Meecrob

I apologize in advance, since this has most likely been brought up already. At 32 pages and limited time to read the forums, I ask your forgiveness. Please have something on bodies other than Kerbin to do. Yes, there are biomes, which I am grateful you added to all bodies. This is an excellent start along with the Fine Print mod being incorporated to stock. I think that there should be something about each body (or at least the more visited ones - Duna, Jool's moons, etc.) that make you do something. I do not have a 100% thought-out solution, but the feeling I get from career mode is that you race to make the game sandbox mode. If I wanted that, I would play sandbox. Perhaps something along the lines of bodies have their own conditions...for an Eeloo mission you would need to include heaters to perform certain science experiments. The gravioli would be useful anywhere, but say the science bay would only operate in a certain temperature range, forcing you to land on the day side or bring heating equipment with you. Vice versa for say Moho. Perhaps different terrain? make it so a rover that works on one body would have to be tweaked to drive in the deep, loose sand of Duna, but works on Dres? I guess what I am getting at is the fact that when I land, I can perform all science within 1 minute and blast off for home without really doing anything - hence my comment earlier about it feeling like a race to sandbox. Do science, fill the tech tree and unless you make up your own reason for being on a planet, there is absolutely no point of going there again. As mentioned on the first page, this is the release reviewers are getting. What's the point of creating a solar system if there is nothing to do but click buttons? I know this will never become a first-person soil research game. I understand its mostly about the flying. I have no issue with that. My issue is that I sit in the nav screen thinking of what I should do and come to a realization that no matter where I go, I click a few buttons and thats it as far as the game goes. I think an attention to detail about more than just gravity/atmosphere of a body should be modeled. It should be hard to get to Moho due to airframe heating issues, it should be hard to get to Eeloo because its literally colder than humans (and kerbals) can really wrap their heads around and research is required to build a craft suited to it. I want a sense of accomplishment for weathering the ...weather?. The same lander I made for Mun can handle any body in the game provided I account for gravity and atmosphere (IE fuel and thrust)....well not Eve or Tylo...but you get my point. TL;DR Make each body individual in a sense to make it feel like more of an accomplishment of engineering and piloting. Make something to do while there. That isn't clicking buttons. The world is watching. Make it impressive for vidja game folk, not just us space freaks who mess their pants off of a perfect burn and saving 7.5 Dv.

Ok, I can see that I was thinking about it the wrong way. I'll concede that point. I'd imagine that it would still be maneuvers made close in, relatively speaking to avoid the worst of the weather while long term forecasts predict seasons, etc? Apologies, AngelLestat, for speaking too quickly.

I admit, I misunderstood the point you were trying to get across and that is my fault. Saying many people have problems with this concept and then re-hashing what I replied to you with is a sure-fire way to sound condescending, rather than explain what you meant. I have no "difficulty" with this concept since you just told me what I told you. Balloons sure feel wind until they have reached equilibrium in their current fluid (IE takeoff). Changes again when they cross a weather front or hit a gust of wind. You have it backwards. Winds exist due to a planet rotating. Planets do not rotate due to winds pushing them. To expand - look up Earth's trade winds. You will find many layers that contradict eachother. E-W at one latitude and W-E at a different. It does not matter how dense the atmosphere is for this to occur. Google search a picture of Jupiter . You will see vertical layers in the atmosphere. Those are Jupiter's "trade winds." Simply put, I don't care if we can measure a solid surface of Jupiter in the depths of its atmosphere. I know wind activity is occurring there. Our observations make it simply obvious. Again, wind does not care what direction the planet is rotating. Show me one interplanetary mission launched years in advance that upon arrival from interplanetary speeds that wind direction upon arrival was less than a trivial issue. Show me one mission where they entered a retrograde orbit and landing that was based solely on wind conditions and not due to communications considerations for example (IE loss of comms on side of body not facing Earth). Spaceflight is an extension of flight and even today on Earth, pilots do not use weather predictions more than 2 hours in advance. I don't think we have weather stations out in the solar system giving us accurate predictions years into the future. Still waiting for an answer to how I'm wrong about a 50m/s wind on Earth is different than a 50 m/s wind on a planet with a higher density atmosphere. There are physically more atoms hitting you.

