lincourtl

Yes, Spaceplane Guidance is a Mechjeb module. This video is older, but the functioning hasn't changed the last time I looked.

Beautiful work! I had a problem with solar panels placed in the service bay refusing to deploy because they were shrouded, even though the service bay doors were open. But I'm not sure if this is an intended stock "feature" or a bug with Stock Part Revamp. On edit: If it's the former, I love KSP, but sometimes I just don't know what Squad were thinking.

The Spaceplane Guidance function will also hold altitude and heading. Very handy.

I think you had a good idea. Your mod idea sounds like it'd be fun for people more into the tycoon play style as opposed to the sim aspect. There are jerks everywhere you go. Try not to let it get to you. As someone who loves the realism mods, I'm nonetheless quite happy overall with the balance Squad has struck in 1.0.x sans some expected tuning and bug squashing. More importantly they've left the game open for serious modding which is what allows the realism mods to exist.

I have my opinions, and they're probably far more left of center than you might think, but rather than injecting my own political biases here let me just throw this out for a bit of perspective... You all realize that the Apollo program was private-public venture of unprecedented size, right? Private sector involvement in human spaceflight is nothing new. A large list of Saturn V subcontractors: http://history.nasa.gov/SP-4206/app-e.htm A chart from Appendix F of Chariots for Apollo showing major Apollo spacecraft contractors and subcontractors:

Minor problem, but not really. It's outputting as tab delimited rather than CSV. Not a big deal given the nature of the data, but you might want to change the file extension to just .txt or use commas instead of tabs as the delimiters. I am pleased as punch to see this back though. Thank you!

I don't know if you're aware of this, so my apologies if it sounds like I'm lecturing, but there is a stage lock function. ALT+L -- very handy for preventing the bump of failure.

Disclaimer: I am not currently an educator, nor am I employed by TeacherGaming, nor have access to KSP Edu. I'm just a fanboy who wants the project to succeed. Precisely because KSP is such a huge game utilizing so many scientific and engineering concepts, and because in-class time is so scarce, I think to use KSP successfully in the classroom you have to go into it with some limited, well-defined, concrete learning objectives. It probably helps too if you implement those objectives as discrete lessons, and create missions ahead of time which the students can load up at the start of class. For instance, take a look at some of the original missions created by the KSP Edu team: http://teachergaming.com/kerbalmissionlibrary Frankly I'm puzzled by the fact that there aren't more missions in the KSP Edu mission library by now because the idea of shareable missions seemed like such a genius idea to me back when KSP Edu was first created. This is probably one area where the KSP Edu team could reach out to more current teacher-gamers to crowdsource missions which can serve as self-contained lessons. I'm sure many KSP veteran gamers would love to help out teachers in developing missions for their lesson plans as well. But that would require getting the KSP Edu mod into the hands of more than just the three dozen or so people who helped out during development. You're quite right too that documentation is important. There really needs to be the KSP equivalent of Bruce Irving's Go Play In Space. Ideally this is something the KSP Edu team should be working on. I don't want to sound critical of KSP Edu, or the team developing it. It's such a small team, and they've accomplished so much. After all, there's pretty much only one developer left from what I understand, plus KSP has greatly changed with each of the past few releases. I mean, Squad essentially entirely rewrote the laws of the KSP universe's physics for 1.0, and they're still tuning the aero- and thermodynamics. So I'm not even sure it made any sense for KSP Edu to devote time to developing lessons and missions and documentation until now. Additionally, I do think they're headed in the right direction. For instance, see the most recent blog post about the Earth History Campaign which is an entirely new game mode. In short, I still think KSP has tremendous educational potential, but the Edu version really needs more attention than just the core team can give to it. On the other hand, they're trying to make money off the project, so I can see why they're trying to keep expenses low.

Apollo CM also executed a Passive Thermal Control (PTC) maneuver; i.e. a barbecue roll. There's an extended discussion of the maneuver in the Apollo 15 Flight Journal starting with this passage. Phil Karn's technical discussion immediately following is worth the read. - - - Updated - - - Exactly. The big silver bits are the radiator panels.

Oh, I know. Plus you are limited by the lack of proper rope modeling in KSP (I understand why it's not there). It was just funny to see balloons inflating and staying horizontal. I love that the balloons expand volume as pressure decreases with altitude, and that they burst at <4kPa (about 17.5km on Kerbin). Too bad we don't have wind in KSP either. It'd be awesome to see a dozen of these lofting over the space center drifting this way and that.

