Cunjo Carl

A couple pics for posterity... Launch Recovery I'm actually really happy to see them launching again. Last year, my little one was making me launch/land KSP New Shephards almost every day. I suspect now he's seen this launch we might be starting that back up again.

Very good news. Long story short, I was visited by an uninterrupted series of small miracles. Things turned around hard for me, and my survival odds are now very good. It's all a bit surreal, to be honest. I needed a half dozen things to happen, each of which had been non-forthcoming over the last months. Then, suddenly, over the last four days they all just clicked into place. I really can't describe how unlikely it all was. You'd think I'd be excited or something, but what I feel is a heavy relief that borderlines on sadness or shell shock. Those feelings will digest with time, I'm patient. My road to recovery will be long, and it's very possible I won't recover fully, but to be honest it's not a big deal. I had earmarked yesterday through early/mid march as 'last stand', and here I am getting to write to everyone while sipping a strawberry half-and-half milkshake and listening to the latest SC2 tourney. ... Things are very good. My survivability isn't guaranteed, but it is now very likely. In the small but present possibility I do crash back down, I'll just mention it on my personal page. I'm not a fan of grand standing (despite how often I grand stand, go figure!) and I feel a bit awkward now. I wasn't wrong, last week by the way. I just got very very lucky. I'll need a bit of time, but I will be back. I'm looking forward to it. Thanks, all.

Lock please- thanks in advance! In addition, feel free to move it. It seemed more Kerbal Network than anything after I wrote it. Changes for Cunjo Carl Edit: *ahem* if it is too much for the forum, I can move it to my personal page, I didn't think about that option before posting. I have the text handy still, so just delete it if so, and let me know by PM tomorrow, and I'll re-up it there. Thanks!

This is hard to write, but it's something I have to say. I'd rather not just disappear forever. I've been fighting a wasting disease for several months now, and it's starting to get really very tough. I'll spare the details, but suffice to say that no one knows what it is, so no one really knows what's going to happen. If you plot a line though, it's about time for me to get my affairs in order. First of all, thanks to everyone here at the forums! I can't imagine a more worth while place to have spent my fun time over the last couple years. I took a long break to teach my friends and students how to program, but I was destined to return. Too bad my return was so short, but well, I'm thankful for what time I have had. It's not really a big deal if not, but I was hoping some folks might become the hosts for a few of my old challenges. They're mostly pretty musty, but if for some reason they do get a resurgence, it'd be nice for someone to be there for it. Go ahead and just toss a quick post in the threads themselves (or make a reboot) if any sound like they'll be a good match for you: Real Time Career Mode Speedrun , 6 Minutes to Critical , Spin to win , The Wrecking Crew . Spin to win isn't a big deal because I believe it's already up for reboots in the heritage list, which works plenty fine. The wrecking crew is a DLC mission that should be self sufficient, but may need occasional maintenance if the DLC mission builder has significant changes. I've noticed that my image host, postimage, has just gone belly up. I still have the old pictures, but not nearly enough energy to pick them from the piles and re-upload them piecemeal at the moment. Sorry in advance. If I can muster the capacity for it, I'm going to put up some bounties on a few of the KSP speedruns. Bounties are pretty common in the speedrunning community as a way for people to kick off excitement for running a new title. They're just little cash prizes, mostly for the fun. Why? This sounds silly, but I may last a while longer, and I'd really like to live vicariously. I hope nothing more than to have a bunch of KSP-greenhorn speedrunners come rushing in to the help forums for help with routing. For this though, I'd need a proctor in the speedrunning community, who I may or may not find in time. We'll see! I'm going to ask a mod to lock this thread, because well, it's a little intense for a forum, and I don't want people to feel obligated in answering. Thanks for reading . I'm going to make myself available by PM for a short time though, and with any luck will get to enjoy the forums as a lurker for a while still. If a miracle happens, I will be back. Thanks all for your thoughts of good health!

