Zeiss Ikon

I haven't had a computer of my own running Windows as a primary OS in seven years (I'm up to two that will boot Windows again -- but my newer laptop has been in Windows for less than an hour since I bought it). Yes, I'm late to the Linux party; I had to wait until it had a reasonably good-looking GUI before I was willing to play. I still wish I could get a distro that uses GEM or the derivative that was used in GEOS-PC/Geoworks Ensemble, but my current choice of flavor is Ubuntu Mate 16.04.3. I'll watch for Ubuntu Mate 18.04, to be sure they haven't ruined it before I upgrade. And Linux on external bootable media is even better for fixing a Linux system, because I don't have to worry about UEFI vs. Legacy (UEFI is completely disabled on my system), and I have all the tools I'll need preinstalled on the external media.

Magnificent. I'd completely forgotten the tapered girder between the CM and Launch Escape engine. Didn't the Apollo LES also pull away a windshield that had protected the (thin walled) CM from Max Q? Not that there's any sensible way to model that with stock parts...

The LES is sized to go directly onto the Mk. 1-3 (or, originally, Mk. 1-2) nose. If you mount your Clamp-o-tron Jr. directly on the pod, the LES will cover it and look more or less like the original. You'll lose the little extra storage space in the SM-6A, but you won't have the mismatched LES base. You'll still have space to mount a couple radial parachutes if you sink them into the surface of the Mk. 1-3, and you can lower the LES after attaching it to the docking clamp, to get rid of the gap. The original Apollo LES had an aeroshield that covered the capsule, and was carried away with the escape tower when it was jettisoned (at partway through second stage burn, as I recall). We don't have that matching part, so you can't do it the same way NASA did without mods.

Yesterday, in my career (originated in 1.3.0, now in 1.4.1/MH): Val and Jeb shared a Mk. 1-3 ride, fully decked with science gear, to Minmus (sent both mostly so they could also become Level 2). Unlike Lufrid's adventure taking tourists to the Mun, the only thing that didn't go to plan was winding up in retrograde orbit around Minmus, and since no landing was planned it didn't matter, except to require the return burn to take place behind Minmus (and both orbital velocity and rotation rate are so low it wouldn't have mattered much even for landing). They pushed the orbit down to 7 x 7 km, trying to get "low above" science (nope, that must happen if you're hovering ten meters above the flats). Watching mountaintops go by outside the windows, they decided not to lower orbit any further, and after getting all the science they could from that orbit, and Jeb stepping out to fulfill a contract term, they burned back to Kerbin. All routine, no problems at all, and they wound up dumping their service stage with almost half fuel remaining. That vessel, Explorer VI, is remarkable. A Twin Boar plus a 6400 tank, with a pair of Lf/O boosters that use flow priority and crossfeed so the core is full when they jettison (the modern, no-ducts version of asparagus), it'll lift a well-laden Mk. 1-2 or Mk. 1-3 with additional passenger or science load high/fast enough to run dry just before making orbit. This ensures the booster will burn up (or at least crash/splash and not clutter up LKO), and leaves the service stage (3200 tank with a Poodle) almost full. With a little redesign (drop tanks and landing legs -- maybe just legs) the pod and service stage should easily manage landing on Minmus and return (a smaller tank than this plus four 400 drop tanks and a set of legs, on the same booster, can land on the Mun and return with a small fuel reserve). Add a couple more boosters and uprate the service stage tank, and the resulting vessel could flyby Duna or Eve, possibly orbit them (especially if an Ike assist is available). And as flown for this mission, Explorer VI is just under 50,000.

I wonder if Pol or Laythe assist (or even a plural/multiple assist) could be used to get a slight aerobrake from Jool, combined with a capture burn as low as possible to get your Jool capture? There are lots of gravity assists available around Jool, after all.