Fantastic work! Oh hey, that's interesting. Kerbals: We're capable of interplanetary travel, but we can't make bendy rope.

No, it's the same thing, just a different intensity. The heat gets transferred because the air can not get out of the way of your vehicle fast enough, so some of it is at an effective standstill (zero flow). This gives it time to convect the heat to your vehicle. This happens to anything traveling through a fluid whether it happens to be a swimmer, a submarine, a bicyclist, a car, a train, a jumbo jet, or a reentering spacecraft. It's just that for ordinary applications the heating is negligible. But once you're moving at Mach 20 or so, even at 100km the atmosphere is going to be thick enough where it just can't get out of your way fast enough. Also, space capsules are designed to create a detached bow shock so most of the heat is dissipated to the surrounding air rather than the capsule. I'm sure NathanKell can explain it much better than me.

Well, that's what I was trying to say. KSP is by its nature science fictional, but I like it on the hard sf side of the spectrum versus fantasy space opera like Star Trek which is why I seek out the mo' realism mods but haven't yet gone the full RSS/RO route.

Because of KSP's conceits to gameplay (1/10 size Earth, entire Kerbolar system would fit almost inside Venusian orbit, super-powered jets and ion thrusters, little green guys with no obvious civilization yet an advanced space program, etc.) I think a little science fiction-y is just fine. Apart from the RSS/RO crowd, I think what most of the mo'-realism community wants is hard sf'ish versus fantasy space opera. At least that's what I'm looking for.

Considering that supersonic parachutes are a highly specialized thing, I think it's a fairly realistic bordering on science fictional (which is not necessarily bad). Also, due to the scale height of the stock KSP atmos, the interval between shock heating and subsonic is pretty brief. I don't particularly find deploying any sort of slow-me-down device while heating is still occurring particularly realistic. BTW -- Good powerpoint about supersonic parachute design: https://solarsystem.nasa.gov/docs/11%20-%20Supersonic%20parachutes%20Lingard.pdf

Like I said above, you can have the best of both worlds. For ordinary/career usage there can be a variety of predefined part shapes and sizes, which can even show up as discrete parts on the parts menu. The parts are still procedurally generated, but the game ships with a selection of standard configs. At a certain tech level you can unlock full procedural ability (call it the "aerospace mastery" node or something), which allows one to make whatever shape and size you want for extra Funds cost. That way you get both the Lego-esque quality of discrete components and the freedom of procedural components. You could also add the option to save your new procedural part as a standard to the parts menu, which would result in lower costs the next time you use it.

Those of us on low end or older PCs appreciated the standalone functionality, although I suppose it really should be rolled into Enhanced NavBall which I like to think of as Myopic Friend NavBall.

I tend to be in the "Go Procedural!" camp, but I also think it's possible to have the best of both worlds. In career mode, pParts can have a base set of tweakable shapes/sizes which serve as the "standard." Heck, you can even have them appear in the parts menu as separate parts. But then you can allow the player to fully procedurally vary the size and shape in exchange for extra Funds. In sandbox we don't care about Funds so the pParts are fully procedural from the start.

Were you using the fixed heat shields configs, or the ones that shipped with 1.0? As soon as I applied the "fix", everything worked pretty normally. I still haven't managed a skipping reentry in 1.0, but I've got some travelers coming back from Duna so I'll try again. All my previous attempts were with the single crew pod.

Superb! I hadn't seen that yet. You are a modding machine, NathanKell! I'll have to try that out

Awesome. One step closer to perfection.

So is KSP now modeling heating from planetary infrared emission, and solar radiation, or is it just modeling heat generated by the ship? Also, do we need to worry about adding heat in deep space? Do we need, say RTGs, to warm up our lonely probes?

I must not have gotten my reentry profile right then. It may be the bug in the heatshield configs too.

I haven't seen this mentioned yet, but you really want to be concentrating on serial staging versus onion and asparagus. Plus it's a good idea to make your first stage last until you're in the upper atmosphere, if possible. It's not always possible, especially if you're playing career and you haven't gotten very far into the tech tree. Boosters should only be used to get you off the launchpad and moving in the right direction. Last but not least, when building rockets, design darts. Top heavy is good. You really want your CoM well in front of your CoL. This actually makes your rocket more stable.

Yep. That's the other way of doing it -- trading off shock-layer heating for time -- and it's a good one, especially when you're coming in from an interplanetary transfer. If I recall correctly, the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter did successive aerobraking passes for almost five whole months! Obviously this probably would not be ideal in the real world with real humans.