Terwin

1) ckan can be wonky some times. Usually it works ok, but if you are having problems with CKAN installed mods, the first step to try and fix it is to uninstall the CKAN mods and install them manually(for MKS this involved downloading from github{the 'latest release' link https://github.com/UmbraSpaceIndustries/MKS/releases } then putting the contents of the zip file into your gameData folder) 2) the extraplanetary Launchpad models are no longer maintained and have been hidden/disabled so that they will not appear any more except on previously built vessels(to avoid breaking saves). I believe there is a mod out there that will re-enable them, but General Construction(Previously Ground Construction) has replaced extra-planetary launchpads as the recommended on-site building mod for MKS

Think of it as having a Pe of 20km in kerbal, but before hitting the atmosphere you angle up aerodynamically so that you do not go lower than 50km(at the cost of reducing your Ap). As you never got to the thicker atmosphere, you did not slow down as much as planned and will end up coming around for another pass(but this time with a Pe of ~50km, possibly needing yet another pass) If your Previous Ap was near Minmus, your current Ap may still be outside of the Mun, and if you ejected all of your life support before reentry, you may not have enough for that unplanned additional orbit. And if you were on a return from Duna, you may not even stay in the Kerbin SOI.

To me 'skipping' sounds like aerodynamically raising your periapsis with minimal loss of energy so that it gets a lot harder to reenter in a timely fashion. No need to go out to solar orbit if your periapsis is high enough that you will run out of life support before you reenter.

Which mods are you using(and which versions), also which version of KSP, and did you install the mods manually or using CKAN? Finally, why did you quote the entire first post of this thread in your message? As this entire thread is about MKS, I do not see how that quote contributes to your message.

How would you distinguish between a ring of stars/systems orbiting a common center of mass and a static ring of stars/systems that do not move? How would you distinguish between a cluster of stars orbiting slowly on the outer edge of the galactic rim of a huge galaxy and a static cluster of stars? How long would it take before there was a significant distinction? If it would take a billion years to have a 0.1% change in relative position, then I would rather go with a static system and use the saved resources for something else.

Both highly dependent on the 'roads' creature, otherwise in a world full of soft dirt, sand, holes, mud, roots, rocks, hills, fallen branches, and other obstacles, they would not get very far without broken wheel creatures and maimed steering creatures. (And Ruts from other wheel creatures would do awful things if the wheel separation distance is not standardized across all of them)

That would take a very long time. https://what-if.xkcd.com/53/ Indicates it would take hundreds of thousands of years to drain the oceans using a drain 10m in radius https://www.quora.com/What-is-the-volume-of-air-in-Earth’s-atmosphere-and-volume-of-water-on-Earth Indicates that if the entire earth's atmosphere were at sea-level density, there would be about three times the volume of air than there is of ocean. So really, during a human life-time you would only make a powerful wind-tunnel and mess-up weather patterns, not even considering the slow-down from lower relative pressure as you drain the earth's atmosphere.

How do you handle repairs and lubrication if it is dead? How do you excrete a complex structure like a wheel in the first place? As far as I am aware, keratin is generally excreted from a structure of the same general shape. Also, Wheels are an awful primary means of propulsion without an external resource providing long, flat roads.

Lots of testing and double-checking fuel tanks along with over-paying their in-house hardware manufacturing people for the control computers perhaps? Don't forget that development costs have already been paid off and the 'sunk costs' of the re-used engines is probably not included in this price.

It will also engulf the pusher-plate and apply that heat to all of the delicate bits that are protected from the tungsten spray that it is designed to catch in space. An atmospheric shock-wave is a very different beast than a spray of tungsten in a vacuum.

Even with a specific date and hour, a launch is far from guaranteed. I would recommend against a road-trip to see a launch unless you would be happy with spending the day touring the facilities should the launch be cancelled.