"Some said: "is not possible to live in uranus, saturn, venus, etc because there are winds from 50 to 600 m/s." With this same mentality we can said that is not possible to live at earth equator because the ground moves at 460m/s." Does it move at 460m/s plus 600m/s winds? Winds are always relative to the ground. Also, one must consider the density of the atmospheres. All the ones you mentioned are more dense than that of Earth's, meaning more mass is being accelerated towards you in their winds when compared to Earth.

I considered that and think it to be the most likely scenario. What I was asking was that because your heart and lungs are traveling faster (relativistically) than your brain, could they operate at a different speed than your brain, but due to time dilation provide the same amount of blood flow/oxygen for example? Edit: Or is it more like a divide by zero where our understanding breaks down?

You are correct. Nerve impulses travel much slower than the speed of light. Thanks for the reality check, its been a long day. A question of my own: I'm no biologist by any stretch of the means, but could time dilation in any way allow the human body to operate in different states of time dilation simultaneously? In a way solving it's own problem? I'm thinking such as bloodflow and muscle actuation for organs etc. or would it all run at the brain's pace?

I think he is referring to how everything propagates at the speed of light. Your nerves transmit signals as fast as light travels to your eyes, so your feet could have been ripped off hours ago, but your senses have not "sensed" that yet due to time dilation.

Thanks StrandedonEarth and OhioBob - That's exactly the info I was after. Seems so simple now!

Maybe my install is corrupt then. I am only able to view the dots representing orbit direction when in the SOI of the body I am trying to orbit. A pre-emtive mid-course burn to reverse orbit direction with prior knowledge is no problem. I think I am missing some basic parameter given in the contract page perhaps?

Ok, I gotta ask. Which parameter in the contract signifies a pro/retrograde orbit? I fly seat-of-the-pants and lobbing satellites to bodies is no problem, but the DV to reverse my orbital direction when I reach the body is making for some serious over-engineering of my rockets. Thanks in advance.

Elon Musk did an AMA and this was posted. Rowsdower and Maxmaps comment. https://www.reddit.com/r/IAmA/comments/2rgsan/i_am_elon_musk_ceocto_of_a_rocket_company_ama/cnfpnzv Edit:[–]RowsdowerKSP 174 points 2 hours ago Max and I are currently freaking out like girls at a Backstreet Boys show in 1999.

I guess what I'm getting at here is that the level of computer control is a grey area. Technically the computer is controlling the spacecraft, yes. But can the computer tell when the ascent phase is over and when to begin circularization burn for example, or does a human have to tell the computer that phase one is over, now begin phase two?

I'm not picking on you, Bill Phil because you are correct, but your post made me think of something. I think we need to define "computer controlled". Technically every command given by mission control was inputted into a computer and transmitted to the spacecraft. I don't think that that is what the OP was getting at. I think they were more asking if the spacecraft had an autopilot function in a sense. Personally, I would define computer controlled as the computer is given a set of parameters and manages them actively without human intervention. Constantly telling the computer what to do is what I would consider human controlled. Edit:VVVVVVV If this is true, I stand corrected. If humans only monitored the computers, I would consider that computer controlled.

This is the type of breakthrough I was thinking of when I previously replied. In a sense, we are very similar to being back in the late 20's-early 30's trying to break the sound barrier. Back then we needed new engines, aerodynamics, engineering...well pretty much a level up in all our technology at the time. These things were improved upon because there was a need for them in order to achieve what we wanted to do in fields other than aviation (IE commercial/military, and not NACA/NASA experimental flight). Currently, I don't see a need, but I do like to think that is because the people who are developing the technology aren't playing their cards yet.

