GreatWyrmGold

Wouldn't that risk disrupting Gilly's orbit?

Actually, the problem has something to do with the way you coded the mod. I'd bet real money that the anti-gravity room changes the magnitude of gravitational acceleration but not the direction. Thus, the room was being pulled more or less than the contents, causing relative motion. And if there were real physix it wouldn't do anything on the ground, either.

I did a quick search, and surprisingly discovered nothing on the topic, so: Is there a reason this isn't on ckan? I'm guessing there is, but I'm not sure what it could be.

Antimaterial rifles are a thing, and they don't involve antimatter. Infantry aren't defenseless against combat vehicles--they just need the right equipment. Mind, it's not vital to the mod by any means, but possibilities exist without even needing to reach for ultratech. If I had to suggest a couple features I'd like to see, they would be the related features of "reloading spacecraft weapons" and "moving missiles/whatever around with KAS". Also, the download link in the OP doesn't seem to work.

There being no "Modded KSP Questions" subforum, I figured I'd go here. I have done many things in my time as a KSP player. I've sent a rocket to Eve. I've sent a helicopter to Eve and realized that an ion engine plus the propeller wouldn't get my kerbal back into orbit. I've sent more missions to Minmus than I can count, built spaceplanes, explored the poles, and tried to figure out Interstellar. But one thing I have not been able to do for the life of me is rendezvous (unless the other object has a sphere of influence). I decided to try out MechJeb's rendezvous autopilot, but determined that it simply did not work. "Auto-Warp" was a complete bust, unless "auto" here means "only allow 1x". Moreover, it was creating maneuver nodes but then not executing them, which I'm pretty sure is the bare minimum you'd expect an "autopilot" to do. I'm not sure what was going on, but I'm willing to bet that I screwed up something rather than MechJeb is inherently screwed up. Now, if it was just "MechJeb isn't very good at this; I should see if I can get better at it," I'd just work at my own rendezvous skills. But when I have such a profound failure, I just can't help but wonder what the heck is going on.

That's better than the version I've been using. Thanks!

The implications of if it didn't are pretty big, too. It's unlikely that life would have gone from one world to the other (though admittedly not impossible); therefore, the implication would be that it spread from somewhere else, likely via comets in deep space. If this is the case, one would expect to find life on every potentially-life-bearing world in the universe, or at minimum the corner with the life-causing stuff. I vaguely recall reading somewhere that tidal forces from Jupiter heat Europa's core (or something like that), which I'd imagine it part of how the ocean is liquid. If it's Europa that I'm thinking of, then that's an obvious source. Even if there was oil, the fact that you'd have to fly drilling equipment there, drill through thick ice and an ocean (without any chance of fixing anything that breaks), fly the oil back home, and deal with huge backlash. Oil prices would need to rise dramatically before that became profitable...it would be cheaper to send huge solar panels into orbit and beam electricity back to Earth. Most likely, if we found life on Europa, we'd gather as much data about it with the probe we sent (likely not much aside from "how fast does it swim away?" if the probe wasn't specifically designed to look for life, eg filtering water to find bacteria or somesuch), then begin designing a probe to study that life further. Also, NASA and the like would get more public interest and maybe more funding.

My opinion on the matter seems to be similar to that of others: MechJeb is best used for when you've learned how to fly manually and don't want to. It's also useful for things you can do but aren't as good as the computer at, like maintaining attitude. That being said, people who fly entirely with MechJeb aren't doing it "wrong," though they are missing out and will be SOL if they encounter a bug or something MechJeb doesn't do well.

That should help with the hitting-KSC part; thank you! Now I just need to work on the not-smashing part.

