cpast

Keep in mind that part of your supervisor's job is to tell you when your research paper writing needs work. It's not an accusation of you, and it's not them just being mean; you should take what they're saying seriously, but then work to improve it. Talk to them and ask if they have more specific stuff. Reading other papers in the field is a good idea (you should be doing this anyway when you're doing research, but if your writing needs work then pay attention to how they do things). There's quite likely a standard structure of a paper; follow that structure, be concise, and make sure you aren't meandering back and forth between topics. You might have to rewrite things a lot; that's fairly normal in writing (it might help if you first outline it so you know what you want to talk about and in what order).

Those are target orbits for contracts. If you go to Mission Control, you'll see you have offered or active contracts from that company to send a probe to a specific orbit, which is that orbit. The Map view only shows locations and target orbits for contracts you've accepted, but the Tracking Station shows it for pending contracts (that you can accept, but haven't accepted yet) as well.

I assume that's because they added it as a response to Armstrong's death, which happened in 2012 (after KSP development had started), while Gagarin died many years ago.

Is it safe to solder on the ISS? I thought soldering generally had concerns about fumes, which would be bad on the ISS.

I've used Separatrons; before I used RealChute, I slapped radial parachutes on them (a radial parachute's insta-open behavior under stock means it's actually a very good way to slow the boosted while the rocket climbs away).

So like this? Or this? Retractable gear predate jets. For that matter, do you mean the nice perfect fuselage retraction of this 1990s jet?

"Procedural" doesn't really have a solid definition, but given that apparently tanks in the Procedural Parts mod work like "set diameter and length and texture, and the tank adjusts to fit that," and no one in the community has a problem calling those tanks "procedural," I think it's a bit pointless to try to maintain that "telling it the appropriate diameter and height" isn't procedural. As far as I can tell, the term "procedural" in the community basically means "the part doesn't have a fixed size and shape, but rather dynamically generates the model and textures based on parameters that can be changed fairly easily" -- that is, the model (and textures) is procedural, and isn't limited to what someone made in Blender or other external software. Basically, the part model used ingame is dynamically generated by a subroutine (or "procedure") at runtime, rather than set beforehand in 3D modeling software and just loaded straight into the game. And by that standard, "sculpt this fairing that is then processed as one part and only shows as one part in the VAB menu" is certainly procedural. I think you're getting too hung up on Procedural Fairings and the way that does things, but even then you can tweak the shape of a PF fairing within certain parameters, and don't have to accept the automagically generated one. I admit the definition is sorta fuzzy; from the dev's point of view, something can be procedural and yet hardcoded, if it's easy to change (e.g. if one number controls terrain on Kerbin, it's procedural from their point of view but not from ours, because we can't change that number). I'm really confused what you mean here. If you supply different input to a PP or PF part, they produce different models. If you stick a different payload in a PF fairing, it defaults to a different model (yes, "thing contained in this part" is absolutely an input in the same way that "thing set by tweakables" is one; PF adjusts to both, proc tanks to the latter, these fairing seem to do input slightly differently, but all of them have some sort of input on the basis of which they create a model). "Seed" is not a concept that has anything to do with procedures; a procedure has parameters or arguments or inputs, but "seed" is a term only applicable to a PRNG (or, I suppose, a plant). From that point of view, "procedural" would be like "procedural level generation" in other games, in which it's a shorthand for "pseudorandom levels instead of handmade ones." But that's not the only use of the term; PF and PP don't have "seeds," because the point isn't to be pseudorandom. I accept that you didn't introduce the term here AFAIK, but it's still not a term one would typically use. Incidentally, the real term used to describe a function that produces different output when given different input is "not constant." ...which was kinda his point? There are many people who post on the "What have you done" thread. The fact that they don't tend to build like him establishes that his way of building is not the only way. I'd wager that many build *very* differently from him, since he plays RSS+FAR+RealFuels+other realism stuff AFAIK, and so his rockets are presumably mostly less ridiculous-looking than what stock players can easily do. I don't see how this in any way goes against "different people do stuff differently." But there are plenty of people whose style it *will* change. So is the rule "when Bill Phil already accounts for it you can add it, but otherwise no"? You account for those things, but players who don't know how real rockets work likely have not a clue that engine thrust is lower at sea level than in orbit (they didn't think fuel consumption changed either, but since KSP so far changes fuel consumption they assume that's how it works), or that reentering in a steep orbit from Minmus is going to be fatal for their astronauts. Columbia probably helped public awareness of this, but how many regular players do you think act like you have to stick heat shields on everything when the 3-person capsule doesn't even *have* something that works like a heat shield? Given that currently the obvious way to recover, say, a Goo canister from orbit is no better than "slap it on the side of a rocket and have it exposed to the full force on the atmosphere on reentry," and there's no issue with doing that in stock, do you think that adding reentry heat will not change people's style of play? I mean, that makes the whole concept of recovering experiments very, very different, with a lot more consideration to the cross-section of the rocket. And here's the confusion. When everyone else on the entire forum uses the term "procedural" one way, and you use it another way, then discussions are actually pretty much pointless -- you aren't even talking about the same thing as everyone else. You're hung up on "procedural" meaning "procedural generation based on pseudorandom seed," but that's not what the term means at all: all it means is that something is algorithmically generated based on input. Randomness is utterly irrelevant, and insisting on a definition of "procedural" that no one else uses means you should probably reconsider if you want to discuss things. How do you figure? We've already had major changes in construction -- tweakables and gizmos (or do you think "you can offset a part in any direction, including to clip it inside something else" isn't a major change?) And it doesn't seem like this is even going to be too far a departure from current building -- you still control the shape of the fairing, just without having to use tons of individual parts and the standard generic VAB interface (you get a more optimized for the task one).