Ben Rich (Chief engineer of the F-117) mentioned in his book that when Lockheed was bidding on the B-2 bomber program that they received money from the government. On a program as top secret as the B-2, you don't just write "TOP SECRET STEALTH BOMBER" in the accounting books, so they chose to call it "Aurora." Its been a few years since I've read it so I'm not sure if this was in Lockheed's or the government's ledgers, but I am leaning heavily towards the government's. Of course you can just say the men in black made all that up and told Ben Rich to say it, but I think Occam's Razor comes into play here. Edit for content: Rocketscience101 - There are no current manned aircraft with cruise speed in the range you are asking about. I think the reason for this is that we don't need them to operate in that speed range. Sure, it would be nice to do NYC to London in less than 2 hours. but would you pay $500,000 a ticket? Concorde topped out just over mach 2 because when you go faster, the skin friction increases so much that traditional aluminum loses its strength. Then what about the (expensive) titanium SR-71 you ask? Back when it was being developed, spy satellites didn't exist and atmospheric recon had to be done. To go to mach 3, they chose to use titanium, then realized they had no tools that were strong enough to use with it. They literally created their own titanium milling procedures and made all their parts themselves. Now, the SR-71 was actually on budget if I recall, but it was considered such an asset to national security and the Russian Threat that money was not an object in its construction. Overall, unless there is a significant breakthrough, the physics of pushing something that fast while in atmosphere loses out to slowing down, or biting the bullet and going (sub) orbital and accepting the added complexity for vastly improved performance.

I hope that the model they come up with has a noticeable difference between sub- and supersonic flight.

well, yes, that's why we have rifles. Although, try it with a plane one day and see how well it works. I might be interpreting your post incorrectly, but I don't see the purpose of echoing my statement without adding anything other than "well duh of course it works". I only mentioned it because nobody else in the thread so far did.

No, its not. A rocket engine works by burning fuel and oxidizer, not exploding it. You've probably heard of knocking in your car engine. That is the point your fuel stops burning and starts exploding and it seriously screws up your fuel efficiency (plus your engine). Lazarus1024 already explained this. Bold mine. The idea of flight (not including Chinese gunpowder rockets from hundreds of years ago) is to fly, then live to tell about it (or recover data/experiments, etc.). The point is to be in control of your craft. There is a reason there were manned aircraft in 1903 and not a manned spacecraft until 1961.

I have one in orbit around Mun and Minmus. The First one was a wild ride - a 37 second burn to Mun but it inadvertently taught me a tip for using it. Spin stabilization makes it so much easier. Try (struggle) to get it pointed where you want and tap q or e. It will still be totally out of control, but it creates a small circular area of un-controlledness it stays within that you can easily correct when you get to your burn.

Rules now are you have to be within gliding distance of a safe landing zone if over a built up area in a single engine aircraft. Don't know how they will get around that one.

Yes I agree. I have been saying the same for hours now. We are on the same side. Edit - I'll leave it up to others if they see an issue.

I already addressed this I don't think it matters if its called ASAS or SAS. The terms are antiquitated and people are drawing different conclusions from them. Hence why I am trying to figure this out without using Ksp terms. Edit - Maxmaps calls it SAS. Parts of the KSP community call it ASAS

I'm not arguing the advantages or disadvantages. I am trying to clarify Maxmap's statement since the same argument came up every two pages. And it looks like I added to the confusion. 0.21 here, some of this is before my time. Let me see if I can re-state what I said in total non-Ksp lingo: There is a part in the game everyone knows and loves that will be removed. It used to function with other parts to make "piloting" (including unmanned) easier for the user. With this revision, the way you interact with it will be different. The functions remain the same (plus added features), but in order to utilize them, you will now have to use a different part. Again, I'm not arguing whether this is a good or bad idea. I just want to get to the bottom of this.

I thought I would offer my interpretation of the SAS changes since they seem to be confusing people. This is after all taken from an interview, not a revised-and-edited-press-release-speech and presented to people who may not even speak English as their first language. (No offense to any party involved. I'm just pointing out the chance for mis-communication.) To me, this implies that the physical part you select in the VAB/SPH and place on your craft to perform SAS functions is now gone. To replace it, you will need a Kerbal (or a probecore of some sort - we need more information on what tier it will have to be). The tools SAS used to use are still there (RCS, RW's and pods), they will just have to be controlled by something other than the SAS module. SAS as you all know it is still there, you just have to utilize it slightly differently.

This. I remember a time when I was learning to dock and literally thinking "well, I can't dock. I've been a pilot for 15 years and playing flight sims for 20 and KSP beat me." Then I watched a South Park, cleared my head a little and practiced some more. I have not missed a docking since. Took about 4-6 game hours to get it down pat. I guess my advice is to push through that initial overwhelming feeling of difficulty and keep practicing, because I found that it was memorizing the procedure that helped me the most. You should start to feel comfortable when you don't have to alt-tab to a tutorial or look at one on your phone. When you know what step comes next, you can begin to increase confidence.