I've seen loads of people build spaceplanes but built few myself. I quickly threw one together with Spaceplane+ parts (also landing gear, RAPIERs, and a MechJeb unit) and took it to orbit with ease. When I had it land, I wanted to end up on the runway like you just about always see happen in videos. I set MechJeb to autoland at the KSC runway (or at least, that's what I thought the thing was supposed to do) and started timewarping. After some minutes, it crashed down in the desert with no apparent attempt to save any of the pieces. It was about a third of the planet away from KSC. Next, I tried flying it level towards KSC for a while, aware that I was slowly losing fuel. I made it there, finally, then decided to see if MechJeb's autoland was any better if you started deep in the atmosphere instead of 50-odd kilometers up. Well, it was closer to the Kerbal Space Center. Luckily, I quicksaved! I tried to land it manually, and...well...most of the parts survived, even if they weren't attached to each other. I have a couple of interrelated questions. How, with or ideally without MechJeb, does one... 1. Land at KSC rather than anywhere on Kerbin? (A version that works with pods would be helpful.) 2. Land without destroying the plane? And while I'm here, what's the Autoland function supposed to do, anyways?

Is it this one? Huh. It sounded like people were using it to actually edit their planet maps or something like that. Well, still sounds useful I suppose.

I'm interested in making new planets, but I have a couple questions. First off, you mention that the SoI is derived from GeeASL. Could you provide us with the formula, or an approximation thereof? Secondly, people keep talking about Space Engine and how it lets them fiddle with planets better. What is it, where is it, and how do I use it?

Happy Fourth of July to all! Here's a little KSP-based video I made today to celebrate. http://youtu.be/VtpIptGLT_o What a shame that all the interesting discussion got wrapped up before I got here, otherwise I'd give my $0.02.

Huh. I thought that was just a package of planets. That is more helpful than I had anticipated! Thank you!

How would one make new planets, moons, or whatever for the Kerbolal system? I know it's possible, and it seems like an idea with a wide array of potential ideas that haven't already been done by people with far more skill in all relevant areas. Hence, I've often considered learning how to do so. I have a few questions on the subject. 1. Does anyone have any general advice? How the planets are coded, where they're stored, general things like that? 2. For making the shape, and ideally the texture, would a tool like this work? If not, what would I need to do? 3. For future reference (once I get into advanced projects), is it possible to give planets unique resources a la kethane? Keep in mind that I'm pretty new to the whole modding thing. I have some vague idea of what can be done, and have a little experience with programming, but I don't know much more than my own ignorance. Thanks in advance for any help you can give.

From a totally pragmatic point of view? Space travel isn't much use. His point was that most things a space program really aren't "necessary". "the inevitable big rock from space"? First off, we're pretty much going to kill ourselves off before any asteroid gets the chance. Second off, we already have several ways we could divert any such asteroids if they came. Third off, unless we're talking the kind of really huge asteroid that wiped out the dinosaurs, we'd survive. Fourth, it's not practical to save the human species from such an event by "getting off the planet". Do you have any idea how much it costs to just get someone into orbit, let alone also bring enough to let him or her survive indefinitely? Even if all seven billion and change human beings put all their efforts towards creating such a program starting now, I don't think we'd see any kind of progress for a long, long time. "We should build a colony on the Moon!" "But we don't have the technology to do that." "Eh, something'll come up. What's the worst that could happen?" "Trillions of dollars and dozens of human lives wasted?" "Aside from that." They didn't supplant us, they simply have the advantage of not needing life support, and humans simply don't care about space travel. Or making sentient AIs.

I am also interested in learning basic modding for KSP. It's a subject for which most guides seem to assume that one already has a certain level of proficiency.

In theory? Yes. Most practical uses for space travel require no human presence. See: Communication satellites, GPS satellites, etc. In practice? The manned missions don't have the same objectives. They're more publicity or somesuch than simple space-drudgery. Moreover, having a human onboard, while it greatly increases costs, also increases versatility. The most obvious way this comes into play is when people fix things that get broken, or (theoretically) improvise something from what they have. Moreover, it can allow better response time for unexpected events. Mars has a communication delay no less than a few minutes and at times nearly half an hour (when the Sun or somesuch isn't in the way). With humans on-site, rovers can be controlled in effectively real time, if rovers are needed at all. Overall...different tools for different jobs.

I bet someone could mod one. Probably. Toughest bit would be the animations, probably. Flexible stuff is tough for normal computer image stuff; imagine how it would be combined with the rest of KSP's engine!

