what do the dish antennas in the tracking station facility track?

[alien_wind]

I noticed when fast forwarding in ksc the antennas rolling around and I wonder do they track something specific

[Superfluous J]

Nope. They pick a point at random, track it for a while, and then pick a new point. It's all for show.

[Gargamel]

4 hours ago, 5thHorseman said:

Nope. They pick a point at random, track it for a while, and then pick a new point. It's all for show.

Not true.   They follow the Nyan cat on people's loading screens across the world.  

[alien_wind]

On 4/14/2019 at 2:01 AM, 5thHorseman said:

Nope. They pick a point at random, track it for a while, and then pick a new point. It's all for show.

did people find it in the source code?

[StrandedonEarth]

On 4/13/2019 at 8:05 PM, Gargamel said:

Not true.   They follow the Nyan cat on people's loading screens across the world.  

And when they're not tracking nyan cat, they're trackin' yo' momma!

[Superfluous J]

48 minutes ago, alien_wind said:

did people find it in the source code?

This is all really old memories but I recall someone asking when the dishes were first put in the game and that was the answer by the devs. Or maybe the devs just said so outright, perhaps in a dev diary.

The part I remember for sure is that a dev said it.

[Guest]

It's tracking SETI's signals

[Fraston]

Perhaps it is spinning around so fast that it almost matches the FPS but is beaming out relay signals to the universe. Each one.

[HansonKerman]

Just for show, although you can explode each dish individually. It only becomes nonfunctional if you destroy the Hub tho. Maybe Squad could add dish destruction penalty.

[ExtremeSquared]

I just wish the other DSN stations had colliders and could explode.

1 hour ago, HansonKerman said:

Just for show, although you can explode each dish individually. It only becomes nonfunctional if you destroy the Hub tho. Maybe Squad could add dish destruction penalty.

 

[Loskene]

5 hours ago, ExtremeSquared said:

I just wish the other DSN stations had colliders and could explode.

 

They do have colliders and you can splat yourself on them, but yeah they don't explode.

[ExtremeSquared]

7 hours ago, Loskene said:

They do have colliders and you can splat yourself on them, but yeah they don't explode.

Well hot diggety, you're right! I wonder when that was implemented. I know I can't be the only one who tried when commnet was implemented and was disappointed that you would fly right through them.

[Loskene]

9 hours ago, ExtremeSquared said:

Well hot diggety, you're right! I wonder when that was implemented. I know I can't be the only one who tried when commnet was implemented and was disappointed that you would fly right through them.

No idea, I only found out when I saw (the outtakes from) a cupcake video flying through the gaps maybe a year ago.

[Kerbart]

On 4/29/2019 at 8:38 PM, StrandedonEarth said:

And when they're not tracking nyan cat, they're trackin' yo' momma!

If they were tracking yo'mamma they'd point in divergent directions.

[Dan Kerman]

Don't they track asteroids?

[RealKerbal3x]

2 minutes ago, Dan Kerman said:

Don't they track asteroids?

The tracking station itself can be used to track asteroids, but I don't think the dishes themselves do. I'm pretty sure they do what others have said above...pick a random point and track it for a while, then find another point and so on.