Leszek

Have a quick look at the names here. Some of them imply genders but most would fit either. So in fact we could have a majority female base here. Unless they say something that implies their gender how could you tell the difference? It is not like a post about the DV needed to get to orbit of IKE is going to have references to lipstick or football. In addition, my name implies I am male. Or it would if you recognize it's ethnic origin. Even so, how could you know? Any population of any size is going to be a mix of male and female unless said population has a gender specific qualifier. Besides we all know this is the internet: Where the men are men, the women are men, and the children are undercover cops. (Old IRC joke.)

He is right, look at KER on the side there, the PE is 69ish.

I think that the fairings should be procedural. Though I appreciate that getting things to fit in standard sizes is a fun challenge for many I have two reasons why this shouldn't apply to stock: 1: Right now you can build all sorts of things, the sky is the limit. Fixed size fairings would hold back those that just want to build huge fun machines. Not everyone plays for realism. If you play for halfway realism then: 2: IR is not stock. If you don't have movable joints, it is hard to fold up stuff so that they fit inside fairings. NASA, ESA, and the others can fold up stuff like origami if they need to, to make it fit. We can't, or more accurately our options are much more limited. If we had some basic movable joints than I would be just peachy with fixed size fairings. My two cents.

The only problem is that as soon as you do something it re-orients the Kerbal to whatever useless plane the game picks. This plane depends on the camera so best options is to press "V" until you get something useful. Though lots of times I just re-orient the ship. I hope changing the orientation of the Kerbal is something they will add in the future.

I was under the impression that girbles have been something Squad has said will be coming but they want to make sure it is done right. (Not sure exactly what that means.) I have heard several people imply that isn't the case. So the question is has something changed that I missed?

Oh my. The drama. Seriously, we have known for some time now that they weren't putting FAR into the game. In addition, we don't know anything about the new aerodynamics coming up. Already people are crying. If they didn't put new aerodynamics people would be crying. If they put in FAR, people would be crying. If they put in Near, people would be crying. We have some people talking about how they expect Squad to screw up the new system. Really. Lets just forget the whole damned game is made by Squad. They managed to not screw that up. Lots of useless, pointless, drama about what exactly? FAR and NEAR are good, but there is more than one way to skin the cat. The new aerodynamics might be totally awesome. They can't be worse than stock aero. Farram4 might quit his mod. TRUE. (And that was always the case. What would you do if he quit regardless of a new version of KSP? It could have happened and can happen at any time.) Or his mod might not be functional and fixable to make it functional in the new version. Also TRUE. But even in that worse case scenario there new aerodynamics would still be better than stock and might actually be pretty good. There is literally no point in any drama now except for one talking point... I would take this opportunity to urge Squad make sure FAR/NEAR is still possible and or fixable in just in case. I would take this opportunity to urge everyone else to relax. This whole thread reminds me of Weird Al's song, "First World Problems."

ILS doesn't track the rocket in any way. It sends a radio beam up and the rocket follows it down. The barge just needs some antennas. The DME is the only part that would interact with the rocket, and it just responds to a ping from the rocket. However the equipment is simple and reliable and off the shelf. Even on the rocket side the ILS equipment is not complicated. If your smartphones could tune to FM just above broadcast range, the app to turn your smartphone into an ILS device would be free and simple. Though you are right, you don't need to know the wind or anything, you just follow the beam down.

In what way is Squad involved? In what way are they associated? Who here has been endorsing these guys? Why do we need to shut down the thread exactly?

That reminds me of a comedy skit. Check it out at 6:50. (The whole thing is funny but the relevant part starts then.)

As was pointed out, the loss of control of the fins due to running out of hydraulic fluid explains the miss. Visual landing aids wouldn't have helped in this situation, it was night and the area was foggy. I have no idea what they actually used but I would put my money on an ILS based system myself. The technology is mature and reliable. Commercial plains use it to control the autopilot for autoland functionality is rough weather. The system is attached to the barge and thus would roll right and left with the physical barge. Also the DME (Distance Measuring Equipment) would detect the barge rise and fall with the waves if it is sensitive enough. (Typically the ones in commercial aircraft report to the nearest 10th of a nautical mile. I am not sure what accuracy they have beyond that. The system works by pinging the DME equipment and timing the delay for a reply. I don't know how sensitive they can get.) Assuming the DME is sensitive enough it means the rocket computer could track the rise and fall and rotation of the barge and make corrections as required.

Yes, you see that sort of thing with radial SRB sep but not on a inline second stage which (correct me if I am wrong) is liquid fueled.

I wonder if they are fail safe such that they return to neutral position if something goes wrong with the hydraulics. Say if they are spring loaded. They would then be able to help keep the stage stable and perhaps give the engines a chance to save the ship yet.

