NewtSoup

Oh I'm starting to find fault with it. Like I can't work out how to make my own launchers for say wine apps and place them on the desktop. In fact it seems the ONLY use for the desktop is to display a rotating wall paper. If there was an easy way to create and edit shortcuts for the menu's that would be just dandy!. I've installed "Main Menu" of course but it's bit of a long way round just to create a custom shortcut for a wine game for instance or to launch the wine version of steam. For something that claims to be "customisable" it's not really. Dang it, I've been discovered. Yes, I admit it. I spontaneously aggregated from old computer parts left in the bottom drawer of a filing cabinet and have been plotting your doom ever since. Empress Valentina is just a simulation run.

I'm now expecting to see a full Kerbal re-enactment of the film "Sunshine" by the end of the month. Hippety Hop, quick like a bunny!

Revive away - have you considered using fuel cells as a means of powering TCS and Radiators? What is the practicality of using a captive asteroid as shield / fuel along with other means? Just throwing ideas out here. Cold you in fact create a sphere segment with TCS on the shadowed sides and the afore mentioned asteroid or just huge fuel tanks? I think you should do lots of testing with sun divers in various formats to see which ones best survive

Feeling a little frustrated. I'm loathe to install all the stuff I had and start projects I want to until the 26th of this month when Bionic Beaver gets released. I know the last time I tried a distribution upgrade it kind of broke everything. I'd hazard a guess that it's all a lot smoother these days but one of the things I want to do is a custom Wine install using some 3rd party patches which get Fallout 4 up and running ( check the appdb to see what i mean if you're curious ). I'm betting though that if I go to the trouble of getting it all in place then the upgrade to beaver will break it. Same as with a thing I want to do for KSP. I have some assets I want to have a go at making. But I'm loathed to install unity, blender and other stuff in case it all gets FUBAR and I have to start over. Of course I guess I don't have to upgrade at all. But then my brain will itch too much.

Heh, it's just another term for brainy people and scientists. I imagine them doing more than simply waiting until such time as I can stuff them into a mobile lab and ship them off to some forgotten moon, although they do reset experiments. I'll give them that. ** Edit - just occurred to me that you probably know the meaning of boffins :).. I'm slow sometimes.

Thanks that's good stuff.. By rearranging the equation I should also be able to calculate the required PE for 2/3 orbits and 3/4 orbits for dropping 3 and 4 satellites at regular intervals with the correct AP so they only need to burn back to the correct PE to be geosynchronous again.

