GarrisonChisholm

Thank you also! If I can get clouds on Eve I will count it a major success, and then I will look into that OPM mod for further endeavors. I may just try Para-Sci High Performance for EVE and see if that is usable for my paperweight first, and resort to hacking EVE's cloud configs if that is still an unplayable step for me.

*nods* I understand, but I can endure that for 6-8 missions. I am already dealing with a 12 minute trip to orbit taking 2 hours, so as long as it is "clear" around Kerbin it should be bearable around Eve for the thrill of discovery.

Thank you! I will give that a go, and hope it doesn't still slow down my fps (I don't see any reason why it should).

Good morning everyone. I have started a new 1.22 game (going to wait for teething trouble observations before 1.3) and as expected EVE just slogs my potato PC to a crawl, so I am playing without clouds. However, before I try to get to Eve I thought I would ask; has anyone heard of a mod for ONLY Eve? Landing on Eve (the OPM Triton analog too I guess [name escapes me]) would be so much more mysterious and exciting if there were dense clouds there, but I can't abide the slow down for Kerbin operations that come from EVE, Is there a possibility for an Only Eve EVE?...

I find myself visualizing the entrance exam for @Ferdoni's Kerbalnauts; 1) Are you an enthusiastic person? 2) How do you rate your enthusiasm? 3) If Enthusiasm were a color, what color would it be? 4) What kind of enthusiasm do you most commonly sprinkle on your breakfast? 5) Are you at all, in any way, aware of what the word "sad" means?...

It might have to be for rights reasons, but I'd find a way to buy Bob a massive steak dinner somehow anyway.

My present game has been dormant long enough that I am already thinking about re-starting. Presently I am playing with life-support for the first time, but though I am playing with Antenna Range I didn't have "line of sight" ticked, which I now perceive to have been rather the torpedo in my efforts at simulation. If I restart, it will be at 10% science rewards and the correct settings for communication, and I will Treasure trying to do the most with the least, and see if I can do a Grand Tour probe with part count limits and with bargain basement engines. That will be Fun. :]

At the risk of self-promoting a desiccated husk, ... I attempted something quite similar a while ago, and despite initial enthusiasm it gained no traction. However! I think it would be cool- for those who wished to add such a mod.

I think this deserves some kind of award. Beats me what, but it does. *impressed slow applause*

This is a fascinating conversation, and boy would I love working at a telescope if it were practical (it is not; children, life, et.al. ), but I think my very esoteric question doesn't seem like it can be answered. It doesn't seem there is a "photons/sec" metric for telescopes, one simply continues gathering light until you have gathered enough, whether that is a 12 minute exposure in the back yard or a 40 day exposure like Hubble Deep Field. Concerning KSP and astronomy, I added a mod that places a star system 10 trillion km away, and then didn't add any tech to my game that would let me explore it- and just "looking" in the tracking station didn't feel right. My solution? I orbited a massive "radio telescope" to posit that I *could* see the detail in the tracking center. I really look forward to JWST's first assessment of the local stellar neighborhood. If only somewhere we find a single pixel of the color green...

Asked and Answered! Thank you!

So, my KSP game is still on 1.1 (i think)- the version where things can't roll straight at 80+kph. I've been out of the loop for most of 6 months; does this mean there is a potential viable reason to delay or *not* upgrade my game to the current latest version? I realize it is a poor thing to ask such a question without knowing the exact version I am playing on- I will provide that tomorrow via edit.

I started thinking about analyzing light from distant stars ([spectroscopy] comments took me to wikipedia and the Extremely Large Telescope and the canceled-but-brilliantly-backronymed Overwhelmingly Large Telescope), and realized it all came down to photons. Which got me to think- if one were analyzing the atmosphere of ProximaB 4 light-years away, how many photons are you *actually* talking about that pass through the detector each second? Millions? Thousands? Furthermore, how would this change, if I were looking at a - say supernova in the Andromeda Galaxy 250,000 times farther away? My layman's thinking of light says the farther away you get - like a fire hose- the less light is emitted at an angle which touches your detector. Do astronomers count, or care about, photons? - & do you need a minimal quantity to do spectroscopy, or (i wouldn't believe it) is *one* photon enough?

This is exactly the type of thing I enjoy chatting about, so I'll chime in. My goal is exploration, so I will never attempt anything so grandiose as colonizing anything. I have yet to have a Kerbal more than dip its toes into interplanetary space, and am testing a Duna landing mission unmanned, though given what I've learned already I am pretty sure it will be back to the drawing board before I have even completed aerobraking. I generally try to let the contracts steer me, and suppose that various govt agencies and private enterprise are collaborating on the tasks. I love the game "as-is", despite the fact that I am still playing the version that doesn't allow planes to taxi straight. I also simply ignore contracts that are foolish. I generally let the "search for life" be my guide, or rather in KSP the search for a "benign life environment". Ultimately I imagine a manned mission to Laythe may be considered, but I am going so slow and cautiously that that is decades away from consideration.

