PB666

The critical issue in the design is to keep the convex points in th design low. To give an exampl suppose i make an 800 sided cylinder . since the are 1600 triangles Unity is giong to make 3200 sided collision mesh = fail. make the craft in blender such that you can easily extract a collision mesh that is 200 trigs or less (255 is limit). This will make more difference that anything. What i have found slows down the game alot are emmisive parts and parts with odd physicss, like panels and lights, ect.

The fairings can be tweeked but i like the current design. If i was a space center manager i would hate the confetti style because of all the projectile hazards it would create in RL. The current fairings are unrealistic, but they work and compensate for other existing unrealistic things in the craft design (e.g. no concave part colliders on the easy). If you want to deal with the space shrapnel issue just separate the fairing at 25000 m alt and drag deals with them. One thing I've found is that muliple fairings are needed fo complex payloads, you might want to have fixed close fairing points at the same factor as the fairing. This affords the attachment and down directed strut connectors to the outer regions of the fairing base for stabikity. You cannot strut upward from the base but the area just inside the fairing attach will accept the connector ends. This creats a small weight disadvantage post fairing payload separation. That's life.

I know when i have major issues and someone comes and saya something like what i'm about to write i feel kind if miffed, still. I have an old machine lighting blew out my router about a week ago, I have a bunch of worn out old mods that are pretty much bandaged to keep going, Mech Jeb gives a warning and no longer reports dV like its supposed to, and I do have the occasional crash, BUT its not that bad .... I don't save games or crafts, there are the occassional VAB glitches that make me wish i did, but I have been throwing every manner of homebuilt parts at the game and its basically takes them all in. I don't see any of the issues that folks are reporting, I put craft up without launch stabilizers, fins or RCS thrusters, really big rockets. I have tested alot if the new stock parts, including the fairings, they have a little trouble in VAB but im doing pretty non-standard stuff with them. Occassional a new design will flip over at grav turn but thats almost always a speed problem in which slowing down or slicking up the craft fixes. Here are my major issues. The time warp transition needs to be sharpened, and craft should automatically retrowarp when they get close to a target. I had a ship dewarb to close to the Mun and it destroyed the Mun. I was only in sandbox mode but if that was a hard career game I might have been #%£*$&. Strut coonectors in VAB have minor problems particularly in mulitiple symmetry. They also attach in wierd ways to certain parts. Parts a heating up (e.g. drag breaking for eccentrity reduction) and not 'visibly' cooling down until backing ou to Space Center. Engine fairings are not separting properly, one has to wait longer to get visibly safe stage separation, the fairings will cross-thru but not damage active stage engines. I could waste drag and thrust on sepratrons but nah, taint that worth it. The terraine fall-thrus of the previous game have not occurred. Other than the Mun event I have only once have had Kraken take my ship, IIRC this occurred because of sway in high atmosphere. There are various fail and warning messeages in F12 reloads that are spurious, sound file warnings I cant get rid of. There are about 30 cautions that appear to be related to stock parts. Most of these issues i consider Minor. If you are having serious issues in hard mode i recommend copying the hard-game folders once a day to a new named folder as a back-up. Its a cheat if used for goof ups, but its a life saver when dealing with bugs. Of course there is always those not-a-bug game play quirks create a grey area.

