Hotel26

So I have graded a perfectly-flat 6x6 km landing field, Eva Firma, 3100m altitude at -0.2169 +169.7142. SSTO is most probably going to be a Mk2 capsule (3 kerbs) + hopefully 2 Hitchhikers (8 kerbs) and will be vertical liftoff, return glide capability and vertical landing under chutes. Thus it can easily return to Eva Firma and be refueled, passengers embarked and disembarked. Fuel trucks and fuel production will be onsite. At departure time, the SSTO will make a short ascent trajectory over the nearby Mauve Mountain facility, currently 6415m MSL, located at -0.5147 +167.5023 and land there fore topping up before final ascent to LEO. The launch platform therefore only has to be big enough to target for landing from nearby, plus contain a fuel depot and fuel trucks. I think 500x500m should be sufficient, thereby reducing the amount of earth-moving. So the the remaining question is still the key question. How high? Any advice about engines would also be helpful!? I guess this can be trial & error. My next step should probably be to get a dV budget and then make a preliminary space-glider design. Even just 7 kerbs in & out in an SSTO config would be outstanding, so I will start with that as a baseline. I have this funny feeling that everything about this project is going to be toad-ugly, except for the bottle of champagne at the end.

I am getting ready to ship a flotilla of bulldozers and earth-moving trucks to Eve for a highly-specific project. The aim will be to build a 4x4 km spaceport platform somewhere on the equator of Eve. The initial altitude will probably be 10km MSL. (Something like 64 cubic km of earth to move, which ought to take less than an hour.[1] ) Skycranes may likely be employed to ferry equipment from lower altitudes up the slopes to the spaceport precincts. The question being posed now is: "on Eve, what is the lowest reasonable altitude to launch from to make conventional VLHR[2] SSTOs viable? So to address the subject of payload, I am primarily/solely limited to an interest in personnel[3] and think 4+16 in a Mk3 format would be super. Maybe 2+8 in Mk2 at bare minimum. Would 10km likely be sufficient or will this project need to Aim Higher?? I would particularly like to hear estimates/advice from those who are reasonably experienced in Eve ascent, but all insights welcomed. [2] Vertical Liftoff Horizontal Return [3] Opinion of my Space Kommand is that only personnel and science need be transmitted out of Eve's atmosphere (and science can be relayed electronically).

Progress at Eve. From L-to-R: Venus Ascension (3x Mammoth), Hummingbird (2x NERV), Mule (4 NERV), Egg, Rim Shot. The Ascension arrived, requiring one last top-up before descending to the surface. The Mule/Hummingbird combination brought the Egg to the Rim Shot station. The Ascension will take 11 kerbals down to the surface once a landing site has been scouted (by surface parties). It'll then await a mobile refuel (to be implemented) and can take 3 kerbals out; then return on a final trip bringing three more down, making a total of 14 colonists in and 3 executives out.

A sudden urge: Nimble. I could say it's a Minmus SSTO but it was intended as a local hopper. Very convenient embarkation through the rear door. I haven't tried Kerbin re-entry tests but, full disclosure, won't be doing so either.

Let's first accept this as a premise. Then ask the question about other intelligent life. We feel it should be there but we have found no sign yet of intelligent life anywhere else, or ever. See Fermi's Paradox. Let's guess that there have been other intelligent species but none have surmounted the same challenges we (are said to) face: limited resources, nuclear weapons, climate change, artificial intelligence(?), genomic monkeying... Odds then that we are going to share the same fate as our supposed predecessors. Now let's ask "what would a truly intelligent species do?" -- realizing the above. Firstly: pointing out that we are a product of natural evolution over hundreds of millions of years in a protective environment (Earth, unlike space itself). Secondly: pointing out the anomaly that we accept that we are the product of a long chain of evolution but somehow think (selfishly) that we are now the immutable end of our line of evolution. Thirdly: pointing out that we are not evolved for space, do not have time to "evolve" for space (before being overcome by our own limitations), and the chemical/cellular life form is never going to be universally efficient in space ... nor throughout the universe. So the unthinkable next step is to do what every species does (given time), which is to produce its successor... but in the radically intelligent case, do it sapiently... thus: produce an artificially-intelligent elecronic form and endow it with imperatives: preserve its existence respect and preserve other life explore the universe and share the knowledge It would certainly utilize robotic instantiations but 'it' would be electronic, distributed and -- in a certain sense -- able to travel[1] at the speed of light. Homo sapiens sapiens might not survive (or perhaps it would, aided by its successor (but not replacement, see #2) but we would leave a sign in the universe that no other precedecessor intelligent species appears to have ever done before. More importantly, by leaving that permanent entity in the universe, we would thus resolve Fermi's Paradox. Quite an accomplishment. [1] not necessarily 'propagate'

So, welcome to the forum. (Assuming you are on Windows), it is possible (especially since you know the file path in the ksp directory), to recover deleted files. I would not guarantee this will work, though, if you have already recreated a new file by the same path/name. But this is the avenue I would explore... If you can't find the persistent.sfs, try looking for a quicksave.sfs and if you were using Kerbal Alarm Clock you might have any number of other .sfs files in your save directory. And by the way, the obligatory, "live & learn". (No, I am not a Windows user. Where to start, I can't say, but help wil lbe online.)

