mason

And, some friendly folk on the IRC channel told me to try the offset tool, and that worked beautifully. I'll see about reproducing the craft more exactly, but for now after using the offset tool: http://imgur.com/a/41Fsm

I've finally finished all the tutorial missions, and I'm progressing along in a campaign, but I'm confused about something - in the "To the Mun" tutorial, we start in a transfer-orbit stage that's got an interesting design - at the back of it there's an FL-T400, with two more FL-T400s somehow merged into it, with a LV-909 Terrier on the tail of each of these. There's also a smooth cap that might be an aerodynamic nose cone flipped around. I don't see how to build this merged-fueltank assemblage, but I'd like to know how as it looks pretty sleek. Is it possible to build the vehicle that's presented in "To the Mun (part 1)"? Thanks!

Thank you!

Thank you all! I like that I have reading material now. Long Finger, can you note what documentary you watched? I'm about finished with a biography of Neal Armstrong that's fascinating and it does talk about some of the issues they had flying - the Gemini VIII stuck thruster comes to mind. I'd love to take in more. Thanks!

If I'm remembering correctly, a vaguely recent Omega Tau podcast had a short series of space-related episodes, and in one of them an engineer (or project manager - I forget which) commented that sometimes it's really expensive re-using parts, as you almost certainly have to modify the part, and doing so requires the full suite of tests to be run again, with the part having a different relationship to the whole than during the initial design. It was fascinating listening to it, anyway. Recommended. The level of testing and verification that goes into (in this case) satellite design is evidently rigorous way beyond what one sees in the software industry generally.

This is probably silly since I'll never go to space, but does the experience of actual astronauts include something like the SAS? I can imaging modern rockets having flight assist like that pretty trivially, but I'm wondering if Gemini and Apollo era astronauts had anything like it. Thank you!

Hi. I've been playing off and on a little bit, and I'm noting that it's exceedingly hard to keep to the target in the "Go for Orbit" tutorial. It seems somewhat like cheating to use the autopilot, but I fail most of the time doing it unassisted, only recently making it once or twice. I find that in atmosphere I fishtail like mad, and outside of atmosphere the briefest possible tap on my keyboard overcompensates badly. Am I doing it wrong, or is this just not meant to be done without autopilot? In other news, I need to figure out where to report bugs. It's unfortunate that I can't reset to launch in the tutorials, as if I try it, I find myself on the launch pad, but evidently the script that allows certain actions at certain times doesn't reset, so I have to exit the simulation and restart from the menus. I'll find a place to report that, but for now I'd love to know why keeping on-target is so difficult in that tutorial. Another question: Are there mailing lists? I really dislike web fora but I'd love to subscribe to a list or three. Thanks!