Alias72

Fuel cells seem like a good alternative to solar panels for situations where sunlight may be erratic and power requirements are constant. I also feel that a more powerful alternative to the RTG is warranted.

The part of my suggestion most relevant is the response kerbals have. currently kerbals do not appear to get scared or angry. I wouldn't mind seeing them cower and curse at you're many screw-ups. perhaps this could be tied to the engineer mechanic being added. If on another planet and the ship the kerbals came in would throw off errors in the editor, then they make very upset and anxious emotes while wandering the surface. an example would be you crash your ship destroying its engine. The kerbals (now on Duna) who exit the ship start wandering around cursing their luck and cowering at the prospect of dying on a distant world.

I feel the game would benefit greatly from a greater variety of context specific contracts. perhaps certain rocks may appear on the surface of duna and when you right click you can take a sample. If the rock is valuable it will tell you. I feel the current surface sample is tedious and unnecessary because performing it is a given.

I suggest adding a sit command. The kerbal will pout and groan but he won't wander off a cliff. he may do other things like pull out a juice box, stargaze, sleep. I also posted a related suggestion about utilizing the stupidity and courage modifiers that relates to this. essentially kerbals who are smart ignore stupid orders (live EVA during supersonic flight) and kerbals who are cowardly avoid courageous things (like planting the flag and becoming a hero). Instead reacting negatively by cowering in fear or getting mad at you.

sorry I used a different link. I was in reactor disambiguation. your quote also works.

the breakdown of uranium is a nuclear reaction. but it happens with or without intervention. An RTG does not have a specialized vessel to facilitate uranium decomposition, just contain and harness the products. from wikipedia: Nuclear reactor, a device for containing and controlling a nuclear reaction A RTG contains a nuclear reaction. it harness it for power, but it doesn't control the reaction itself.

thank you for catching that.

Hello everybody! I have designed a small single engine aircraft for FAR. I used the following mods: Far, KAX, SXT, Tweakscale. There were other mods but these are the only dependencies (plus firespitter but it is required for KAX) It is low altitude and speed, but I spent 4 hours on it so SHUSH! I had massive stability problems arising from a bad landing gear part. Not using that anymore. It travels around 80 m/s at an altitude of 1.2 km. It has a take off speed around 65 m/s. It weighs about 3 tons and has an endurance of 4 hours. Not overly impressive, but nice and stable. Another issue, especially with small planes, is mass. The fuselage of this aircraft is one metric ton. this is unreasonable given that an empty Cessna 172 is around 700kg. my fuselage weighs more than a Cessna. In the future I would choose a more suitable fuselage for the aircraft size. the one I chose is for the Beechcraft king air. I also used a 675 hp P&W PT6. Well. If you have any small aircraft or wish to comment then post them below!

There you go! now all you need is a trademark and your set!

hello. Recently I tried to launch a simple small aircraft from the mk 1 runway. BIG mistake, there were no survivors. the runway's appearance is fine but its surface should still be flat. ALL runways, even dirt ones, provide a completely, or near completely, flat surface. The slightest divet can catch a landing gear and flip an aircraft. The Bumpiness you hear of is merely small pebbles causing vibration in the landing gears, not massive holes in the surface. As it stands you are better off using the grass as a launch platform, the runway is a no go zone so far as aircraft is concerned. for examples please google dirt runway under images. all the examples are flat and smooth. Another point I would like to make is about grass. Non compacted soil has a lot of give to it. Wheels dig into the ground if they are not designed for it. the Grass surrounding KSP should have a higher friction, this would make it more dangerous to use the grass as a runway as you may flip the aircraft. Dry dirt poses less of a risk so sandy rocky areas may be okay assuming there are no actual rocks in the way of your aircraft.

the idea with the threshold was so that a player can, with a glance say "OK he's not going to be able to do that." when kerbals are close to the threshold they whine and complain. which is meant to add character. the circumstances under which a kerbal might be pushed past the threshold usually involve rapid unscheduled disassembly. It may be possible that a kerbal pushed past their threshold will freeze up and refuse orders as they cower in fear / let out an angry rant towards mission control.

the categories were meant to be arbitrary, there would not be 27 definite categories, but different parts that are better suited towards different regimes of flight. You are right about this not fixing intake spam. That said the need for differing intakes for different flight regimes may mitigate ti somewhat. And I have nothing to say about the other 3 comments because you are probably right.

