silent_prtoagonist

This has been suggested a few times, but I think it's worth repeating. At some point there's supposed to be a rework of the staging system, which might include something like this. My guess is that rework will come with docking, whenever that get's implemented.

The James May, conceived in the mind of Taskarnin, perfected on the Nürburgring...

Down Under has always been one of my favorite mod packs, looking forward to the update

Very creative use of those Mk2 fuselages, I like it

Nuclear rockets are already featured in some mods, DownUnder comes to mind (nukes are essentially the same as regular engines, just more efficient). I believe in the flobathon interview some of the devs said that they hope to be "scope-complete" within a year, that is all the features are there, but they still need to be fleshed out, polished, etc. (but don't quote me on that...)

The problem with docking isn't in physically attaching the ships; that's fairly easy, and there have already been a couple of mods that do that, albeit buggily. The problem is that the way that the game internally keeps track of all the parts in a ship makes it difficult to turn two ships into one ship, which is really what you want to do if you're making space stations or interplanetary spacecraft.

The Kerbol system was manufactured by an advanced, ancient race of monkeys. Specifically, it was produced by a company specializing in miniature solar systems, marketed as novelty items and sold in gift shops in popular tourist galaxies throughout the universe. The only clues we have about this company are their trademark stamps, which they left on small monoliths all over the system...

Ah, that makes sense about the GAs, I wasn't thinking about multiple-encounter missions.

Three very interesting sounding books that I haven't heard of before. You, sir, are not helping me make progress on my reading list

Voyage - Stephen Baxter I'm currently reading this one, a very detailed description of how the US could have gone to Mars by the 80s instead of building the Space Shuttle. So far I really like it, it does a remarkable job of being a hard scifi but still having interesting characters. The Collected Stories of Arthur C. Clarke One of my favorites, it's an (almost) complete collection of Clarke's short stories, up through about 1999. Kind of a tour de force of plot twists and surprise endings, all interwoven with his famous ability distill a sense of awe and wonder onto a page.

I considered doing something like this for my final project in the optimization course I took last spring (although I ended up doing a different project); I'll be very interested to follow your development. I'm also curious about the choice of a genetic algorithm. It seems like this wouldn't be a difficult problem for the more efficient algorithms, as long as you don't mind loosing the capacity to find multiple minima...

On the theory that Kerbals are sentient tree seeds, I like to name my ships after trees/plants: Apple, Birch, Cottonwood, Dogwood, Evergreen, etc. Gives it a military code name feel...

Just gave parts 1 and 2 a try, and they work like a charm. I took a ship out to a Mars-analogue circular orbit (i.e. 20e+6 km or so) and then calculated a phase angle of -68 deg for a return to Kerbin. Even eyeballing the phase angle, the Kerbin intercept popped up at periapsis just as it was passing Kerbin's orbit, as expected. The calculated dV was approximately correct too. After 7 years of Orbiter and 1 of KSP, 0.17 has finally convinced me to start learning to do this by the maths instead of relying on IMFD/Transx/MechJeb I think my next goal is going to be a solar-orbit rendezvous with a ship marked in Mars-analogue orbit, so that I can give part 3 a try.

Lol, I was just about to work this out myself, then you beat me to it, Kosmo-not. I'm going to have to give this a try... Being 14 doesn't have to stop you. I know these formulae look horrible, but they're really not that complicated. You don't even need to do any algebra to use them, just plug in numbers in place of the variables, and work out the answers step-by-step with a calculator. And trust me, the feeling of accomplishment from getting somewhere, knowing that you crunched the numbers yourself, rather than letting mechjeb or some other program do it for you, is well worth the effort; you should give it a try

Another good source. The famous footage of staging from Apollo 4, showing among other things a view right down the throat of a J-2 firing in vacuum.

The last time Harvester was quiet for days on end was last weekend...and the weekend before that, etc...

10/10 if that's a deliberate joke, 2/10 if that's an error message.

Adventures in lunar space... Bill makes the first Mun landing in 0.16 Turns out I didn\'t have quite enough fuel to get back... Grey is the lander\'s orbit after burnout, ready to make another 'landing' in half an orbit... Blue is Bill after abandoning ship. Bill wishes he\'d brought something other than Kwilight to read... Rescue mission arrives about four days later (Kerbin time). This was actually the first time the whole gang has been together since 0.16 Home sweet home. Bill decides he must go back and face his demons (and also finish the Kwilight Saga)... Bob and Jeb decide to come along this time. They touch down near a strange object... Bill, Bob, and Jeb reflect on the face of the monkey god... However space dementia soon sets in...

Haha you beat me to it, Skunky. Seriously, try waiting in real time for half an hour watching the altitude and vertical speed indicators tick by, just to see what your apogee and perigee will be, and then come and talk to me about long waits. TBH I never really used 2x all that much anyway, it\'s wasn\'t really enough of a difference to satisfy my impatience (if it\'s gonna take 'several minutes' to do at 1x, it\'s still gonna take 'several minutes' at 2x) and caused too many problems, especially in atmosphere. That said, it would be nice if there was maybe a way to enter 'reduced physics mode' at 5 or 10x, say treat craft as rigid bodies, and maybe still lock orientation, but apply external forces such as engines or aerodynamics. That\'d cut down a lot on the calculations that have to be done. It\'d probably not as simple as that, but it might be doable...

Yep, that fixed it for me, too. Thanks

Ah, I see now. Thanks

I\'ve been trying to figure out what the 'toggle movement mode' (default left alt) keybinding does, but so far I haven\'t been able to see any noticeable effect either on the surface or in space. Does anyone know what this binding is supposed to do, or is it just a placeholder for the moment?

I noticed this too on my first (and so-far only) Mun landing in 0.16, it made the landing quite difficult since I usually rely on my lander\'s shadow to judge altitude in the last few meters...

This is brilliant! One of those things that you don\'t realize how much you were missing until you see it. I wonder if there\'s a way to disable the default camera. It\'d be cool to launch a probe somewhere and be limited to only using fixed camera views, just like a real spacecraft.

If I recall they\'re about 1.5m tall, but it\'s not a nice, round number.