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KSP Weekly: Looking Forward to a New Year!

SQUAD

By SQUAD
in KSP1 The Daily Kerbal

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SQUAD

SQUAD

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Welcome to KSP Weekly everyone. First of all we want to wish everyone a Happy New Year filled with fortune and happiness. Last year was very important for us and 2018 is already off a big start. With the KSP Enhanced Edition, 1.4 Update  and Making History Expansion, we couldn’t be more excited for what’s coming this year and, as always, we are very grateful to share our passion with you all.

As space enthusiasts, we are also looking forward to witness the exciting space missions that we’ll see this year. So let’s go through some of these:

To start things off, this month we should see the inaugural launch of SpaceX’s Falcon Heavy rocket. This will be the most powerful rocket in operation and this first launch will be taking Elon Musk’s own Tesla car to Mars orbit. The launch date hasn’t been settled though, but the company is aiming to do so sometime around the end of January or early February.

Additionally the company Rocket Lab, which is positioning itself as a low-cost way to reach for space, are launching the Electron rocket in New Zealand this month as well.

In February, Roscosmos will be sending a Progress cargo spacecraft to the International Space Station (ISS) in just three hours; the quickest time we’ve ever sent anything to the ISS.

Expected to be launched in March is NASA’s newest planet hunter, the Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite (TESS). Some estimate that it will find more than 3,000 planets outside the Solar System, including Earth-sized worlds.

Coupled with that, the Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO) plans to launch its second mission to the Moon, called Chandrayaan-2, which will consist of an orbiter, lander, and rover.

During the month of April, SpaceX will perform an uncrewed test flight of its Crew Dragon spacecraft for the first time. China’s Tiangong-1 space station is expected to re-enter our atmosphere at some point during that time too.

Although having been delayed from 2016, the InSight lander is expected to be launched in May and after landing in November, it will attempt to study the Martian interior using seismology.

In June, China is expected to launch the Chang’e-4 relay satellite to the Moon, intended to be the orbital component of a planned lunar lander on the far side of the Moon by the end of the year.

JAXA’s Hayabusa-2 spacecraft is expected to reach its target asteroid Ryugu around that time as well. The plan is to return a sample of the asteroid to Earth in 2020.

On July 31, NASA’s Parker Solar Probe will launch and will study the Sun by getting closer than any spacecraft has before. Moreover, NASA’s Juno mission at Jupiter is expected to end by coming down into its atmosphere.

In August Boeing is expected to perform an uncrewed test of its CST-100 Starliner spacecraft, with plans to then launch humans in November at the earliest. SpaceX is expected to perform a crewed flight test of the Crew Dragon during this month too.

And to make things even more exciting, around that month NASA’s Osiris-REx spacecraft will reach its target, the asteroid Bennu, from which it will return a sample to Earth in 2023.

The joint ESA and JAXA BepiColombo mission is expected to launch to Mercury in October. The mission comprises two orbiters, but it will not arrive into orbit around Mercury until December 2025, owing to the complexities of orbiting a body so close to the Sun.

Finally, on December 20, the launch of the Russian-built Nauka module is expected to happen. This will be one of the final modules of the ISS, but has been delayed since 2007. *

So there’s a lot to be looking forward this year. And while we wait for more exciting news about these missions, we will be certainly playing some KSP and be amazed by the ingenuity and creativity of the world’s scientists and engineers.

[Development news start here]

After a week off, we’ve returned rested and fully recharged to get back to work at full throttle. As expected, there’s a lot to do as we are getting ever closer to the release dates of the projects we are working on. In fact, we have just announced the Official Release Date for Kerbal Space Program Enhanced Edition. Click here to learn more before this new console version is released on Tuesday, January 16th!

In addition to the Enhanced Edition news, we’ve been hard at work on the Making History Expansion. This week the developers finished the Mission Overview/Objectives display in the Tracking Station for both mission building and mission playing. Some bug fixing happened as well. We encountered a bug that’s causing file system errors on the unix-land platforms, but the team is already tackling the problem and it will be fixed in the next couple of days.

The QA team is also getting ready for a balance pass. The new parts are all either working or mostly working, but some config values need to be updated still. The Russian-inspired pods for instance have a very low drag that makes a safe re-entry possible, but a little too hard unless you make a living playing the game. Many people using the pods would have a heck of a time not blowing up as soon as they hit thicker atmosphere, or just ploughing into a cliff at a velocity measurable in Mach numbers. While some people might appreciate the challenge, a ball shape shouldn’t slip through the atmosphere like a greased cat.

