IncongruousGoat

KSP version: 1.3.1 Windows 64bit Problem: Any spacecraft sent beyond low Earth orbit has certain, seemingly randomly selected, parts offset from where they should be. These parts will often result in phantom torque. The phenomenon gets more severe with both longer flight times and greater distances away from Earth. Mods installed: Replication steps: Launch a probe on any BLEO trajectory (the example one is headed to Venus). From some vessel/location other than the probe, warp forward a few months. Switch back to the probe. Observe parts offset when in normal flight but not during time warp. Screenshots: Logs: Log files will be provided if requested. I haven't posted them since this problem isn't a crash.

Forget the visuals, the sonic boom probably scared the heck out of anyone who wasn't paying attention to the warnings.

And, the stream has started

Music's started

Launch stream:

It appears I was mistaken about that one. Seems like I've been managing to stick my foot in my mouth all over the forums these last couple of days...

Not all languages have array slicing. Actually, not all languages have arrays in the first place, but that's a discussion for another time. In any case, I take as an example C arrays. Arrays in C are (more or less) just regions of memory big enough to hold a certain number of variables of a specific type. Arrays contain one type of thing, do not automatically resize (and can only sometimes be manually resized), and most certainly don't have a slice operation. The closest thing you have is a function called memcpy(), which literally copies a certain number of bytes from one memory address to another. Don't assume that, just because Python has it, other languages will too. Python in many ways is a weird language that makes most of its choices in the name of being fast to write above all else. But, to answer your question, I never have to do array slicing - because it isn't a meaningful operation in the languages I use most of the time.

Hey, @MinimalMinmus, @dvader, and I have all done them as part of Corundum/Diamond/NCD runs.

@Lisias I feel your pain. I lost a few hours the other day slamming my head into some select()-based networking code before realizing I had failed to RTFM. It turns out that the first argument to select() is not, as one might expect, the number of file descriptors to monitor. No, it's the integer value of the highest file descriptor. Plus one. I want to find whoever wrote the spec for select() and slap them for gross incompetence.

Wait, level two? I only had a crew of one.

If nothing else, this thread has given me even more reason to never ever move to the tropics. The winters here may be harsh by southern standards, but having to deal with hurricanes on a yearly basis is a bit too much for me. At least the blizzards up here don't go knocking houses down, most of the time.

I know a guy who calls him Beneficial Cucumber, but other than that I've got nothing.

U.S. pad numbering already made no sense. SpaceX is just following the fine American tradition of strange pad numbers. Just look at the pad numbers used at the Cape and at Vandenberg. The Cape's scheme has several gaps and inconsistencies, and I don't even know what Vandenberg is using. Plus, it's not like SpaceX were ever committed to consistent naming in the first place. I mean, seriously - 1.0 to 1.1 to Full Thrust to Block 5. Like with the Falcon 9 naming scheme, there's probably a rationale somewhere in there; it's just not immediately apparent.

@ManEatingApe Well, great. Now I just feel silly. But, seriously, congratulations. You clearly thought the whole "42-part Jool 5" thing through a lot more thoroughly than I did.

You know, it's been a while since I did this challenge. It's high time I did it again. Fine folk of the forums, I present to you Amalthea, a 42-part Jool 5. Mission album is here: https://imgur.com/a/0V7TogV Designing for low part count leads to some interesting tradeoffs. Laythe especially is a tricky one to get a low part count on, because of the high variation in flight regimes and the high delta-V requirement. In the end, though, I managed to cram everything I needed into 42 parts. I could have taken it lower still, but I was doing this for the Douglas Adams challenge.

Well, it's finished. I did a 42-part Jool 5 with no ISRU. Mission album is here: https://imgur.com/a/0V7TogV Craft file is here: https://kerbalx.com/IncongruousGoat/Amalthea The mission was... honestly, pretty unpleasant to fly. Delta-V margins were often razor-thin, TWRs and accelerations were never what I wanted them to be, and using ion engines out at Jool is a painful experience in general. But I did it anyway, to show that it can be done. Also because designing it was fun.

In response to 1: I think the rules here get increasingly flexible as the difficulty tier you're attempting goes up. A couple of the ships I used for my NCD run were part-clipped to kingdom come (For Emily, Whenever I May Find Her being the most egregious example), but I think that was let slide because... well... NCD. @Jacke Expanding on number 2: Not only are you allowed to have an EVA kerbal ride a ladder into orbit, you're actively encouraged to do so. Breaking the rules isn't allowed. Circumventing the rules in as creative a way as possible is practically the point of the challenge. In response to 3: I suggest going by the standard @dvader established for his Corundum/Diamond/NCD runs and using the default settings for Hard for the advanced settings. Actually making the advanced settings as bad as possible causes a number of problems, including no data transmission and no unmanned probes.

You'd be surprised. Obviously there's a bunch of research done on the ISS about long-term human spaceflight, but there's also good research in biology, medicine, materials science, inorganic chemistry, climatology, and a number of other fields that simply can't be done outside of the microgravity environment of the ISS. Plus, now that private companies are being allowed to fly experiments to the space station, the commercial sector is getting in on the microgravity research game, which is opening up all kinds of opportunities for new research. It's not like the astronauts that are on the ISS are up there just for kicks - it's a serious platform for science. NASA is just terrible at advertising what the ISS does. For example, did you know that the astronauts aboard the ISS have been growing vegetables for crew consumption on-station for years? I'm willing to bet that even most space nerds aren't aware of this.

Location: 2058 Valentina Dr., Kerbal Space Center, 67019; PO Box 34, Kerbin. 7/10. Points for precision, but it's not super useful until the USPS sets up a mail ship doing the Earth->Kerbin run.

Well... I made it. For whatever it's worth. Hooray?

Gold if it's done with ISRU, platinum if done without. With ISRU, you can get away with only bringing one lander if you show up in a spaceplane for Laythe. Without ISRU it gets a lot more complicated to fit in all the varied gear you need within the part limit.

Hmmm. This is interesting. I'm going to have to take a shot at this, and I already think I know what I'm going to try and do... The Jool system beckons.

Tang

I dunno how much use it'll be to you, but if you want advice on how to do things with no facility upgrades, no cash, and no tech I highly recommend checking out the Caveman Challenge thread: Again, I don't know how useful you'll find it, but if nothing else you might learn a thing or two about how far you can go with low tech and an un-upgraded space center.

Heard this for the first time a few days ago, and it's been running circles in my head ever since: