Snark

Hi everyone, We just posted about how this thread has been breaking rules, and why it needs to stop that or we may have to lock it permanently. Already (just now) we had to remove a post about KSP. KSP is out of bounds for this thread. So this thread will now remain locked for several days, to give everyone a chance to read and understand. Please take this seriously. We know you enjoy this thread, and we'd hate to have to lock it permanently if people can't follow the rules. Thank you.

My understanding is that it's because the physics engine isn't multi-threaded. The game only really uses one CPU, regardless of how many cores you have on your machine.

A huge swath of content has been removed, due to: politics Protip: complaining about other people being political is, itself, "politics" off-topic digressions Protip: saying "this is off-topic, but" doesn't make it any more on-topic, folks politics telling other people what to do, a.k.a. "backseat moderating" politics personal attacks politics Just a friendly reminder of stuff that everyone already knows (right?): Politics is out of bounds here. Forum rule 2.2.b. The huge swath of bickering we've had to remove in this thread is ample evidence of why we have this rule in the first place. Leave the political outrage at the door, please. There are plenty of other places on the internet for you to be angry about politics if you so choose. Thanks. Please stay on-topic. Forum rule 2.2.o. If someone else posts off-topic stuff, just report it if you like; don't respond to it, and particularly don't respond just to tell people that it's off-topic. That's because, Please don't tell other people what to do or not to do. This is called "backseat moderating", it's not your place, you're not a moderator. Forum rule 3.2 addresses this. If you think someone is behaving inappropriately, please just report the post and let the moderator team have a look at it. It's what we're for. Please avoid personal remarks. Forum rule 2.2.d. We're all friends here, there's no need to get personal. Address the post, not the poster. Thank you for your understanding.

Several posts have been removed, owing to: snide put-downs personal remarks arguing about arguing There's nothing wrong with lively debate of opposing opinions. But let's please remember to be civil, and leave the insults, put-downs, and condescension at the door. Thank you for your understanding.

It's been a few weeks, and the license issues haven't been addressed. Locking the thread pending resolution of the issue. @LizardMan , please reach out to us privately when you believe the license issues are resolved, and we're happy to work with you to get your thread unlocked. Thank you for your understanding.

Locked per OP request.

Okay, that is seriously cool. My guess is that it'll go kablooie, but I look forward to your findings with great anticipation.

The atmospheric dV mainly applies to just the first 10 km or so of altitude-- after that you're mostly in vacuum. So a good rule of thumb is to use the atmospheric dV for your very first stage where you lift off the launchpad, and vacuum for everything else.

Moving to Gameplay Questions, where a lot of the question-answerers hang out. The "stage view" shows all your stages. Little vertical row of buttons, in the bottom right corner in the VAB, or bottom left when in flight. These should have little blue labels on each one, saying how much dV the stage has. Your total dV is the sum of the dV for the individual stages. One thing to bear in mind is that fir any engine, the dV will be different depending on whether it's operating in atmosphere or vacuum. For some engines the difference is just a little, for others it's a lot. BB default, the VAB shows your atmospheric dV for all stages. You can toggle the display from atmospheric to vacuum via one of the settings buttons, in gray on the bottom right corner of the screen. As for how much dV you need, is this a return mission or one-way?

Moving to Kerbal Network, since this isn't about the game itself. Not for regular users. It's been deliberately set up so that only moderators can remove posts, because of the potential for abuse (trolls and so forth). If you have a post of yours that you would like to be removed, then you could always request this from the moderators-- just file a report on your own post, with a note requesting removal. We're happy to help, if we can. Please note, however, that there are some circumstances in which we won't remove a post. In particular, if anyone else has already quoted you or responded to your post, then we won't remove yours, because that would make the other person's post seem nonsensical (as though they're talking to themselves or something).

