Aetharan

Alright, just spitballing some ideas on what kind of logic may have gone into the decision, here. Point A) A "squad" is defined as " a small group of people having a particular task" or " a small number of soldiers assembled for drill or assigned to some special task, especially an infantry unit forming part of a platoon." Point B) A "troop" is defined as " a group of soldiers, especially a cavalry unit commanded by a captain, or an airborne unit.", or, effectively, synonymous with "squad" for our purposes. It is also the group name used for monkeys. Point C) A collection of coders are often referred to informally, especially as a joke among themselves or derisively by those who sign their paychecks, as "code monkeys." Combining the above three, it makes perfectly logical sense for a small group of coders starting a new company and deciding to call it Squad to select a monkey outfitted as a soldier as their emblem-- and, as a side-note, all of the above logic doesn't even have to process on a conscious level in order to have its effect. Cultural osmosis and symbolism are just strange like that.

Given the similarities in our forum handles, it doesn't surprise me that we have related agency names (with the intentional misspelling in mine, of course.) "Aetharcorp Aerospace" for career saves, "Aetharcorp Experimentals" for general mucking-around sandboxes. If I'm focusing on a specific challenge and want it to have its own save file (one of these days, I'll successfully complete the Elcano challenge!), then that save generally just gets named after the challenge in question.

When it comes to engineering, I'm afraid that I have a bit too much of my father's teachings ingrained into me: Always over-build. Of course, he was speaking as a musician and electrical engineer. "If you have to turn the amps above 75%, you're not using a powerful enough set for the house." "Always install wiring rated for at least twice the highest amount you ever expect to need to power through it." Things like that. How does that translate to rockets? I'm annoyed when my builds require going above 2/3 throttle to achieve liftoff. My final launch stage almost always ends up accidentally having enough delta-V left over to double as at least a transfer stage to the Mun. I almost always build landers and crew pods with emergency engines sporting at least 500 m/s worth of fuel, and preferably twice that. Since I've started playing with life-support, I try to make sure that the ship has either twice the supplies needed for its maximum crew for the intended mission length, if not finding a way to close the cycle entirely. Needless to say, this tends to mean ships heavy enough to be quite a strain on my poor laptop.

Props to both of you for beating me to the punch. Only the ladies are allowed to have "blonde moments". The rest of us are stuck with "blond moments", and wouldn't we all much rather just drop another letter and be having "Bond moments" instead? Seriously, that guy gets all the luck. That being said, and referring back to the original topic, I honestly hadn't noticed that KAC had that function. I'll have to make use of that in the future.

I voted the KS flag, but I also need to take a moment to thank @HebaruSan for posting that video. It really got me thinking, so now I've gone and redesigned my own flag (as well as the mission patches for my space program, an example of which is my avatar). @KSP Bros, please tell us that the actual flags used in-game don't have all those compression artifacts. If the .png flag you're using in-game for the KS side is clean of them, then I think it'd actually look equally good on the pole or painted on the side of your rockets.

This. A thousand times this. If you've strapped something onto the side of your rocket asymmetrically that isn't a physicsless part, then that means you have more drag on that side of your rocket. Done very, very carefully it could result in a natural gravity turn, but most of the time it's just going to result in your ship spinning out of control unless you've massively overpowered its control authority. You have two basic options to make your craft fly more easily under these circumstances. The first is to remove the aerodynamic imbalance by concealing the unpaired part within a fairing / service bay. The second is to pair all drag-inducing parts. Never hurts to have a spare anyway-- you never know when a collision is going to wreck one of 'em.

I find myself looking at this feature, glancing at Connected Living Spaces, looking back at this, and just maybe (quietly) saying squee. I can only hope that we'll get the ability to put in crew-tunneled fuel tanks to make it all more believable. Heck, maybe even tunnels that can be attached like struts between parts of a craft. So very many possibilities for addition of verisimilitude, if we can even hope to see this functionality made relatively easy for modders to access. Maybe at some point in the future we really will get to watch Jeb crawl from one end of that 100-meter Jool cruiser to the other to grab some snacks. This smacks of laying the groundwork for IVA actually having some activity to it.

At the risk of farther-derailing the thread, the fact that a single post is currently responsible for over 25% of my rep points kind of drives home the need to respond. It's actually a bit embarrassing to be getting "like"s for choosing to embrace Wheaton's Law, rather than being another example of the GIFT. I certainly don't need that kind of reinforcement to treat my fellow players decently. (Note: The GIFT link contains language inappropriate for minors.) We're gathered here to celebrate a shared love of a non-competitive, creative game. All of the reasons that one would normally find in other game-focused communities for people to be cruel to one another just don't exist here. Upvote me when I impress you with some accomplishment I want to share, beat a challenge, or manage to pull a prompt and helpful answer to a question. Not for just failing to be vile.

The short answer to your question: Yes. The long answer: this thread. Ultimately, it's not something that needs to be specifically simulated, but a consequence of physics in general. (Edit: As a side-note for my fellow rocketeers, I actually found that thread just by typing "Oberth Effect in KSP" into Google. It was, quite literally, the first result. It always pays to at least check the first page of Google results before starting a new thread. There are a lot of us, and this community is several years old, so unless your question is about brand-new features it's likely already been asked many times before. May all your rockets remain pointed toward space!)