You're correct. By the mid-1970s, not only had Niven corrected the Earth's rotation (which he had reversed in the first edition of Ringworld), he made reference just after Lying stand-up guy had crashed on the Ringworld to faint jets visible at several locations along the edges of the ring. These appear in my paperback copy, 7th printing (1975). You're incorrect. See above about MIT students having calculated in 1971 that the Ringworld was unstable. The net gravitational force by/on a spherical shell for any body inside is zero, but a narrow ring doesn't have this property because its surface is effectively one-dimensional rather than two-dimensional -- this prevents the cancellation of nearer by broader that occurs in a spherical shell. I'm not qualified to do the integration required to calculate this for even a true zero-width, zero-thickness "one dimensional" ring, never mind for a ring with appreciable thickness and width, but I've been well satisfied that you must have a (gravitationally) complete spherical shell for the cancellation effect to be complete -- even a couple good-sized holes at opposite poles (as, for instance, to allow access to the interior of your Dyson Sphere) will result in small, but non-zero gravitational effects (generally, a weak attraction toward the inner surface at the equator between the two holes). The "spherical shell with holes" is just an extreme case of a Ringworld -- and if there's any net gravitational force within a perforated spherical shell, it'll be greater the larger the holes relative to the size of the sphere. A ribbon like the Ringworld, then, is just a spherical shell with really big holes at the poles, and there'll be an unavoidable net attraction toward the inner surface of the ribbon for anything inside the ribbon and close to its "equatorial" plane. Even a complete spherical shell wouldn't be "stable" around a star -- there's no net unbalancing force, but there's no net restoring force, either, so the tiniest net momentum applied the the shell will eventually cause it to drift into contact (or close enough to burn through the shell) without active stabilization, essentially "pushing the star back to center" on an ongoing basis.

Took me a second to back out your "wing loading of 1" being in lb/ft^2. In game, that'd be 4.88 kg/m^2 or, if we fix the mass vs. force units, 47.9 N/m^2. Of course, the canopy is animated as being quite a bit smaller than that; relative to Kerbal size (.75 m tall); it looks like about half that area, if not a bit less.

Seems to me I recall E and Q (roll, for spacecraft) having some effect too. And there's a setting that, if "on", causes the EVA Kerbal to reorient to the camera view, so you're always "behind" the Kerbal regardless how you orient your camera. Move the camera, tap S or W, and the Kerbal reorients to head-up, back to the camera. I normally have that setting turned on, so my Kerbal orientation (hence thrust directions) is arbitrary. The issue I have is and has always been the spacecraft tumbling as soon as I touch it. Maybe this is because there are no orbits without some kind of inclination -- but inclination relative to what? Why should Kerbin's equator matter in space?

And in what version of KSP?

Seems likely that you're using BDA in a KSP version it's not fully compatible with. What versions do you have? (No, I don't know anything about BDA, but someone who does will need to know this).

I haven't tried it yet, but several others have reported landing Kerbals successfully on personnel parachutes. Let me go see if I can reproduce that, and get back to you. Edit: Okay, just tried it, bailed Jeb out of one of the stock jets around 400 m over the level ground near the Space Center (damaged the jet on takeoff, because I'm a sucky pilot with pushbutton controls), deployed his parachute as quickly as possible -- had a canopy at around 350 m. Figured out how the parachute flight works on the way down, steered toward KSC and played with speed. With view directly behind Jeb and level to the horizon, I was able (on my first try flying a parachute in game) to land Jeb at about 7 m/s, unsure what the vertical was (but not much). Jeb tumbled, because Kerbals can't run that fast, but he lived. This was my first time. I have to presume you can do better. What you probably need to do is look up how trims work and use elevator trim to slow down -- that' s what works well for flying airplanes in game.

Okay. How would anyone know that? And I'm pretty sure it isn't true, anyway, at least on a local basis: I can EVA a Kerbal and fly around the vessel in any direction. A couple times recently, I've had to fly around to the far side of the rescue vessel to get the rescued Kerbal to a hatch. Up and down, right and left, after going forward (and occasionally back); they can thrust in any direction. It wouldn't make any sense to only able to thrust in one plane...

Can't say that's surprising. There's no code to it, it's just parts, and unless it has a parameter that was added for 1.4, it should work as far back as 1.2, maybe even older.

Error 17 occurred two years of running time ago, and it's just now causing trouble? "Insert bootable media" probably means your BIOS is trying to start from the wrong drive; your boot order may have gotten messed up when you pulled the 3 TB drive out of the system.

Furthermore, if you bring a (stock) save forward from 1.3.0 (at least) to 1.4.1/MH, the new parts get inserted into the existing tree and parts bins.