Doesn't 0.90's SAS show the various options for what heading to hold? Why's this rocket not have that?

Isn't the radial in between small and large? Also, you can just add more radials if needed, which means it's a lot less important to have the XL one.

When you talk about "different altitudes," that's KSP concepts talking. In real life, in the vast majority of cases, altitude isn't the only (or even the primary) concern about your orbit -- you also care about orientation of the orbit (argument of periapsis, longitude of the ascending node, inclination). In KSP, unless there's a reason not to, you always launch into equatorial orbit. Equatorial orbit is a fine orbit, which is generally quite nice. But no launch sites are on the equator in real life, so you have to launch into an inclined orbit (GTO loses its inclination at apogee, at the same time as the satellite enters GEO). Almost all satellites are intended to achieve some goal on Earth, in which case you care very much about what your satellite's ground track will look like. For instance, if you launch a constellation of satellites, you have fairly specific requirements for orbital orientation, and it's not enough to be high enough.If you're going to a space station you have to match its orbit, which is going to not be in GEO (so a GTO satellite won't easily mix with it -- you *could* do it if the satellite itself went from LEO to GTO, but that's worse than having the launch vehicle deliver straight to GTO). And then you have to deal with the massive amount of integration work, knowing that if *any* satellite fails it could cause serious problems for the rest. Lots of payloads doesn't really work unless you don't particularly care what orbit most of them go into. It's complicated to deal with, and so you *would* wind up in the same situation as someone using a semi to handle mail delivery routes.

Which is why I'm happy that the system now seems to involve some amount of actually *building* the fairing, instead of being automagical.

Can't. RPM is GPLed, and Mihara isn't the only contributor, which means *all* contributors have to agree to relicense it to allow integration (or someone has to rewrite basically everything that's been touched by anyone who didn't agree to relicense it).

How does the construction work? The devnote seems to indicate that "build fairing" is a special mode you enter into (either right away or through tweakables), but in that mode do you place panels like building a mini rocket, or are the controls things like "increase width to 1.5 m, add 1 m cylinder at that width"? If the latter, can we build fairings with crazy shapes, or does it have to be circular cross-section and/or mostly cylindrical? EDIT: Actually, what'd be really neat would be to have a video of the fairing editing. Maybe in a future Squadcast? EDIT EDIT: Also, thanks to the Squad employees for answering questions here -- from my point of view, shorter devnote + answering questions >> just a longer devnote.

It seems the procedural fairings coming in 1.0 will work rather differently from the Procedural Fairings mod; instead of slapping a part on and having it automagically form the fairing, you actually have control over the design of the fairing. After reading that, I'm wondering if it could be adapted to wings - pure automagically shaped wings lose flexibility, but if we could *build* wings without using 50,000 parts, that'd be awesome.

I was concerned about this, but it seems like the fairings *won't* be "slap a part on and you're done" -- you *build* the fairing, with a lot more flexibility than PF gives. And on that note: Is there any way that could be adapted to wings? If the fairing system is procedural but you have control over the shape, will either Squad or (more likely, as it hasn't been mentioned) a modder be able to adapt that system to build wings of a shape of your choice?