Eh, no sense waiting for midnight to roll around in my time-zone to offer the wish. The Texans obviously aren't! Happy new year from Arkansas. (The guy who should have waited was whichever of my neighbors set off seven fireworks at 21:35 instead of waiting for a moment that would have been meaningful to somebody in some time-zone somewhere. At least wait for the top of the hour so you can claim to be celebrating with distant friends, people!)

"I'm sorry, Dave. I'm afraid I can't do that."

@Whackjob I actually have that time-to-orbit beat by an hour, although it was because of the type of engines involved rather than the actual mass of the ship... as in your example, I had plenty of time to cook and eat a hefty meal during the ascent, and like you, I went through it on an over-taxed laptop. I haven't killed it yet, but I have made it beg for mercy.

You're talking about a part with a max temp of 3,400º that comes with the benefit of carrying a lot of heat away from the craft (losing ablator) instead of absorbing all of that energy into itself and conducting it up into your probe / command pod / whatever. It does its job, and does it well, but it's not a magical "If I have this, I can ignore the effects of atmospheric compression in front of my ship" tool. The problem is not in how the part works. You're coming in too steep and too fast. Edit: Just for reference, in one of the challenge threads I've taken part in, I brought a ship back in from Duna-height Kerbolar orbit to Kerbin re-entry with a PE on the first pass of 45 km and no heat-shield at all-- tail-first entry presenting a Spark, which has a max temp of only 2,000º. That ship lost nothing to heat or atmospheric forces.

I'm in the camp whose first exploded building was the launch pad, upon loading a heavy rocket onto it. Rather than disable building destruction, I just started using launch clamps to make sure that my over-sized constructions don't sit on their engines.

As a side-note, MechJeb is cheating if you're in a serious relationship with another auto-pilot mod, and it's not one of those "open relationship" deals. You really should consider your autopilot's feelings before flirting with other mods that serve the same function.

May as well add my little bit of fuel to the fire, preferably while everybody's standing far enough back that nobody gets burned: Personally, I use MechJeb quite often, for a number of purposes: Primarily, Smart A.S.S. for pitch/heading control relative to the surface, rather than my current orbit. Maintaining rover speed at a constant is useful, too. The ability to just look at a little window occupying some of my screen real-estate rather than shifting over to map mode to gain information on what my current orbit looks like is also a blessing and a half. The final use to which I typically put it is the "execute next node" feature, letting the auto-pilot handle burns that I've planned out myself. I very rarely let MechJeb actually plot a node for me at this stage, and I always do landings on my own. The thing is, I called on it to plan maneuvers and handle landings quite often in earlier play. For me, it wound up serving as a teaching tool: I watched how it would handle a given task, then worked backward to figure out why it was doing things in the way that it was, because that was easier for me to understand than the question of "How do I accomplish this thing that has no analog in my real-world experience?" Thus, seeing something done by the machine a few times was typically a good way for me to figure it out so that I didn't need MechJeb any more to accomplish the task at hand. As to the question of whether it's cheating: No. I'm not competing against anybody, so there's no unfair advantage to be had. I haven't cheated myself out of an experience, but instead rode my bike with training wheels for a while until I'd figured out how to keep my balance without them. The only thing that it has deprived me of is frustration, and in so doing, it's made it far easier to stick with the game for longer and have much more fun over that time. In conclusion: If you think that MechJeb makes the game better for you, then that's perfectly fine. Spread the word if anybody's asking about mods that perform functions it can handle. If you think that it somehow violates the spirit of the game, and refuse to try it on principal? That's your decision, and I won't deride you for it. More power to you if you want to handle everything manually, and are capable. Just don't go around telling others that they're in the wrong for enjoying a single-player game in their own way. To everybody expecting (or displaying) hostility in this thread: We can handle controversial topics without jumping down one another's throats. That there is a strong disagreement is no reason that debate shouldn't or cannot be held, so long as we remember that we have far more in common with the other side than we have in opposition. Debate on, but please, for the love of the Kraken, be respectful.

I know I'll wear the badge with pride! At some point, I still need to try to pull off an expedition too. Certainly not going to cry over failing to break the 50-minute mark, even if I have only barely managed the minimum amount of flair to earn my Velocity badge!

...aaand it all makes even less sense to me now. Do Kansans pronounce the state of Arkansas the same way that they do the river, or do they use two unrelated pronunciations for the same word with the same origin depending on whether they're talking about a body of water or a political region?

Combine this with the HX parts from B9, and it's now somewhat reasonable to build space battleships that wouldn't be out of place in the Gundam franchise! I've been hoping for somebody to put out beam or particle weaponry for quite some time! There's only so much awesome you can pull off with those USAF lasers mounted on various bits of your ships.

Spoken from a clearly subjective standpoint, of course: I'd rate KSP somewhere between a heavily-modded version of Minecraft (one of the Feed the Beast, kitchen-sink modpacks) and Dwarf Fortress. Some things just aren't intuitive (and, for me, absolutely ruined a lot of space battles in anime once I figured them out), but I lost a lot less hair learning to play KSP than DF. I will say that one of the axioms from the dwarven community translates very well into the Kerbal one: "Losing is fun." Even the most spectacular failures in this game can still be giggle-worthy.

