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KSP Weekly: A Corned Beef Sandwich


SQUAD

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Welcome to KSP Weekly everyone. This past January 5th, a legend passed away. A man who enjoyed the longest career of any astronaut (42 years of active NASA service), became the first person to fly six space missions, walked on the moon, and commanded the first Space Shuttle. We are talking, of course, about John W. Young. We want to take this opportunity to honor his memory and talk a little about his work and legacy.

John Young was an American astronaut, naval officer and aviator, test pilot, and aeronautical engineer. He was born in San Francisco, California, on September 24, 1930, to parents William Hugh Young, a civil engineer, and Wanda Howland Young. Young showed an interest for science at a young age and  earned a Bachelor of Science degree with highest honors in Aeronautical Engineering from the Georgia Institute of Technology in 1952. After graduating, Young entered the United States Navy. He served as fire control officer on the destroyer USS Laws and completed a tour in the Sea of Japan during the Korean War. Following this assignment, he was sent to flight training. In 1954, he was designated a Navy helicopter pilot and after receiving his aviator wings, he was assigned to Fighter Squadron 103 for four years. After training at the United States Naval Test Pilot School, Young was assigned to the Naval Air Test Center at Naval Air Station Patuxent River, Maryland, for three years. In 1962, he set two world time-to-climb records while flying his Phantom II, attaining 3,000 meters (9,843 ft) from a standing start in 34.52 seconds and 25,000 meters (82,021 ft) from a standing start in 227.6 seconds. He joined NASA this same year.

Fellow astronaut Charles Bolden described Young and Robert “Hoot” Gibson as the two best pilots he had met during his aviation career: “Never met two people like them. Everyone else gets into an airplane; John and Hoot wear their airplane. They’re just awesome”.

In 1965, Young flew on the first manned Gemini mission with Gus Grissom. He somehow managed to smuggle a corned beef sandwich onto the spacecraft, a feat for which he was reprimanded, even though it was probably far more delicious than the food on board. Some members of the US House of Representatives were not pleased about the stunt, claiming that Young cost taxpayers millions of dollars by disrupting a scheduled test of space food during the flight. Despite this stunt, he commanded another Gemini mission the next year with no reports of corned beef smuggling, though he may have gotten better at hiding food this time around.

In 1969, during Apollo 10, he became the first person to fly solo around the Moon. He became the ninth person to walk on the Moon as Commander of the Apollo 16 mission in 1972. During that mission, he drove the Lunar Roving Vehicle on the Moon’s surface. He is one of only three people to have flown to the Moon twice. He also commanded two Space Shuttle flights, including its first launch in 1981, and served as Chief of the Astronaut Office from 1974 to 1987. John Young was the only person to have piloted, and been commander of, four different classes of spacecraft: Gemini, the Apollo Command/Service Module, the Apollo Lunar Module, and the Space Shuttle. Young retired from NASA in 2004 after one of the most incredible careers in aerospace history. He was 87 years old when he passed away, and he will be remembered by space enthusiasts for many more years to come. And it seems that he enjoyed snacks as much as our green little friends. Godspeed, John Young, and here at the KSP HQ we salute you!

[Development news start here]

This past Tuesday we officially released Kerbal Space Program Enhanced Edition! After months of hard work hand in hand with our friends at BlitWorks, we have been able to provide console players a faithful and worthy version of KSP on both PS4 and Xbox One. These past few days we have been carefully watching the response from the community while providing assistance with some controls and functions, and the whole team is jubilant to see that it has been predominantly positive. However, it is through your constructive criticism, feedback, suggestions and bug reports we are receiving that we’ll be able to solve the issues and bugs that have been showing up. So, yes, there is a patch planned that will address many of the issues we’re discovering as part of our ongoing support plan for the Enhanced Edition. In the meantime, remember that posting on the Console Project of the Bugtracker with as much detail as possible is the best way to make sure we see and fix them, so please do report anything you find. As always, we appreciate all of your feedback!