What would happen to venus depends largely on how similar it once was to Earth. Venus has alot of sulfate in its atmosphere and the heat and sulfate lock the water off the surface. On earth's crust sulfate and carbon tirnover on the surface is governed by subduction at the plate edges. As organic carbon and sulfate are subducted lower, the pressure increases but so does the heat, eventually the heat is more important and even 1000 km down the lighter elemnts will coalesce and cause a rise under the upper plate, this results in the ring o fire phenomena. But the biggest reservoir of sulfate is the ocean, the alkali elements trap both carbon and sulfate as counter ions. This is also driven by redox potntials created by phototrophs and the phototroph deposits on land and in petroleum resrvoirs. Venus does not have these, and if the acidic atmospere disappears a very alkalin surface is likely scavenge and raise the boiling point of any counter-ions that exist. Thus I would make the following prediction Venus cools, its crust will further solify and crack, you would see multiple mid atlantic typ ridge formations. This would probably go on for another 200 million years and the increase solar output would cause an equilibration. in this model if we put a giant reflector between venus and sun at L1. What might happen, venuses atmosphere would begin to collapse, but the resulting acid rain would react with th alkalin surface causing chemoturbulation of the surface. Venus would take years to equilibrate under this scenario because alkalin reserves in venus would be like coal and oil reserves on earth. In fact you really would not need a power source on venus because you could drll down, inject brine and turn the sea/drill shaft into a giant battery. Secondarily the crusts temperature at surface is ckoser to its mantle temperature, so that heat flow to the surface would provide a good source of geothermal power, add in subsurface a fissure chemothermal heat sources. IMHO Venus has probably lost some of its acidifyers due to the height and thermal convection of its atmosphere. Thus the cooler venus will tilt in favor of an extremely acidic surface. Its very diificult to loose alkali elements to degassing. Venus will always be a violent place for life, but early life formed in such a violent place so ......., better ti cool and drop the bugs first. I disagree that venus is within the goldilocks zone of Sol, I think sulfate in addition to carbon , both essential elements to life, and sulfate particularly the evolution of Archea, and bacteria are somewhat dependent on archea early on in carbon and nitrogen cycle....so. If sulfate is important, locked away in huge amounts inoy oceans, but causes venus to be a greenhouse disaster, the problem is not the sulfate, its the size and proximity of the planet to the sun. The reason we see little evidence for habitable planets is that such planets are much rarer than the optimist propose. I don't think the solar proximity effect can be reversed even with wishful technology. Venus has been marked by the sun, if sun were to blinkout in one gigantic sterlizing burst of light and forming a brown dwarf, any visitor landing on the inner planets would realize that Venus and Mercury were lifeless and Earth had and Mars might have had life. Even if you put a colony there while it was cooling they would come to the same conclusion, it was not a genesis planet.

I have to say that he is right with regard to engines. By definition th whole nozzle thing breaks the no concave surface rule. My design precept is that the collision mesh and visible mesh should be close. 1. facilitates surface mounting. e.g. of bad mesh is the station hub part which disallows surface attachment because of the concave surfaces. 2. I try to come in with a collision mesh under 150 triangles. With the engine these two are not going to be importent, your collision mesh is essentially the fairing. But I am still going to push the point of creating an engine that is better than stock, if you need a more powerful engine for smaller payload, just mod a tank to half height an place an adapter tank on top. What is lacking in the game are launch engines of the best efficiency both on ground and space. I am developing a real hate for the IPAD keyboard. Got to get my #%^¥£€#% router fixed!

blender, its worth learning, and we have pretty good ksp support now through links to this forum. twas not the case 6 mos ago. I should add that it was recently polled as the favorite here. Many folks import the basic mesh into blender for texturing so if you have a simple mesh 3D program use it, then impoft the mesh into blender.

Lighter than air, AC, rockets, wheel, engine (locomotive), and electric power all evolve in step with each other. A tier that does not have these evolving in step looses elements that can be faulted.

The fairings can expand outward to accomidate wider payloads. The problem i found is segmental flexibilty within the fairing can lead to part-part collision and failures. The issue for space station cores is that the station 6-direction hub does not allow surface attach because of the concave surfaces and discrepencies between the collision model and the visible model. This means you cannot close the fairing but well on the other side. I am building a new size2 core with no appreciable concavities so that the lower size3 fairing can be close on a bottom flange on the hub and a second size3 fairing can be placed on top. The other problem is that the fairings will not accept strut connectors. To fix this problem I am going to create a thin physicsless <Size3 plate, maybe 0.1 m with very high breakin torque. So physicswise here is the basic problem... over 250 m/s below 24000 m the wide parts will create alot of downward drag. typically the SAS will be close to the top. Between the SAS unit and the fairin base you have on the station hub a size2 port which has weak twisting force resistence. To solve this problem the plate goes on the fairing and the port goes upside down on the plate. The bottom half of the station and bottom half of the hub is covered by the 1st fairing, then inside the fairing will be stut connectos (from plate to hub bottom at ~ 1.4 m out). This then allows the station to have all manner of junky parts on the bottom (gigantor, batteries, sci experiments, light, etc) on karmony or storage. The top fairing will unfortunately be a vistigual part on th station since I want it to have a command capsule. In any case, this is how I solved the fairing size limitation. The other solution is to change the docking pots, which given thier current bugs, im going to leave alone.

