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Sid

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Everything posted by Sid

  1. Brilliant. You have reminded me of several things I'm doing wrong ( I don't mean there is a wrong and a right way in KSP - just for the task I have set myself ) Boosters and spent stages. I need to start dealing with them properly. Night landings on Kerbin ( I do always bring them back, but I'm not being careful as to night or day ) Comms satellites. Tracking was a huge factor in mission planning....shouldn't have missed that one either I haven't attempted a mission with Kerbals longer than a few days so far, but I like the 90 day restriction
  2. I like using KSP to recreate some of the real ( and imagined ) missions of the 60's and 70's To give myself more of a challenge I have set some mission rules to add realism to the way I build and fly. Here they are, in no particular order - can anyone add to these, or critique them ? 1) Spacecraft will have the minimum delta-V required to complete the mission - with a little contingency and subject to limits imposed by available tank sizes and engines 2) Stages used to both enter Kerbin orbit and later inject the craft into a transfer only get that one relight. The relight must be performed within an hour of entering orbit. Service modules and probe engines can have unlimited relights. 3) Payloads must be sized to fit in reasonable sized shrouds. 'Reasonable' being open to discussion, but if it doesn't look like it could have been built and flown in the era then it's out. 4) Space stations and small probes can have reaction wheels\ASAS but larger craft must use RCS for attitude control. 5) No attempt will be made to land Kerbals on another body until at least one mapping\photographic probe and a lander have been sent first. Successfully 6) "Kerballed" craft and launch vehicles must be Kerbal-rated. At least one remote controlled flight first to ensure controllability, structural safety and clean separation of boosters. An escape system must be fitted, and tested. Parachute systems also to be tested. That's all I can think of. This is the first time I have actually written the rules down. I haven't really thought too much about nuclear engines yet, but I think I'm going to pretend that Nerva was never cancelled.
  3. Would some kind person be able to make me a forum avatar ? I'd like a biker Kerbal if that's possible - think Kerbals Of Anarchy
  4. A very good point.... Or are your Kerbals hearing scuttling noises in the ventilation ducts, like there is.....something.....moving around in there ?
  5. I'm English by birth but now live in rural Spain. Without water at the moment because the pump which takes our rainwater from the collection tank into the house has broken. I'll try and fix it tomorrow, but please don't feel too sorry for me - I've got beer in the fridge
  6. Yep, but I do find that some things are either easier or more efficent to do without using Mechjebs autopilot. Which is NOT a complaint, it's a great piece of work.
  7. I tried the Ben Bova books, but he mixes romance into his stories, and I want to read about how people 'FEEL' about each other from his point of view just about as much as I want a hole in my head. Plus, at the time he was writing his books, he was a fully paid up member of the global warming watermelon religion. Maybe he still is. Neal Stephenson is pretty good. I like 'Snow Crash' and 'Reamde'
  8. This isn't it, but I like it anyway :-
  9. I can't figure out this new ASAS at all. Have the joins between parts been made more elastic ? I ask because I tested the Gemini-Titan and it was wobbling around on the pad like a piece of half cooked spaghetti, which isn't going to help. It never did that before. I've got huge problems controlling any rocket now during the initial launch, they seem to have a mind of their own. Sometimes it's like one of the gimbals has gone hard over, other times they do as they please. What they are like in orbit - when RCS and reaction wheels would actually come into play - I don't know. I haven't managed to get there yet and all my Kerbals have resigned I reckon I'll go back to 0.20 until everything settles down. I was really only interested in the new Mun with the spiffy looking craters anyway.
  10. I remember watching the " Turkish Stars " aerobatic team back when they were flying the F-104 Starfighter - it was awesome. Good luck !
