTTY). I don't see it taking more than about ten seconds to get a good temp, pressure, and a recording of the signal that will let you analyze atmospheric (or exo-atmospheric) effects on the signal -- yet multiple flights that spent a minute or so in a particular biome didn't get fully completed temperature and pressure scans.

I made my first two launches in a new RSS/RO/RP-1 career, with a fresh install of 1.7.3. I installed with Test Lite instead of Test Flight, Real Antenna instead of Remote Tech, and Kerbalism instead of Science Alert Re-alerted, [X} Science, and whatever else (it also gives "reliability" management for non-engine parts, and tracks the overall health and mental well being of Kerbals on long missions, rather than just making sure they have food, water, oxygen, and electricity as TAC LS does). Unfortunately, I found that the need for science experiments to run for a protracted period introduces some issues in the sounding rocket era. If it takes 30 minutes to complete a Supersonic Flight Analysis, and your rocket's total flight time (launch to impact) is only about ten minutes, does the data get saved and added to that from the next flight? If so, how is one supposed to remain solvent when it takes five or so times as many launches to get the science for the next engine/tank/etc. upgrade node? I know it's possible; other people are doing it -- but it's not very well documented (in terms of telling one how to go about getting science early in the career).

I just completed a new install of 1.7.3 RSS/RO/RP-1, and I'm using Test Lite instead of the Test Flight I've used in previous installs for engine reliability, Real Antenna instead of Remote Tech for comms, and Kerbalism for my life support mod (instead of TAC LS in previous installs), including reliability of everything else but engines (turned off the engine failures in Kerbalism since Test Lite handles that) and science collection. Test Lite seems easy enough -- it works just about like Test Flight but without having to R&D engines before launch (instead, enable "extra telemetry" during a launch to collect more flight data faster). Real Antenna is a bit different from Remote Tech, but doesn't look unfathomable -- antenna design and transmit power, along with distance and atmosphere if any, determine how fast you can send and receive data. What's got me is Kerbalism. I haven't even gotten into crewed flight yet, and won't for a while (quite possibly never in this first save) -- where I'm having problems is in gathering Science. I found the buttons to start various instruments running during my first real sounding rocket launch (Copper A -- a solid booster and liquid fueled sustainer, capable of about 130 km without a contract payload), opened the UI and flagged each data file for transmission as they became available -- and when the telemetry unit for the rocket (broken up after the fins burned off during reentry) crashed and I returned to the space center, I found that despite scanning temp and pressure Flying High over Shores and both High and Low over Forest (didn't start it on the pad, my mistake), analyzing telemetry continuously from launch, and running supersonic analysis all the time the vehicle was in that regime -- I had only 0.2 Science after the mission ended. I did see something afterward that suggest that, for instance, Supersonic Analysis would take 30 minutes to complete with the built-in antenna in a WAC Corporal Telemetry Unit, and based on reading the online information, it appears there are similar (if shorter or longer) time requirements for other experiments. For a rocket with an average total flight time around ten minutes. Which raises the question -- how does anyone get past the sounding rocket era with Kerbalism?! And why doesn't the Github documentation include hints on this subject (or why is that information hard to find)?

But that (if you get the thousands of details just right) gives you a fusion boosted fission bomb. Direct fusion requires a far different approach. To get one with enough yield to bother is, as far as I know, still future tech.

I got a start on installing Realism Overhaul in 1.7.3. Got through the core install, verified it starts, now I need to install all those other mods -- Stage Recovery, Test Flight/Test Lite or Scrapyard/Oh Scrap!, MechJeb, Parts packs, Principia...

One reason you might never have noticed "same craft interaction" before is that it was just added in version 1.7 or 1.8 (it surely does not exist in 1.6.1, and does in 1.8.1, but I haven't installed 1.7.3).

Same kind of error nearly killed Evel Kneivel on his Snake River Gorge jump -- he missed landing upside down in the river by a matter of feet. Goodbye, Mad Mike. You were the most Kerbal of us all.

Going out on a limb here, based on "next useful encounter in 65 years" -- rather than accept that or just do an impact, I'd be strongly tempted to search for an available gravity assist from Moho to get to an encounter with another body that can provide another gravity assist. Eve is the obvious candidate here, but your odds of getting a return to Kerbin are actually somewhat better, and Duna or Dres might turn out to be better options (i.e. available for return assists with lower dV expenditure). It's likely to still take years (but probably not 65) to get your craft back to Moho, and would likely be faster just to launch another mission.

Sorry, Michael. I don't know how to make the board NOT display the part of that command that looks like a URL (because it is) as a clickable link. Those were commands to be entered (copy/pasted) at your Linux command line. You can't click the link there and expect to get anything sensible as a result, because it's actually a link to the repository itself (which doesn't have an HTML page your browser can interpret).

I've been playing since just about the time 1.3.1 dropped -- and still haven't landed on Duna or Ike. I have done Gilly, once (easier than docking with an asteroid, in some ways -- which I've also done, and captured into Kerbin orbit).

Punctuation matters. Enter the command this way: sudo add-apt-repository http://repo.steampowered.com/steam/precise/ You'll be prompted for your password (use the same one you use to log into your Ubuntu), and the repository will be added. You should then be able to issue: sudo apt install steam-launcher You won't be prompted for password again (it'll remember your authority for several minutes), but the Steam client should install. Once that's done, you may be prompted to restart (I don't recall), and once done (if needed) you can launch Steam from your regular software menu and install your (already purchased) KSP on your Ubuntu machine.