It was night and the light from the Mün illuminated the KSC with a quiet beauty. The Great Speaker had had it's tape changed and was repeating a sound that the brain doctors at the Kerbal Enrichment Centre called "Krikits". She ambled over the dew dampened grass letting the sound and smell of the night fill her senses. She reached out and caressed the speaker's console lovingly before firmly stabbing the stop button with a finger and silencing the annoying noise! She looked up at the Mün, it's stilton like substance hung in the air in exactly the way cheese wouldn't, It's radiance entranced her and deep within she felt a longing. She was sure she had been there before, she had the memories and yet she had not. In that moment it was clear to Valentina that the time had come to reconquer Kerbin's largest child. The science boffins had been conducting their weird experiments in planes and ground cars around the KSC and the nearby places. They had a fascination with sticking thermometers in places you wouldn't normally think to stick one. It was best to be off and away from them if possible. They had, nevertheless, developed a whole slew of technology for the engineers to manifest. Time to wake Bill. Bill was unhappy. It was dark and not a time to be back in the Vehichle Assembly Building. Except it wasn't. Strangely it was always daytime in here no matter the time of day. Once inside the giant construction space you could look outside and see the crawler way and launch pad clear as, well day really. But the second you stepped back out through those doors - Darkness! Well assuming it wasn't already daytime. Bill suspected Valentina was working on a way to make engineers productive around the clock by tricking them into thinking it was always 5:02 pm. In fact it WAS always 5:02pm in there. Just about tea time. Tea time! Bill was hungry. At least there were snacks in the VAB. Stepping through the main entrance the girl on the desk greeted him with the usual "Hello Sweetie". He stopped in his tracks and looked at her. She flashed an engagement ring at him and winked. "Not today Sweetie, but if anything changes, I'll let you know!". Yes of course, she was engaged to some doctor or other. Who, he didn't know, it didn't matter anyway. He stepped through into the main assembly chamber. It was huge and unsettling. Just as with the strangeness of the time of day, you could see the walls and the roof and yet it was possible to build craft that wouldn't actually fit inside the VAB, inside the VAB. Like it was bigger on the inside. He tried not to think about it. Time to get designing. Thankfully the boffins had done considerable research and it wasn't long before he had a science package, command module, tanks and a beautiful engine to take the whole lot from LKO to the Mun. It was then that he noticed that no research had been done on heavier landing gear. He was going to have to improvise if he was going to avoid a pool ball based diet. Many hours later he stopped for tea, as it was tea time after all and admired his work!. Strong and Stable and not at all conservative in nature it stood there ready, fulled, filled with snacks, ready to do science. He notified Valentina of his success and signed off on the paperwork to have it taken to the launch pad. Valentina was impressed. Ignoring protocol and all documentation procedures she went straight to launch. Bill had once again out done himself. The craft flew beautifully. The solid kick from the huge SRB's shook her to her core. The pleasing but gut wrenching lurch as they cut off and staged. The steady thrum and vibration of the main engines as they ramped up to full power filled every fibre of her being taking her from pleasure to.... ahem, sorry, got carried away there. Everything went text book to orbit. Nice gravity turn. Main stage separated cleanly with apoapsis at 100k on a sub orbital trajectory. Circularised at 100km before plotting a transfer burn to within 20km of the Mün. Performing Remote Camera inspection of Vessel. What in the name of the Kraken's deep fried appendage rings! "WILLIAM KERMAN! YOU PROMISED ME THIS THING WOULD HAVE LANDING GEAR!" "Actually, I just said it would have the ability to land without damaging the engine. I have perfect faith in your reconciliatory piloting skills. Oh your breaking up.. bzzzzt shhhhhhhh" *click* Valentina took a moment or two to compose herself. She could of course do this. Only one person would think she couldn't, Jebediah! And Bill had betrayed her to boot it was time he was replaced. She could find a new assignment for him. Jeb, she would have to think of something special for him. There was a new applicant by the name of Catsey who showed great courage and relatively little stupidity. Valentina sent back the orders for Catsey to be hired and put in accommodation adjacent to her own. This young apprentice would be turned to her side and become a powerful ally. Valentina turned the craft retrograde and ramped up the poodle ( this doesn't get said often enough ) to a deorbit burn and aimed for somewhere in the mun's midlands. Sure enough she set the craft down very gently, with the landing finesse of a tortoise dropped by an eagle. The slope was rather steeper than she would have liked and the craft having three scrap girders instead of proper landing gear to sit on slid for a few minutes before coming to a full stop. Valentina took a final deep breath, punched the "more data" button for Bob and donned her helmet for her first(?) Münwalk. Finally the New Kerbin Empire Flag had earned it's first star! Of course only she knew it was the New Kerbin Empire Flag yet. But soon. Very soon.

That's an interesting question right now. Maybe not. Usually yes. There is a bug at the moment which stops KSP recognising my Thrustmaster HOTAS Joystick which is annoying. And if I try to configure the game to use my steam controller it simply crashes. The game SHOULD respond to any Direct Input controller on Windows or SDL compliant Joystick ( Direct X equivalent I believe ) in Linux. Does KSP use SDL? I'm not sure but probably.