Actually, magnemoe and I were specifically talking bout diving/recreational scuba. I was specifically attempting to correct an argument that oxygen toxicity is a relevant danger when recreational diving with compressed air. I did not disagree that the partial pressure of oxygen in a high-pressure environment is a potential issue, only that recreational scuba divers do not spend enough time at depth for it to become an issue(by more than an order of magnitude), and have much more pressing safety concerns. Some other things to consider when living in an high-pressure environment: * breathing effort (even with a higher partial pressure, breathing in an environment that much denser takes a lot more effort and is a leading cause of 'scuba-naps') * Need gradual decompression to transfer to lower pressure environments(need to let the excess dissolved gasses in the blood and tissues to percolate out naturally so they don't create un-wanted bubbles in the blood or tissues, potentially causing damage, and that will take time) * cooking and other chemical processes: Water only boils at 100c at 1 bar of pressure, more and it needs to be hotter, less and it will boil cooler, this added density should also affect other chemical processes to a greater or lesser degree, and things that are safe at 1 bar may be hazardous at 3 bar, and vice versa(don't expect your internal combustion engine to work the same at higher pressures without making adjustments for example)

Recreational scuba diving does not generally worry about oxygen toxicity unless using an enriched oxygen air source(nitrox). Spending a full 60 minutes submerged on one 80cuft tank is generally only possible when staying less than ~5m deep, so the feasibility of spending 12 times as long at a depth where you use up your air three times as fast is highly unlikely(not even counting the time to get down and back up). The recreational diving limit (112 feet) is at roughly 9.5 bar partial pressure, and it is uncommon to spend even 10-15 min at this depth where the exposure limit is more than 5 hours(and you are using up your air at ~4.5 times the shallow rate). Nitrogen narcosis(nitrogen under enough pressure makes you act/feel drunk) however can happen around or below 30m, and this is a much more common danger than staying at depth more than 10x as long as most people can make their air last. Even shallower divers can get hyperbaric injuries(if you hold your breath when while going from 20m to 10m for example, the air expands to 1.5 times it's previous volume and can 'pop' your lungs like an over-filled balloon, going from 10m to 0m expands the air to double it's volume, making such problems even easier to encounter if you are not careful). These are the sorts of issues compressed-air recreational divers are more likely to encounter, so those are the issues they focus on in the training.

How do you keep it connected and inflated? replace it every time it hits a thorn? How do you speed up or slow down? Rolling only works on relatively smooth surfaces. Even 'flat' grasslands tend to have ruts, holes, rocks and other obstacles unless you have someone removing them. Modern farms, road ways, trails, etc are artificial constructs where wheels work well, but if not maintained, they quickly be come unusable to wheeled vehicles. There is a spider that lives in the desert that 'rolls' down the dunes to escape predators: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wheel_spider But they do not use this as a primary means of locomotion and only as an escape mechanism. This page has a full discussion of wheels and wheel-like structures in organisms. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rotating_locomotion_in_living_systems Apparently some bacteria have solved the issue of free-rotation for their flagellum, but it does not look like anything more complex has managed it.

Unless you are referring to using two klaws on Ship A and trying to connect them both to ship B, I do not think this is the case. In any case, I usually put a nose klaw on any ship with a complex mission/IRSU so that it can easily connect with any derelict- er refueling stations. When I run out of fuel, I generally send a fuel pod quipped with a klaw to refuel it. Preferably one that can land on a near-by body and refuel on it's own in preparation for the next ... um pre-planned refueling. I also like putting ISRU on anything leaving the Kerbin system with crew so that they can land and 'rescue' themselves if needed.

@Bej Kerman to expand on @Snark's post, would you pay for a DLC at least twice the size(and cost) of Breaking ground just for a sky-hook approximation? Would enough players want sky-hooks enough to pay for that DLC to make it worth-while? Personally, if I badly wanted a sky-hook approximation, I would just fly my vessel to a certain height, and then edit the orbit using the cheats menu. Perhaps I would have a small satellite that I had to get within a certain range of while maintaining a certain altitude if I wanted more realism, but that is about as 'realistic' as it is feasible to be without breaking the game in many bad ways as mentioned previously. (I suppose it might be even more realistic to just use the cheat menu to throw objects at your vessel until it undergoes a RUD, but I doubt that would be the sort of realistic you are after)