Lately, I've been playing 1.6.1 for my RO install. I was planning to switch that over the 1.7.3, but then heard RO was working in 1.8.1 -- and can't find an installation page for it or confirmation from the mod devs. I really, really need to get off 1.6.1, though; the parts bin graphics bug is driving me nuts. I've also got stock careers running in 1.8.1 on both my laptop and my desktop computers. I should probably put one of the save files into my Dropbox so I can play the same save on both, like I did on 1.4.1. Haven't looked at 1.9 yet.

That's "gone" in terms of the Lunar near-equatorial orbit it was left in. The other stages I mentioned (Apollo 10 LEM descent stage and Apollo 11 LEM ascent stage), left in Lunar orbit, have (AFAIK) gone too low and impacted the surface over the past fifty years. Which happens depends strongly on how high/what inclination/orientation/eccentricity the initial stage orbit was. As I noted, near-polar Moon orbits can actually be stable enough to stay a good while. I didn't count the Saturn transfer stages because they were never inserted into Lunar orbit.

You can install using your regular package manager, if you first add Steam's repository (repo.steampowered.com) to your repo list. The complete information ought to be available from Steam if you log in with your browser from the Ubuntu machine.

Except that in the KSP context, it usually means a probe intended to facilitate contact either beyond normal antenna range, or to bypass blocking bodies.

Even without outside perturbation, most three-body systems are long term unstable. Lagrange libration points are a partial exception; they're only metastable (L4 and L5 more so than the other three), and depend on large mass ratios (i.e. you couldn't depend on a Lagrange point to make Earth/Luna stable with a second moon as heavy as Luna). With setups that could remain stable for geologic time, the view would be unspectacular -- it'd generally be a tiny moon orbiting a rather large one, and likely well out of the plane of the large moon's orbit (i.e. an accidental or artificial capture, not something that formed in place). For our Moon, only near-polar orbits can last even a few decades due to a combination of Earth's influence and masscons in the Lunar crust. Everything left in Lunar orbit by Apollo (Apollo 10 LEM descent and ascent stages, Apollo 11 LEM ascent stage, as I recall, before they started crashing the ascent stage for the seismic experiments) has long since fallen. Principia mod with RSS has enough data about the Moon's mass distribution to model this accurately, if you want to play with it. You can use just those two plus Hyperedit for this kind of play -- no need to go through a full RO install.

Judging by the blue sky and non-gray ground, I'm pretty sure your probe didn't land on the Mun. I also notice your G meter is reading several times what it should. Navigation problems?

I've played RO in 1.4.1 and 1.6.1, been through the sounding rocket era at least a dozen times before starting over (usually due to either bankruptcy or approaching 1970 without yet so much as a Lunar flyby). I've never understood why, if you're not using Scrapyard and its companion Oh Scrap!, which handle reuse of recovered parts or assemblies, there's still a refund of parts costs when parts are recovered. As far as I understand it, reflying used parts was never a thing in rocketry before the Shuttle era. Yes, there were concepts that intended to treat rockets like airplanes, but even today, most rocketry follows the "artillery" model -- launch it and then sweep up the resulting scrap. One of the reasons SpaceX is able to offer launch services at prices other companies can't match is that they're the only ones recovering and reusing even a significant fraction of their launch vehicle since the Shuttle was retired (and unlike the Shuttle, they can refly a booster in mere weeks, instead of almost a year). Yet, even without a mod that lets me reuse recovered parts, if I put (correctly configured) parachutes on my sounding rockets, I get most of the cost of the (significantly more expensive and slower to build) rocket back (even for discarded stages, thanks to Stage Recovery). This makes no sense. A WAC Corporal engine has a limited burn time, and the technology of its manufacture would make it cheaper to build a new one than to try to refurbish one to original specifications. Landing under parachute doesn't generally return a ready-to-fly airframe, either -- flight weight tanks and fins are made of the lightest material that will do the job, and once the tank is depressurized, it'll be prone to buckle under high, off-axis end loads (as with a parachute landing), not to mention the crumpling of the skin where it protrudes past the actual tank domes. Fins, likewise, are prone to take loads from different directions during landing than what they were built to take in flight, and building them to survive that makes them heavier than they'd otherwise need to be -- which is bad. So, bottom line: sounding rocket era vehicles can't be practically reflown after recovery, other than possibly the instrument packages. This is very much true of ICBM-derived launchers, as well -- picture trying to reuse an Atlas balloon tank. Running the engine until the tank is dry results in loss of the internal pressure that's critical to supporting the tank's own weight, never mind whatever it's supposed to carry as payload or upper stages. Even if you shut down with, say, 1% propellants remaining, to keep the pressure, there is no way this tank is going to take landing shocks without buckling the tank wall -- picture a full can of beer that gets dropped, and what happens to the cylindrical sides of the can. The entire vehicle, then, has to be designed for reuse before recovery gains you anything other than data about the flight -- and we get that in the form of the rapidly diminishing "access to a vehicle that survived X" science award after recovery (which, IMO, shouldn't drop off nearly as quickly as it does -- NASA was still learning about reentry in the Shuttle era, learned some after each and every Mercury, Gemini, and Apollo mission, and SpaceX is preparing to learn things no one else has ever known with the thermal management system and swinging fins of Starship). Until the vessel is actually designed and built in a way that allows reflight, we shouldn't get any kind of refund for the parts.

RealEngines, as I recall, gives a bunch of engines and/or modifies stock engine models to have little or no throttling, single or limited ignitions. It may require RealFuels and RealPlume, I'm not certain because I have it as part of a full RO.

Yeah, a little naming mismatch there. Glad you found the right thing.