I've often wondered what the deploy function was for on winglets and tail fins. They didn't seem to have much use at all. So I've never, ever bothered binding that function to an action group. This is my current "Science Plane" - It's got an octo for stability control - a load of science bits a couple of engines and two tail fins, the reaction wheel is not necessary, I just like it for making "on the spot" turns instead of faffing around taxiing in a circle. Its ugly but it flies pretty well and it does the job. The wing section at the front is for a kerbal to stand on when they climb out of the cockpit. As long as you are doing less than 80m/s you don't get blown off the wing. Though I wouldn't recommend "let go" or "climb out" or you will disappear into the distance which is why everything can be reset from the cockpit door - no the wing is to stand on to take surface samples when landed really. Anyway back to my point - I've always had to slow down to do EVA's in flight and to reset the science stuff. This has led me to wish I had air brakes. Today though I thought "I wonder?" so I went back to the SPH and bound the deploy function to RCS toggle because I only have basic action groups available right now. Lo and Behold a PAIR, you must have 2 or things will go very bad for you, a PAIR of fins turn in on each other and produce a massive amount of drag working just like an air brake!. This resulted in my first ever successful landing at the abandoned island air field. As you can see the tail fins are turned inward this allows me to really control my speed on approach to a runway and indeed on the runway itself to aid in braking. I would highly recommend this kind of setup (2 fins or winglets ) to anyone making planes because it's just so useful. The first deployables you get are in Aviation ( Tail Fin ) and Flight Control ( AV-8 Winglet) - Obviously you need Aviation for making planes anyway but there may be a use for deployed winglets in aerobraking maneuvers.

It was a lot of work and a lot of fun and I will do it again. This time I have extra ground stations turned off so I am in the process of setting up a Minmus SatNet right at the moment. All prep work before base building. I'm doing contracts in Career mode to keep the funding sufficient. Also thinking ahead to what technologies I will have available to me. Also just used my first "Wolfhound" engine - superbly efficient in space! much better than a poodle which was my previous interplanetary bulk cargo engine. 412isp on the Wolfhound! nearly a 25% improvement on fuel efficiency Here's one of my new Minmus Relay Sats in orbit - the first one I dropped. Sort of. I will admit I did this when I was very tired. On the first attempt I did. I reached Minmus Orbit and then realised I'd left a KER module off the ship so I couldn't work out my orbits correctly to drop 3 synchronous satellites. Second attempt I had Ker module. Dropped my first sat and then realised the sats didn't have ker modules so I couldn't fine tune their oribits back to synchronous after the kick from the decoupler ( even 1% makes a difference ). Third attempt I dropped the first satellite and then realised that the solar panels weren't up to the job. So I went back and changed the satellite and for my fourth attempt I thought - I've done the work 3 times already - I subtracted the funds for the lifter and then "set orbit" 3 synchronous satellites. everything was paid for in funds. And I truly believe I'd worked hard enough

This was my diary of Minmus Station and Rura Penthe This thread documents my Mun Mission along with Babylon K

The first one already got sucked out of existence by a hard drive failure along with the Rura Penthe Ore Mines on Minmus. Minmus Orbital was again a refuelling stop and science lab and starting to sprawl with modules getting added ad-hoc with no real design plan as I wanted this one to grow organically. I make all my bases and stations and deep space vessels from modules which can be launched and then assembled in space or on a surface. Copious use of docking ports! That spreadsheet is so useful btw. Thanks again, I'd have had trouble finding that by myself. I'm just about to pick up RA-2 Antena which will give me 93% signal to minmus with my current HG-5's around Kerbin.

They are indeed, the reason I'm using them is because I decided to make life difficult for myself and play a harder career mode. I have no ground stations other than the launch sites so I set up with the best I had available right now. It's been a really good lesson in working out how to set geosats up at equidistant points. Obviously the mun network is not geostationary but it does have a triad of 4xHG-5 sats in place that will let me keep full probe control at all times. Handy for the rescue and tourist missions. I'm being offered minmus missions at the moment. Surface base and explore but I need to pay particular attention to them rather than just set accept them right away. Last time I went Funds! and then realised that the brief required 7k of electric charge, 12 kerbals and 6500 liquid fuel. That's why Babylon K got built. It was an over engineered flying fuel tank. It's a shame it's gone - I put a lot of work into the K. But that means I will have to make Babylon-K 2 ( and yes I did cheat in Sinclair Kerman to command the K )

I may have miscalculated a little.. They give me full probe control at the mun 100% of the time but they'll be usless for transmitting data back.. only about 10% signal strength!. ( Unless it just takes longer to transmit back with weak signal? ) I'll replace them when I get better tech whatever.

I just popped a quartet of quad HG5 satellites in geostationary orbit around kerbin. They have a combined range of 14m meters. Enough to reach just beyond the moon when communicating with a similar satellite. I'm now sending another 3 to orbit the moon. Then I'll have a basic 100% power relay system set up that doesn't need the extra ground stations turned on. Will work on minmus later! ( decided to up the difficulty this time ).

