cpast

They really don't, though.

Kerbosynchronous orbits have to be the same period as the sidereal day, not the solar day. They are now a bit under 6 hours, as opposed to before when they were precisely 6 hours.

I at first had thought mass was more than 0.03. If mass were higher, that would make more sense.

Most civilian GPS systems do not work in orbit - they have velocity/altitude limits, to prevent them being used in missiles (remember - GPS was originally developed as a military system, and is run by the Air Force). If the US government supports your project, you can get receivers that will work in orbit, but you need special receivers. For pulse propulsion: Good luck getting a launch provider to take such a satellite. Keep in mind that the Cubesat design spec prohibits pyrotechnics, and any system with over 100 Watt-hours stored chemical energy has to be analyzed on a mission-by-mission basis (and probably fewer launch providers would want to take them). Propulsion has to comply with a specific standard, which may or may not account for pulse propulsion (the three kinds it mentions that I can see are solid rockets, cryogenic, and hypergolic).

MRO did a capture burn. The only craft that have entered atmosphere at escape speeds (i.e. on a transfer orbit) have been rovers. "Aerobraking" isn't actually used for this, the term is "aerocapture"; "aerobraking" refers to things like MRO, that do capture burns into a highly elliptical orbit and gradually lower apoapsis by dipping a tiny bit into the atmosphere over hundreds of orbits.

You don't need to buy anything, not even the chassis (although they recommend you get deployment springs from Cal Poly, even that's not a requirement) -- you can make just about all of it if you so choose, provided it meets specs. Cubesat isn't a company, it's a standard. Anything meeting the Cubesat spec is perfectly fine for a launch, whether you built it from scratch, paid someone to design and build the whole thing, or anywhere in between (many launches are universities who build the satellite themselves). Cal Poly inspects Cubesats before flight, and decides on waivers for anything violating spec, although the launch provider has ultimate control over what flies on their rocket and can require whatever additional things they want. Points in the spec to note: * Mass of a 3U is limited to 4 kg, although there can be exceptions on a mission-by-mission basis. 6U can have up to 12 kg. * Ordinarily, stored chemical energy is at most 100 Watt-hours (can be higher on a case-by-case basis, but not all launchers will be OK with that) * All propulsion has to comply with AFSPVMAN91-710, so anything does not quite go.

The O-10 has *really* bad ISP. Why's it need a nerf?

I think that post was about translations given an official status by Squad, not unofficial mods. If Squad were to officially endorse translations, then yes, that's an issue. If they're mods, no problem.

And here I thought all Kerbals lived in harmony.

Since Vernors seem not very helpful for docking (unless you stuck one on each side for translation and had powerful enough reaction wheels, I guess), the Q-10 seems to fill the role of main power on light craft needing 6-dof movement (e.g. tugs, low-gravity landers, light orbital crew/science transfer vehicles). That way, you only have to deal with one fuel system (right now, I actually use tugs that have just RCS blocks for this reason, relying on 'H' and 'N' with no special main power).

Yes, I do. My post was a legitimate answer to the question: Several moderators also make mods, and they had the option for early access.

Mechjeb can calculate where parachutes will land, so it's by no means impossible.

It does not. Above 22 km or so (0.01 atm), on-rails parts ignore atmospheric drag; below, they are removed.

I think all moderators (at least, those over 18 years old) have the option to get early access if they so choose.

I believe mods have already done that; it's certainly possible with a mod.

However, a single laser only has two states; radio systems easily have many more than two symbols. EDIT: Apparently LLCD had 2 states as well. Disregard this post.

If it's a laser, you can't have everyone with a good enough telescope viewing it. Laser beams are narrow; that's the whole point of lasers. While it wouldn't be the size of a laser pointer beam (it would be substantially bigger than that), it would still have to track a ground station. There are ways to make this work, but those also work for radio signals. Lasers would not be faster; why would they be? Radio waves are also light.

I think it's reasonable to expect devnotes (or FAQ, or some sort of dev comments on things) tonight at some point.

Why would you have to do that?

Ted said a week or so ago that

Devnotes don't have the potential for unexpected major complications, the way an actual release does.

And a lot more people failed to meet their goals. The Kickstarter success rate is 43% for *all* projects; a site I found estimated 7% success for projects with a goal over $100,000. That one person's project went viral, explaining the huge amount of money given. It's not representative of anything.

Aerocapture may not actually be entirely off the table as a possibility (except due to engineering constraints): I had been going off of Wikipedia, and was unaware that landers have done direct atmospheric entry to Mars from interplanetary orbit. Still hard, but similar things have been done

Pretty much. EDIT: I had been going off Wikipedia saying aerocapture had never been done; I was unaware rovers have done direct entry from hyperbolic orbit.

N-body is hard. It is not analytically solvable (it relies on step-by-step numerical simulation), and doesn't have stable orbits (as a rule). In contrast, patched-conics has almost all orbits stable, is fairly intuitive, is not nearly as subject to things like floating-point errors (because it's analytically solvable, so errors don't cascade down), and in general has a lot of advantages for a game. And it has nothing to do with advanced math or physics; what you need for N-body is someone who's skilled in applied math, because the main challenge is optimizing lots and lots of numerical calculation.