Hi folks, a few things: First, just to get this out of the way: we've removed and/or redacted some content, due to 1. personal remarks, and 2. responding to personal remarks, and 3. backseat moderating. It's fine to discuss things, everyone, but let's please not make this personal, such as speculating about other people's motivations. That's out of bounds, per forum rule 2.2.b. Please don't do that. And if you see someone else doing it, please don't respond or try to "call them on it"-- that's also not allowed, it's called "backseat moderating" and is prohibited by rule 3.2. Just report the post and let the moderator team deal with it. Thanks. On to the more substantial point, here. This thread raises some interesting questions, which (if I may be so bold) basically breaks down into two general areas of discussion: Philosophical / sociological, i.e. "how does one define the boundary between science and politics" and related questions. Practical, regarding this forum, i.e. "what are the rules, and how do moderators decide what's allowed and what's not." Point #1 is certainly interesting, but that's not really in our wheelhouse as moderators; it's not about the forums. So I won't make any attempt to address that, here. Point #2, however, is definitely relevant to our duties, and I can see that folks would appreciate some clarity if possible. "Just what is the policy, and why?" So, let me see if I can shed some light. The following is going to be long, but it boils down to the following topics (each of these sets the criteria for the next one): What the forum is for Why the rules exist How we decide what the rules are Why the "no politics" rule in particular and finally, back to the actual question: where exactly is the line between "politics" and "science" when they intertwine? Okay. Crushing Wall of Text™ begins now-- don't say I didn't warn you! If you just want the answer to the question and don't care about the context leading up to it, skip ahead to the last section. The "Prime Directive" Before I get into the nitty-gritty of the actual policies, I think it's useful to take a step back and look at the overall guiding principle that drives everything else. The "Prime Directive", as it were. It's basically this: Q: What is this forum for? A: This forum is about the game Kerbal Space Program. It exists to allow people who are interested in KSP to have a place where they can come to discuss it with other people who enjoy the game. It shall provide a friendly, non-toxic environment where all are welcome. That's it. That's literally the only reason this forum exists. That's essentially our entire motivation as moderators. Basically any moderator action, ever, is in service of that purpose. (Disclaimer: My use of the term "Prime Directive" here is just my convenient turn of phrase for purposes of this discussion-- it's not like it's an official term or anything.) So, for any given situation where we need to consider taking moderator action about some situation, the only real question for us is: "Does this situation threaten the above priority?" If yes: Then we take action. If no: Then we leave it alone and let people do pretty much what they want. Of course that devolves to human judgment (the moderators'), and of course humans are imperfect, which means we can make mistakes. But we've got some reasonable safeguards for that: there's a team of us, we consult each other a lot to guard against individual lapses of judgment, and nobody makes it onto the team without a lengthy track record that demonstrates they have pretty good judgment. TL;DR: Every moderator action is primarily an exercise of judgment. The basis of our judgment is the protection of "the KSP forums as a nice place for people to talk about KSP". The role of the Forum Guidelines-- why have them at all? "Well okay," I hear you cry, "if it's all just moderators 'exercising their judgment', then why bother even publishing any formal written rules at all?" The answer is that it's primarily for the benefit of the users. The "prime directive," above, basically boils down to "don't be a jerk." That's an awfully vague statement, though-- especially since different people have very different concepts of acceptable topics of conversation, where personal boundaries are, etc. One person's "admirable frankness" is another's "being a total jerk". And if there weren't some written rules, then it would be uncomfortable to users, knowing that there are these "moderator" people who wield forum authority. If you know you can get smitten with thunderbolts if you step over the line, then there's a natural and wholly reasonable desire to have some idea of where the line is (as judged by the Powers That Be). So, as a result, we've tried to codify "don't be a jerk" into a set of forum rules that are reasonably explicit and detailed, about the do's and don'ts. This accomplishes several things: It gives users a reasonable idea of what types of behavior to steer clear of. It helps the moderators be more consistent in our actions, and avoid "mission creep" over time-- we can refer back to the rules in each case, as a helpful framework. It helps the community have more confidence in the moderators as being reasonable arbiters of reasonable rules, rather than just a bunch of totally arbitrary martinets. The important thing to understand, though, is that this is not legislation. The forum guidelines are not intended to be a rigid, completely unambiguous, fully detailed specification of exactly what is or isn't allowed in every case. Because to do that, they'd have to be about a hundred pages long, and they'd be written in such dense legalese that not even the moderators could keep up with them-- and they'd be totally impenetrable and useless to the users. Which would be silly, since it's primarily for the users' benefit that the written forum guidelines exist in the first place. "Well, okay, if they're not intended to be as detailed and specific as a legal framework would be... what are they for?" Basically they're a guide for judgment. They help users understand the approximate shape of our judgment space, and they help the moderators keep our judgments reasonably consistent and understandable. Like any human creation, they're imperfect. They are our attempt to strike a balance between "detailed enough to be useful to people" without being "too detailed so that they're hard to understand and toxically rigid to to apply." How are the rules decided? Why these rules? It ties back to that "Prime Directive", again. As much as possible, we'd prefer not to have rules. After all, if our goal is for the forum to be a pleasant place where people are happy to spend their time... then people tend to be happiest when they're free. Nobody likes being told what not to do. Therefore, we have a strong "bias for inaction"-- less moderation is better moderation, and fewer rules are better. So... basically the only reason for a rule to exist is if it is deemed necessary to protect that "prime directive". There are certain types of user behavior that have significant