In other news, the Making History Expansion continues to be carefully molded, as more features and components are implemented. For instance, just as with the core game, we expect that Mods will play an important  role in Making History, and this week completed the design of where and how Mods installed into the game are going to be displayed to the Mission Creators and Mission Players. We are making sure that Mod support is at the forefront of the decisions we make with the design. It is imperative for us to maintain the relationship we have with our community and to extend this into the creation of Missions and the support of Mods. It is because of this we will integrate Mod support from day one into the Making History Expansion. In the upcoming weeks, we’ll let you know further detail regarding Mod support, so stay tuned for that.

Additionally, the team is working on the implementation of Tutorial Missions for the Mission Builder into the list of Stock Missions to be included in the expansion. We want to make sure that everyone who ventures into Making History has the means to fully take advantage of the tools they are going to have at their disposal. Our fans have made us aware of shortcomings of the tutorials in the core game and, as always, we have been taking note, so these new tutorials are going to include a new Highlighting System accompanied with instructor dialogs that will improve the flow of the tutorial.

Moreover, the development team finished implementing the correct experience and trait levels into missions for Kerbals, and is working on additional Nodes to be included in the Mission Builder. These include the following:

  • Action Camera Mode Node: This will be an action node that will allow mission creators to toggle the camera mode during mission. An example of how this could be used is to create a sort of cutscene within the flow of a mission.
  • Test Velocity Node: With this simple node, we want to include the ability to test a vessel’s velocity. We’ll allow Creators to choose between Orbital and Surface modes.
  • Create Flag Node: By using Create Flag Node, Creators will be able to place a flag on any planet’s surface. We’re adding the ability to select the Flag, and include a message and description to it.
  • Test Vessel Distance Node: This node gives the ability to test the distance from a vessel to another object.

This week we finished merging in the last of the code and models for Engine clusters and Structural Tubes into the game, so it’s time to get into some more detail on how these work.

Engine plates come in sizes from 1.875 through 5m, and the player can independently select from several node configurations (single, double, triple, quad, 6x1, and 8x1) with symmetry support.  The plates also include mesh switching that allow for up to five different lengths per engine plate.

One design consideration was to not penalize players for using the new engine plates (both in terms of mass and part count).  So they will have a relatively low mass (since they essentially take the place of the normal engine fairings), and will also have a bottom decoupler built in, so the behavior would be very similar to the normal practice of putting an engine on top of a decoupler, except now you will be able to have this behavior for an entire cluster of engines.  Of course, everyone likes part pictures, so here are some examples of the new engine plates, using both old and new engines

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We also took all of the new engine shrouds (25 in total) and will be providing a set of mesh-switchable structural tubes, suitable for boat tails and other creative uses. These come in sizes from 1.25m through 5m, each with five selectable lengths.  They all have inward and outward facing nodes on both the top and bottom, and are completely hollow for all of the makers out there. It’s important to mention that these features are still being tested and may still to go through some additional changes.

We’re hoping that this new trove of structural elements will really unlock some creative opportunities for our players, and we had a lot of fun making and testing them too, as shown in this test footage

Finally, we remind you that you still have another week to participate in our latest KSP Challenge - Target Practice. So go check it out and share your creations!

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 Sources:

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Will we be able to surface-attach things to structural tubes?

EDIT: Didn’t watch the gif, sorry. Turns out we will. That’s great, and can alleviate the issue of not having extra large landing legs.

Edited by sh1pman
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43 minutes ago, SQUAD said:

In 1965, Young flew on the first manned Gemini mission with Gus Grissom. He somehow managed to smuggle a corned beef sandwich onto the spacecraft, a feat for which he was reprimanded, even though it was probably far more delicious than the food on board. Some members of the US House of Representatives were not pleased about the stunt, claiming that Young cost taxpayers millions of dollars by disrupting a scheduled test of space food during the flight. Despite this stunt, he commanded another Gemini mission the next year with no reports of corned beef smuggling, though he may have gotten better at hiding food this time around.

Now THAT is truly kerbal!!! 

Screw the taxpayers... I'm takin' some real food!!! :D

Edited by Just Jim
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40 minutes ago, Just Jim said:

Now THAT is truly kerbal!!! 

Screw the taxpayers... I'm takin' some real food!!! :D

In his memoir (a wonderful read) he stated that his was not the first sandwich in space, he knew for a fact it was at least the third.  