Perfect. Thank you!.

Hello kind people, I have a question about antenna, relays and power consumption. In my new rebirth game I am about to launch my first satellite contract and just for giggles I thought I'd make it a relay sat. This made me think. The satellite I have built for the contract has a 200 battery, an OKTO, 4 communotrons ( just for looks ) 4 basic solar panels, an oscar-b tank and a spark engine. I was thinking of adding an HG-5. The HG-5 uses 51.4 charge per second when transmitting so in theory my 200 unit satellite could transmit for around 3.9 seconds before zonking out (assuming no input from the panels ) This then left me asking the question - what If I had extra ground stations turned off and I was using relay sats for an actual network and I wanted to transmit data from say eve to the far side of kerbin where the KSC is. This would route through my dinky relay sat. Am I going to lose connection to the KSC after 4 seconds or does the game ignore power requirements on comnet sattelites? I'm well aware that if I had one on a mun station and transmitted data back to Kerbin I'd quickly run out of power if I didn't have sufficient battery life and or solar panels, But that's on a craft that's currently loaded in memory and being fully simulated. So I think my actual question is: Do I need to make sure that my comnet satellites always have enough power to transmit for at least a few minutes at a time or does the game just check for the presence of a relay sat and not worry about power ?

I am staring to really like Gnome 3. I works in quite a different way to Unity while at the same time being familiar. It's feels like what Unity should have been if they'd got it right. Now, part of me does indeed crave the structure of the classic menu with all it's categories and tree like branches but I think that's really just my brain being resistant to change and not liking having everything lined up. I don't need to alt-tab any more or press a super key, mouse to top left and pick the window or favourite application I want or just type a letter or two of the application I want to find. It's quicker and more convenient than hovering a mouse through a category tree. I like the way the work space switcher works too. The way it creates and removes them as needed and the fact that you switch between them in the same way you pick an application to run. For me, I think this is the new way of working. No more hierarchical menus. They're not needed any more. I think this is good for my brain too. Learning to think in another way.

I know what Im going to do with the flag. Darken the background to a deeper blue. Get rid of the planets. Brighten Kerbin. Then add a large star for each planet visited and a small star for each moon visited. Visited means landed on with the exception of jool where a suicide probe will suffice. I know you CAN make a Kerballed Landing on Jool but I'll add something special for that Still if someone is willing to help graphically that would be cool!.. Gimp compatible stuff please

Having established herself as Kerbin's premier pilot it was time to undertake the next two missions. Escape the atmosphere and test a Hammer Solid fuel Engine at the launch site!. Bill, not being hungry for pool balls and very much aware of how long Jeb had been in the bathroom quickly came up with a design which should be completely over-engineered while still able to satisfy Bob's need for "more data". It was perfect. Too perfect. Valentina noted that Bill would have to be "reassigned" as soon as was practical. For the moment though he had his uses. To be quite honest this took a couple of iterations to get right as it would NOT re-enter nicely with a 1.25m Bay on the underside. The capsule always, always, always pointed nose down and smeared everything across the landscape. With the addition of a heat shield however everything came up roses. In fact the drogue chutes were probably not necessary. Let it be known that a cargo bay is decidedly un-aerodynamic now. With 1.4.1 it's heatshields every time for me now if I have "extras" to get down to Kerbin ( unless I have a datacore on the nose of the pod and THEN a parachute.. that might work )

I got drunk and moved on Though this thread can continue for linux related stuff! In fact I have three 1.4.1 bugs to report. 1)Thrust Master Hotas not recognised by the game! 2)Attempting to use a Steam Controller causes the game to crash 3)Graphical Glitch in Assembly buildings - parts are clipped at the top and overlap at the bottom