Perfect Landing. Every Time. I think I've got this Jeb character down pat! @Disparia Books, I should probably mention for your upcoming chapters that at the moment there's a bug with spawning orbital craft using nodes that aren't docked directly to the start node. So, it's best to get all your assets up in the air right at the start for now. Thanks for the mission, it was fun to play!

Yay! Man, I really wanted to catch the ladder on my way down, but the craft were floating 200m in the air on approach, and suddenly popped down when I got close so I wound up overshooting. Also, I learned it's a bad idea to launch on Duna with all your solar panels and antenna out . Well, the more you know, right? Made it in one piece, thanks for the mission! Also, cool looking fuel pods on the craft.

Have a quick question about getting the mission builder to do something special? Find some neat and useful trick? Tell us about it here! I'll get the ball rolling with tricks for handling mission requirements in any order, or all at once. One at a time: Just shown for comparison, connecting requirements in a row checks them one at a time. In any order: Lets the player tackle your requirements in any order, allows you to trigger optional dialogue during a mission, and gives your player an option of which objectives to do (like winning by doing 2 of 4 objectives). First choose some variable to temporarily track progress, like score, funds, or fuel hidden in a nearby tank you've spawned. Set this to the number of objectives that need doing. In my case, I wanted the player to destroy 4 buildings, so I set the score to 4. Next, for convenience, put an always true node with 'run once' turned off on both sides of your objectives. Link the first always true node to each of your objectives and dialogue triggers. Then, have each objective link to a node that decreases the remaining objectives variable by 1. After this, link everything to the second always true node, and finally have this node link to (in order) first a node that checks if the objectives remaining variable is 0 (win!), and second the original always true node at the start of the loop. In this way, the player will continue to run through the loop until they've completed enough objectives to escape. To have multiple triggers for a single result that happens only once. Have both triggers link first to the result node with 'run once' selected, and then link second to an always true node that bypasses the result. All at once: There's a few ways check multiple requirements at once, but the easiest I've found is using time. Link together nodes for each requirement you want satisfied, such as altitude>x, speed>y, and speed<z. Then, have the final requirement link to (in order) first a 'time since node' node testing if the time since the initial requirement was <5s, and second link back to the initial requirement. In this way, the system will first check to see if each requirement is satisfied one by one, and then on a second loop double check that they're all satisfied simultaneously before moving on.

I'm glad you liked it, thanks for playing! Looking good there! The ball can survive the loss of a couple limbs and still wobble along fine. Keep going, best of luck!

That.... That is spooky.

I've been really enjoying the new mission creator. Thanks for making it!

I would also love a node to convert resources levels into score directly! For right now, there is a way to implement that functionality using a few separate nodes to make a loop. Here's how it works: (We've made it to orbit with at least 120 fuel, or we would have exploded.) 1. Remove 1 unit of fuel 2. Add 10 points 3. If fuel is less than 1, go to scoring. Otherwise go back to step 1. In this way our fuel drains and our points rise until the tanks are drained. In practice this takes a few seconds. To make it work we need to do the following things to the nodes shown in the picture below: Under the options of both the change resource level node and the change score node, we unselect the 'run once' check box. Have the change score node link to both the resource amount node and the change resource node. In the change score node's options, we make sure the resource amount node is higher so that it will happen if possible, or redirect back to the change resource node if not. Example link. Also, I got a bronze! Thanks for the challenge.

I'm also not a dev, but it looks like (just a guess) they've added a step to the physics easing that figures out where the base of the vehicle is relative to the surface and then corrects it if the vehicle is partially subterannean or in freefall, before finally starting physics proper. So, my planes that would previously start 10ft in the air now start on the runway, and the subterranean fairing shenanigan at the start of this video no longer happens, too. I'll call it a net win, regardless! Recently patched out ground positioning shenanigans On the top right of any page, find your profile icon and click it. In the resulting dropdown menu, click 'profile'. In your profile page, near the top right, click 'edit profile'. Finally, in the 'Member Title' field type in bottle rocketeer and click save!