To start with, you would need very large precision for very large objects and very high relative speeds for those objects.(if you are in position, would you want the hook to have a 99.999% chance of skipping past your position instead of grabbing your ship? If not, the system will need to run physics calculations for any sort of sky-hook parts(including ships trying to catch a sky-hook)) 100,000 times more often than is done for any other parts in the game, causing a lot of slow-down). More than just a massive slow-down this will change how other things interact with those sky-hook compatible parts and may need a whole separate approach to implementing physics. Because both the numbers and the precision needs to be so high, it will probably not be able to use any of the standard data-types, meaning a lot of custom-coded calculations using bits of math that can't take advantage of CPU optimizations like floating-point look-ups(yes, it is often faster to look up a calculation in a table than to do the math yourself, even if you are a computer. Remember the problem with Pentiums? That was bad numbers in a look-up table) Because KSP players like to home-brew, every single part that gets close to being in-range of a sky-hook will need microsecond-increment physics simulation in case someone decides to make a custom sky-hook handle out of fuel tanks or something.(or else the hook will just skip past the entire ship without interacting with it) The accuracy and precision needed to use a sky-hook successfully requires extensive computer calculations and control, making it wholly unsuitable for the sort of seat-of-your-pants flying that is encouraged in KSP. Just a few reasons I can't imagine seeing anything even close to a sky-hook in KSP2.

Doesn't the Progress module regularly refuel ISS? Does that not count for some reason? https://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/station/structure/elements/progress_about.html Personally, I prefer the 'Fountain' approach, as that lets you start small and on the ground to prove everything works as expected and cheaply, then you just increase the number (and speed?) of the kinetic elements as your platform rises higher and higher. The hardest part seems like it would be building the vacuum tube as you climb higher... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Space_fountain

If you follow the catalog link in RoverDude's signature, you can access old versions on Github Edit: Link to MKS releases page: https://github.com/UmbraSpaceIndustries/MKS/releases Link to 1.7.x version: https://github.com/UmbraSpaceIndustries/MKS/releases/tag/1.2.0.0

Don't forget to actually adjust the effects on white-listed Kerals, as by default they are the same as other Kerbals.

The LS expiration times are only updated while the vessel is simulated. As vessels are not simulated in the background, that information screen can only count down. So long as you have a reliable energy supply on your vessel/base feel free to ignore the EC timer.(You can also ignore the supplies timer if you have a reliable source of supplies, and even the habitation timer if you have active colony modules and plenty of colony supplies). Just be careful about coming back to an 'expired' capsule that relies primarily on solar power and happens to be in shadow.

Wasn't there a space-walk where there was a water leak inside a suit, and they had to get them out of the suit quickly so that they did not drown?(water was already covering eyes and nose, so if it covered their mouth they could no longer breathe) This looks like it: https://www.space.com/24835-spacesuit-water-leak-nasa-investigation.html

Some other important values you may want for calculating optimum pitch: Air density(calculable from body+altitude) blade off-set(how far out from the center of rotation is the center of lift on the blade? Note: in addition to placement off-set, this can change based on rotational velocity, type of strutting in place, rigid attachments on or off, etc) Atmosphere model(Stock, FAR, other?) Propeller Angle off prograde(arranged like an airplane propeller or a helicopter propeller? what about 4 propellers all at 45 degrees off of vertical?) Air-speed vector off propeller(s)(a helicopter going straight up has different thrust needs from one going straight forward) Admittedly, I am no aerospace engineer, but those seem fairly important. There are probably plenty of others that are needed that I am not even aware of.

Not so much 'not permitted' as 'required to' the only problem is, the 'required to' is 'dispose of it as enriched nuclear materials' (because they removed several percent of the total volume when extracting the 'rare earths' they were mining, leaving the thorium fraction slightly higher than it was originally). If they could find a buyer for the Thorium, or even just throw the tailings back into the original hole, they could still make money(at least when a certain country is not selling below cost to try and drive others out of the rare earths market).

I must admit that I generally only use transfer windows by chance. For a nuclear powered scan-sat probe heading to Duna, I realized after my ejection burn that when I achieve polar orbit around Duna, I will have the entirety of my 'core' stage(~7km/s) and several hundred m/s in my drop-tanks still remaining. On the other hand, my self-fueling Munar Hopper only had ~500m/s left in LMO, and I had to send a fuel tanker out to it so it had enough fuel to land. (my Mk2 version launched with ore in the tank and had quite a lot of fuel left after landing on Minmus. Unfortunately the 'Viewing Cupola' in the contract description seems to be the core cupola pod, and not the 'viewing cupola' part from MKS, so it can only fulfill half of the contracts it was intended for) Generally I favor self-fueling ships and I like to have a fairly large fuel/ore capacity so that they can be used for a variety of missions, with the Life-support(USI-LS) generally providing the hardest limit on the range of a given vessel.