I pretty much only use MechJeb for the convenient information and some with the smart A.S.S. for maneuver nodes (useful when I can't find them, or for longer burns) or sometimes when I'm landing. The maneuver node editor is also useful, although I've never remembered to use it when it's been available.

We haven't made it a million years. If we're still around in a few billion years, we might consider needing to start on it. 5-7 billion years is longer than the Earth has existed. We've got a while. And, frankly, if we survived and don't have interstellar travel by then, we suck. 1. The "Red Giant" thing isn't "One day the Sun's small and yellow, the next it's big and red". 2. It would take much longer than a year to evacuate Earth. Even with portals of some kind running 24/7 and moving a thousand people every second, and the population of Earth (and other areas swallowed by the Sun) was only 10 billion, it would take over to three years to move everyone--and it's unlikely that we'd be so lucky on any count. Improbable. If we're still dependent on Sol by then, we're doomed--it won't shine forever. Regardless, I don't see our civilization reaching the hundred-thousand-year mark without serious changes... 1. Capitalize proper nouns. 2. There are places other than America on Earth, you know. 3. The whole Martian surface probably wouldn't be a city...but a lot more of it would be, which means that we'd have a really tough time feeding all those billions of refugees. There are so many things wrong with that. 1. Again, proper nouns. It's really starting to bug me. 2. What, only America gets Mars? 3. Wait, America still exists? Even though no nation on Earth today existed in any kind of form more than a few thousand years ago, and none more than a single thousand if we discount China, India, and possibly Japan? 3. "Which," not "witch". 4. They're not Martians if they're not on Mars. ... Re: Space habitats: Space living has a good number of issues. It is harder to fix things if they go wrong, harder to expand or gather resources, harder to get gravity, and overall you're more reliant on your equipment. One failure in the right system could spell doom for the whole habitat. Oh, and planets hold a lot more people (unless you're building planetary-scale habitats, which pose their own issues). Not that space habitats are inherently inferior--they just have different strengths and weaknesses. Re: Gengineering: Yup. That's probably easier than terraforming. Of course, we can't say for sure what things will be like in a few centuries; maybe both tasks will be trivial enough that people decide to terraform because it means more tourism. The U.S.A. hasn't made its third century. Talking about its fifth...billenium? trillenium? is kinda silly. The names for everything else change. Just a few centuries ago, people spoke sufficiently differently that you'd have trouble understanding them. A millenium ago, the common English would be as hard to understand as modern French. True. However, five billion years is a lot longer--specifically, half a million times as long. That's like saying that a piece of tissue paper stayed together in water for 15 seconds, so it'll make it a few months. I'm pretty sure China stayed more or less recognizable for that period of time. And so far, as a species we're doing a great job of ignoring them.

I like to try and learn stuff about computer programming, given how important computers and stuff are to today's world and whatnot. You know what's annoying for laypeople like me? When two (or more) equally credible sources make contradictory claims without citing anything! So, please. Cite your sources. It helps the laypeople, and--to appeal to self-interest--it forces the other guy to argue with a (semi-)credible computer science guy rather than an anonymous guy on the Internet.

Something from the Bay 12 forums.

The other day, for a Let's Play I'm doing on the Bay 12 Games forums, I had to walk a kerbonaut 30 kilometers over Minmus. ("Why not use an EVA pack?" I did. When I finished rolling, I was 30 kilometers away.) When discussing this turn of events, someone (username Vattic, if anyone cares) mentioned that he was, quote, "surprised MechJeb doesn't have a walking autopilot." While this probably wouldn't be a job for MechJeb, it is something that it makes sense for someone to do. At the minimum, there would be a button that makes the Kerbal walk in a straight line (as though 'w' was being held down), but the ability to set in coordinates or--better yet--a target for the kerbal to walk to would be nice. Does anyone with sufficient programming knowledge feel like attempting this?

Unless it takes only hours to go through subspace. Or unless it takes absurd amounts of resources to reach near-luminal speeds.