  11. IQ tests are a great way of identifying people who are good at scoring well in IQ tests
  12. I'd offer you my skills with 3D CAD except I use Solidworks, which doesn't really work too well for making models for games. You can convert a Solidworks model to 3DS but it'll come out with about 40 million polygons and by the time you have reduced them to a sensible level you would probably have been better off making the damn thing in 3DS right from the start. Then there is the texturing and mapping, which I know as much about as operating the washing machine ( ask my wife ) If you want an engineering model of a spacecraft though, get in touch
  13. It's any homemade rocket engine\firework\whatever. You are making an 'explosive mixture' as far as the law is concerned. My view was that stuff is only illegal if you get caught doing it Even the Estes motors were considered illegal in the UK until something like the mid 1980's Ironically shortly after I gave up making illegal solid fuel rockets as a hobby I applied for - and got - a licence to manufacture firearms. Which isn't easy in the UK...that really stopped me doing anything fun. Except for building and shooting guns, which is also fun of course
  14. I think if the planet was a Paris Hilton analog it would be pink rather than purple and inhabited by small yappy dogs. I personally like the way the KSP system sometimes reflects our own solar system and sometimes...doesn't. Must send a probe to Eve soon ( meaning one that actually gets there rather than falling victim to my substandard design decisions and trajectory planning )
  15. I loved the Estes motors, but never actually bought a complete kit. The neighbours and their kids used to come over to some of the launches - it wasn't a space technology outreach education program so much as " Hey, hold my beer and watch this " My amateur rockets had to be launched discreetly and away from human habitation, because making a solid fuel rocket engine in the UK ( where I was living ) is actually illegal. Plus they blew up a lot
  16. My personal suspicions about how serious you were about developing this software ( and how much of it was original work ) are completely gone. I wish you the very best of luck Dion - I'll buy the PC version when it comes out.
  17. A friend helping me on the rocket project was involved with pulsejets. Well kind of......as a target He's an older guy who lived in the south coast area of England as a young child in WW-2 and remembers the V-1's flying over the Channel from Nazi occupied France I would maybe like to build a pulsejet but realistically I don't have the skills - I'm a good machinist but sheet metal fabrication isn't something I know much about, or have the tools for.
  18. Not really. Are you a communist or something ?
  19. I'm interested in the technical challenge as well nowadays. Rockets which explode have turned from a feature into a bug now for me I doubt I could afford to build anything liquid fuelled which is light enough to fly, and anyway I live in a place where wildfires are a huge hazard for much of the year. It's not really safe to fly an experimental rocket. No problem to build a test stand though. I do keep thinking about a boost glider powered by those small Estes motors - I think they are safe enough to use here because of their reliability and short burn times. Not really much different to the fireworks the locals love so much ( except I doubt that Estes use a cement mixer for making their black powder ) - my neighbours don't look like Kerbals but sometimes they behave like Kerbals...
  20. I've been doing this since I was kid - the rockets anyway. I did have a project underway to build a jet powered go-kart a few years ago but the engine ( a large turbocharger from a diesel truck ) produced roughly 0% thrust while having about a 90% chance of incinerating anyone who went anywhere near it... development stopped when I moved to another country, which is probably all for the best. I'm going to make a hybrid rocket at some point in the future, but for the moment I don't have a workshop - all my engineering machinery is sitting in a friends garage until I can build a 'Skunkworks' to house it. I'm not sure what to use as an oxidiser, I can get 40% Hydrogen Peroxide but I'll have to concentrate it a lot further somehow ( got a few ideas about that ) - Nitrous Oxide might be more convenient however and a lot less explodey.
  21. I don't agree with you, but it's very possible you are right and I am wrong...does that make any sense ?
  22. Unmanned sample return probe. Luna 16 was successful. Quite an achievement really and one that the Russians have never really gotten full credit for outside of the space geek community.
  23. Not exactly - more like " You have 6 months to prepare this flight Comrade, it must be launched to coincide with the elections in Italy, where it will increase the votes of the Communist Party " I do wonder if the story of Korolev dying while undergoing surgery was a cover-up and he actually died from one too many facepalms...
  24. I'm just recreating the Soviet era of spaceflight in KSP ( as best I can ) - it IS fascinating. The Russians, I think were hampered by several things :- The early death of Korolev, a man who was able not only to design rockets but work around the insane Soviet bureacracy to some extent Leaders who regarded spaceflight as nothing more than a demonstration of prestige and would put insane deadlines on flights for political reasons Secrecy and paranoia imposed on the scientists and engineers, preventing the sharing of knowledge
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