According to the youtube video the fins rotate to help steer the craft. Incidentally while I was looking for this video I found another. There has been some discussion here about how they keep the barge stable with mostly guesses on how they do it. I found this video stating they use thrusters. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ekJcUBKv50Y

I once had a ship going to orbit to deploy the first part of a space station. This ship had a cupola module in it and like usual a Kerbal snuck into it. This one wasn't designed to have a Kerbal in it and I didn't build any way to save the ship if something went wrong. A crewed ship will always have a parachute for example and I can stage to a reentry from sub orbital if there is an issue. This didn't have anything and if it breaks the (stowaway) crew will die. Well, radial decoupler bug saw to it that the core stage was totaled at about 20 KM in altitude. I staged to the orbital maneuvering stage and burned for orbit. This stage was designed to do the orbital insertion and the orbital transfer so it had some fuel. On the downside I was using NEAR at the time and the cupola isn't aerodynamic. Still I managed to make suborbital with an apoapsis of 85 KM. A quick check with a maneuver node shows that I needed some 350 DV to insert into orbit. I already knew from a Scott Manley video that a Kerbal jet pack has about 550 DV in it. So out I go and burn for dear life. I had to do some vertical thrusting to keep from falling down from apoapsis but I made it to an 85 X 80 orbit. The rescue mission was trivial and a complete success. Now at least I know how Kerbals can get stranded up there. Also I now check before launch to make sure there are no stowaways.

Yes they had that issue and others, hence the version numbers. Some of the first dino's they made were not viable ETC... It has been a long time since I read the book too but I remember version numbers such as 4.73 and such. Implying several versions of non viable dino's with the current version itself having much revision since the baseline V4. But the point is that it was a long drawn out process with lots of trial and error and many best guesses. The whole thing was much more complicated and sophisticated then "we use frog DNA to fill in the gaps."

Ever since the movie, people forget how it was done in the book. The DNA wasn't filled in with frog DNA. In the movie they just simplified to frog so they wouldn't have to do a long lecture. The DNA gaps where filled in by searching all samples of DNA from ALL life, birds, fish, mammals, ETC... When they found a match that had the same start and finish sequence they filled in the gap with what the modern animals had. Issues of who is more closely related to who is only relevant when they have competing samples of DNA with different gap fillers. Even then (as was pointed out earlier) they had to make revisions and the dinosaurs even had version numbers to match what version of Dino they had. In the book, not all the dino's reproduced and those that did happened to have frog DNA in them. But they didn't realize that until it was pointed out by DR. Grant well after fecal matter started hitting the fan.

I agree. I am not sure why the XP system isn't for example. It doesn't seem to depend on anything that isn't in the science career. Also making it so that you have to spend science to upgrade facilities shouldn't be that hard. Just my two cents.

I delete a career and start over from scratch whenever a Kerbal buys it. In other news I have been to Mun and Minmus hundreds of times. Duna, once.

I have just completed Beales tutorial on things for the purpose of making my own mods based on some of those. Specifically Mercury, Gemini, and some service modules. Of course I have no idea if I have any talent in the area yet, but if you feel like trying it out I would recommend the tutorial. http://forum.kerbalspaceprogram.com/entries/3232-Part-Modding-Tutorial-1-5-Modeling

NEAR has no settings at all. FAR you can install and ignore the settings. It does make rockets easier in that they don't need as much DV to get to orbit, but it also makes it harder in that if you don't fly right or design right you will lose the rocket. The improvement for getting into orbit isn't that great, 3600 VS 4500 so I don't use any mods to make that any harder. Having said that, that mod (whose name escapes me ATM) has a one button preset to fix that. Finally FAR has been getting more drag up high (and therefore taking away some of the DV advantage) and that is what is causing the DRE issues we are having. Back to topic: Starwaster, I have tried the settings you specified and my ships are now being destroyed during ascent. My rockets start with a 1.25 TWR, so it is not like I am bombing through the atmosphere. I have been playing with the multiplier setting and changing my ascent to a slower gravity turn to try to get higher before I speed up. I think I can fix that issue on my own but I figured I would say something and let you know all the same.

I meant maintain it. Yea I found the menu, I was over thinking it.

This mod is still my #1 go to mod for space capsules. And now I see you have a part modding for beginners tutorial! Very nice.

Perhaps a FAR/NEAR button? I am already on hard now so I will get to those changes. Now I have done that before in an old version of DR and a config file. In this version I thought I read that the key combination (which I don't remember) was disabled but then I see someone above mentioning that they changed it in game. The front page info looks a bit out of date. What would be the best way do go about doing that? Config file? (Nevermind, found it. Derp) (Or perhaps a difficulty slider?) (And last edit) I think that people are going to complain about something like this because it is very much a suit to taste in an alternate environment where there isn't an objective answer on how it should be. Having said that, this is an awesome mod and I thank you for making it!

So then the question becomes what should I do? If it is FAR that is creating the issue, should I change my settings? Should I wait for another version of DRE?

First, Love this mod to death. I have a suggestion. The AP/PE alarms should default to whichever is next instead of just AP. Or perhaps have the option to default this way. I don't know if I am the only one, but I get so used to KAC knowing what I want to put an alarm for next that I sometimes forget to to change it to PE. Just a thought.