henryrasia

I believe the difficulty in KSP isn't solving problems, solving them elegantly. In that sense, there shouldn't be missions to "get this to that place" but rather "get this to that place with minimum mass, flight time, without active control, etc. If there are mods like kOS, then problems become even more interesting, trying to make the shortest code to do the most results. I like the idea of a precise ICBM/cruise missile. I myself would suggest a more math-y problem: Making a Kerbin-Duna cycler (or an Earth-Mars cycler in RSS).

Hi guys! So here's part 2 of me trying to figure out Kerbin's mass and radius from within KSP. I hope you enjoy! As always, feedback is appreciated!

Hey guys, I though I'd share my first ever video. I try to calculate Kerbin's mass and radius using the in-game instruments. Please tell me what you think!

I remember Novasilisko... nuff said I've been following in the game since 0.15, but only bought it after planets were added in 0.17. Some things of back in the day KSP players were almost real life rocket scientists, because they managed to do things like docking back in the days that even rendezvous needed excel computations. Does anyone remember the Kerbin-Duna cycler? Man, there wasn't even mods to calculate departure angles ;_; The devs would listen to the community, and post regularly. It was much more manageable back then. I remember the dread people had about going to steam, that it would draw the likes of pewdiepie and such and make the forum because a horrible mess. It did happen to some extent, but it wasn't so bad. Novasilisko (or should I call him Knova? ) started the trend of adding easter eggs everywhere. Like my next bullet point: The magic boulder. Guys, remember the hunt for it in the forums? The naysayers saying it was a myth, that we were wasting our time. The decoding of the Duna signal (in hindsight, how did people even find it in the first place o.O) that led to clues and all kinds of theories. Sadly when Nova left no one continued his plan of making a "story mode" with mystery clues leading to other clues around the solar system. Remember when the sun was Kerbol? Finally: when I started looking at the forums in 0.15 I remember people going crazy over the new spaceplane hangar and C7's airplane parts. Good times. I could probably go on and on, but these are the one that stand out.

Nice! And yes, there would be no requirement for commitment to regular writing, anyone can do a one-off.

A long time ago togfox created the Kerbin "Geographic And Science Society" (thread link), with the objective of naming geographical features in the game and have one hub where sciencey "research" could be published. The last post on the thread was from 2013, so let's not necro-post there. What I'm thinking about is whether there's interest in the community to create something similar to that. Now that we have 1.0 out, a reasonably stable Realism Overhaul mod, and projects such as the Apollo Mission Recreation one, I think that it's a great time to do that. The only thing left to decide is if people are interested (please vote in the poll!). So here's my plan: This magazine would be a PDF posted here in the forums with a few articles relating to space, science, and technology neatly edited together. To make sure it doesn't feel like a job and have articles actually be completed, I think a monthly cycle would be best, as well as the inclusion of many types of articles. Some ideas: Kerbin Scientific Journal An article about some scientific investigation within the game (for example: finding the size of the Kerbin crater and estimating the impact that caused it). This section would be a scientific article written with some scientific rigor (I mean, it's a game after all), and the published ones would be the most interesting or the most scientific of submissions. Kerbin Innovation and Achievement Records A write-up about a mission within KSP that was important in some way, such as a submarine mission to Eve with return. Articles would be chosen based on how well it's written as well as how cool or novel the mission was. In this section there could be competitions, such as a Red Bull Air Race styled one with the same plane for everyone. Real-Life Space Column Columns about some piece of news, personal opinion, or discussion on some topic relating to real life aerospace technology, astrophysics, etc. It's really up to how much the community is interested in it, though. What do you guys think? Could you be an artist, writer, scientist, pilot, something else? UPDATE: The original 3 publications of the KGSS are unavailable, even in cached form. Unless togfox still has them somewhere.

Is there a problem with CKAN? I can't download Realism Overhaul. It gives me this error: Missing "C:\Games\KSP RSS\Ships\VAB\Tantares Vostok.craft". And I have not selected Tantares to be downloaded. What is happening?

Why didn't they try a slow reentry? As in making the perigee cause substantial drag, but not enough to risk the structural integrity of the wing. Then you pitch up and maintain flight around the world, descending as you slow down. 16 days is enough time to decelerate to subsonic speeds with little dynamic pressure. I guess because they didn't know the extent of the damage, but still, would it have been possible?

Thrust is NOT a contact force. Think about it this way: If you're ice skating holding a bowling ball. then you throw it, you're going to fly backwards. You are pushing on the ball, yes, but the ball doesn't need to "push" on the air. Now imagine that instead of bowling balls, they're tiny post combustion molecules, lots of them, LOTS of them. And what's "pushing" them out is their final impact against the combustion chamber before flying out of the exhaust. You may think that it'd be impossible to calculate all of these interactions, but rocket science simplifies it into thrust and nozzle physics. Now sure, that's for traditional gas exhaust rocketry, but all rockets more or less follow this principle (ion drives use ions pushed by electromagnetic fields, for instance). Hope this helps

Hey guys, I thought I'd post this question here since it's a very specific spacey physics thing. How do gravity turns work? I know what they are (btw, not KSP's turning to orbit, I mean the actual natural pitchover caused by gravity alone), but it's really puzzling me how the trajectory works out. I've tried solving it parametrically, but even the horizontal part get to a dead end: the velocity vector depends on the acceleration vector, which depends on the velocity vector's pitch, etc etc etc. It's a loop that reminds me of how computer code handles this situation, with new value = previous value + change in value. But it can't be this complicated. NASA used gravity turns way before computers could handle long simulations, so there must be an analytical solution. Any tips?

Hello everyone, quick astronautical question. How does a normal force (or normal acceleration, if we divide by the mas of the vessel) affect its heading? The fastest the object is moving the least the effect, but is there a mathematical relationship between the force and degrees/second prograde heading change?

I just think the bubble cockpit should be more bubbly, with greater visibility down and backwards than the current one.

0.16 adding planets and revamping aero parts was mind blowingly awesome. There was nothing as exciting as the Duna hill / magic boulder first findings/theories. I miss Nova's mindset about the game...

See if I understood correctly: The QA team look for and report bugs that have to do with textures, broken mechanics, crashes, glitches, missing assets, things quite bluntly not working, etc, while following a guideline for substantial notes on the issue (to avoid "KSP crash SQUAD pls fix ASAP k thx bye" syndrome) Therefore, they fail to catch mistakes on the big picture of the gameplay, independent of version, OS, etc, that the community could catch easily and wouldn't need any specific training. I propose an approach close to what Arma 3 does, which has a "dev branch" wherein you can get the new features (at the expense of lots of bugs) and you can file issues (bugs or otherwise) using the issue tracker. It's like an automatized version of what the "feedback and suggestions" subforum used to be back in the day. I think that way we can improve the game faster and better and make everyone happier.

The WHOLE POINT of KSP is to build stuff that works from things that weren't meant to be used quite that way. Back in 0.13 there would be the best forum posts of all time, rescuing a capsule with landing legs before docking or EVA, landing with fins mounted on decouplers before landing legs. I saw the first proof of concept docking with nothing more than spreadsheets and math to figure out trajectories. I hear there were even orbits before there was a map, or timewarp, or even knowledge about the properties of Kerbin. And then, of course, these helicopter monstrosities.