negative consequences for other users. So for such cases, we have a rule. These are the cases where we judge that the positive effects of the rule (protecting the community from problematic behavior) outweighs the negative effects of the rule (constraining people's freedom). "Well, okay then, how do you judge that balance?" Well, anything that involves human decisions is not going to be an exact science. However, in the case of the forum rules, we do have one thing going for us: Lots and lots of data points. The forums have been around for a decade now. There have been nearly 200 thousand topics and nearly 4 million posts made. Collectively, the moderator team has tons of experience of dealing with user behavior, and other users' reaction to it. This is a very rich set of experimental evidence that we can leverage to drive the rules. So, basically, it boils down to: Each rule is there because bitter experience has demonstrated-- generally on many occasions-- that it's necessary to protect the Prime Directive. Which brings us to the current discussion: What's the deal with "no politics"? Why have that rule? For reference, here are the relevant rules: We don't have anything against politics as a topic of discussion, per se. We'd love to just let everybody talk about any topic they want, so as to maximize user freedom, which is a Good Thing™, right? However. Many years of experience have demonstrated, consistently, that the community cannot be trusted to discuss this topic without going completely bonkers. Any time politics comes up, the following is going to happen: Someone will express a political viewpoint (i.e. approval or disapproval of some political position) Many people who disagree with that viewpoint will feel uncomfortable and unwelcome, thus making the forum less pleasant for them Some people will disagree with that viewpoint vehemently enough to express an opposing political viewpoint This will then make both parties extremely angry, and then Bad Behavior™ will ensue Endless circling back and forth because neither party will budge from their position, and both parties insist on having the last word Personal insults and offensive speculation about ulterior motives begin to fly etc. The flames burn everything down, everyone involved (including innocent bystanders) has a really rotten time, and the Prime Directive is violated all to heck. So, when we look at "politics as a topic", there are therefore two relevant considerations: It consistently degrades the forum experience for everyone It's not actually relevant to the forum's main purpose (it has nothing to do with KSP), so the only reason to allow it in the first place is a nebulous desire to "let people do whatever they want" The result? Some rules are difficult and we agonize over them, but this one's pretty much a no-brainer. Thus the rule. (We could summarize it as: "rule 2.2.b exists because our experience is that the presence of politics always results in massive 2.2.d violation".) Okay, so can you just answer the darn question please? When science and politics intertwine, exactly where is the line? Glad you asked. @KerikBalm gives a pretty good definition of the problem: And then goes on to ask some really good framing questions, to try to understand how we might judge where to put the boundary: Those are great framing questions, and it's understandable that you may want to try to nail this down to get objective rules for deciding. However... as good as they are, these are actually not (very) pertinent to how we moderators make our decision. They're the wrong questions. They're good ones, it's just that this isn't how we decide. As moderators, our decision isn't based on the science, or the politics, for the most part. It's based on our understanding of how the KSP community will react. Basically any topic can be categorized as a level of "fire danger": Green (vast majority of topics): No particular reason to think it's any problem at all, just let people say whatever they want to. Yellow (small minority of topics): Potentially dangerous, has a pretty good chance to blow up, but maybe people can be trusted to keep their act together and stay civil and not have hissy fits over it. We keep an eye on it and are ready to step in if problems actually pop up, but otherwise stay hands off. Red (tiny minority of topics): So incendiary that our experience tells us that it's going to blow up, so there's no point in waiting for it to actually do so. Step in proactively and shut it down. We'd love to let people discuss any topic-- regardless of the scale of the implications, who is implicated, or whether the science is "settled" or not. However, we've found that certain topics are just like waving a red flag in front of the metaphorical bull. So the answer to the question of "what is allowed" is this: We disallow a discussion when the community demonstrates that they can't be trusted to discuss it responsibly. Yes, I realize that may be profoundly unsatisfying. "What?! You mean there's this totally worthwhile topic, that there's no a priori reason why I shouldn't discuss it, and the only reason I can't is because other unreasonable people are going to get mad about it?" Yes. Exactly. Rem acu tetigisti. You have nailed it precisely. Because it all ties back to the Prime Directive, and whether discussion can proceed without a whole bunch of yelling. Occasionally, we're so sure that something's going to blow up that we'll just shut it down immediately when it pops up (e.g. a discussion of the political merits of a particular candidate or party). More often, we'll adopt a "wait and see" attitude to a particular thread, and only step in after the members of the discussion have demonstrated that they can't be trusted to handle that topic anymore. It's a "this is why we can't have nice things" scenario. For example, take the coronavirus thread, which is the one people have been tiptoeing around in this thread up to this point. Coronavirus is, of course, a pretty important topic, and we'd love to let people discuss it ad infinitum. We did, in fact, allow it to go on for well over a year, and around 2000 posts. For most of that time, it appeared that the community could handle it, so it stayed open (even though it did need some moderator attention from time to time). Recently, however, the thread had been going in directions that were more problematic, and so after a lengthy discussion and review process among the team, we finally decided that the thread needed to be closed, because the benefit it brought to the community was becoming outweighed by the negative side effects. (And, lest someone go haring off to the thread right now to see the last few pages to try to follow our judgment-- please do remember that there's also plenty of previously removed content that you don't see, but we do. So, for privacy reasons, we can't really discuss the specific details of what finally pushed the thread over the line, beyond what we've already publicly posted. So let's please not speculate about that here, it would be off-topic for this thread.)

