KSP as a full fledged hobby!!

[klesh]

High five, dilznick.  

[Norcalplanner]

On 7/14/2016 at 4:37 AM, John FX said:

I find it handy to have a real world hobby that produces a physical item as well but only so other people don`t berate me for wasting my time `doing nothing`

As an aficionado of both complicated board games (ASL, Advanced Civ, etc) and computer games, my standing joke is that I should just tell people that I'm fishing instead of gaming. Think about it how much more socially acceptable the following statements are about fishing instead of gaming:

I took a week off work to go fishing.

I bought some new fishing gear.

I subscribed to a fishing magazine.

I'm watching a TV show about fishing. 

I'm reading up on how to get better at fishing.

I'm talking to people online about fishing.

I spent a year putting together my current fishing rig.

I flew to another state to go fishing.

And on and on and on...

 

[cubinator]

6 hours ago, dilznick5 said:

snip

Wow, that's awesome! Just show them your best, and that you are totally willing to do the job, and you'll have a chance, at least! Good luck!

[autumnalequinox]

23 hours ago, Ten Key said:

"Max won't live that long. . ."

Oh good, I'm not the only one.  

Hehe.  And here's some nerdiness:  Remember that weird orbital propellant depot from the movie?  (something I remember well because I thought it was an interesting concept)  I remember it as like a cage with O2 tanks and fuel tanks literally strapped to it with bungee cords.  The worst design.  Ever.  

 

[the_Demongod]

KSP is becoming more than just a hobby; at this point I'm considering pursuing aerospace engineering as a direct result of my love for what I've learned in KSP and RO/RSS/RP-0.

[SyzygyΣE]

4 hours ago, the_Demongod said:

KSP is becoming more than just a hobby; at this point I'm considering pursuing aerospace engineering as a direct result of my love for what I've learned in KSP and RO/RSS/RP-0.

RO/RSS/RP-0 is one of the most intriguing and addictive mod collections I have ever found. I have had little experience with rocketry and aviation before downloading the trio, but after deciding I want to take on the challenge of realism and acquired them, I simply cannot stop thinking about how I could design my crafts in and out of the game.

I still remember the first time I booted the game with their features and launched my first RO rocket in sandbox testing. And boy, did it catch the "used-to-stock-mechanics" me completely off guard.
    "Wait, these engines are not throttleable?"
    "Wait, why does it say 'feed pressure too low'?"
    "Wait, I've been doing gravity turns wrong this whole time?"

And then it was three days of continually checking tutorials to familiarise myself.

I was persistent because I love realism, and that was when I came across terms and methodologies like ullage, hot staging, a correct ascent profile and the best TWR at launch—things I would possibly never have known had I stuck with stock. Not saying it is bad, but I am so glad I chose realism and broadened by horizons. Even though everything is much more complicated compared to stock, I don't regret it one bit.

RO/RSS/RP-0 has too inspired me to take on physics as a subject for next year and learn more about the mechanics of spaceflight. For me, as well, it has become something much more than just a hobby, and I intend to keep my passion of launching my little Kerbals towards the grandeur of the cosmos, hopefully without the presence of explosions. 

[autumnalequinox]

10 hours ago, SyzygyΣE said:

RO/RSS/RP-0 is one of the most intriguing and addictive mod collections I have ever found. I have had little experience with rocketry and aviation before downloading the trio, but after deciding I want to take on the challenge of realism and acquired them, I simply cannot stop thinking about how I could design my crafts in and out of the game.

I still remember the first time I booted the game with their features and launched my first RO rocket in sandbox testing. And boy, did it catch the "used-to-stock-mechanics" me completely off guard.
    "Wait, these engines are not throttleable?"
    "Wait, why does it say 'feed pressure too low'?"
    "Wait, I've been doing gravity turns wrong this whole time?"

And then it was three days of continually checking tutorials to familiarise myself.

I was persistent because I love realism, and that was when I came across terms and methodologies like ullage, hot staging, a correct ascent profile and the best TWR at launch—things I would possibly never have known had I stuck with stock. Not saying it is bad, but I am so glad I chose realism and broadened by horizons. Even though everything is much more complicated compared to stock, I don't regret it one bit.

RO/RSS/RP-0 has too inspired me to take on physics as a subject for next year and learn more about the mechanics of spaceflight. For me, as well, it has become something much more than just a hobby, and I intend to keep my passion of launching my little Kerbals towards the grandeur of the cosmos, hopefully without the presence of explosions. 