That may be so -- and certainly was for me (for about 7 years!). In addition, my foundation premise was that a HUD is grows more useful as you add a few useful datums [sic] and then grows less useful as you add more data. Everything should be instantly accessible. So then I put quite a bit of work into determining, organizing and testing two HUDs of about 8-10 items each. It's recently exploded into 4x HUD and I know where everything is instantly, which has resulted from concerted investment over time. But this is how useful KER can be. I've now reached the point that I think I want two modifications made: economize on the space between the title and the datum (my left-most HUD is obscuring the Commnet % and the relay list pop-up) option to display the Target Name alone without the Target function menu (the latter is useful but doesn't belong in my HUD).

Was a long time before I got KER but cannot live now without the HUDs.

There's a lot you haven't said, so an outsider is going to have to start with the very basics. Do you have Commnet enabled in the game settings? (As best I can recall, this is done at world creation time.) A search (or edit) of your persistent.sfs will reveal that state: It may also be, as Aelfhe1m is intimating, that your probe is using a direct link to Kerbin as the most direct route. Wait until it circles behind the Mun and then see how it relays. Also, there are options for showing the relay network connections and you don't verify that you have those turned on, so it's inconclusive that there is any communcation occurring at all, which is why I ask about EnableCommNet.

In no truly sophisticated simulation would anyone be able to even posit the question "What if we are living in a sophisticated simulation?". Same applies to "free will versus predestination" and other time-wasting 'philosophical' bunkum. Just my opinion -- which is another class of thing that would not be discernible. (Spelling and grammar would be regular. People wouldn't go on and on about stuff, or use "it's" when they are required to use "its".) Perhaps consult https://forum.kerbalspaceprogram.com/topic/221060-what-if-we-are-living-in-a-shoddy-half-baked-simulation, which actually is a much more plausible situation.

Can't help you with a mod, but I can tell you what I do. Use Mod-F12: Cheats: Set Position and 'teleport' your craft to coordinates -0.067 / -74.625 (yes, I know these off-by-heart!) ensuring you have a low altitude set that is sufficient for the dimensions of the craft (usually just a few meters). Also note that some craft will want a Pitch of 0 and some 90; check your navball. And ensure the target body is still Kerbin, of course. This will place your craft just outside the SPH. Then you have your Recover Vessel button available!!

My mistake; thanks for the correction. OK, this I like! Thumbs up. What's not to like about a holiday week -- by royal dekree! Info: Latin 'Quattro' is the origin of Spanish "Cuatro'. I guess I feel that 100,000 Kerbals, sitting at typewriters, tapping at keys in their own language are, sooner or later, going to manage to typo an 'English' word. Your idea about switching to Spanish (as homage to Felipe) is very appealing, though! "Cuatker'. I feel it is OK (because I am learning Spanish) as long as people would feel comfortable about how to pronounce it "Kwotker"). See how other people weigh in...? (I'll hold my fire now: I'm down in the weeds, anyway. Love what you've done!)

Any reason odd minths couldn't have 8 meeks and even ones 7? Or vice versa (better), as an aid to figuring out how many meeks in a particular minth? You're showing Tresker and Quaker both having 56 days. (Shades of Earth illogic requiring rote memory: like July & August (the Caesar months) both having 31 days.)

Beautiful! Leaving the question of how one does actually 'implement' it. OK, so I see my production world is in year 8, Unoker 55, 2h3m. A Joolday Jooldia. Am I implemented?

heartily seconded and in that case 'dia' from Jebediah. (but your work, your call; I admit 'Evedia' is a bit harder to say)

It's just a phobia of mine, but I play games precisely to get away from the 'real' world. (I don't even like to use the term 'game' because I so much prefer 'pedagogical pursuit'.) I thought about 'sekker' but the Latin word for six is sextus; nothing dirty... I am, in fact, a sexagenarian ('look it up'), so I deeply resemble your remark. Incidentally, there have been some very credible attempts at a Kerbal Calendar in the past, so I'll see if I can make a webography of them to post here: AK - After Kod Calendar and month names, Nov 2023 The Kerbal Calendar, Jan 2023 <------- highly recommended Kerbin Calendar 2021 Kerbal Calendar 2015 ...maybe more, but it's time for me to play pursue KSP now...

^ Precisely! If I adopted this kalendar, I would make a royal dekree that the last day of your year (all of 32m24.6s) is an intergalactic public holiday. (I don't think the employers should mind! ) For the same reason, months ('munks minks' ('meeks' & 'minks')) would be easy(er) to remember, or more systematic anyway: unoker duoker tresker quaker quinker sexker sepker oktoker And, naturally, like the rest of the whole universe (with the exception of a backwater known as Earth) zero-counting the days: 0..426 in the year and 0..55 within your 'minth'. (Ah, and finally, for consistency, should those be 'Joolday' and "Eelooday'? (Actually, a day pronounced/spelled 'diah', after the imperial inventor of the kalendiah...) 'Eloodiah'. (But I'm OK with 'day'; I am not a stickler or anything! ) UPDATE: I read the OP again and saw that months are based on Minmus, so the 'minth' makes sense, although I would now call them 'minks' (not 'munks'). In any case, all good work, all above.

