fulgur

Kerbal Engineer Redux. Most useful mod ever (except, since the ΔV readout replaced some features, maybe K Alarm Clock or Transfer Window Planner).

My computer is quite slow, so I don't actually bother with big missions, mostly just fun messing in LKO and the occasional trip to Minmus. Since I only do the fun stuff, for me I have only made SSTOs for several months... most of which are either gigantic lumbering cargo-carrying behemoths, or fun little Mk1 craft with about ten times too much thrust.

Today I built another SSTO. This one is very fast, high TWR and good atmospheric manoeuvrability. At the cost of being expensive and only carrying one person. It belongs to Jeb now. Takeoff was at 70m/s, which it achieved quite quickly. It ascended at about 25 degrees. It got very, very hot very quickly, with parts in danger of overheating. Luckily, with high ascent angle, the plane made it to orbit intact. De-orbiting with airbrakes out. It can re-enter steeply and pull up at the last minute, because of all the control surfaces. Landed on the surface. Airbrakes? What airbrakes? (There is a worrying tendency for one to explode before the other, and then it spins out of control without use of RCS.) I might put it on KerbalX once I add monopropellant.

It does seem very odd that the numbers plummeted recently, from 100,000 cases / day to just 70,000. That might however be to do with the fact that testing is happening less and less as healthcare systems are overloaded, as even the best systems will be - Italy has a pretty good universal healthcare system, so I'm worried for the USA's individualised, profit focused system.

This may just be the one in the news in the UK, but I thought that the test with antibodies was testing for the antibodies themselves. Since antibodies appear as part of the response to an infection, I thought that that test was to find out which healthcare workers had already had it, and were immune. Of course, you can have tests which use antibodies to detect pathogens, but I'm not sure if the widely publicised test (in UK news, such as the announcement that NHS workers were to be tested in the workplace, even if asymptomatic) can test for new infections, but rather tests for the immune system's response to it. Which is still useful, of course

Passed the 1-million mark! Hooray! I ironically groaned. And a nice graph of exponential growth! Showing how in any one country, cases grow very very quickly. And this is substantial under-reporting, because in the UK, we are only testing NHS workers and hospital patients. And celebrities, of course. You can also see the deaths are beginning to increase exponentially, as a fraction of the cases become deaths (with a significant time lag of a couple of weeks, as the virus incubates). This will show a greater mortality rate than reality, as we in the UK are only testing healthcare workers and anyone ill enough to be in hospital already, and those people are a subset of the population who have more severe symptoms anyway, otherwise they wouldn't be in hospital. Personally, I would not rely on the Chinese statistics completely. However, it is very clear that they have successfully suppressed the outbreak by now, and while the actual number of cases and deaths may have been concealed, they did act with speed and resolve and authoritarian - but effective - measures which kept virus cases and deaths down compared to smaller countries such as the US, Spain, Italy, the UK etc. This is because we didn't act as quickly, decisively and unilaterally, as (a) our leaders didn't want to crash the economy (a self defeating goal, as this lead to the outbreaks spreading across the entire country instead of just single urban centres, like Wuhan itself) and (b) we have a democracy which is run by people who aren't epidemiologists and may have under-estimated the effects of the virus.

Total cases in the world by top countries. Active cases. The outbreak in China has been suppressed, while the outbreaks in Europe and America are growing exponentially. Source: https://coronavirus.jhu.edu/map.html

Fixed it. The 1st one was correct.

Yep, I just use ReStock. I do not believe there are any ReStock+ parts on that thing. EDIT: KerbalX says that there are not.

I was bored and realised that my Ilion SSTO could grab a few more awards, so I went to Minmus.

Where are you if exam season is 'obviously suspended'? The only places I can remember are China, Italy, Iran and now the RoI.

1) Out of KSP, KSP.x86, KSP.x86_64, KSPLauncher.x86_64 and Launcher.x86_64, which file should I run? I click them all interchangeably, but presumably one will be better... 2) I am slightly busy for the next few weeks, apologies. 3) No BDB, I would not use it and it is massive. 4) Is this going to be on 1.9.1 now the stable release is out? Or still 1.8.1?

The Hitch-hiker's Guide theme, or more properly, Journey of a Sorcerer by the Eagles. At 2:30, almost exactly, is the theme music for the Guide.

Does anyone have any idea how to do the same thing (allocate more RAM) for Linux? I googled it and it came up with results for Windows... If not then I cannot do it. Or I could do it first & y'all could add the mods afterwards.

Actually (my authority being the thread linked at the top of p2 of this thread) the K'Yangtze is the one with the Lake on the end. You know, the Area of Contention. I vote for the Knile as a name, but @Koolkei should decide.

Very sorry but my computer screen is broken. The hard drive should be (EDIT: is) good but I can't do anything for maybe a week which doesn't involve files already online :-(

BDB and HabTech have human-esque parts you can use

I believe that the cause is Scatterer; it was working before I installed it, and I don't think it's Kerbal Engineer.

Oops forgot! Will this be on 1.9? It's just dropped and I've downloaded it so, if you are playing on 1.8, no more Ussari/SPUM/KSR/☭ craft for you ;-) Will do some tomorrow Greenwich time. And I thought that you invented the ☭ faction?

Why not fly to Tylo in an untested experimental spaceplane containing your new lander? Much more fun, and orbits two sats with one launcher...

69-

I know you didn't, but I have to ask: Did you name her after the character in Duna, Ore Bust?

However, the programs are individual to all the spacecraft, i.e. my massive folders of kOS files. And I actually love doing rendezvous and resupply, it gives me a chance to field-test SSTOs before flinging them off to Laythe or wherever. Plus SSTO-flying (if not a brick) is inherently fun.

It's the 2.5km physics thingy again. Get physics range extender if you want that sort of stuff to work...

Ooh, a Kraken! Also nice pictures. In my relentless quest to provide advice, ever thought about getting cloud packs? SciFiVE is pretty light.