cantab

More rover designing. I couldn't make the rollcage on my latest design work, so I went back to look at an older one, that had been good in tumbles but didn't have the delta-V to take off from Duna. Lengthened the chassis and realised it's ridonkulously good at handling crashes. I can drop this thing out the sky at 50 miles an hour (23 m/s) and drive away afterwards.

For Kerbin in the stock game, to be honest if you can survive a fall from a kilometre, maybe even lower, you can survive re-entry from orbit. Also, if you don't want people submitting gliders you may need to tighten the rules.

Just be aware there's a bug; if you extend a ladder in the VAB, launch, then revert to the VAB you'll be unable to retract the ladder in the VAB and will have to trash it and place a new one. So check all your ladders are folded away before you launch to save yourself some hassle.

It's not tiny. Kerbin alone is bigger than India. Combined, all the current planets and moons (excluding Jool) are larger than the USA and Canada combined. In terms of pure area that dwarfs pretty much every game that's not Minecraft or a flight simulator.The problem is at the moment there's not much of interest in that vast area. The current bodies really need fleshing out and improving the detail on. I'd like to be able to cross a small stream on Laythe, find an outcrop of layered rocks on Duna, and so on - and of course have the science system give me interesting results for doing so.

My thoughts: An overhaul of the construction system would be good for a sequel, but probably too much effort for too little gain for v 1.0. Perhaps a good interim measure would be some sort of "solid" strut. Either placed like the current struts, or perhaps it attaches like a stack or radial part and is automatically extended until it hits another part which it then connects to. Simulating the internal behaviour of the engine is way beyond what KSP should be I feel. Such a program would be a game unto itself given the challenges of just getting one working. Hinges and bearings should definitely be in stock. They ought to be simple enough to code and they'll really open up possibilities. Cargo bays, spinning space stations, tipjet-powered rotors, etc. Procedural parts might be good for KSP 2, they'd give it a fresh feel and a cleaner interface. That said I'm not sure I'd want everything to be infinitely tweakable. It would probably make sense for engines to be "off-the-shelf" items, while fuel tanks would be highly flexible.

Bit of a thread bump here. Anyway, the OP near-duplicated a challenge two days prior which had more detail, http://forum.kerbalspaceprogram.com/threads/77662-No-Rules-Circumnavigation-Race. And that challenge has a link to an older more restrictive circumnavigation challenge.

When I briefly mucked around building stuff powered just by Sepratrons, I thought of that xkcd. But a model rockets mod, with tiny radial sizes and engines that match the specs of the Estes ones and so on, would be fun. Wonder how many model rocket engines you'd need for a Gilly lander?

"Once that happens, the odds that another gravitational interaction will alter their orbit again is very small." Not really, because when a comet comes into the inner solar system it's coming through the territory of several planets (Jupiter in particular) that can change its path, especially if it's in a low-inclination orbit. As evidenced by the respectable number of periodic comets. And if a comet encounters Jupiter once, it's likely to encounter it again eventually.

Surface prograde will tend to drop below your heading because gravity is pulling the rocket down. The effect is greater for low TWR rockets, which may indeed want less of a pitchover to compensate. That said your screenshot above is showing a respectable TWR and speed so I'm not sure if it's the issue here, unless the stage before or the start of that stage had low TWR. Orbit prograde will be below surface prograde in a standard eastwards launch because it has an extra horizontal component from Kerbin's rotation, but you're showing Surface velocity above. Though unlikely, it could be that your command module is mounted askew on the rocket. I'd have thought you'd notice that on launch though, unless you're switching command modules during the ascent.

He mentioned it in another what-if, http://what-if.xkcd.com/24/ About 2 km/s, and that factors in drag. You can determine the figure neglecting drag by the SUVAT equations. 100 km is small enough compared to the Earth's radius that treating gravity as constant should be fine.

The main disadvantage is that it's really difficult to make work. Hence why decades of research has yet to produce a functioning fusion power plant. Heck, fusion barely happens in the Sun. The power produced per cubic metre in the Sun's core is about the same as in the tissues of a lizard. The Sun just owes its enormous total power to its enormous size.