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The history repeats itself for the first time as a tragedy, and the second time as a farce... Again we wait for the console patch. But this time I was already learned by the bitter experience of the previous release, which I had to sell with my US-account and retrive a lot percents of losses. Now I will buy the game only when these ugly low-res textures of the planets and their surfaces will be replaced.

Edited by Kerbuvim
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1 minute ago, Kerbuvim said:

I wrote about PS4, but I have something to compare, on the PC I'm playing from version 0.23, I played about 500 hours. But for a long time I want KSP on the console

well if the console is unlikely to get better planet textures as it cannot play mods. on your PC you can use mods to improve the planet textures. It is very unlikely that Squad will alter the textures.

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5 minutes ago, DeltaDizzy said:

well if the console is unlikely to get better planet textures as it cannot play mods. on your PC you can use mods to improve the planet textures. It is very unlikely that Squad will alter the textures.

Well, maybe someday I'll get over it, but not now ...

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2 hours ago, SQUAD said:
He also commanded two Space Shuttle flights, including its first launch in 1981

Not to be overlooked, that first shuttle launch was the only maiden test flight of a new US spacecraft to carry a crew.  Imagine what the pucker factor was like for Crippen & Young.

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2 hours ago, Red Shirt said:

Ah, the shrouds make sense now. Not quite sure how the plate decoupler works with the shroud but I'm sure it will all make sense in time.

It decouples from the bottom of the shroud (and the shroud along with it).  The plate and it's attached engines remain with the upper stage.

 

1 hour ago, TimothyC said:

Please confirm that this is a typo and you mean 1.875m instead of 1.85m.

My fault :)  Typo!  It should say 1.875

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@RoverDude so can we do it like this: plate - stack of engines - structural tube instead of shroud - decoupler?

Basically, I want the engines to remain inside the tube after staging (with, say, landing legs surface-attached to the tube on the outside).

Edited by sh1pman
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2 minutes ago, sh1pman said:

@RoverDude so can we do it like this: plate - stack of engines - structural tube instead of shroud - decoupler?

Basically, I want the engines to remain inside the tube after staging.

If you want a clustered boat tail, you could do plate/tube/engines (and tie the decoupler to to the tube bottom node.  You can do some shenanigans to get a tube on even a bi/tri/quad engine plate by going to single mode, attaching your tube, then swapping your plate node count.  A single engine boat tail would just be tank/tube/engine/decoupler.

Will probably be easier for me to make some gifs, but yeah - short answer is yes.  Boat tails were a specific design consideration.

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I know the image is only a WIP, but will the engine plate bottom and top surfaces also have the ability to switch meshes to match the outer rim?  The plate bottom surface where the engines attach in the image seem to have the biege color that is normally associated with the inside of cargo bays or the inside of the shrouds in that image.  If used as the back hull of a spacecraft, it might seem out of place when the rest of the hull is white-ish/grey, orange, or what have you.

Not a big deal, I was just curious.  I figured clustered engine plates were primarily intended to be used for rocket interstages; but you know us players, we'll use these lego parts in all sorts of places. :)

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31 minutes ago, Raptor9 said:

I know the image is only a WIP, but will the engine plate bottom and top surfaces also have the ability to switch meshes to match the outer rim?  The plate bottom surface where the engines attach in the image seem to have the biege color that is normally associated with the inside of cargo bays or the inside of the shrouds in that image.  If used as the back hull of a spacecraft, it might seem out of place when the rest of the hull is white-ish/grey, orange, or what have you.

Not a big deal, I was just curious.  I figured clustered engine plates were primarily intended to be used for rocket interstages; but you know us players, we'll use these lego parts in all sorts of places. :)

The top and bottom surfaces of the engine plates are stock-gray, not beige (only the shroud/tube interiors are beige), so you should be fine :)

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6 hours ago, SQUAD said:
the behavior would be very similar to the normal practice of putting an engine on top of a decoupler, except now you will be able to have this behavior for an entire cluster of engines.

Cluster decouplers? I thought this day would never come! And they go up to 5 meters. That's going to change a lot.

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