I suspect a lot of folks hope that, too. The fact that Kopernicus is effectively mandatory for solar system modding puts an unreasonable pressure on the Kopernicus maintainers to keep it running-- and my impression is that it's a lot of work for them. Not sure how "annoying" it is for the mod's maintainers to work on it, but it sounds like a big job. I've always been extremely grateful to all the folks putting in hard work on Kopernicus to make life easier for the rest of us. Without their efforts, solar system modding would be... perhaps not impossible... but much more difficult and likely much less common. (And I've always been very impressed at how easy it is to use Kopernicus to mod the solar system.)

Moving to Suggestions.

Basically no. As @DDE points out, there's not much temperature variation over the surface. Looks like altitude is more of a factor than latitude. Consider this: https://www.esa.int/ESA_Multimedia/Images/2006/12/Temperature_maps_of_Venus_surface ...it's not full-globe coverage, but you can see that the entire temperature span of their scale is only 20 degrees C, and the closest spot to the pole that they show is actually where one of the "hot" spots is.

MIT license allows that. It's a fairly wide-open license that's irrevocable and allows doing just about anything with the material, as long as credit is given to the original author. As long as the republished mod is meeting the terms of the license and following the add-on posting rules, therefore, this is permitted.

This is pretty good to start with. Here's a tutorial to cover the next bit, from your current situation up to docking, which may be helpful:

Absolutely! My own suggestion is that since you already have plenty of engines on the lander, then you may want to consider a "transfer stage" that's basically just a fuel tank, to save mass (i.e. don't lug around a second set of engines). Dock it to the lander, then stage away any engines on the transfer stage so that it's just a fuel tank docked to the lander. (Or it could have some small engines on it that don't stage away; just remember to deactivate them before you start firing your lander's engines. Wobbliness can be an issue, yes. Autostruts solve this pretty straightforwardly, though-- just take the main tank and set it to "autostrut to root", then it should hold itself in position just fine. Well, he already mention that he's got plenty of thrust on the lander, so I think the engine aspect is covered. Just need to autostrut the transfer stage so that it doesn't wobble. (Or, alternatively, if the lander has a docking port centered underneath, he could dock the transfer stage under the lander, so that it's pulling the docked tank rather than pushing it.) If he's got enough engines to give a 700 ton ship significant thrust, that's a whole lot of engine mass. I'd suggest doing the opposite, and switching off the engines on the transfer stage (or, indeed, just eject them before doing the transfer burn). No point in lugging along a whole second set of engines, unless the Isp is so much higher that it's worth the extra mass. Actually, there's another variation of this that can allow getting by with a somewhat smaller transfer stage: Your lander and transfer stage boost to a highly elliptical orbit around Kerbin (oriented the correct way for your intended interplanetary burn), with low periapsis. Then use refueling tugs to dock to it at Pe and top off all the tanks before disconnecting. Thus, when you start your interplanetary burn (with full tanks), you're already going ~3000 m/s at Kerbin periapsis, so you don't need as much boost to do the burn.

Just as a follow-up: in the future, if you need some sort of help with a particular thread or post and don't know what to do, then the easiest way to get help on it is to just report the post with an explanatory comment. That'll get our attention and we can look into it. (A lot of folks seem to get the idea that reporting posts is only for bad stuff, like if someone's being abusive. It's not. Reporting a post doesn't mean "this is bad" or "this is good", it just means "hey moderators, could you please take a look at this". The report lets you type in a note about why you're reporting it-- please do!-- which is very handy.)

