natsirt721

The default path mode, body-centered inertial (ECI) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Earth-centered_inertial The mode I am suggesting, body-centered body-fixed (ECEF) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ECEF The difference is that the latter takes into account the rotation of the primary body.

The map view should have a toggle button to switch the reference frame from which trajectories are drawn. The current mode (body-centered inertial) is great for visualizing orbits and keplerian mechanics, but a body-centered body-fixed frame would provide some additional information. For example, landing on bodies you would be able to set up a retrograde maneuver and see your exact point of impact. For synchronous orbits, seeing the anelamma can help with precisely establishing an equatorial synchronous orbit. If I have a relay in a highly-elliptical orbit, I can see exactly when it will pass over points of interest on the ground IRL, converting from ECI to ECEF can be a bit of a challenge, but the simplicity of Kerbal's physics engine should simplify this to a just a transform based on the body's rotation rate. Additionally, there would have to be some setting for how far in the future to visualize the orbits, as they would no longer be closed conics but rather arbitrary paths.

@Jas0n I believe you've misquoted there...

In the off chance that this suggestion is ever implemented, can we also get more diverse locations for asteroids? AFAIK the only two places they currently spawn are near Kerbin and around Dres. Some additional locations might include: The aforementioned 'full' belt near Dres Trojan point asteroids co-orbiting near Jool and Kerbin A scattering of moonlets (prograde and retrograde) around Jool A sparse Kuiper-belt-esque region beyond Eeloo Bodies on highly elliptical orbits (comets) Famous last words, but it seems like it would be fairly easy to add many of these as possible locations for asteroid spawns.

If you do have to do insane plane changes, it can sometimes be far cheaper to boost yourself into a highly elliptical orbit and change planes near apogee - just make sure your apo is near the node. The plane change dV is a function of your current velocity and at apo you're going much slower, hence less dV. Even though the maneuver requires three burns instead of one it can (sometimes) take less total dV at the cost of increased time. IIRC the Ulysses probe required a near polar sun orbit, so they shot it out to Jupiter and used a gravity assist to perform the plane change.

Make the coin with CAD and distribute the file for 3D printing. If you can stand the idea of a plastic coin, that is.

Earth time, for sure. You don't have to convert years and days into meaningful timespans. Especially due to the 'more days-per-year but fewer hours-per-day' disparity.

This could be because in KSP turbojet and turbofan engines take much longer to spool up that real engines. Less thrust & acceleration earlier means lower velocity for a given distance (with the same TWR) in KSP than IRL. However, KSP engines usually reach full spool by the end of the takeoff run, and combined with the high TWR allow for a more rapid ascent. Also, KSP totally fails to model the sharp increase in drag in the transonic and hypersonic regions, which is probably why the model uses the increased drag multiplier. With an accurate subsonic model, drag would be far too low at high Mach to be practical - the multiplier combined with the polar curve at low velocity isn't too disparate, but enough so that you noticed the improper L/D (props for that!).

Jet aircraft performance is highly dependent on (primarily) velocity and air density in complex ways. Flying at a variety of altitudes and velocities you're probably experiencing this and can't make sense of it. Thrust from the jet engine, and lift and drag on the airframe are three of the four forces governing vehicle dynamics (weight is the other) and each is affected by the freestream conditions (temperature, pressure, velocity, and derivatively density and Mach number). In turn, these forces govern acceleration and velocity which affects how the freestream conditions change. Under some conditions you can be unable to change your position and velocity like you would expect; e.g. shallows dives don't change your conditions enough to accelerate rapidly like you would expect. KSP doesn't exactly model real world interactions (modeling subsonic compressible aero is tricky enough, let along super- and hypersonic aero), but it's close enough to be passable and the interactions are still very complex. Short of learning the governing equations and how KSP modifies them I'd say the best thing to do would be trial and error - what conditions are required to get to to other conditions? If you are so inclined, there is a "show areo dialogue" tick in the F12 menu (sorry if you're on console :/) which will enable a button on most parts to show you a window with all the nitty gritty values. tl;dr aerodynamics is a complex topic, learn the trends and you should be able to get by.

