[routine flight repeater]

19 minutes ago, Krakatoa said:

 

Routine Mission Manager You mean this?

the moment when you realize you might be clinically retarded. thanks dude, it'a actually the exact thing i've been looking for

[routine flight repeater]

while i know that mechjeb and kerbalOS exists, they both require me to look at the rocket, taking up a bunch of my time. all my refuelling makes the rockets both very large (to limit the number of flights) and the time spent flying the same mission quite long.

while i understand it might be quite dificult, is it possible to record some basic information about a flight, and just create a payload in the wanted orbit? while just spawning payloads is probbably is the easy way i imagine it showing up on the map as if it is being flown as a "blip" moving along a track showing the original path to the desired orbit. 

an even more ambitious wish were if i could record a flight, and go back to control some of the dropped stages so spaceX levels of reuse becomes feasible.

[cant resume saved game]

what it says on the tin. i cant resume a saved game. this is combined with the "cant go to space center, revert flight or quickload" bug

[Revert, Space Center, and Recover buttons don't work]

i had this too. it didnt matter if i exited the craft or changed vessle or anything.

[bug, cant recover craft or go to space center, "no target"]

after rescuing two kerbals in orbit and splashing down (more or less) safely in the ocean outside KSC i tried to recover the craft, but it wouldent. "no target". then i tried to go to space center, still "no target". i cant even quickload out of my problems, and i dont really want to redo aproximatly 40 min of mission.

edit: i cant revert the launch either, gg. alt f4 it is.

[Video Wednesday: Kerbal Wind]

*wind blows through hair*

[mining the moon]

Even if the Moon was fully solid, which it isn't, doesn't mean it's cold by human standards. Tidal forces and radioactivity will keep it warm, and there is no atmosphere, and very little water to help you keep cool as you dig.

Smaller bodies, like Phobos, Deimos, Ceres and large asteroids are properly cold, and are probably differentiated (heavy stuff in the middle, etc). The lack of strong gravity will be both an advantage (no pressure, easy to move rocks) and an issue (equipment tends to fly away, and we developed all our mining technologies for places with atmosphere and gravity)

it isnt fully solid, but it isnt far from it. the core is around 2000degrees C and boring equipment starts to get compromised at 200 + degrees C iirc. that's still (if we assume a uniform heat increase towards the centre.) around 170km or so. with the abundance of oxygen we could probbably use it as a coolant in some way. maybe use helium from the surface or something (taking care not wasting it, it's valuable as fusion fuel).

[mining the moon]

"quite a bit of oxygen"? Oxygen is the most abundant on the Moon. It's bound in silicates and oxides.

i know, around 40% of the lunar soil is oxygen by mass. but i'm not sure if that keeps on going to the centre. in any case it's abundant. even earth is mostly oxygen. about the same amount as iron (ca 30%. i forget if there is more iron or oxygen)

[mining the moon]

there is a little molten material in the middle, but the moon is mostly solid. tidal forces dont affect solid objects that much. http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/e/eb/Moon_diagram.svg

[mining the moon]

mining is great, it allows us to build things. and things are great. the only issue is that most of the fun stuff is stuck where we cant get it.

the deepest hole on earth is 12km deep, the temperature got too high.

on the moon however the grond is mostly solid. we can dig as deep as we want. if we extend only the pressure we are up to about 100km deep holes, and i think we can go deeper. considering the moon's radius is only 1700km we are already a acceptable distance to the centre.

when people talk about mining on the moon it's mostly collecting surface dust and rock, i havent found anything on deep mining the moon. we dont know that much about what the rock consists of, but the figures i have seen of the surface compositon makes me think it has a pretty high concentration of iron and aluminum. probbably quite a bit of oxygen too.

the only real thing missing on the moon is carbon and water. good thing that is available on comets and asteroids.

if we move out to other moons we have phobos and deimos, both of which are only 10-20 ish km in diameter, easilly minable. with the low surface gravity the rock should be pretty easy to break as gas bubbles would be distributed, cracks from impacts would build up and not all the material has to have been molten/fused.

the moon is in short more fertile soil industrially than most of earth.

[What's the secret feature?]

It's a small, but fun feature that lays the groundwork for something coming in 0.26. This was just a tiny piece of a bigger pie, so to speak. If you get tired of it or don't like it at all, it can be turned off. I do think that there's a fair lot that will find challenging uses for it, for sure.

this wouldent be the construction of buildings would it? i am guessing being able to destroy buildings will require us to rebuild them. that is a small step away from buildable moon bases and expandable KSC facilities. omg, i just made myself shudder with excitement. if you guys dont do this a modder shure will.

