Orbital Vagabond

This isn't an excuse to not use good communication. Squad just doesn't seem to learn. No matter what they do (good OR bad), they communicate poorly, which leads to confusion, contention, and discord in the community, and then they assume that regardless of what was done, nothing could have possibly been done to avoid it because the internet is full of malcontents.

Lol. Everyone is freaking out about the UI, and it sounds like the UI is being revised to be PS4/U5 compatible... Hello Skyrim interfaces. Did anyone else thing Harv's little "footnote" came off as passive aggressive/rude?

You may want to check the rest of this thread and others. They'r farming the port out to a totally-not-shady third party http://www.ftmobile.com/default.aspx

I hear what you're saying, Murph, but this isn't just about the Nuke. In 1.0, the game had an interesting heat-based mechanic with drills. This mechanic was basically removed from the game (nerfed into oblivion) and could be reinstated with radiators. Beyond the nuke and revising the drills to be similar to their old configuration, there's a lot of interesting things that could be done with a robust heat mechanic, e.g. fission reactors to produce heat (useful to power stations beyond Duna's orbit); The hotter they get, the more electricity they produce, but the more likely you are to cause it to exploded unless you have enough radiators.

Just to be clear, in my view there are two distinct sources of heat generation: Internal generation (drills, nukes) and external generation (atmospheric interaction). Heat generated by internal sources shouldn't be able to be dissipated by methods designed for external sources, e.g. ablation Heat generated by external sources shouldn't be able to be dissipated by methods designed for internal sources, e.g. radiators (Radiators require a heat gradient between the inside of the vessel, and the outside. When re-entering, the outside is hothothot). As long as these two criteria are met, and is otherwise reasonable, the solution is acceptable IMO. Rickenbacker's solution DOES tend to work, but I think it might get iffy in thin atmospheres.

Kerbin's more distant orbiting body is "Minmus", not "MinImus". I think the OP was using the term "minimus" to refer to a least amount, i.e. the least amount of dV needed to reach 75km x 75km orbit. I don't believe he was referring to the satellite. I had to read it a few times to figure it out as well.

Like I said, I may have misunderstood what the plan is. My information is coming from this post: So there may have been nuances in what was said during the 'cast that I'm not getting. To me, this sounds like a replacement heating system instead of an additional one, especially since they nerfed the bajebus out of the heat from drilling system, and changed the efficiency to be engineer based. I'm sorry, but I'm not going to go watch the stream... I seriously cannot stand those...

I don't think it has a manned control pod. If the vessel had a manned control pod, the indicator should be yellow and read "local control". A green indicator indicates a probe with a KSC connection is controlling the vessel.

GM(Ker) = 3.5316 x 10^12 m3s-2 r(Ker) = 600 km All these values are available on the official wiki page.

First, the minimum dV to get to a circular 75 km orbit around Kerbin from the surface is certainly not 6350... Is this a typo for 3650? Second, you aren't going to find a proof due to the complexity of the math involved, especially concerning drag. Your second step will fail apart. Finally, with fuel and mass held constant, a vessel's dV changes as a function of altitude due to ISP changes. I can tell you that a Hohmann transfer from 70 m (about where KSC is) on the equator to a 75 Km circular orbit would take 2389.9 m/s, assuming infinite TWR and no velocity losses due to drag. That's about the extent of what you can get for a theoretical minimum based on math (and even then, its not a proof). Beyond this, you'll need approximations and numerical integration methods, which don't qualify as mathematical proofs. Addendum: It's Kerbin. Not Kirbin.

Based on a recent DevNotes, it sounds like the devs are moving to a "skin heating" model instead of a "thermal mass" model we have for heat now. The reason for this change was stated that it was impossible to appropriately balance the thermal masses in several command parts. I may be misunderstanding this, and hence the rest of this post may not be terribly relevant. While this is a good change, I still miss the interesting heat management from the drills in v1.0. I think keeping both heat systems would allow interesting game play while allowing balance for all appropriate systems. I think it would be interesting to keep both systems, and track external temperature and internal heat. Skin-atmosphere interactions generate "skin heat", and machinery like drills and nukes generate "core heat". Skin heat would dissipate into the environment via convection and radiation. Core heat would slowly conduct into the skin, where it would increase skin temperature and dissipate as above. Also, core heat could be reduced using radiators, which require electricity. Making the radiators "active" helps because it represents that the system is pumping coolant around the vessel, so radiators can be placed anywhere and still dissipate core heat. Parts can fail with surface temperature reach a certain threshold (hull rupture) or core heat exceeds a certain threshold (catastrophic explosion). By limiting the use of radiators to dissipate core heat, the mechanism shouldn't be exploitable for removing skin heat generated during re-entry. Radiators shouldn't be effective at dissipating entry heat anyway. Anyway, just a thought on the heat systems.