[hc ipad] THis experience is different from mine, but if you had a rover with 2-each goo and mat-sci unit and 1 each temp, grav, vibr this i easy to achieve. The canyon area of the mun is a hotbed of sci. However, i place my lab in LMO and conducted numerous docking/Mun and a couple of refueling missions and basically filled out the entire tech tree in 0.25. BTW i unlock all the lower sci tiers before leaving low kerbin orbit. There is a lot of science on the ground in KSC. In response to NikkyD, I typically do no recycle a crew on Kerbin system orbits more than 4 landing missions. You can make the game more realistic by switching out crews on refueling missions an send your spent crews back with sci data. One effective way to do this is to collect them in LKE and then return them back as one group, this way you don't have to carry chutes and HS to the science objectives. In addition you can carry extra fuel and use this to retrograde break on reentry (at very low entry angle) with a complete science package and conduct science on th ground on Kerbin. I generally keep enough retro fuel on reentry to at least slow my craft down to a speed that its SAS keeps it from tumbling. Also, I also add one crew capacity for each crewman year in orbit. This means for a 5 year mission would set a baseline of one capsule and one storage container. If a minimal Gilly mission takes 2 years then you Since a minimal science mission wants a MPL you need to have on pilot and one sci; the cap has 3, MPL has 2 and so i add one storage container. The eve landing mission is basically suicide so 1 year of supply per crew i all that is needed. - - - Updated - - - Science is 1% inspiration & 99% inspiration. You can however get "Science" on the cheap from the american association for the advancement of science and place it on your coffee table for the admiration of the uninformed. :^)

[hc ipad] Just blew up th mun with a 10t landing stage?

What if it wasn't based on Unity, what if it wasn't and indie, what if all the design facilities were not free/shareware that anyone can create on . . . . .what if it wasn't KSP. What if birds had scales and fins and swam in the ocean, but couldn't fly?

I don't but I think you call it OCD. If you are playing completely stock, never use mod, never modded, or never built a part you are missing 75% of the creativity of the game. Sure I have used electric powered generators that can power 1000X powered ion drives, but also I have built a space factory and put it up with stock engines so. Had a whole host of aero parts before 1.0 came out. I don't have 20 minute boot ups, I cull my mods. And I am really not in the mood for completely unrealistic mods like Warp drives or Interstellar travel that are based on completely faux science (to the loud protest of many in this forum, but I also have not created a Caenni drive either). I can imagine a fusion reactor driving ION drive in RL, or an ION drive with an ISP of 30,000. Not exactly seeing a nuclear pulse engine as viable (given the shock plate seems like Murphies law waiting to go wrong).