I think Porkjet's nuclear engines mod has/had a nuclear tuturbojet engine, which is similar to what you're thinking of. Rather than use fuel and oxidizer to heat the atmosphere as a reaction mass, it uses (surprise) a nuclear reaction. This would conceivably provide thrust for as long as your nuclear fuel lasts (well, until the engine needs to be rebuilt anyway).

I've tried this too, but it looks like the small static panels only operate at around 20-30% during the worst bit of reentry. Only when my speed drops to ~1km/s do they suddenly suck the heat up and then usually sit around 70-80% until touchdown or the heat dissipates. Intuitively this doesn't seem right, but I'm not nearly versed in thermo enough to repudiate it. Something to do with the plasma sheath perhaps? The panels are also really draggy so I try to avoid using them whenever possible. As for stability, pairs of airbrakes at the rear of the vehicle can dramatically help during reentry. If you attach them top and bottom but make the top ones stick further out, the resulting drag will tend to keep your nose up a few degrees. They're also super useful if you end up in a flat spin - I've recovered several times from certain death by deploying them all (beware of over-gee!). Their thermal tolerance is pretty low however, make sure to watch the gauges and retract them before they fry.

I thought fine controls just graduated the ramp-up speed of the control outputs. Does it do more than that?

The ISS does align its panels edge-on to prograde during the night, but that's only to reduce drag (might also reduce micro-meteriod impacts?). At higher altitudes that behaviour is entirely overkill; first because drag becomes negligible, and second because the higher you go, the less time you spend occluded w.r.t. your orbital period.

According to my rough calculations, a mere 10 m/s would require 300,000,000,000,000 tons of liquid fuel with the LV-N. Using 100 of them (60,000 kN thrust) would take about 430,000,000,000 seconds or ~13,000 years.

And you're worried about overkill? edit: But point taken, I would agree with the overkill assessment

Oh I totally agree about the realism aspect. Automatic deployment is something I forgot to consider. I think fuel cells will reduce their output based on need, that's sort of like automatic deployment?

I think stock can handle boats just fine as is, and the KSC is close enough to the ocean not to warrant a designated dock. One of the great things about KSP is that people do crazy stuff with parts as they were never intended to be used. I just saw examples of people using fairings as rotor bearings. People make boats work all the time with what they have, I see no need to specialize there. Plus, designated boat parts would be very strange to work with. Lego-ing hull segments together doesn't seem like it would work as well with naval hulls as it does with space/aircraft. That being said, an electric or liquid fuel propeller / impeller would be amazing - current propulsion methods are pretty limited. Air-breathers do well enough until you get to Eve, and nothing else matches that level of efficiency.

When If we get actual shadows maybe we'll get something like this.

Toggled by clicking a menu item (or AG) as opposed to deployed by clicking a menu item (or AG)?

Try separating the munition before launching, but keep indestructibility on. That would confirm the joints theory. Also use a single part for the munition so there's no inter-play there. h0: The forces involved would probably break the joint, but it's hard to say what the end effect would be. The munition might carry on its course or something else crazy might occur.

I could see this either way - having never used PF I can't really comment of its ease of use but I don't really have qualms with the way stock fairings are implemented, except for when they totally and utterly faily to function as intended. That I can and will disagree with. The last time it happened was with a 3.75 and 3x clamshell. I would concur that the smaller ones seem to be more stable.

I'm with Gargamel on this one; KSP is not an easy game by any stretch of imagination, and I like it that way. Few games these days are challenging to the point where you don't have to learn a specific skill set in the context of the game to be effective - KSP provides practical experience with a vast array of pragmatic engineering subjects. Some tasks are definitely outside the scope of the game but very few are impossible - often times you just need to approach it from a different angle. Decent land vehicle design is pretty tough in KSP because most of the dev effort is focused on simplifying rocket physics, not driving physics. While I do agree that it would be a nice feature, especially given the current configurable state of wheels, I cannot really justify steering limiters (except perhaps in the reduced slew method I mentioned above) in any other regard.

I find that if I use more than 3 pieces, when I go to detach it turns the contents into a blender. 2 and sometimes 3 seems to be ok (n.b. version 1.2.2), but any more than that fail miserably. I swear, if SQUAD had fewer qualms about integrating mod content like they did with SPP back in .25, KSP would be in a MUCH better place...

I think you're confusing your gaming experience with 2001:ASO

Prepare to die disappointed