This mission was made to fulfill everyone's secret dream to someday become an enormous self-propelled wrecking ball. Features: A robust non-linear mission structure, Explosions (the good kind) Download Link

That sounds really awesome! I've never heard of anything like it, but haven't played career yet in the latest release. Can I ask which version you're running, and which company provided the contract?

I'm having a ball with the new structural panels. I guess I've heard the DLC has some other things, too?

For sure! Sorry it's not working. It almost sounds like the trouble is specific to either your forum account or maybe your firewall somehow? Anyways, I've made a direct download link for the pictures available in a small edit at the end of the topic post. I'll be sure to keep it up to date (or atleast as up to date as I keep everything else ). The definition is just what was in the little blerb and spoiler in the main post. This 'effective Isp' and the one from bypass jet engines aren't related. If I'd remembered the term was used for bypass, I would have given it a different name . This effective Isp is a measurement of mass efficiency, and the lines shown in the plots are the best possible mass efficiencies for that engine and TWR requirement. This optimum happens at a specific payload fraction, which is found by the following: The RE-I2... I think it's supposed to be the J2 (SaturnV second stage) These DLC engines have atm curves now! While the curves are the normal linear scaling we'd expect in the 0-1atm region, the part files describe a sharper drop at higher atm. I'll have to test it, but I think that means the otherwise amazing looking Mastadon won't be much use on Eve

Yep, the other two were improved in step with the big tank, at least in terms of drymass/fullmass. I need to break some bad news to you though, the tanks don't automatically update in v1.4. You'll need to go through and swap them all out for the new ones. It makes sense they did this for compatibility reasons. If you're doing a re-optimization anyways, perhaps not that big of a deal. So, brachistochrone to Jool? Oh, also I was poking in my calculator to pull up the fuel values anyways, so I ran the mass optimal stage sizings, and it looks like v1.4 stages are ~40-50% more deltaV than the old v1.3 ones for most reasonable TWRs and asparagus-levels. Might be a good starting place to check in your reoptimization? Best of luck! I'm curious to see this thing when you get it going again.

Tada! @Renegrade is correct for everything except this, which we happen to have in ksp 1.4 already. The old masses are .413 empty, .938 full. And, the new masses are .19empty, .76 full. Version 1.3 Xenon tanks (44%) vs... Version 1.4 (25%)

Could be that your system doesn't like my image host, Postimage? I don't know why that would be, but I'll be updating the pictures tomorrow, so if they're still missing after that I'll host a direct download link to the pictures too. Right? Imagine something like turbopumped's 100km/s ion sundive run again in v1.4! Of course I wouldn't dream of this, but it's also possible to use this extra efficiency to make the mega rockets smaller.... For simple single stack rockets I totally agree, it's tricky to squeeze the poodle in unless you were planning to use it for some interplanetary/KSO burns as well. I was very surprised though in one of the more recent cost-to-LKO competitions, there was a 2 stage kickback->Poodle craft that narrowly edge out the more standard kickback->twinboar and kickback->skippers. So, I guess the answer is moar (tm) boosters. For the Wolfhound (J2-Type), it would be kinda fun to mimic boiloff by having the engine constantly leak fuel like probes constantly use power. I think in practice it would probably drive me nuts, though... Agreed, with any luck it will be a very low tech engine. I also like the maximum dV calculation! It's a great first order look at rocket efficiency, and can be calculated just by typing formulas into google. Effective Isp is a quite similar but second order look which accounts for one additional detail, which is payload. While I present it kinda slapdash here ('cause it wasn't the main focus), effective Isp does have a mathematical underpinning I could share if you wanted. Anyways, the maximum dV calculation is equivalent to a single stage rocket without a payload, but our actual rockets have payloads, and so they need more thrust (=engines) than the maximum dV calculation accounts for. This means in real rockets, engine TWR is a little more important than the maximum dV calculation shows. Just like any first and second order analysis, the difference between the two techniques is generally not very great. I also find that surprising. Relative to the Mamoth, the F1 equivalent Mastadon looked a little anemic on TWR, but not that badly. Maybe it's the huge fuel tanks they're trying to push like you say. I remember hearing stories that SaturnV gently meandered off the launch pad relative to many modern rockets, so perhaps the DLC isn't far from the truth!