As pointed out, the general public don't much care for space exploration. Sure, people will cheer on the missions, but give them a choice between a manned Mars landing and an income tax cut or a bunch of new schools and hospitals and they'll vote to cancel the Mars landing every time. What people very much are interested in though is travelling themselves. International tourism's a trillion-dollar industry, and that's not even counting domestic tourism as well. Virgin Galactic are following the line of space tourism and I'm sure they're not the only one. I would not be surprised if the first Mars landing ends up made by a company CEO planning on taking paying customers to the red planet.

Yeah, for optimal fuel usage it's about 8 hours. But I tend to run more like 4 or 5, I find the nodes easier to set up that way even if it does use a bit more fuel.

Messing around with rovers mainly. I'd built one that was good on the ground, nice and rugged, but couldn't fit enough fuel on to return from Duna (which is my plan for it). Then I built a larger one that'll have the space for the fuel, but I'm having trouble making a decent rollcage for it.

Yes, but then if an experiment is done that experiment is done in the real world, which still has the full complexity of real physics.Likewise, KSP could model 21st century physics in the most accurate available methods, and it would still be useful for learning about Newtonian mechanics and Keplerian orbits.

I assumed the legs were for a soft touchdown when you came back to Kerbin, so that you don't risk breaking the Sci Jr by landing on it. For returning to Kerbin from the Mun or Minmus, the trick is to leave Munar/Minmus orbit when you're heading backwards compared to its own orbit around Kerbin. That will drop your periapsis down nicely. Set down a manouvre node on a ship that's orbiting the Mun/Minus, set it up to escape, then move it round the orbit and watch how your trajectory round Kerbin changes and you'll see what I mean.

I don't know if it's what Ferram uses, but Blade element theory would probably be good for the aerodynamics. It's what X-Plane, probably the most realistic mass-market flight simulator, uses, and that evidently manages good performance on desktop PCs. X-Plane also includes, or did include, the ability to simulate flight on Mars.

The only thing I can think of is that the second ship will be heavier when you're circularising (because less fuel has been used) and so require a longer burn. It may be that MechJeb's getting confused for some reason, perhaps if it's too close to apoapsis when you tell it to circularise.

Yeah, if it's transmitting, plain old radio direction finding. Helps to have recievers in different places but not essential. Take a few observations and you can figure out the orbit. Or, if it's big enough and reflective enough, optical tracking. Don't even think you'd need that fancy a telescope, though you'd want a fast-tracking and precise mount.

So that's where the Magic Boulder got to!

Patents are the exact opposite of secrecy. The whole idea behind patents is that inventors can make their inventions public, so that science and engineering can advance, without letting everyone else copy their invention.And finding stuff online can sometimes be annoyingly hard. I still haven't been able to find the Orion (nuclear pulse propulsion) mod for KSP, despite having seen plenty of pictures and videos of people using it. It's also very possible what you saw was a joke, considering it exactly matches the description of a nuclear (fission) reactor. A small research reactor core would easily fit in the engine compartment of a car (though operationally they sit in a big pool of water for cooling).

By the fact that it, y'know, doesn't fall.

Asteroid science is a bit weird at the moment. A Kerbal can take a surface sample from one, and can take a new surface sample for every situation it's in. The normal science multipliers apply, so you'll get more points for sampling it in solar orbit than in Kerbin orbit (which is sensible for game balance at least), which in turn gives more points than for sampling when it's landed on Kerbin (which is I suppose also sensible since by then you've contaminated it, but is a bit of a low reward for the effort). Put one in orbit around somewhere like Minmus or Duna, then land it, and you'll get an even bigger slice of science.

Lookswise I quite like that blue-white appearance. Layout-wise I'd like a Uranus analogue, with the moons having a high orbital inclination. That'll make it a very different system to visit and leave compared to Jool. (Giving the planet axial tilt would have to wait since KSP doesn't currently support that, but it doesn't matter much for a gas planet.)

Then you need to take a step back and consider what the hell you are doing. And then just shove a bunch of the current biggest RCS tanks on.