It's understandable to feel frustrated, if the situation seems like that. However... please remember that asking for help from a modder is a completely different situation from talking to a clerk. A clerk is a public figure who's being paid to do a job-- on some level, it's their job to help you. That's very much not a modder's job-- remember that they make these mods for free, asking nothing in return. They have many users using their mods, and in some cases they maintain many mods. So it's not really like going to see a clerk-- it's more like if you're a guest in someone's home. At a time when they have many guests, and many problems around the home to deal with. In such a situation... if the host is friendly then I'm sure they're happy to try to help you with a problem ... just remember that they're doing that as a favor to you, and they have a lot of other demands on their attention, as well. So, the best way to do that is to help them help you-- and also understand that, 1. they don't actually owe you anything, and 2. they may not be able to devote full attention to your particular problem, so it's easy for them to miss things. So no matter what... it's best to stay patient and appreciative. Glad you got your problem sorted out!

So, there are general tips ("how does one generally go about doing this"), and then there are specific tips ("what's wrong with my craft, in particular?"). Specific tips tend to be much more useful... however, we would need to see your craft to be able to offer such advice. So... could you post a screenshot of your craft, so we could get an idea of how you're constructing it? Then we could offer specific advice on how to tweak it. As for general tips: It sounds as though you have some combination of "not enough control authority" (i.e. can't steer) with "aerodynamically unstable" (i.e. it wants to fly butt-first rather than nose-first). That's a common sort of problem. The overall strategy is: Pointy and aerodynamic in the front Any draggy bits go in the back Fins at the rear Have your CoM (center of mass) as high as possible. If your CoM is in the bottom of the ship, this will not end well. Control authority during launch is going to come down to engine gimbal and/or steerable fins. Any such control authority needs to be as far behind the CoM as possible, since their effectiveness is directly proportional to the lever arm. An engine or fin that's twice as far behind the CoM will be twice as effective at steering. (Reaction wheels are useful once you get into space... but those first 10-15 km of ascent will be so dominated by aerodynamics that control wheels won't be able to keep up.)

Some content has been redacted and/or removed, due to: personal remarks excessive rudeness backseat moderating (i.e. telling someone what to do or not to do) Folks, let's please remember that modders put in a lot of hard work to give us shiny toys for free. They don't owe us anything, and complaining about what they produce is a pretty poor way to show appreciation for their generosity. Of course not every mod is to everyone's taste, but nobody is forced to use a mod. So if you really don't like a mod, then simply don't use it. Or if you have ideas for how it could be better, and want to offer constructive feedback, then by all means do so. Personal criticism and derogatory remarks, however, are uncalled for, so please don't do that. Also, please remember that it's not anyone's place to tell anyone else what to do or not to do... so please don't do that, either. If you think that someone's behavior is straying outside the forum rules, then please report the post and the moderators will have a look at it-- but beyond that, please don't try to engage with behavior that you think is violating forum norms. Thank you for your understanding.

If you're including these mods with your release (i.e. not just taking them as a dependency), can you please update them to actual links to the source content? For example, "for the sunflare" doesn't tell us where you got it from-- please make that a link to the original source. That needs to be present so that it's easily possible to reference the source and verify its license.

All of them. They're all missing, that's the issue. Also, it doesn't specify which mods are included, which is also an issue (since that makes it impractical to determine which licenses are missing). Basically, what it boils down to is that, 1. it needs to be easy for anyone to glance at the OP and tell what works are included and what their licenses are, and 2. the inclusion of those works needs to be in compliance with their licenses. And if the modpack contains any original work of its own (i.e. isn't simply a bundle of other mods), then 3. the modpack would need to specify its own license, which would need to be compatible with the licenses of the included works. (Yes, jumping through all those hoops is a hassle for any modpack author, which is a major reason why modpacks tend to be fairly uncommon. It's just an unavoidable fact of life: people's works have licenses on them, many licenses are incompatible with each other, and trying to put multiple works in one package therefore makes a legal snarl whose complexity goes up with the square of the number of mods included. Also, artists, in particular, tend to be understandably protective of their creative works, so art-heavy visual mods are often the ones with the most restrictive licenses on them. And those are often the types of mods that modpack authors would like to include, but can't due to the licensing issues.)

Moving to International, since the post is not in English.

Hi @LizardMan, We're sorry, but we've had to remove your download link, due to licensing issues. Please see the add-on posting rules here, with particular reference to section 2, "including other licensed work with your add-on": Executive summary is that if you're including any other people's mods, you'll need to ensure that you're complying with the license terms of each one, which includes things such as surfacing those licenses in your post, giving appropriate credit as licenses require, etc. We're sorry for the inconvenience-- we realize this stuff is complicated, but it's unavoidable, alas, due to legal requirements. If you have any questions about all this, please feel free to reach out to me or any member of the moderator team, if the rules are confusing or unclear. Thank you for your understanding.