[resources lite/ cargo]

ok, this isnt a suggestion regarding mining fuel or anything, this is a suggestion regarding collection of stuff and quantising the stuff you gather.

cargo holds:

ok, first of all we need to agree that all gear/resources/things take up some space. since it is boring to have specific parts for storing every single resource separately it would be nice to have a cargo system so we could have anything physical we would like to store in a common storage space. this could be everything from repair tools when /if they get implemented and soil samples and random objects. this would also open a whole new area for mod makers as they would have a unified storage space to put things in. it would be easiest if cargo was measured in volume as that makes the most sense.

science requirements/uses

if some science experiments required physical objects we would have a reason to use this system in vanilla KSP. instead of magically generating a "soil sample" we go out, pick up a rock and store it in the cargo hold. you get science for returning soil from different places, with deminishing returns as you increase the ammount. this would also open for a real science use for the science modules as you could "convert" the soil to data you can transmit home. weather the soil is consumed by this or not doesent matter. on a slightly different note, it doesent make sense that we dont get 100% science when we transmit, it should rather be that some data cant be transmitted, rocks for example. then you would need a science lab to convert it into transmittable data.

resource generation/management

when we have a place to put our shaz we can suddenly play with management of basic life support mechanics with waste being generated or whatever. if this is unwanted you could always use this for space station experiments. you generate "space plants" or something and either return them in a capsule or study them in the lab module. i dont really thin this is nessecary for squad to implement, all i'm saying is that this opens quite a few doors when it comes to managing "stuff", this is mechanics that will easilly be converted into mining and fuel/resource generation by either modders and/or a future squad.

tools

we needa supply of tools and items one time or another. it makes sense to have to pack your flags in advance rather than the unlimited flag eneration we seem to have now. having to pack these in a cargo hold seems to make sense. unless squad wants to make a tank with a "flag" resource we need an inventory system.

sorry if the english is a bit weird or my logic fails horribly. i havent slept in quite a while.

[developement time]

how does the community feel abut the long dev time? we used to get a major update every few months or so, but .23 was half a year ago now. the ARM update was ok, but the only real improvement other than minor tweaks were the joint enhancement. what do we feel about the slow developement? also, at this pace, where do we see KSP in two or three years?

[moon VS mars]

what did we learn from biosphere 2?

actually, we rearned quite a lot:

-dont bring insects if they arent nessecary.

-dont mess around with biomes you dont need

-have more plants per person

-every plant should be useful

there were a lot of things that was made ineficcient in biosphere 2.

for example there werre a lot of emphasis on animals and insects for some reason. the carbon cycle wasnt very well thought out either at the carbon sink was a lot weaker than the carbon source.

if i were to change somethging i would have enough plants to feed a 50% larger population than the one living in the colony/biosphere.

plants that dont need insects for bearing fruits are preferable, this means leeks and potatos are pretty good as food sources.

if you need a larger carbon sink, grow grass. grass doesent need insects to spread (on the surface it is already on) and without insects or any polination it wont spread to places we dont want it. this should also be done in a separate room from the potatoes, as this would be the "scrubber" while the potato would be a food source. this means the air in the grass room must be breathable while the air in the potato room may have a lot higher carbon content than is safe to breathe (to make for better growing crops)

if the air in the colony has too little carbon it is easy to just burn some previously grown plant matter in the growing rooms (no reason to fill the whole colony with CO2 if you just need it in the growing rooms right?

[moon VS mars]

if we really wanted we could probbably make a biosphere on earth. the reason to go to the moon is that it is close enough to test out infrastructure for going to mars. if your habs are rugged enough to survive the moon it is probbably rugged enough for mars, in the end the moon is quite a lot harsher than mars.

the reason going to mars isnt up for discussion at the moment is that going there is so hard that it makes no sense. we could probbably build a selfsuficcient colony on the moon with the resources needed to get ten or so people to mars. we have gotten pretty good at recyceling in the last few decades and the little resources available on the moon would probbably be enough to keep us alive. getting a carbon oxygen cycle running isnt that huge a problem when earth is so close, it would be the most important resource to ship to the moon from earth in the startup phases, oxygen can be mined on the moon and a working fusion reactor seems to be on the horizon, so power might not even be a problem on the moon.

basically, we cant really get to mars. and the moon is a little useless. going to the moon is great for getting fuel so mars isnt too huge of a leap compared to fuel availability in orbit.