The counterpoint to more planets always seems to be a variation of "It's pointless because it would just be more of the same". And this is such a weak argument it's not even funny. Seriously, If you can't imagine planets and moons that *aren't* Elloo clones, then you have a pretty limited imagination. There are great recommendations already on this page, and I would add moons in retrograde orbits, extremely oblate moons, moons with tall spikey mountains, and Titan-like moons. That's easily enough to populate a GP2 neighborhood. Also, rings are pretty.

Or we could just move electric wheels to way earlier in the tech tree...

Scott Manley also weighed in on this about a month ago: To sum up: Liquid hydrogen is the fuel that makes sense for nukes, and LH2 is very bulky. If we included any kind of accurate LH2 fuel, then it's tankage would be even less size and mass efficient than using the half empty LFO tanks! - - - Updated - - - On one level, I agree with this so hard it's not even funny. But on another level, I'm really conflicted about it. The devs have stated that any kind of procedural part (beyond fairings, because...?) isn't going to be considered because they prefer the "lego" asthetic and building challenge: You have a variety of pre-fab parts, instead of the perfect part for every possible situation. However, it's frustrating when the devs include new mechanics (e.g. LF-only nukes), then don't include the parts that feel like they support the new mechanics. See also "Where my radiators at, Squad?, Vol. XXVIII" And I kind of hate myself for saying this, but I think sticking with the "lego" aesthetic is better option in this case. However, I would be very happy if we got a few configurations (like, 4 or fewer) for each tank size, e.g. the FLT 200 could carry LFO 9:11 (for pure LFO engines), LFO 12:4 (for dual-cycle engines), pure LF, or pure OX. The configuration could be selected in the tweakables menu, and one-fuel tanks could hold slightly more volume than fuel tanks that contained multiple fuels. I think it would be a good compromise between the two stances. PS we still need radiators.

Well, maximum efficiency is going to require tech beyond early career. So, trying to give advice within your requested parameters: *Take as many science experiments as you can with you. *Suicide burn to land *Aim for surface TWR on the Mun of ~ 2 (No higher than 3, and no less than 1.5). *Take a scientist with you the lander, and try to hop between a few biomes on the surface of the Mun *Skip the Mun and hit Minmus for way more science for less effort. All previous advice remains consistent, except don't worry about your TWR Hope that helps.

Also curious if this mod is still functional.

"I'd rather be orbiting."

Wait, he actually MADE it somewhere?

It doesn't matter. Equatorial orbits can never be sun-synchronous because they view the sun in different positions at any given latitude on each orbit since the position of the sun relative to the orbit changes on each orbit due to the planet's orbit around it's parent.

Don't the chutes (drogue and standard) open gradually now? The g-forces don't seem to spike the way I recall they used to. If this is true, I'd say the redesigned chute modules would qualify as "New 'chutes for the new model."

This is inaccurate. Sun-synchronous orbits are highly inclined/polar orbits, not equatorial. Sources: http://satellites.spacesim.org/english/anatomy/orbit/sunsynch.html

"If gravity was affecting ships in orbit, we'd be seeing pictures of astronauts walking around the ISS, not floating."

Yeah, I know the meatball was the original logo, and it looks REALLY dated to me. The worm was in use from Apollo-Soyuz through early "shuttle years", and it just always sat well with me, certainly better than reviving an older design. I guess I'm in the minority on this one. /shrug

For anyone who doesn't know, the "Worm logo" is the modern, stylized logo that was used by NASA between 1975 and 1992. As a child of the 80's, this was the first logo I ever saw for NASA, and, man, I just realized how much I miss it after looking through some old NASA stuff. It's just so clean, and minimalistic... I've always preferred it to the "meatball" logo. Anyone else feel me on this?

How much Vacuum dV does your SSTO start with? It sounds like your profile is already pretty efficient.