The F-15 also has an alternating-step ladder, as do the F-22 and the F-35. However, none of theirs look like the KSP ladder, so I'm pretty sure it's based on the A-10.

That is a very clever way to do proc fairings. Can't wait to see how it works out.

The comms delay is because signals only travel at the speed of light, which is finite. That's the only problem; the issue isn't being able to communicate with Earth (that happens only around every 1 month in 26), it's that it takes time (4-24 minutes) to do so.

I believe the original versions of KSP had a launch tower, but it ended up being generally hated (because it was easy to run into during launch) so was removed.

Naturally, you presumably drive in from the Netherlands, though. Actually, how *does* Squad coordinate with so many remote workers? Do you guys have, like, daily meetings at such-and-such a time, or is it basically "work on your stuff and chat with other staff as you feel like you need to"?

That would be the case if all of Squad worked in the office, but don't most of them work remotely? I was under the impression that many, or even a majority, of the devs aren't even in Mexico.

Ariane already does this routinely with 2 satellites, and it's not uncommon to have a number of CubeSats on another launch because they're so small. However, there are issues with launching tons of things on one rocket. First, it only works if they're all going into mostly similar orbits -- if you have them going into different orbits, then you need to waste a lot of fuel moving things around between orbits (GTO is an exception, as it's not rare to have two payloads going to GTO). Keep in mind that real orbits are mostly not equatorial and at similar altitudes; real orbits are almost always at some inclination, often a significant one (again, GEO is an exception). Also, it's highly questionable whether you'd be saving money. The issue with a huge rocket is that they're really, really, really, really expensive; you need a *lot* of payload to make that worthwhile. Unless you have tons of missions that happen to be ready at around the same time, and which all take similar orbits and all fit on the rocket, you'll end up substantially under your weight budget, which means the launch will be very expensive compared to a smaller rocket. It's similar to why airlines fly regional jets instead of using 747s everywhere, or why mail carriers don't use semis on their routes -- having a huge capacity is only sensible if you can actually fill that capacity in a reasonable amount of time. In the actual launch market, there just aren't enough payloads to be able to reliably fill a huge rocket going to a specific orbit with 5-6 of them; that means a customer has to either wait a long time for other customers who can share the launch with them, or pay the cost of a massive rocket without many customers to split it between. Combining a *crew* module with cargo is what happened on the Space Shuttle, and was one reason it was so expensive. Manned spacecraft have to meet extremely high standards for reliability, and you don't need that for cargo (you can get by with more risky launches and an insured payload). Manned missions are also *really* expensive; combining with cargo requires the cargo customers to subsidize the manned mission to some degree. One lesson from the Shuttle is that building a craft to take a crew *and* cargo means the cargo launches end up being expensive.

I was unaware that violence was the standard response to people who are mistaken about scientific facts.

All but interplanetary transfer (I've only done a handful of those at all, though), precise landing (could probably do it myself, but would be much lower precision), and gravity assist (never done at all). For rendezvous, I generally use MechJeb, but have done it without (it's just somewhat annoying). I initially docked with MJ, but then discovered DPAI and found that it was super easy to do myself (plus, I not-infrequently find myself having to capture spinning cargo, which *requires* manual piloting -- while it'd certainly be better automated, and if I used kOS I might write routines to do it, MJ doesn't handle that situation). I generally execute nodes with MechJeb even when I made them myself, and as soon as I unlock ascent guidance on a career save use it for all ascents (again, I've done them without, and can do them OK without, but the ascent is somewhat time-consuming and I'd really rather not have to babysit it for the whole time).

There's a difference between "shut down" meaning "decommission a plant" and "shut down" meaning "stop the nuclear reaction." The latter isn't like turning a key, because it's even easier - you press one button, the control rods are immediately fully inserted into the reactor, and if it is a decent reactor design (not the RBMK, with its graphite-tipped control rods) your reaction has stopped in seconds. That doesn't mean you're home free, as fuel rods are still decaying and releasing heat, but the reaction is shut down extremely quickly, and decay heat is much less than the heat caused by the reaction. Even that doesn't take too long to be no longer a problem assuming your cooling systems were working properly enough (and most reactors have additional emergency cooling systems that draw water from outsidefor exactly this reason). Decommissioning takes time not because it takes time to stop the reaction, but because it takes time to deal with waste disposal regulation, bring enough capacity online to offset the loss in generation, and wind down everything that's going on at the plant; however, decommissioning is irrelevant here, and the relevant kind of shutdown happens initially in seconds, and then all that's left is decay heat (there's no chain reaction anymore).