Geschosskopf wrote: OP: * Mk2 SAS, battery, decouplers, and shorter RCS tanks PB666: not only MK2 but MK3. I think a size 3 battery and Size3 SAS unit might be nice. Also a size3 RCS tank. The reason I say this is on space stations that are built in space, long thin parts are kracken fodder. I use for example a size3 short tank (scale of T200 factor), on a lg docking port that I can remove and replace to supply. (because its not aerodynamic enough to launch into space). It is docked on both sides so I don't use up a docking port. But if the tanks are excessivley thin, then docking another ship only invites the kraken. OP: * A 3.5m version of the 909 or Poodle PB666: yep, definitely needed. Should be a three or four engine design. Ihave a scale mod of the poodle size3, 4, 5. OP: * A 2.5m or Mk2 sized mono RAPIER for Mk3 spaceplanes, to avoid spamming the existing RAPIER PB666: I suppose but I think this would be not commonly used, you should create a scale mod. OP: * KAS-style fuel pipes for refuel on the ground more elegantly than using the Claw and with less bother than struggling to align docking ports PB666: That would take all the fun out of it. . . . . . . OP:* A medium-sized rover wheel. PB666: A wheel, period at Start game. it could be a wheel from a tonka truck. OP:* A radially mounted probe core to help with the vertical-to-horizontal transition when landing rovers PB666: Use mech-jeb. You can assign probe elements modules to other parts if you don't like MechJeb, OP: * Boat hulls, pontoons, and rudders, preferrably with retractable, powered wheels in some of them (like Firespitter) PB666: Like for landing on water. OP: * Some sleeker, sexier lights of several types PB666: Yes, lights are not aerodynamic they don't fit flush on the body and you have to tweek them. ......... OP:* 5-way RCS blocks PB666: yep. When you say 5 way that could mean pentagonal also, but I am sure you meant -x, x, -y, y and z orientations (when -z points in the direction of it mounting surface) OP:* Stack adaptors that hold fuel PB666: Wow so many already, you can make them on blender, I have made a bunch. I frankly think mine are better than theirs, I say this because when you use the size3 tanks and adapters you end up having a dead space if you don't use size three parts. It looks kind of half-ar$e. OP:* 5m rocket parts PB666: Mod. OP:* bigger sepratrons PB666: Mod. Having finally manage to cover the rocket parts per say (spent most of the last few weeks cleaning out my parts and game-data directory and testing the drag issues, I would like to say to the dev team ---- well done. The part I find most impressive are the fairings and the openable equipment enclosures. Amazingly you can use one inside the other. I did not find the rockets as unstable as other folks but I have been working on my aero parts for some time. I find there is a cost now for poor design and a reward for better designed and aerodynamic craft. I am still finding myself having to get used to the new boosters. The good point is they appear to crash less into the launches, the bad point is that you have one more step to worry about in launch, because for smaller rockets (when you use 2 boosters) you will probably need to adjust down the thrust to avoid overspeed on less-well designed rockets. What can be improved. 1. Telescoping mounts. Now with the nice fairings/ instrument bays it would be nice to have telescoping mounts for things like ion drives or test equipment. Even a rotating space station. 2. Wheels (more of them e.g. fixed simple wheels with no power early game) 3. More sophisticate roverbay. (although personally I never make rovers, bad habit from earlier versions where roving did not have much of a payoff) 4. Corner welds. Instead of tacky looking strut connectors it would be nice were we could weld corners at a cost per length. This would give a much stronger bond with lower breaking torque between pieces. 5. The RGS is a multifunction standout, but wouldn't it be nice if we had a standout (nacell) that was aerodynamic. If find myself at times needing to lower the flex on the upper stages of a launch and I end up having to shove a MGS out into space so that I can add strut-connectors between two peices that are not in each others line of sight. 6. As others have mentioned the recyclable off-world landers have a horizontal cross section that exceeds 3.75 meters across. The most stable landers are at least 5 M side to side, otherwise you end up burning power to keep a craft true and they will not stay true on worlds with heavy gravity. A one to four conversion plate would suffice. -Solution 1 is to make a plate that has telescoping standout and landing struts. -Solution 2 is to make 4 and 5 meter parts. 7. Size2 jet engine 8. Radiators . . . . . really . . . . . . . if an engine needs to be cooled there should be aerodynamic parts can be used to radiate. An alternative is a simple plate that does not conduct heat upward. Once a TNR is activated it will produce heat and that heat needs an effective means of dissipating, the expended fuel is extremely radioactive (thats why they keep spent fuel in cooling ponds at nuclear reactors). A better solution in vertical plates on the nozzle of TNR that can slowly dissipate the heat from the nozzle (I know this is oxymoronic since you want the exhaust to retain thermal energy until out of contact with the nozzle) and other parts of the engine. 9. Bases. One aspect of the base is that buildings are disconnected. It would be nice to have a expandable platform in which fuel depots, etc can be plugged in and craft with docking ports mounted on the bottom can dock. In 0.90 I tried this and the ship would never dock no matter how close I got the port. I would lower the landing legs and nothing would happend. It would be nice if the deck had a landing zone, if the four legs of the ship landed in all of four areas the deck would move the ship to center and a docking port would rise up and attach. You could have three types of ports. 10. Off-world VAB package. This would be also nice, could be installed and activated. Tranporting of materials to the factory would then allow one to build ships in space or off-world. #9 could be built as part of an off-world package assembly. 11. Asteroid that cannot be moved but are worthy exploration targets. 12. Telescopes and space observatories designed for LKE and HKE. And I know I will get some complaints, 'all this is available in this add-on or mod', yeah I know.