Many versions ago kerbals were given the traits of courage and stupidity. Since that time these numbers have been little more than a roleplaying element. I propose that Courage and stupidity have effects on gameplay. Kerbals will require a specific stat in order to do certain things. for example: -Flying through the atmosphere at mach 4 you ask your kerbal to go on an EVA. being incredibly stupid he happily obliges. If he wasn't as stupid he would have refused your suicidal request shaking his head and grunting angrily. -while going on EVA your cowardly Kerbal gets camera shy and refuses to plant the flag, instead quivering in fear at the prospect of being remembered for all time! luckily it was a two man mission! -on route to Jool you decide it is time for Chicken Kerman to get some fresh air. Unfortunately the cold dark vacuum of space scares him and he refuses to let go of the ladder! -Landed at KSC you decide to go out for a walk. The problem is your rocket is 30m tall and your pilot just isn't stupid enough to let go and fall all that way. Most actions are assigned a courage and or stupidity level. this is the threshold below which a kerbal will refuse to undertake that action. A kerbal MAY be convinced to expand his boundaries by doing things just below his threshold but never above it. It may be because their shy, or just because they aren't brain dead enough to follow your orders, but they just wont do it. And like I said, a Kerbal may become stupider and braver if he try's hard. maybe your kerbal is too afraid to plant the flag but surface samples are right up his alley. take enough surface samples and he may one day plant that flag with pride. courage and stupidity currently have a bar. The closer an action is to the kerbals threshold the more scared or angry he appears. kerbals pushed beyond there threshold are either petrified by fear or blinded by rage at your blatant lunacy!. the idea is to link kerbals physical and emotional responses to actual game actions, hopefully, giving them some much needed character.

Hello and welcome to my proposal for a new mechanic encompassing jet engines! The current system for Gas Turbine or "jet" engines is to place an intake, which generates intake air, and a nozzle that represents the entire engine. This system has a few problems. 1: the placement of the engine mass at the nozzle shifts the center of mass for the entire aircraft backwards. this requires lifting surfaces to be placed rearward and causes stability issues and unintuitive design. 2: By scaling engine ISP instead of thrust engines remain incredibly powerful outside of their range of usefulness. additionally the limited customization of engine configuration lends itself to a more limited set of designs for engine use and placement. My proposal: building a working jet engine would require three parts. an Inlet, a Nozzle and an engine. the inlet would determine intake air based on speed, the engine determines ISP and Thrust, and the Nozzle determines net thrust at altitude. Inlets determine the amount of intake air, the efficiency of the inlet at altitude, and provide a limited set of placement options. generally speaking there would be three types of inlets. low speed, high speed, and variable speed inlets. Additionally each inlet will have an inline and a radial version for a total of at least 6 inlets. -A low speed inlet will be most efficient operating between mach 0.3 and 0.8. the inlet will not work with supersonic flows (the inlet will not produce intake air.) -A High speed inlet will be most efficient operating above mach 1.2. This inlet will work below that number but will be less efficient. -A variable speed inlet sacrifices weight for performance. this inlet has a variable geometry and will be sufficiently efficient at all flight regimes. Engines determine how air and jet fuel is converted into thrust. There is in this category, a wide range of potential options. High thrust low ISP, Low thrust High ISP, compromise engines, and dual mode engines. basically all the engine does is take intake air and fuel and applies the rocket equation. Engine ISP remains fixed. -If their is less intake air than the rated maximum the engine will produce proportionally less thrust until it reaches a flameout condition. (an example would be 20% flameout, so if there is 20% of the rated intake air then the engine shuts off.) -Dual mode engines perform like the SABRE. they have the option of burning liquid fuel and oxidizer instead of air and kerosene. Nozzles determine the amount of thrust ACTUALLY produced. The provide an efficiency scale based on altitude. there would be low altitude nozzles, high altitude nozzles, and multi-altitude nozzles. In addition some nozzles would provide thrust vectoring. -Low altitude nozzles provide excellent efficiency at low altitudes(95%) but significantly less as altitude increases. -High altitude Nozzles are most efficient at high altitudes, though will function at lower altitudes. -Variable altitude nozzles such as the aerospike are heavy but remain very efficient at different altitudes. Consequences on Design: Though this proposal may sound complicated it should, in practice, be both simple and intuitive. To build an engine you pick an inlet. -The inlet you choose depends on whether you wish to go fast or slow and if you have place in line or radially. then you pick an engine. -The engine you pick is determined by how efficient you want your plane to be vs how much thrust it must produce. then you pick a nozzle -The nozzle you pick is determined by how high you wish to fly, and whether or not you want thrust vectoring. I believe this system is also intuitive, as it allows you to actually choose where your plane will perform. It should provide results that conform better to expectations. Also by moving engine mass further forward it should help with aircrfat balancing.

could the poster who answers this also explain the process for the community. I am sure some people (me) will find it very useful and will be very grateful to you.

It may be beneficial to simulate physics on working craft (kerbal or probe core). I would support this, however, kerbals cannot keep there spacecraft in the air so I see little point. If the latter changes I will support the Former.

I made a 4.4 ton space-plane that can get into a 90km orbit and return to KSC. What are the rules for submitting it?

It appears that the engineer class is only partially implemented. I expect (read greater than 30% chance) that DV and mass values will be displayed in flight if you have a qualified engineer. I would also expect these to be accessible in the hanger.