Fair warning, my math just got 10/10 most confusing in the "Confuse the next poster" forum game. So.... Let me know if it's confusing . Alright, so I'll talk a bit about what those numbers mean and why we use them first, and I'll retread a bit of ground from streetwind who has already given a good description. First, what parts would need editing? 1. Engines (thrust curve and atm curve) 2 optional. Intakes (mach curve) for any except the shock cone 3 optional. Wings (Lift and Drag mach curves, which would be in the physics file rather than the part files) If you're just looking to do rapier, it shouldn't be too tricky! Sets of numbers that define a curve like this are called 'Splines' or sometimes 'Tangent curves' depending on the field. Each key represents one point on the graph, and the way we'll plot it (or calculate it) is to plot what's between two of these points. 1. Find the data The data is written in config files using the following format key1 = X1 Y1 I1 O1 key2 = X2 Y2 I2 O2 key3 = X3 Y3 I3 O3 key4 = X4 Y4 I4 O4 Where each key defines a point in terms of its x value, y value, incoming tangent=slope (I), and outgoing tangent=slope (O). A good example of these values might be mach values for x (the thing you know), thrust coefficients for y (the thing you want to know), and the I and O tangents for how quickly thrust coefficients change approaching and leaving this point. Plotted as a line, these tangents are the slope coming into and out of the point, so if the I and O are different, there'll be a kink in the line at that point. It seems like a silly way to make a line, but it winds up being an easy way to make a curve with whatever shape you want, and it's quick to calculate on a computer provided you handle memory lookups correctly. For this reason, they're super popular in games where they want silly curves for balance reasons, and they'll need to be using those curves thousands of times a second. 2. Find some coefficients We'll need some coefficients in a moment, so we plug in some numbers from key1 and some from key2. A = 2Y1 + O1 - 2Y2 + I2 B = -3Y1 - 2O1 + 3Y2 - I2 C = O1 D = Y1 3. Form the equation We'll write an equation for the line that goes between the points of key1 and key2. We could try to make this equation in terms of x, but it would be really hard! So instead, first we'll make a convenience variable called u. The fancy term for it is a unitless transform, and it makes life soooooo much easier. Then we'll write an equation for y (the thing we want!) in terms of this u. u = (x - X1)/( X2 - X1 ) Eq. 1 y = Au3 +Bu2 + Cu + D Eq. 2 Cool, so if we make up an x value, and we want to know the corresponding y value we simply plug x into Eq 1, and then plug the resulting u into Eq 2 and we get our value! All's we need are those big letters A-D. 4. Do this for each key and plot/use the results Or just borrow the version I have in google sheets. Google sheets is terrible at plotting, because its x axis literally doesn't work. Seriously, how? I go with excel '03, but does anyone else have a suggestion for plotting datasets? I've been considering writing a javascript plotter that would take in keys and print out results, but those take time. If people are interested let me know, otherwise I'll stick to excel! Here's a link to my google sheets calculator. The coefficients + y values will update automatically, you need to provide x values and key values. When you plug in key values, you can select the line and click+drag the little blue box on the bottom right of your selection box to copy it down over a large section. When you plug in x values, if you put in 2 numbers (say 0, 0.25) select them and do the same box click+drag, it'll generate a series (0, 0.25, 0.5, 0.75, 1....) so it's easier than it looks. https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1tOJqRXW4Wo1SWHrNcMaj5yhGBmKHT_NTiezBKlGGeEI/edit?usp=sharing 5. Change around the values until you have the curve you want! Please let me know if you have any questions about this stuff. Best of luck!

@Flavio hc16 : @Streetwind's given a good explanation, and I'll put up a post that can help put numbers to the ideas this evening. Cheers!

... Wait, now I'm confused.