Other expansion parts also need tailoring to fit into the game alongside core parts, or to make using them “as intended” less of a Manley-level endeavor. The Apollo-inspired ascent module for instance, is capable of achieving a low (~10km) Mun orbit with a very few units of monoprop to spare. The margin for error though, seems tighter than an actual Apollo ascent module. Fine if you play everything in Iron Man mode, but this and many other parts need a close view under the microscope and discussion on whether they are usable by normal players, and in a state that is fit for release.

The team also added Stability Time and Vessel Speed options to the Landed Test Module. And on top of that they were able to implement a Docking Test Node, which will be performed by selecting the parts that need to be in the same vessel (or separated for the undock node).

And as we are talking about nodes, the testers are currently testing a new batch of them for the Mission Builder and we figured that we could, as usual, use the occasion to go into the details of what these nodes are going to do in the expansion (remember that the names are still prone to changes):

  • Vessel Stage Activated Node (Action Type): This node will be used for timing further nodes or events in missions. For example: once the player has activated the 3rd stage of their rocket, some interesting event in the mission gets triggered.
  • Repair Part Node (Action Type): Repair Part is a way for a mission creator to repair parts at will. The node lets mission creators repair parts when a certain point in the story is hit, regardless of a mission player’s actions. In contrast, by using a failure node, a mission creator can set whether the player must repair the part manually or not.
  • Fly Through Node (Location Type): Fly Through is very similar to a survey contract waypoint. In a mission, it requires the player to take a flying vessel (not a rover) to a certain point in the sky, or a certain point in space.
  • Dialog Message Node (Action Type): We’ve talked about this node as it was being developed in previous KSP Weeklies. It will allow you to customize messages in a mission to provide detailed instructions to a player. It brings up a full dialog on the screen with text, and a picture of Wernher or Gene or some other ranking Kerbal explaining these things to the player.

Additionally, we have good news for all players who were anxious to hear about the content that the 1.4 update is going to include aside from the localization package we’ve already disclosed… [Drum roll]…Several parts that we have been showing off in the past months will be included for free in this update. Some of these are:

The AJ10 Engine

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The new set of decouplers and separators

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The New Fairings re-skins

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The revamped FL-R1 RCS Fuel Tank 

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The new skins for the Rockomax Fuel Tanks

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The Monopropellant Toroidal Tank

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The new shrouds

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Among several others features to be announced…

That’s it for this week. Be sure to join us on our official forums, and don’t forget to follow us on Twitter and Facebook. Stay tuned for more exciting and upcoming news and development updates!

Happy launchings!



* Information Source: O'Callaghan, J. (2018, January 03). These Are The Most Exciting Space Missions To Look Forward To In 2018. Retrieved from http://www.iflscience.com/space/these-are-the-most-exciting-space-missions-to-look-forward-to-in-2018/

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Bottle Rocketeer 500

Bottle Rocketeer 500

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AWESOME! I am so happy that some of the parts will be included in 1.4! Also, I am starting to see a style with the MH Parts- stockalike, but more uniform, less "kerbally". The shrouds are awesome, the AJ-10 is very nice, and the decouplers are OK, but not the best possible (mainly because the stripes inside on the ones with yellow stripes). Also, the fairings are very nicely done. The Rockomax fuel tank retexture is very nice.

6 minutes ago, sh1pman said:

RIP Rockomax 2.5m decoupler, you won’t be missed.

Recently, I figured out what the Rockomax Brand Decoupler could be an analogue of- the CST-100 decoupler thingy.

Edited by Bottle Rocketeer 500
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StrandedonEarth

StrandedonEarth

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Any chance the old skins will still be available? Could the different skins be available in the tech tree? It makes sense for a fledgling space program to be using converted oil drums, swimming pools, or parts found on the side of the road near the junkyard, but once the space program takes off (pun totally intended), then they can start using purpose-built hardware fresh from the factory, with those nice clean new skins.

Speaking of rocket evolution, how about a tech node for shaving 5% of the mass off a tank? The Space Shuttle's ET dropped over 8,500 kg, or almost 20,000 lbs, between the original Standard Weight Tank and the Super-Lightweight Tank that started use in 1998. That's over 24% lighter than the original! (from wiki link). I know, it would make things like design help more complicated, but it is a more realistic progression.

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Mrcarrot

Mrcarrot

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Wow... I like that we get free new parts in 1.4!

I'm also hoping we get to keep the old parts as well... I don't know if I'm the only one, but I like the current fuel tanks as well.

Edited by Mrcarrot
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JPLRepo

JPLRepo

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18 minutes ago, nascarlaser1 said:

These parts look great!

I question though that I'm confused on. Are these parts for the next version of KSP or the DLC?

not sure why you're confused. it says it in the post. content that the 1.4 update is going to include

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