I'll have some numbers for Duna shortly. (36-blade engines!) You will receive all credit for this one, @TheFlyingKerman!! Thank you very much for leading the way.

As an addendum to my earlier post about managing Duna landings, @Kimera Industries To illustrate my earlier thinking, Batwing Mk3 was equipped with drag chutes to slow down (in a shallow zoom), would then pop main chutes for a vertical descent, but was equipped with 4x Cub Vernier engines to control and arrest the final touch-down. Pretty much a foolproof system.

Shades of Gattaca...

A really good question and for a long time, I had believed that "on Duna, why wouldn't you just use chutes to land and then taxi". So the first part of the answer is that a distinct advantage of using a turbofan is that reducing the blade pitch causes a lot of drag suddenly at speed and applies quite effective braking -- in the air! On the ground, you can easily go into reverse pitch and quickly halt (or reverse!) the aircraft. Of course, in the final moments, you are going to drop out of the air, but if you flare and fly low and time the arrest just over a higher point: well, you might get lucky! No, you should get lucky! The second part of the answer is to build a Dunaport (see below), with or without a runway. Effectively, produce a giant flat spot on Duna. Without a runway, you can land in any direction (like the very old days of aviation). With a runway, you need a couple of aiming points ("navaids", a.k.a. flags) at least 10km from the runway ends so that you can line up on the runway well in advance. As we know, turns are very slow (and wide) to execute on Duna due to the thin atmosphere! (How do you build a Dunaport? Kerbal Konstructs. I actually found it totally unusable for seven years until @Caerfinon wrote his wonderful guide for Getting Started With Kerbal Konstructs.)

UPDATE: OK, with the 40-blade engines fitted, Elektra manages 193 m/s @ 5300m. It can fly on its 6 wing panels alone with sunlight, but it's probably worth dumping their mass/drag and doing without. (This photo is before the wing incidence increase to 9 degrees and with 24 blades, before the upgrade to 40.)

Wiring up propeller-propulsion engines is quite the pain in the sternum, is it not, and a major deterrent? Which is a pity because these things are so efficient (running on fuel cells/LFOX trickle-feed) and because there's a good argument for their use on Duna. I have now what I think is a single assembly containing left & right forward 'propellers' and left & right rear "repellers'. The intention is that you connect this to a node (a temporary, dummy octa cube, if necessary), then clone each of the engines you need, multiple times if necessary, and position them on your vehicle. In one variation, the 'small' size rotor, blades and shroud can be connected to an NCS adapter with a trailing tiny air intake, which looks quite spiffy. So I will add an NCS adapter into the auxiliary control stack (with the Mk0 LF tank), for cloning: all of the tanks are modified for LFOX (rather than standard LF only). Cloning should implicitly carry across all the control "wiring" for Brakes, RCS, Main Throttle and Custom01 (Keypad '*' and '/') for fan blade pitch. Huzzah! ACKNOWLEDGEMENT: the base engine has 40 blades and I am not currently sure how this was engineered (even with the multi-symmetry trick) by the inventor: @_Rade KerbalX/Rade. See his Red Arrow machine. Note that rpm is limited to 420 due to the momentum of 40 blades, but I may reduce this to an even 36 if that gets the max rpm up to the putative max of 460 rpm. So, how did he do it? I don't know[1]. But if I had a gun pointed at my head (and I do), I'd rev-eng the craft file and invoke the mythical Mathematical Python to digitally place N blades. Reader poll: is it a "Garrett turbofan" or will it be a "Raddett turbofan"? We will see... [1] I assume, therefore, he is a genius. UPDATE: OK, so the symmetry hack works for this. I've just made a 36-blade rotor using 6x6 symmetry. To get 40, you would make 8x6 (48) and then use Sh-X (8 times) to decrement the number down to 40.

"Green-field programmers" always think they can do a better job just rewriting other people's code, pronto too!, saving themselves the pain of understanding the original. On top of that, they think their code will be oh-so-much-more-maintainable by others, after they move on -- to greener pastures. The above is pretty much the psychological basis for "the Six Phases of a Project": Enthusiasm Disillusionment Panic Search for the guilty Punishment of the innocent Praise and honors for the non-participant Not pointing at any particular people in this instance, but I never could understand the motivation to "rewrite" KSP to, what?, "make it snazzier", or more "bug-free"... come on. The only justifiable reason I can see for a full rewrite would have been to get the heck off Unity and into some potentially multi-threaded environment. "Just my ugly opinion", as usual, and first to advertize it.

STS again. Snore... A dirty secret inside NASA (ignored by management) that it had a 1-in-100 probability of catastrophic failure. For thirty years... We on the moon yet? You know the saying: "if you can't lead and you can't follow, get out of the way"