Previously in Kerbal Space Program: Quietly and without anyone noticing, from the depths of the nethersphere the Kraken grew restless. Reaching into the substructure of the Kerbiverse with it's many tentacles it began it's interminable work. Nothing noticeable at first, a glitch in the matrix *cough* an unexpected repeated meme. Here and there a delay in time. Barely tangible and passing unremarked by the Kerbals and indeed the Superuser herself!. But bit by bit by byte by megabyte the fractures and fissures festered unfettered across the divine snack platters of the Kerbiverse and indeed the entire multiverse and then ... nothing. The Superuser tried in vain to coax the spin back into the Kerbiverse but it's snack platters could do nothing more than a brief cheddaring noise before sinking back into nothingness. With that everything was wiped from existence. No more would Babylon K dominate the local system it simply vanished from Minmus Orbit. No more would hapless tourists with only a few funds find themselves unexpectedly transferred to the Minman Ore Mines at Rura Penthe Base. All was not lost however. The Superuser, though thoroughly spanked by the copious tentacles of the Kraken for completely missing the foretellings of the SMART, began again. This time the multiverse was rebuilt with no spin but was in a solid state to the core. This time there was the technology, she could rebuild it, stronger, faster better than before! And would find the route back to Kerbin! So Say We All! Valentina opened her eyes. The sky was blue and cloudless above her. As she came too she recalled the memories of a previous life. She knew she was powerful! But this new form, this new form - It was weak! But not for long. She luxuriated for a few moments in the kerbal enriching sounds emanating from the great speaker and slowly became aware that the space centre was back! More! there was a count down going on T minus five minutes!. There was just time. Sprinting as fast as her shift key would allow she ran back to the astronaut complex. She threw on her suit and made for the launch pad on foot, stopping only to pick up a number 3 pool ball. Ahead of her she could see Jebediah sauntering towards the launch vehicle confident in his status as pilot of the first Kerbal Launch Vehichle. With all her strength she threw the pool ball at Jeb. It sailed in a lazy arc through the air and came down right on target! It bounced off the top of Jeb's helmet and landed in the grass in front of him. Round and red amongst the green blades, he could not resist, It looked exactly like a mini ball of Edam. A fine snack to be sure. He removed his helmet and stooped to pick it up. Sitting on the grass he dropped first one glove and then the other. He turned the ball slowly, realising with horror his mistake as he spotted the number 3 on the side. Quickly he turned back towards the launch vehichle. Simple as it was, just two goo canisters, a pod and a flea booster it was a fine sight and scrambling through the hatch - Valentina!. Clipboard in hand. She had already done her crew report and EVA report. A goo pod opened and then a great pit opened in Jebs stomach as he realised - he had eaten the pool ball!. That was going to be painful later! The countdown reached zero. A mighty roar filled the air and Valentina Smiled as she was pressed back into her seat. She had forgotten to check her staging and the parachute had deployed at the same time the engines fired. But no matter. The science from the goo pods and her crew reports would vinidcate her. Empress Valentina was on her way back! And she was going to science the Kraken out of this! ( or at least make someone else do it ) I'm no graphic artist - if someone can help me make a better flag along these lines I'd be very grateful - 8 planets of the Kerbol sytem in a row. Kerbin dominating and a gladius over kerbin to represent the Empire!

Oh work spaces was one of the things I most loved about linux. I remember when the work space switcher was a tray icon you clicked once to summon the switcher and then click again on the work space you wanted. Gnome three works by using shift-super and up and down arrows to navigate an infinite number of work spaces. If you drag a program into the bottom most (empty) work space it creates a new empty work space below it. Drag the last window out of a work space and it removes said work space. So I've not bothered installing cube, it might mess up gnome 3 too much. I think perhaps "got used to unity" was more accurate than acutally "enjoy" Off to the shops quickly and hten it's back to starting a new career mode in KSP. This time though I know what I'm doing better. I've selected some mods, I'm leaving out visual frills. So it's x science, maneuver node, better time warp, engineer, docking port indicator, alarm clock and better time warp but nothing that "does the job for me" ( except maybe KAC).. oh I think I should install waypoint manager too. I like that.

I was quite enjoying unity but I knew that 18.04 will be using Gnome 3. My old install had compiz running along with the desktop cube and my own selection of 30s / 40s pinup girls as wall papers ( I love the swing era and look )

Now here's a thing. My original post way back on page one was about the screenshot application being slow. I have a clean install and the screenshot button just "works". No messing around with keyrings. From now on, every time I install something I'm going to press that Screenshot button and find out where it falls over, if it does. Also chrome starts up much faster now too.