I don't know how the Gravioli detector works, but the NASA uses two satellites one following the other through space. http://www.nasa.gov/audience/foreducators/k-4/features/F_Measuring_Gravity_With_Grace.html This works because surface perturbations that result in decreases in surface mass (a satellites is only a few hundreds of miles above earths surface). Theoretically if a machine was sensitive enough you could have two floating balls in a device and measure the distance between the floating balls as the travel. You can estimate the average gravity of an object by knowing how fast a craft is traveling at its perigee (radial) and the major axis, and in fact if one can simulataneously measure radial component of velocity and the orbital component of velocity one can measure gravity at any point in an orbit.

http://puu.sh/hZgAQ/f125f7bc3a.jpg http://puu.sh/hZgHy/eb3338a521.jpg http://puu.sh/hZgPo/047495542d.jpgYou should tell people that was part of the design, it makes getting in an out of the pod much easier, not with all that needless jetpacking up and jumping. BTW, I had an oversized nuclear engine I used as the core of a lander were only a flat ovoid fuel tank was on top, the rest of the SC rode saddle-bag on both sides of the engine, when the craft landed the nauts go to walk out on a deck and step right onto the surface without all that. jumping about. Im not a big radio phobe, a few gamma here and there never hurt any self-respecting kerbal.

Right, voyager is in interstellar space, but it will take 40,000 years to pass within 1 ly of the nearest star, meaning that it will continue to travel in interstellar space until some clever computer scientist figures out when it might pass into the 'atmosphere' of some star. - - - Updated - - - Well thats not exactly the poster child of progress. Rye cultivation began during the period between LGM and the younger dryas (~12,000 a). The first wheat cultivars were cultivated and domesticated about 10,000 years ago, the wheat we know as bread wheat was domesticated about 8000 years ago. So what we consider the development of the fertile crescent acutally begins in Europe and ends several thousand years later were agriculture is doomed as a consequence of upstream water hoarding, decreased pan evaporation rates in the Indian ocean as a consequence of chaff burning and global warming. And of course we can look at all these regions now and then ask the question where technology is going to lead eventually to those that create it. If we want to go back as far as pottery, that's roughly 16 to 18 thousand years ago in the Sea of Japan region (notable home of the worlds most maniacal nuclear state). Now put these techno-savey on a ship, say 50 to 1000 years and lets reask the question, is this likely to succeed. You have to get the socialization right before you can attempt such ventures. - - - Updated - - - Google is a powerful, its also a powerful weapon. Identity theft as we know it now would not be possible without an internet. When you talk about the Usenet, google and deja-vu all but destroyed it, not because of the competition, but because it allowed any nepharious idiot could had just enough sense to use a web browser to begin posting crap. I use duck-duck. Think about google in a time of war between the US and any major world power. Step one, use all the financial information you have parsed together from from the internet step two shut down the western financial systems. War over. Consider that antimatter will have the same growing pains as any technology. The first useful rocket was the V2, so where is actually that going to go. - - - Updated - - - Sustainable lunar colony, no. Manned exploration of inner planets, possible, missions less than 5 years. There is really no reason to have a colony on the moon, limiting resources are magnitudes more expensive on the moon than on earth. The first question to ask is why Why would I have a space station at L2 - astronomical observatory on a much larger scale. Why would I have a space station in LEO - space science (microgravity). Why would I have a production facility on the moon (with DV > 1000 m/s to get stuff into orbit, when we already have the materials we need floating around in orbit). Lunar colonization - 15 days of light and dark (not suitable), except a small region of the moon. Requires a power supply capable of sustaining all aspects of living. (no microgravity, lower concentrations of hydrogen, carbon, and low molecular weight atoms - essentially all the elements concentrated in organic matter). A lunar station is useful for scientific reasons only, until it is buried 10M below the surface it is not suitable for long term survival of humans. Colonies have mini-gravity may have consequences of growth on children and heart health, they require expensive importation of almost all the biological elements, the will need to maintain a constant pressure differential of 100 kPa, the will have to manage carbon dioxide flux between photosynthetic and not photosynthetic organisms. 220,000 miles away from the nearest hospital. A colony that includes minors would not get an IRB unless those minors had some life-limiting condition.