I wouldn't be too worried. The engineer was obviously the least thought out class. I wouldn't be surprised if a majority of his functionality is dependent on parts of the game not yet implemented. He very well may serve as a form of Kerbal Engineer. Telling you your current mass and DV in flight. And I wouldn't be surprised if KER values become accessible from the hanger. It only adds to the game.

I would investigate a tandem launch system. The "rocket" contains reaction mass. A ground based laser system powered by a nearby nuclear reactor would power the lasers which would, through thermal ablation, accelerate the reaction mass out the rocket nozzle. oooh, oooh! how about we use a reusable first stage powered by a jet engine or hybrid rocket. that way we can get a more efficient launch profile. the possibilities are ENDLESS!!!

there are a number of problems with aerodynamics. allow me to explain. we are trying to approximate the real phenomenon of lift, drag, and moment on an aircraft. The Navier Stokes Equation will almost always give you the correct solution. The problem is we can't solve it yet. we can't solve it fully with a real life supercomputer, multi-million dollar research budget, and an actual set of projects that would benefit. we can solve specific examples but it is computationally expensive especially for viscous flow (read 90% of flows). So what are the equations being used in real life and in FAR? well these are numerical approximations. in Aerodynamics we rarely solve a set of true equations based on physics. Instead we have created equations that are close to a real life solution, with a bunch of assumptions, and then apply corrections. Here is the problem. These equations are designed to approximate reality with a low cost. They are what is deemed absolutely necessary to get an accurate solution; You want to create an approximation OF AN APPROXIMATION and still get ACCURATE RESULTS. Do that successfully and aerospace companies will pay you hundreds of thousands of dollars, universities will give you an honorary PHD, and some obtuse physical quantity will be named after you. Don't believe me on the latter? Reynolds number is a number named after someone who said that "flow becomes turbulent about here sorta?" It is incredibly unlikely you will get anything close to accurate results with less than the aerodynamic solutions. It is like approximating patched conics. will all your orbits be circles? "Well", you may way, "we don't NEED to accurately simulate aerodynamics right? this is just a GAME! QUIT KILLING MY FUN NERD!" ok stop a moment. I think the point is somewhat lost. What we are saying, with all this math, is that you will not get anything close to real life without those equations. If you don't simulate mach effects then ANY aircraft flying greater than Mach 0.3 (read very slow) will behave wrong. Not wrong in an ok its just a game way. Sloped wings will be pointless. Drag won't increase rapidly so dagger shaped aircraft are bad. you would want massive aspect ratios (look at a B 52). This is not even close to what we want to represent. Well why don't we get rid of viscous flow? Ok you're solution is accurate if you are flying either really fast or really slow (all flow is laminar at Mach 0). No turbulence is great but... well you get no lift. without viscosity the air leaves the way it came, merely moving around the wing, and you get zero lift. congratulations you accidentally the physics. See D'Alembert paradox. We actually do assume laminar flow in the real equations but use a correction to give us a usable solution (kutta joukowski) Why don't we assume air is always incompressible! Less math FTW! well you could. except that a dart shaped projectile traveling at Mach 20 will most CERTAINLY compress the air. Everything above Mach 1 RELIES on compressibility! aerodynamic heating? compressible flow. Supersonic drag? Compressible flow. Supersonic Lift Compressible Flow! The reality is that Aerodynamics is as simple as it gets. If you want a system where wings magically generate lift based on speed, and parts generate drag if there in front then you can get that. But the best designs will be nothing more then a dart. Picture everyone flying missiles with landing gear. Ok if your focus is on rockets very bad if you like actual planes.

It IS so easy to change. the cfg can be opened in notepad and is readily available in a subfolder of the gamedata/squad folder. thats how I fixed the radial decoupler bug, by adjusting a cfg in gamedata.

I really like the original posts notation. perhaps the only change I would make would be a two letter code for each major celestial body. Asteroids can have a special designation #C where the letter represents the asteroid class. unfortunately I have little else to contribute at the moment other than general approval. I would, however, like to point out that no system is perfect. There will likely be two systems, one for position, the other for time depending on the focus of the flowchart. Anyway a very simple sketch is appropriate for describing in a very simple overview what it is your report is about. More detailed diagrams should be contained within. One more suggestion. when denoting very simple missions with a clear goal I suggest using a shorthand. The primary focus of the mission is the only icon displayed and everything else is implied. Again not for use in all missions but useful for munar landings. just show the munar landing with orbital command module symbol.

and THAT is why stock KSP needs a DV calculator!

I would like to see a landing simulator for spaceplanes. It is incredibly hard to land something with the maneuverability of a brick, the stability of a jenga tower, and the speed of a ballistic missile on a runway that has no supporting equipment (such as compass rows lights and signals.)