FleshJeb

This goes beyond my wildest dreams. At one point, I wanted to design a rudimentary machine-learning system that would take a basic characterization of the aerodynamics and thrust of a spaceplane, fly a few ascents, and find an ascent profile approaching optimal; attempting to improve each time. That would obviously be very time-consuming, and examining per-part drag values in flight is a giant pain. (I got to the point where I asked the KRPC dev to please make them available.) This is SO MUCH BETTER. My only critique thus far is that it may be hard to identify parts that have low absolute drag, but are highly draggy relative to other parts of their size. You mentioned that the RCS blocks eventually showed up as being highly draggy, but something like the 1.25m reaction wheel (which should never be exposed to air IMO) may not. Or the opposite case where service bays are extremely slippery. Potential solution to above: CorrectCoL has the ability to compress/exaggerate the lower end of the AoA scale. You could do this by having the option to exaggerate the ends of the highlight color scale. Alternately, or in addition: The ability to restrict the highlighting by form factor and ignore the rest. i.e. Only examine parts of a certain size class; surface attached parts only; above or below a specified mass. Do you think it's 1.3.1 compatible? I may just have to try it and find out. EDIT: Forgot to ping @AeroGav

I need to start paying more attention to your threads. Also, make me Mounted J parts or I won't be your friend.

Per Gargamel's excellent suggestion, you can put images on the forums by putting your picture on imgur, and linking to it. Albums are broken, but individual pictures work. Laythe is a different animal: The air is thinner at sea-level (about 7000m on Kerbin), so taking off and landing are either done at high speed, or you use a lot more wing. This is assuming you're talking about winged SSTOs. If you haven't already read this, you should: EDIT: The explanation for how drag works is out of date. It's more realistic now.

Would not play without, in this order: MechJeb KER KAC Editor Extensions RCS Build Aid TAC Fuel Balancer CorrectCoL One of the things I value MJ for is the fact that it allows me to test a design with repeatable results/parameters, and make solid qualitative/quantitative judgments about the performance--I rarely do under 20 iterations of anything.

Pratt & Whitney J58s, or a reasonable facsimile thereof?

Is the white streak an artifact, a meteorite, or a moon?

I sympathize with that perspective, but a few years ago, I subcontracted to work on a couple of Tesla Supercharging stations. Their modus operandi was to bully all the local permitting staff, push ahead of other projects in the queue, and attempt to subvert standard permitting procedure as much as possible. Likewise, we contractors were under a huge amount of pressure for very little money. And we're talking about a couple of minor projects that could have waited the additional month it would have taken. I understand the desire to maintain momentum, but I have 20 years in this business, and we do things in a certain way because it produces good, reliable, responsible results. We also strive to maintain good relationships with the permitting agencies, because 90% of the people that work for them are smart, flexible, solutions-oriented people who want projects to succeed. Anyway, the whole experience left a bad taste in my mouth. They were literally the worst clients I've ever worked for, and had no professional or institutional respect for anybody. You'll forgive me if I'm highly skeptical of any statements about permitting that one of Musk's companies puts forth. This isn't the first project in history that's operated in phases, so something is fishy about this story. Addendum: Civil Engineering may seem boring and fixed, but we frequently have to adapt to new design and construction technology and methods. The Boring Company isn't the first innovator that we in the industry have ever dealt with--They're not special, and they don't deserve special treatment. Bonus: Part of the the background mapping for one of the stations (My company holds the copyright, so no issue posting it.)

The projectiles better be "dumb" then. Guidance could be accomplished by making them reflective and using lasers. The question being, could they have enough surface area while retaining the necessary strength? How much laser energy do you need to pour into them, and would they survive the heating? How much wider does the laser beam have to be than the projectile? What magnitude of energy losses are we incurring that way? On another note, I'm assuming this all requires superconductors. Not only for the mass-drivers, but you'd need to store the incoming energy as a magnetic field in a superconducting ring. Any other conductor would get vaporized into plasma. Hmm, could we do our station-keeping by mag-sailing the Earth's magnetic field?

Smooth as funk, son.

Please keep your ridiculous fiction out of my science game.

I figured the man likes cinematics; it might inspire something. The craft could do with some more fine tuning, but it's fun, and can VTOL. I wish I'd captured the epic dive off the VAB--It was very birdlike.

I'm still in 1.3.1 - I discovered that the higher the damper, the more they like to launch into the air on load. The spring setting doesn't seem to cause this problem. I started setting all mine to 1.0/0.5. They bounce a lot but it dies down after a bit.

The seagulls at KSC are getting pesky. https://www.dropbox.com/s/5hrj366wjmx9rxq/Bio Falcon.craft?dl=0

Your first inclination would be +/- 90

I'd pay to see someone do a roughly polar shot on Eeloo. Pol would be the easiest.