Mars is not a solution, in the case of our sun turning into a gas giant, mars would be a band aid to fix an aortic aneurism.

please.

also http://forum.kerbalspaceprogram.com/threads/106220-Basic-part-making-workflow

Everyone will be pleased here with my short answer. Your wrong. If you are so desperate to have an unrealistic SSTO why not create a dual mode engine with a LFoX portion with an ISP of 30,000.

Obviously since you can make parts you can combine two parts into one and bypass the limit. 1. Mod a capsule with mechjeb installed in it. 2. Mod a tank with your favor engine. 3. Mod parts to make the stronger and not need strut connectors. 4. Capsule with a builtin antenna, or solar cells. 5. Mat science with goo. BTW, I liked spore . . . . . a real space stage..... Conquered the galaxy, at least the grox part of it. I particularly liked the part about dropping volcanoes on cities. - - - Updated - - - I have only one real complaint about early game . . . . . .I need wheels... training wheels will do.

Or there is an unseen flaw in the experimental design. The effect has been reproduced by different groups, but that may just mean the humans are prone to certain kinds of errors. - - - Updated - - - The researches aren't able to explain it either. But the wave particle duality of light also went unexplained for a time. The device needs to be tested away from other objects which it could push off of, this is the critical problem. They show a very low level of thrust, and their electronics start to degrade after a time, so there is lots of room to speculate about flaws. I postulated that on the very minute scale the device is imparting momentum via virtual particles and if it tried to increase the force production the effect would saturate quickly (theoretically the force should not accumulate, but uncertainty does allow for random force production, just how large will fluctuations be allowed to build before its no longer random). It may be defining something not yet described in physics, that for a given frequency there is a limit to uncertainty within a given space. Either that or it something completely overlooked in the electronics. Unlike K2 and Rakaydos, I think the only route here is to test in space or some equivalent circumstances were the proponents can test whether the effect can build indefinitely (e.g. increase a crafts orbit). For the very reasons they give, that the effect _has_ to be a flaw in design is the best reason for testing, because the more they are convinced that the reaction mass issue disallows the force, the more I see that there may be a weakness in physics that the purist are oblivious to.

This thread is a reminder why we need more mandatory science education in our public schools and universities. The forces that act to give Mars the climate that is has are unlikely to be changed by man. If you want Mars to retain more atmosphere you would have to give it more mass. So far as yet I haven't had anyone argue for moving the asteroid belt masses into collision courses with Mars (equally foolish but with alot more water). To be a colony, it has to be self-sustaining, at least in theory, if you don't have an EM density capable of this, it cannot be a colony to begin with and anything you do put on Mars is basically a death row prison complex.

actually if you are landing in the highlands or mountanous regions, or you are relying on landing struts to absorb part of the landing force your prolly need to open a few hundred meter higher. I set my chutes to open 1000 meters

Well thats a double meaning This one is very weird. I have a very large rocket composed of one of my blender constructs. At the bottom are 12 @ (Rockomax decoupler, big orange tank, and skipper)s. There are 24 launch stabilizer and the rocket is well off the ground. The launch goes well, the stabilizers decouple & relax and the rocket is off the ground, but then . . . . . . .the launch pad explodes . . . . . .There is no evidence that any part fell off or broke off the rocket. The rocket climbs, up, up, up . . . . . . . . and then the launch stabilizers reappear on the rocket, and then disappear. The rocket climbs some more the stabilizers appear for a bit longer The rocket climbs to around 20,000 meters the stabilizers appear again and the rocket spontaneous explodes leaving no trace. I have long suspected that when parts decouple the game is not actually removing all traces of part from the remaining portion. The reason I suspect this is that when I add strut connectors to the lower stages of the rocket, they frequently increase the lag, but when those stages are decoupled the lag continues, even after 4 or 5 stages have been decouple the rocket remains laggy as it behaves from launch.