Once I finish up my epic heavily modded-almost-RO-but-not quite career game (I want to make a viable USI space colony before I call it quits) I am planning on trying out the awesomeness of that combo for the first time.  I'm totally excited.  I've been "saving" RO for when I finally do all the big things in stock.  Luckily I have been easing into it (use FAR, deadly re-entry, life support, basically everything but the real life scale and real fuels) and I am *slightly* confident my designs should work for the most part.  But I can't wait to be forced to totally relearn how to play the game.

I'd highly recommend adding Orbital Decay to it once the newest version comes out.  It's tuned well for RO and the next version is including some basic N-body sim.  

[SyzygyΣE]

7 minutes ago, autumnalequinox said:

I'd highly recommend adding Orbital Decay to it once the newest version comes out.  It's tuned well for RO and the next version is including some basic N-body sim.  

Yep, Orbital Decay is great. I'm also using that right now and can't wait to see how N-Body sim will affect things in the upcoming update.

[NeoMorph]

On 15/07/2016 at 4:00 AM, autumnalequinox said:

Watching either Earth to the Moon or Apollo 13 I got that feeling when I knew exactly what that navball was doing.  

I don't mean how they use it... I mean how to actually MAKE one... and how they got the three axis display to work. You see it isn't actually a ball... it's two hemispheres either side of a circular plate that is connected to a 2 axis gimbal. I couldn't figure out how they got three axes to display until I got that it wasn't a ball. It also makes sense regarding how gimbal lock occurs after I saw this image... and yeah, it's actually an official Apollo schematic.

[autumnalequinox]

2 minutes ago, NeoMorph said:

I don't mean how they use it... I mean how to actually MAKE one... and how they got the three axis display to work. You see it isn't actually a ball... it's two hemispheres either side of a circular plate that is connected to a 2 axis gimbal. I couldn't figure out how they got three axes to display until I got that it wasn't a ball. It also makes sense regarding how gimbal lock occurs after I saw this image... and yeah, it's actually an official Apollo schematic.

Somehow in my mind I always saw it as a magic 8 ball even though I knew there were gyros and figured it was attached to something.  Really neat.  Good thing we don't have to deal with gimbal lock in KSP and break out little Kerbal sized sextants.

[NeoMorph]

Just now, autumnalequinox said:

Somehow in my mind I always saw it as a magic 8 ball even though I knew there were gyros and figured it was attached to something.  Really neat.  Good thing we don't have to deal with gimbal lock in KSP and break out little Kerbal sized sextants.

I tried to make my own and got pretty far with it but I was always getting gear drag and problems with the record player (the way the contacts that link the motors to the circuitry is done. This image below is a actually from a REAL one... I figured to make my own I would need to get a CNC machine to make the tolerances small enough to stop the problems with alignment and gear drag. As I don't work due to disability it's REALLY hard to save up for one... and justify it tbh.

[NSEP]

Playing video games is number one hobby. But i just realized i only played KSP (i used to play Minecraft and other games, but thats getting boring).

By number 2 hobby is drawing and my number 3 hobby is looking through my telescope.

[autumnalequinox]

10 hours ago, NeoMorph said:

I tried to make my own and got pretty far with it but I was always getting gear drag and problems with the record player (the way the contacts that link the motors to the circuitry is done. This image below is a actually from a REAL one... I figured to make my own I would need to get a CNC machine to make the tolerances small enough to stop the problems with alignment and gear drag. As I don't work due to disability it's REALLY hard to save up for one... and justify it tbh.

Wow!  See there's a good hobby there.  It's not like anybody else is making Apollo-Gemini era navballs anymore.  I know it may be hard to justify but that is legitimately cool thing to make.  I'm on a super tight budget and just save a tiny fraction of $ each month for big, crazy things and wait as long as it takes (my last PC build took 1.2 years of saving but it was totally worth it). 

We're almost at the point where instead of classic cars we will have people building classic spacecraft/spacecraft hardware.  I mean they just released the entire nav program of Apollo on github recently.  

Gods now I'm imaging a "car club" that gets together sometime in the year 2100+ and chips in to build a replica Saturn 5 using old diagrams and what little info we still have (regrettable) and launching it for fun.

[ShadowZone]

On 12.7.2016 at 5:20 AM, autumnalequinox said:

Anyone ever get the feeling this game has become a full fledged hobby?  I mean that includes reading deeper and deeper spaceflight articles (including scientific paper abstrats and exerpts) and obsessing with space in general (depending on the strength of one's current level of obsession with the game).  

It's almost a weird sub-niche between model rocketry, building models, and playing with CAD programs or something.

Yes. I am fully aware of it and enjoy every moment so far.