@The_Rocketeer Yes I was being ironic. I took a wild guess as to what political "box" you fit in to point out the flaw in the argument. For a game company to act "socially responsible to boost sales" should be expected and encouraged within that box. Second quote: I was suggesting two things: Advocating for balanced gender representation isn't limited to "sex-equality activists", it's simply a common good. Anyone who disagrees should have their "masculinity" called into question. Which was dirty, and I retract it. Beer and farts are still fun though. I think "egalitarianism" is a useful term. The original term "feminism" seems to have been poisoned beyond constructive use. There are a couple of root causes: The misandrists that "feminisim" is now conflated with are few in number, but they happen to be very noisy. The people who do the conflating greatly exaggerate the influence of the misandrists. They use them as a foil to say, "See, these people are jerks, so everyone on that side is a jerk. Vote for me!" That tactic is commonly used by politicians on all sides, and it's divisive, unproductive crap. So, I make it a point to question the premises of outraged reactionaries, especially if I agree with them. @Hotaru has presented a good argument that I think we all have some agreement on. It's a "good enough" rationale, without getting into the weeds. Final note, in case it wasn't clear. I appreciate everyone who has a passion for spaceflight and exploration, and it's a pleasure to share that with you all.

That's a good argument. There should be a difficulty setting for number of no-cost starting kerbals. I admit, I don't play career mode. I spent about 8 hours trying and decided the whole thing was so poorly implemented that it wasn't worth my time. .Why do you hate capitalism? Heterosexuals. I like being around women--They're fun and they smell good. OK, that last part is a lie, they drink beer and fart a lot.

Short-form argument: KSP is "just" a game, but it's an educational one (with an educational version). Many of us have had our math, science, engineering, and analytical skills strengthened by it. Little girls play this game. Jeb, Bill, and Bob are clearly male. (Race isn't an issue, because they're green). Media representation matters. That's a hard premise to quantify, but I think it's common sense to say that who you see on a screen or in a story affects how you see yourself. We find our heroes and our good examples in stories. I'd much rather have a kid identify with Valentina Kerman than with Barbie. If the inclusion of female kerbonauts helps keep some little girl interested and engaged with everything KSP has to offer, that's a great thing. It's not a zero-sum game--No one loses anything by their inclusion. There is no reason to feel threatened and insecure about it--Certainly not to the degree seen in this thread. (I think part of the problem is that so many things have been politicized that aren't inherently political. Basic fairness and raising strong kids has no politics, and it's not part of some "culture war".) Having female Kerbals is just a way of saying, "Welcome to the fireworks show! Plenty of room for everybody." To the OP: No, we don't need additional female Kerbals (other than honorary real life ones as they come up), it's been well-handled already.

In addition to the other techniques mentioned here, I build my long-range rovers with roll cages and skid-plates. Nothing fragile can touch the ground until a whole lot of steel gets ripped off. In addition, I usually add enough reaction wheels and Vernors that they can self-recover on Kerbin. (I find about 4kN/ton works well). Just for fun, I spent 30 minutes building this example rover and took it to the Mun. It survived multiple 35 m/s uncontrolled rollovers with minor loss of parts. Fully-loaded, it weighs 65 tons. It can certainly be improved, as it's just a concept demonstration. If you want to have fun roving, armor and redundancy are key.

IF only to have caster-type wheels with 180-degree steering, and a steering range you can set.

Hah! That's the same music WintersSEO uses for his Warhammer40k videos. Sorry to hear that the mirror is still a pain.

The NTSB is the most respected accident investigation organization in the world. When you go up against them, you're probably wrong. I did some work for Tesla, helping them navigate some local gov't regulations. They were nothing but bullies who wanted to break rules and get their way at any cost, because "Tesla is special, so you should kiss our butts". Unfortunately it worked. The worst thing to come out of it was that they pushed ahead of local people waiting to get their projects approved. Not that bad, but it's a terrible precedent. I've been involved in helping people get into regulatory compliance my entire career. As much as some people like to crap on "gov't workers upholding stupid regulations", I've found that 90% of them are smart, capable people who really care about protecting the public and ensuring that things are fair and orderly. The vast majority of the time, they're following good rules for good reasons.

As a professional draftsman with 24 years experience, your tools being "quirky" is not an excuse. A professional KNOWS where the tools fail, and incorporates a check stage into their workflow. Mistakes cost money (at least my $15). Things like this are why I will NEVER get in a self-driving car, and I minimize my online financial transactions (I've also done backend webdev work for a firm that set up e-commerce sites). We're long past the point where software engineers should have licensure by a professional board. That said, I'm happy to see this patch, but I'm going to wait a few more months before I upgrade past 1.3.1.