Unfortunately, in a career, this only works after you have Level 2 pilots.

Jeb sure gets his helmet on in a hurry when I push the EVA button...

I believe there was a setting for this, at least in 1.3/1.3.1.

Or just keep the downloaded files for the old game versions. I've got 1.2.2, 1.3.0, and 1.4.0 set aside for "future use."

Wolfhound was intended as an analog for the Apollo SM engine, wasn't it? That's why the huge nozzle bell. I've read that the SM engine was originally intended for a much larger, heavier direct ascent lander/return spacecraft, and was grossly overpowered for the CSM/LEM stack -- but it was already developed, had the throttling and restart capability they needed, and would allow putting other stuff in the SM besides fuel tanks. A very minor update of the same engine was to/will power the Orion SM, pushing a much larger, heavier craft than the Apollo. I have to agree that a 400 Isp is a little high for an engine that doesn't require hydrolox or at least methylox, but I bet we'll see a lot of those on Duna/Eve/Dres missions in the future...

Okay, the SM point is sensible. The only time the Apollo capsule operated independently was the last few minutes after staging off the SM. OTOH, during that last few minutes, it used pitch/yaw as well as roll to orient for reentry. They did not orient and then stage the SM, from what I recall -- that would have required fairly immediate translation to ensure the SM didn't strike the CM when air drag started to build up. Once they entered the plasma fireball, they did use only roll to orient the COM of the capsule for cross-range and up-down trajectory control -- the aerodynamics dictated the pitch/yaw orientation from the point where they started to build up sensible deceleration. I have a suggestion for you: put a Mk. 1 in orbit, and try to get out and push. Hint: quicksave before you let go of the hatch.

The problem is, the pod's not going to stay in any heading while translating with the built-in RCS -- try it for yourself with your reaction wheel disabled. There's enough pitch/yaw coupled with the translation that I doubt you could manage enough dV that way to even get a "just barely" decaying orbit starting from my usual height of ~85 km. As for getting out and pushing, every time I've ever tried that, all I managed to do was induce a tumble (making it impossible to re-board) and have to reload a quicksave made before going EVA. Unless there's a pilot or probe core on board, no SAS; no SAS, you can't push in a chosen direction because the craft will rotate as soon as you make contact to push. With no instruments in the suit helmet, you can't even attempt to stabilize the tumble and be reasonably sure you're pushing in the right direction if you succeed.

With the amount of coupled pitch/yaw I experienced, if you have a dead battery, this probably wouldn't work. Not to mention that since there are no pitch or yaw ports, you couldn't point reliably either normal/anti-normal or radial in/out if you started prograde or retrograde, nor get back to retrograde after maneuvering. A pod with built-in RCS ought to at least be able to pitch and yaw as well as roll. All it would take is four more ports at the nose, pointing radially outward, to get pitch/yaw and JIKL translation. I'll probably have to make a subassembly with a set of "anywhere RCS" sunk in to the nose.

Given how easy it is to restore the Mk. 1-2 pod to visibility, I'm not sure what all the wrangling is about. If you prefer the old pod, then use it. I bet it'll be equally easy to pull the discontinued parts out of the old versions once Squad/Take Two pull them out of the stock game. They're just parts, people add parts to the game all the time, and all the bits and pieces (models, textures, skins, config entries) are present in the old games. For myself, I'm interested in how the RCS on the Mk. 1-3 was used to deorbit -- I tested the thing in orbit (in 1.4.0) and didn't see any way to thrust forward or backward. It rolls beautifully, translates (JIKL keys) fairly well (with some pitch and yaw mixed in because the ports are behind the COM; I used that to align retrograde for reentry with a dead battery), and I couldn't find any way to apply pure pitch or yaw, never mind translate forward or backward, in my testing. Mind you, I tested for a few minutes in 1.4.0, before installing 1.4.1 and MH, and I'm not sure Advanced Tweakables was turned on; those directions might have been disabled, and I was short on playtime so didn't get to check.

I wonder whether he was using 1.4.0 or 1.4.1 under the MH expansion? Apparently, some Early Access folks got the DLC before 1.4.1 dropped, so might have encountered bugs the rest of us never saw (since we got 1.4.1 the same day MH dropped).