Doozler

Cute idea! I feel he should be doing some "Kerbally" things like bashing a crashed rocket with a hammer, accidentally opening visor, dropping delicate experiments on foot etc etc... Maybe the WASD keys send him shooting off the screen in a blast of RCS!

I've just unlocked rover wheels and cubic octagonal struts, and wanted to start making "silly" vehicles (tanks, cars, trains etc). I'm a bit confused about how construction works, especially WRT the Part Tree. As I understand it, when you attach a part to a vehicle, you are only attaching to ONE "parent" part. My question is: does this apply to the strength of connections, as well as the "logical structure"? i.e. if I make four pillars and then put a roof on top, then for the purposes of physics, there is only one joint at one of the pillars? The only additional strength comes from struts, so from a strength point of view, you might as well have one pillar and struts, rather than four pillars and struts? Is that correct? I suspect that some tutorials will cover this, but can't tell without watching hours of youtube! Any help much appreciated.

You've been going all weekend so I think that's allowed . Your dedication is impressive!

Possibly OT, but these guys put a paper aircraft into "space" (>100 km) http://www.theregister.co.uk/Wrap/paris/

What they said ^^^ Just to add, water is the most obvious thing to mine from an asteroid. Drinking water, reaction mass, shielding, plus H2 and O2....

That was my plan!

Just chipping in to add to requests for a "mission report"!

Must... Not... Revive dead... Thread... OP, did you have a particular reason for asking? Do you have some nefarious plans?

Yes, and the point here is that the exhaust (the fuel) started off at 100 m/s and ended up at 10 m/s.

For a "where does the energy go" perspective, imagine a rocket with exhaust that fires at 100 m/s. When the rocket is going slowly, the exhaust ends up as travelling at 100 m/s (i.e. it has lots of energy). If the rocket is travelling at 100 m/s, the exhaust ends up with 0 kinetic energy, so there is more for the rocket.

To elaborate, n-body physics does not have a "simple solution" i.e. a formula, which means that you essentially have to "simulate" the motion time step by time step. This would be very computer intensive (and I think make time warp of orbits subject to the same kind of wobbles as physics time warp on launch). Without n-body, one you know what the orbit parameters are, you know where the craft/ body will be for all times in the future with a simple formula. In practice, n-body physics wouldn't have too much of an effect apart from a few special cases - like the lagrange points.

The science module needs two kerbals, although I know lots of people don't use it. I like the idea of different kerbal classes. I also wonder if the skill should be earned/ payed for/ upgraded. This would make losing a kerbal a big deal!

Just for fun then: Neglecting reaction wheels and just using thrusters placed at a distance rt from the axis of rotation: We can do the calculation but it depends on how the moment of inertia changes with time. This will be different for different rockets (eg depending on how far the fuel tanks are from the axis of rotation. If we assume that the moment of inertia decreases constantly with time, i.e: MI(t) = MI(0) - y t, we get a pretty similar formula to delta V: (F= total thrust (identical thrusters), MIfull(empty) = Moment of interia when tanks full (empty), rt = distance of thrusters from axis, y= rate of change of moment of intertia ) We can now look at some simple cases. Fuel tanks and thrusters on arms of length rt, MI(t)= MIfull - c* r2t*t so y = -c*rt, when c is fuel consumption rate. For cylindrical tanks of radius rc along the axis I get: For a heavy station with tanks in the middle y is very small, so I don't know why I did that. Edit: added nice maths from http://www.codecogs.com/latex/eqneditor.php

Yes please! Does anyone have any workarounds for this? For Kerbin you can use the Mun's orbit as a reference, but is there a way for other bodies? I have a Mun station that needs aligning.

Ooh, you could set up the lights to change colour for each rocket stage! With red for the ABORT! ABORT! Stage, obvs.

I think the nodes are getting an update of some sort in 0.24.

As a general rule, for normal-ish life* I thin you need 1) Some kind of liquid (water, Ammonia etc) 2) An energy source (sunlight, themal vents etc) *normalish= not intelligent clouds of gas etc.

The lights are going to be used by exactly the sort of people who use too many animated emoji. Oh hang on, that's me... Seriously though, apart from the orientation lights, this will be useful as a quick-n-dirty part painter. I suspect people will go completely nuts with it. Don't think you need tweakables - different coloured lights turned on and off with action groups should do the job!

Is that verboten? Thanks for the warning!

I think this is the fundamental problem. Once any one-time science is done, you could of course abandon the station. I think ongoing science (one point per day) feels great but would be open to abuse by time warp. The most realistic reason for a permanent station, I think, is resource mining. I think this is on the back burner as far as stock, unfortunately. Agreed! There is no way I am going to try to fly my moon base back to kerbin though. I'll just leave it there and imagine they are doing non-points science! Edit: And I agree that contracts/ money might sort this all out. Contracts could do a lot for this sort of justification.

The science lab is a good use for a station - I have one around the Mun so my small lander can visit multiple biomes without returning to kerbin. Only really usefull for mun and minmus, but would be a must if multiple biomes get added to other planets. Add life support requirements and you need a reasonable size station already.

Ok, Bus sent to Munar Orbit, piloted by Jeb. I thought bus driving would be beneath him, but it pointed out is was still technically a dangerous experimental craft! Took far too long, but this was the heaviest craft i've landed and launched. I also made a vague attempt to get it close to KSC!

Woohoo! Well done. I spent a few good hours before I realised that in target mode the green marker was relative velocity not orbit velocity. I think I tried to match velocities by eye! The best thing about learning docking is that two failed ships can be joined to make a space station which counts as a success! 2 wrongs = 1 right!

Finally got round to trying this... I now have a game not a slideshow!

Cheers. Have been give a challenge so albums will be useful! I'll get onto imgur.