I normally ignore rescue contracts (other space agencies don't fit into my worldview), but when I saw one come up for Nina Kerman, I couldn't say no. She became my first Kerbal to step onto Duna, though that was in a pre-lifesupport game so I am not sure I count it as anything but a sim anymore. Nina is my daughter's name.

:\ I'm sorry Arch. I tried to build it myself rather than DL the file, and after a very laborious deployment the darn thing broke, and I just didn't get back to it. I was worried about "version" issues- I should have just DL'd it.

I think the real limit to this thread is "what's the farthest distance object you have modded into your game." For practical reasons, I presume you mean actual missions that you hope to get actual science from, so I will not include my Valentine System probe which has an intercept set up for about 43,000 years. ( *highly* doubt I'll have the patience to run the game for 3 months to get that one...) At that point it would be about 10 trillion kilometers though. I'd be interested in hearing what the longest anyone has planned a manned mission for that took life support into account though. If you're dealing with perishables, even 2 years would be amazing.

I would pay serious $ for a coffee table book on the Kerbol system that was published in the approximate faux "1955-ish" era... I've said great work too much, but; great work Sir.

I did a direct retro-grade probe insertion into Laythe at ~10km/sec and left my Jool Transfer Stage attached when I realized how insanely hot the entry was going to be, and was delightedly surprised when I realized it would survive. Mind, the retro-grade velocities being discussed here are almost twice what I encountered (and I wasn't risking any lives of course!), but the result might be reproduce-able. Especially if 3-4k of dV could be budgeted for terminal breaking, though I know that for the difficulty of the mission being discussed that would be an Awful lot of baggage to cart.

Actually I was thinking about this, if I may interject, as I have sketched out high velocity returns before. A layered design where a 3m heat shield and shortest 3m tank (with radial decel engines) was separated from the 1.25m return capsule by spars/struts to create a thin "air gap" to minimize heat transfer, plus a ton of radiators on the 1.25m capsule might allow a super-high velocity return. Stability should not be an issue as the vast majority of the mass would be in that 3m fuel tank stage, and by the time it explodes hopefully you're down to 6k/sec. (the Kerbal Astronaut Corps does not endorse or certify this technique)

Its ALIVE!!!!!!!! *runs in terror of the woken dead...*

*gives thumbs up, as his dad was a Tool and Die guy*

One thing to consider though makes this even less likely to need to be completed if you are playing with Life Support. A botched (facing prograde + inattention/distraction) Munar Insertion that kicked you out of Kerbin's SOI would put you onto a path that wouldn't take you soon back to Kerbin, but the player who might make such an error and also was dealing with LS would have a Very difficult time. Such a player has likely just cobbled together their first lunar landing attempt, and is hoping that the ~ 10 days of supply they have on board will suffice for the trip. If their poor Kerbalnaut suddenly finds themselves cast out into interplanetary space, then a Very complex craft (from their perspective) needs to be constructed from scratch and launched Very quickly. In fact, with KER, I believe such a rescue would be impossible. A craft to get to interplanetary space, rendezvous, and return with sufficient supply for the mission would seem to me to be a tall task for a relatively new player. I almost said " @Snark is on the money", but then this would be stating a case which is always empirically known to be true.

I am happy to see this thread has popped up again, and auspiciously upon a day when I chanced to stop in again. (fwiw, the 'community coffee-table project' idea was not bad... ) @OhioBob, have you chanced to give consideration to expanding this to the Outer Planets Mod yet? It moves Eeloo (as you likely know by now), so it would involve editing, not just adding on to this existing work (alas).

Aside from "Absentee" recently, I am a Scientist/Engineer, and even though it is only for my own benefit I run my space program as if the Kerbals are indeed just learning about their system. I am not "looking" for anomalies, and at the moment we think the obelisk by the Space Center was likely placed by explorers from the Pyramid Civilization on the desert continent millennia ago- whenever I first naturally blunder into another anomaly this will eventually change! At the moment I am testing my first Duna exploration vehicle unmanned, though it has been aero-braking for about 8 months because mission control has become distracted by a (different) computer game... >.> I build my probes to be as efficient and aesthetic as I can. No Kerbal has yet strayed more than a day into interplanetary space, as I am exTremely cautious with my builds. Long-time-no-see everyone!