peewee69

Yeah, I'm also thinking Arcturus. Hopefully I'll get a good look at it again tonight. Dunno how I've never noticed it before, I don't get to see many stars due to light pollution over London, but last night it appeared so bright

Thanks for checking, I've no idea what I did see last night then. It moved with the background stars, so fairly sure it wasn't something in our atmosphere, but it clearly wasn't a normal star.

I could be wrong, but I think I saw the nova a few hours ago, about 10.30 BST. Initially thought maybe aircraft landing lights when I caught a passing glimpse, but later at home there was a bright and very twinkly star to the west. Stellarium points to the correct region. No news yet...

I'm excited to see how Jeb dies for the first time (again). I wonder if he'll think "oh no, not again!"

This is probably one of the safest bets to make given the nature of human behaviour

All of your comments are true about all the other absurdity from last man on earth, but despite it all it was the nose first reentry that I found just too stupid not to mention. How could the entire team of X number of people never have seen a capsule reentry? Surely someone at some point could have said "errr, guys, I think capsules enter bottom first". Any maths whizzes out there wanna calculate the odds of putting, say for example, 10 people in a room together and NONE of them are aware of such a basic fact? Surely you'd have better odds of winning the lotto?!

I know it's not sci-fi, but I have just watched an episode of The Last Man on Earth where a crew capsule re-enters nose first! Such a basic flaw, how did nobody on the production team not know?

In terms of financial returns from Starship development, surely space mining ops are more feasible now? How much mined material could SpaceX land back here on Earth?

I've been building lots of very specific function craft, which results in lots of rendezvous & docking manoeuvres. And lots of vehicles everywhere which is becoming a bit of a headache!

I cannot decide if the better strategy for a career game is to design missions for single-use, or to build infrastructure & re-use as much as possible? How do you play?

Really great story for you fans of autobrake; https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-8012215/amp/Tesla-Model-X-automatic-brakes-stopped-two-families-crushed-tree-Storm-Dennis.html

In the new "Lost in Space" on Netflix, in the first episode during the scene with the ship crashing, the computers display a distance to impact in meters, but the computers voice reads out in feet, both of which have the same numerical value. Not exactly scientifically inaccurate, but an error which caused me to not bother watching it anymore...

Actually, this only applied to the distance between the first and second satellites due to a slight launch timing error of about 10 days. Given that your maths calculates the travel time around Kerbol of 0.57° per day, then this should lead to an error of about 5.7° degrees, which should make up the difference between your calculated value of 24° and the measured value of 30°. When the 3rd satellite arrived into it's designated orbit, it was indeed about 24° from the 2nd. Thanks so much for the reply, I can now sleep at night! This is what I usually do for local satellites. However, I didn't much like the thought of doing this for the deep space satellites as it would involve waiting for many years before the constellation was fully operable, and I have a contract which will need the deep space coms up and running in no more than 4 years.

I want to design a "one ship fits all" rescue craft that is capable of dragging the whole stranded crew capsule back down to Kerbal for a safe recovery. My question is this; what types of crew pods am I likely to encounter? Do all crew pods spawn, or is it just a select few? And if so, which ones?

I wanted a deep space relay network and so went through various calculations, working out that I would need a constellation of 5 relays in a circular 17.7 Gm Solar orbit. So I decided that the best way to get them to their appropriate orbit would be to launch them 1 at a time in intervals equal to 1/5 of Kerbin's orbital period. I calculated this to be aprox every 85 days (given that it take 426 days to orbit Kerbol). As long as I followed the same trajectories for each launch, they should all end up at aprox 72° apart from one another, right? WRONG! Instead, they have ended up at about half the intended distance to one another (around 30° or so). Why?

I know, I know; we haven't even got EP1 yet, (but I am looking forward to it!). I have been thinking a lot about what I would like to see for the next expansion pack and wanted to share my ideas and invite you all to share yours! My idea; KSP: The Search For Life I would like a more substantiated reason to do science, other than just unlocking new parts. I would like the data to actually mean something, be useful in some way. So, in The Search For Life, you would take various measurements in the Kerbol system looking for that "sweet spot" where life may exist. The goal (finally! an end-game to KSP!) is to prove extrakerbestrial life in the fastest time possible, posting your results to an online leader board. This would have to happen in a randomly generated system of planets and moons, which would have to be discovered by telescopes first before any missions could be sent there. Perhaps one of the bodies could even host intelligent life and a Kerbal would have to be sent there to make first contact. What are your idea's?

I think then it must be a bug. Interestingly, my RoverMate on my surface rover also doesn't detect an anomaly while parked right next to one, despite having 100% detection rate!

I think that DNS 1 should be enough to cover Kerbin's SOI. If you are using basic antenna's, you must have them deployed to work.

Yes, but the RoverMate only works within 10km (I think). I did make my first anomaly hunter with this core, but it found nothing in a 75km polar orbit. Not sure why I didn't use the MK2, but probably because the FOV was too low. Does the probe permanently forget the anomaly after detecting it the first time? Or will an anomaly be put back into the randomised detection pool again? I find it difficult to believe that in the first few hours of searching it was detecting several anomalies, but now it doesn't detect anything over the course of 3 days!

Hi fellow Kerbanaughts! I'm having difficulty with detecting anomalies. I have a probe core in orbit looking for the blighters, but it appears to be loosing it's ability to detect them. The core is a RC-L01 (the highest detection rate), and with time is detecting fewer anomalies, even failing to spot the ones that it saw a few orbits ago. I watched the thing go round and round Kerbin for 3 in-game days without it detecting anything at all! Am I just being impatient? Does the detection rate deteriorate with time?

Thanks!

Hi fellow kerbanaughts! A curious phenomena has occurred when comparing the early career parachutes; The Mk16 has an effective diameter of 20.7 and the Mk2-R has 41.3. Yet when I tested each of them, I found that the Mk16 slows the descent of my test craft to about 6 - 6.5 m/s and the Mk2-R to about 7 - 7.5 m/s. Surely a larger effective diameter should lead to a slower descent?

I've had enough of all this speculation, so I decided to consult my Crystal Ball of Truth and Wisdom. This is what the ball told me; There will be a new expansion pack called "KSP: The Search for Life". With this EP, players will play online. Each instance of a game will produce a different planetary system whereby the online competitors are challenged with being the first to ultimately discover life elsewhere within the system. The first challenge will be to discover and calculate the orbital pathways of the planets and their respective moons. This is done by scouring the night sky with telescopes which players will have to build and improve. Science points are distributed to the players who make the most discoveries. There could be anywhere between 5 to 12 planets of varying classes. The next task is to study these planets by sending scientific instruments. Planet x might have liquid water, whereas planet y may have lower surface radiation and planet z has a moon with methane plumes evident in its atmosphere etc. Each of these factors will increase the chances of discovering lifeforms and each player will have to make decisions about what missions should be prioritised to which planet. Some lifeforms may live sub-surface, some may live on the surface within specific biomes, while some may live in the atmosphere. Some lifeforms may be single-celled, some may be multi-cellular and some may even be intelligent! The first player to bank 10,000 science points wins the game!

Instead of getting into shape (and bruising me in the process), why don't you help me to work out how to increase the TWR of this painfully slow ferry?!

Boy, do I regret buying my ticket for the patience ferry!