[moon VS mars]

what is the reasons for going to mars?

human spaceflight as we all know is hard, but most of us want us to spread our wings and become a multi body sosciety. what then differs between mars and the moon and in which cases would they be more suited than the other for colonization?

the upsides of mars includes the abundance of important resources like water, methane and CO2. mars also has an atmosphere that allows for these to stay frozen without any serious problems.

however there are also downsides, one of there being the prohibitively long transit times that will require ISS sized ships to accomodate any large ish amount of people, and that's just counting internals for storing food, water, purification/recyceling equipment, living quarters/ bunks, large scale CO2 scrubbers and everything else needed to sustain life.

the moon is an alltogether different story. life on the moon is harsh, there is little in terms of resources to be had. you could make some interresting materials due to the vaccum, but nothing really that amazing. there is some water ice to be had, but nothing compared to mars. the little ice there is though, if we can get it, is very valuable. and there the great positive of colonizing the moon comes into play. getting there is doable, if not trivial compared to mars. yes we can reliably get to mars now, but the transit times to the moon is so short that a few blokes could just sit it out in a tin can. the infrastructure to live on the moon is much the same as that of mars, with one exception; landing and taking off on the moon compared to mars is trivially easy, with modern engines you could probbably do a SSTO and on the same tank of fuel land again

in short the moon is great as an orbital fuel station to be used as a springboard to the solar system in adittion to gaining some experience in colonization. if we can colonize the moon we can probbably colonize mars.

mars is something for the future where sustaining our fragile bodies no longer is a problem.

this is just my bitcoin on this debate

sorry if my english sucks a bit, i'm tired.

[cannons in space]

Modern tank combat takes place at ranges of a mile or so, which the projectiles cross in less than 1 second. Since tanks can not move at their top road speed when moving across uneven ground, this means that the target is, for practical purposes, nearly sitting still. So as I said, canons are still practical weapons if the time-to-target is quite short.

I also find highly questionable your stipulations that space combat would be between battleships at ranges of a few kilometers. There's a reason no one has built battleships in over 60 years; aircract and missiles can hit battleships long before battleship guns can hit back. That principle would hold true in space combat as well. Also, with modern guided weapons and innovations such as shaped charges, speed and maneuverability are better defenses than bulk and armor. If you do wish to limit the discussion to capital ship exchanges at fairly short range, then canons might indeed be the best choice, but that is a very arbitrary limitation and not likely to reflect future combat in space.

once again, this is sci fi, so i was burdoned with selecting the setting the weapon is set in. also, the effective range of an L55 rheinmetall cannon is 4000m, hitting something at twice the range without the limitation of gravity seems reasonable. there are reasons to use bettleship sized ships, mostly the cargo capacity and more surface to mount countermeasures on.

[cannons in space]

Is there any particular reason you've chosen that particular cutoff? Other than that it makes the kind of engagement you want to talk about possible?

i might just misunderstand [sCI FI THEORY] then, there is so much sci fi to choose from and since Dodgey asked me

Firstly we need to establish the basics of your spacecraft and who you are fighting. That way we can design a weapons system to take it out, otherwise we are just takeing shots in the dark here.

i chose the huge lumbering ships and wondered how suited cannons would be in this situation.

feel free to correct me if i have misunderstood.

[cannons in space]

i think we have mostly agreed that the effective range of this is between 20-50km (i mentioned 100km, but that is with a large, stationary target at EXTREME range), anything over that is streaching what is even possible with an unguided projectile. i also think i mentioned that the theme is more

than apollo, i dont know if that counts as anything, but i'm going with hulks slugging it out with relative velocities around 200m/s. think battleships in space.

[cannons in space]

I'm surprised that the discussion has gone on this long without anyone raising the biggest obstacle, which is simply hitting the target.

As far back as World War I, military engineers and scientists began to realize that you could pound an area with hundreds or even thousands of artillery shells, and when it stopped, most of the enemy would still be alive to pop back out of their bunkers and shoot at your attacking troops. In WW2, only a fraction of all the bombs dropped from aircraft actually got close to their intended targets, and even fewer actually hit the target. They were already working on smart weapons during WW2 itself, such as tv-guided drone planes. The reason militaries have switched to guided weapons is that, even though they are far more expensive per-unit, they are less expensive in the long run because you might only need to fire one of them to do the same job as dozens or hundreds of dumb projectiles.