Oh no, I lost!? D:

You know what? Here's a copy of some mathematics help I gave to someone on the forum, asking how to go from your craft's radius+velocity to keplerian orbital elements. I tried really hard to keep it straight forward. How'd I do? Orbits for those finally tired of going round in circles r(θ) = p/(1+e*cos(θ-α)) This equation tells you the entire shape of your orbit in terms of 3 constants, which you can calculate from any point in your orbit. Those constants determine shape, size and direction: e "eccentricity" which defines the shape p "semilatus rectum" which defines the size α "longitude of periapsis" which defines the direction your periapsis points. Tasty orbital elements like apoapsis and semimajor axis can all be found as simple relationships to these 3 constants, and in the next few paragraphs we'll see how these terms arise from from the fundamental concepts of an orbit. For a refresher: Orbits work by having you spin 'round a planet, and your centrifugal force holds you up even though gravity pulls you down. If these two forces happen to balance eachother your orbit will be a pleasant circle, but if they're out of balance, you'll bounce back and forth between them like a mass on a spring. At periapsis, extra centrifugal force becomes upwards momentum and you rise, then at apoapsis the higher relative gravity becomes downwards momentum and you fall. Then the cycle repeats, and because it happens the same way every time your craft orbits in the same shape every time. So the shape of the orbit must be based on the forces that make it happen. Let's see how. Terms Cheat Sheet: 1. Eccentricity: The Shape e = sqrt[ (ω*PUp/FG)2 + (FC/FG - 1)2 ] The eccentricity measures the ovalness of an orbit, and to rephrase the picture painted in the intro, it captures this cycle: FC >FG ... we go up ... FC <FG ... we go down... [repeat]. So, our constant 'e' needs to be able to catch the essence of this at any point in time. It handles this by adding these two squared terms: (ω*PUp/FG) , which is the upwards momentum relative to the force of gravity (then multiplied by the rate your angle is changing to make the units work out right... <waves hands>). Any amount of upwards/downwards momentum causes imbalance, but the amount is relative to the gravity it'll be pushing against. You have this when rising and falling between apoapsis and periapsis. (FC/FG - 1) When centrifugal force and gravity are equal to eachother, FC/FG becomes 1, and the term falls to 0. As either becomes different than the other the term gets a greater magnitude. You have this primarily at apoapsis or periapsis. Since these two things are 'added in quadrature' (a2 + b2 = c2 hypotenuse style), it doesn't matter if the terms are positive or negative, it only matters how big they are. And with this, all possibilities for imbalance are captured and brought together, and can be measured anywhere in the orbit! 2. Semilatus Rectum: The Size p = r*FC/FG The semilatus rectum measures the size of an orbit. It tells us the radius your orbit will have in that single moment of the cycle when gravity and centrifugal force balance. We can measure what this magic radius should be from anywhere in the orbit by taking our current radius and multiplying it by a fudge factor: FC/FG . Why? By serendipity, FC/FG happens to be proportional to 1/r, so whenever our radius increases, the fudge factor decreases inversely. That means their product always stays the same, and it's the same value as our radius in that magic moment when the forces balance and FC/FG = 1. In this way we can measure this special radius from any point in our orbit. 3. Longitude of Periapsis: The Direction α = θ - arctan( (ω*PUp/FG) / (FC/FG - 1) ) The Argument of Periapsis measures the direction (angle) of our orbit's periapsis relative to some pre-chosen galactic standard. Notice the (ω*PUp/FG) and (FC/FG - 1) terms are just the measurements from before for how far out of balance we are through either up/down momentum or imbalanced forces. Their ratio tells us where we are in the cycle, and the arctan turns that information into an angle. That whole piece tells us where the periapsis is relative to us, so when we add it to θ (which is where we are relative to the standard) we get the longitude of periapsis: the angle our periapsis points relative to the standard. Because it's always relative to where we are, we can figure out the direction of the orbit from anywhere along it. And that's it! Now we know the shape, size and direction of our orbit we can plot it or gather other information through simple relationships. I hope it's brought some insight to the nature of these seemingly ineffable constants! Derivation:

Experiments Continue....