Arkansas, USA. I'll leave it up to our friends in Kansas and Alabama to decide whether that's technically a Southern or Midwestern state. xD (As a funny side-note for our foreign friends who are unaware of this fact: Despite apparently differing only in the additional syllable at the beginning, "Arkansas" is pronounced nothing like "Kansas". The longer state's name is pronounced as a dactyl, with the second 'a' an undefined sound closer to a soft 'e' and the final syllable pronounced like a tool for cutting. The shorter, at least when spoken in the dialect of a native from my state, is a trochee that enunciates the first syllable like it's written, but sounds like the second should be spelled "zus". I would blame this inconsistency on an attempt to Romanize words borrowed from the natives' language, but that still doesn't explain identical spelling for very different-sounding words.)

I never feel too bad about the kerbals who die in exploding ships and the like, because however painful it may be, it's only that way for an exceedingly short time-frame. Probably too short for their neurons to realize it's happening. The ones that always get me are the life-support failures. Hunger and thirst are bad enough, but the most horrifying on a visceral level is when something goes wrong with the air. My most poignant in recent times was the saga of Glenica Kerman, who managed to set a course home for her ship knowing all too well that she would have been dead for over a year by the time it went through its re-entry sequence. I don't know why it hits me so hard, but the simple thought of just sitting there, helpless, as you watch the gauge on your oxygen tanks slowly drop to zero, leaving you with the knowledge that you now have only what's only in the cabin with you. Every breath robbing you of more precious oxygen, ensuing that the next one you take will be that much less effective. Did she go mad in those final hours? Was she resigned to her fate, writing some inspirational words in the captain's log? Did she, perhaps, time her final sleep cycle so that the oxygen would finally run out in the middle of ship's night, so that she could go peacefully while dreaming instead of gasping desperately? However the poor woman handled it, I can at least say this much: She got a seriously Kerbal burial.

Kerbit n. The emotion experienced at the precise moment that an individual decides, against all reason, to stop tweaking a frustrating bombuxle and just click launch. This emotion is known to take several minutes to completely clear from the system, much like the process of coming down from fight-or-flight mode. Also used in the exclamatory to express this emotion. (Editor's note: Moments of Kerbit are approximately 45% likely to correct the initial problem, and 45% likely to introduce entirely new and spectacular failures to the bombuxle.) Kerbitwha n. The emotional response to witnessing implausible direct results from a moment of kerbit. Most commonly experienced as combination of lingering kerbit after-effects with either horror or stunned surprise.

Somebody has to point it out, so this time around, I'll be "That Guy"TM. Is this challenge new? This challenge is extremely similar to the Velocity Circumnavigator sub-category within the Kerbin Circumnavigator Challenge, which is still a semi-active thread even if somewhat old, and has not yet seen a major version update since it began. The only differences here are that you are allowing part-mods (tracking them in a category separate from stock-alike) and requiring a lower operational ceiling by 5 km, with an apparent misconception of just what the Karman line represents. A plane can maintain aerodynamic lift above 25 km without reaching orbital velocity (in the real world and in game). I would suggest operational ceilings of 30 km (where Rapiers flame out) or 70 km (where you've actually entered space). Is this challenge possible? You've made a claim of near-success, but provided no proof. My latest entry in the above-linked challenge comes close, except for the operational ceiling you've set (which I exceeded by about 800m 1,140m.) It's generally considered good form to submit an entry into your own challenge, with screenshots or video, so that players considering entering it know it to be within reach. What are we trying to do? How do we win this anyway? Since nobody in this thread is going to be transforming into a deity, Apotheosis isn't the word you're looking for. It's just a nitpick, but it is a point of clarity that has already seen some attention, so I figured I'd bring it up. You're looking for "apoapsis." What, exactly, constitutes a circumnavigation in your book? Are both polar and equatorial circumnavigations fair game? Do prograde and retrograde circumnavigations count equally? Does the craft need to land intact at its starting point, or is crashing somewhere within a degree or so of the KSC close enough? If it does have to land, must it do so with all of the parts that it started with, or are staging / burnoffs allowed? I'm not trying to bring you down here, but I strongly suggest that you look over the Challenge Submission Guide, and refine this challenge to clear up your exact intentions and farther differentiate it from the Kerbin (Velocity) Circumnavigator Challenge. It might be fun to compete in what amounts to that with mods, if the parameters are clear.

I decided to take another shot at this, in the newer version of KSP and with (I think) a better flight profile than before, but doing the best I could to replicate my plane from August given that I don't have the craft file, and thus have to re-build from a combination of the screenshots and my memory. Thus, I present to you the Hexwing Rebuild, which completes one circumnavigation in a period of 59 minutes and 17 seconds. It's not the fastest plane to fly, but does squeeze in at both 'under an hour' and 'faster than the slowest Velocity Circumnavigation', so that's the category for which I'm submitting it. https://imgur.com/a/lAX7T