And that's just the situation when firing at a large target that is sitting still, like a bridge or a factory. If the target is maneuvering at all, the only situations in which it makes sense to use dumb projectiles is if the time-to-target is short enough that the target will not have moved much by the time the projectile arrives (naval canon), or if you're firing a large number of projectiles and trusting to probability that at least some will hit (which is what fighter planes do). But notice that even in those instances, the limited range of the guns means that they are usually used as a last resort after missile supplies have been exhausted or range is under the missile's minimum.

And given the scale of the distances involved in spaceflight, it's hard to imagine a situation in which the target is still going to be at the aim point when a canon shell arrives. If the enemy is aware of your presence, it would be suicidal of him not to be jinking, in which case you'd be wasting a great deal of your finite supply of large canon projectiles as you try to hit him.

In short, it seems to me that the only way to effectively use dumb projectiles is to blanket the cone-volume of possible target positions with something like either machinegun bullets or shotgun pellets. By comparison, a missle, while more complex and larger, is likely to cross the distance faster and can make course corrections along the way, both of which make a hit more likely. If you can only carry a few large weapons, you'd be much better off choosing a few dozen guided missiles over a few score canon shells. This is, after all, the conclusion modern navies have reached.

you do realize that hitting a 3m x 3m target at 2km with a tank shell today is almost trivial right? accuracy has improved greatly since WW1 with better manufacturing and advanced electronics. hitting something larger than 20m x 20m in microgravity conditions with no windresistanse on ranges over 10km seems quite possible.

[cannons in space]

the 100+km range is what i would call the EXTREME maximum for even hitting a target of decent size. i would choose missiles on ranges higher than 10-30km due to the higher hit probbability. the cannon only really shines on ranges within 20km, optimally closer than 10km since the target would have little to no time to detect the projectile and deploy counters. the only counters that can really be deployed at short notice cant really deal with high density penetrators.

[cannons in space]

Cannons in space? Well...think about how much you are complicating things for engineers. First of all: this cannon will be big, heavy, and will create huge structural stress every time it fires. It will require considerable amounts of explosives, which will have to be stored in secure compartment. And it will have to be put some distance from the cannon - explosives generally don't like to be stored next to a source of heat and frequent shockwaves. Which means cannon-armed spaceship will require transportation system for its ammo - secure of course. All of it means more mass, space and complexity of the design. There is a reason modern warships generally carry one medium-sized, universal, automatic cannon, and couple rapid firing, fast-tracking small caliber cannons as point defence weapons. When a ship needs to kill another ship, it will be done using aircraft (if available), then guided missiles - with cannons being used only as a weapons of last resort. Or against a target that is worth less than a bomb or guided missile. No one will shoot Harpoons or Tomahawks at Somali pirates O

There is also the small issue of barrel longevity Each shot degrades the barrel. Degraded barrel is less precise and more dangerous - keep firing, and it will finally explode. If you want to avoid this...well, go back to shipyard. There your cannon mount will be at least partially disassembled, old barrel removed, new one put in place. Then new barrel will have to be calibrated, properly tested (which means live firing, which starts the process of degradation ) - it's a long, time and workhour consuming process. Like i wrote - there are many reasons why modern warships no longer use cannons as primary armament.

most explosives handle shock pretty well, and if it blows, so what? it just vents into space, no overpreasure to worry about. the structural stress is minimal as we can fit pretty large shock absorbers on this, there is no loader behind it to not kill. since the bore is so large pressures can be lower and the cannon can last practically forever. warships are also known for needing constant logistics support, i suspect this would be the case in space as well as a compact ship is favorable due to heating issues and to not be a huge target. i am working on the assumption that we are using some advanced propultion system so fuel isnt an issue, so ammo storage isnt really an issue.

[cannons in space]

lasers are out of the picture due to extremely low eficciency when it comes to penetrating anything. railguns, maybe, but they get kinda hot and require a lot of energy aka lots of bang, extreme buck. missiles are easy to counter with the weak point defence lasers we have and some time fuse flak cannons. we need something with moderate to high penetration abilities that we can make many of cheaply and operate on lowish power (they can use quite a bit, but lots of capacitors arent really wanted in space).

[cannons in space]

this is the setting/feel

we have the engines to move heavy armour, how are we going about penetrating that armour?

[cannons in space]

If you want to fire a cheap and simple round at a target in space why not go the whole hog and use a rail gun? The ammo is very low tech and all you need is the means to generate electricity to fire it.

heat, power requirements, rare metals, hard to produce the caps in orbit, and it's heavy. lots of issues. it is pretty powerful though, but if a 400mm cannon is overkill, almost any railgun would be too.