noneyabidnis

Something interesting I just found that may help. I created a rocket that\'s 14 larger stock fuel tanks tall, with a single engine at bottom. Cuttlefish lander at top. When I leave the little black box off the rocket, it at least stands up straight for a while, and then gradually falls over in one piece. When I attach little black box, it breaks apart and falls as soon as I go to the launch screen. I know the rocket sounds ridiculous, and it won\'t fly, but perhaps the excessive amount of fuel tanks and the exaggerated behavior between black box on the ship and black box not on ship will help the problem stand out.

Agreed, but even HBO docudramas can be fairly informative. Like HBO\'s 'ROME' series - I actually learned a lot of interesting info (after researching various events portrayed in the series). Same goes for John Adams. That said, I definitely appreciate programs that are thick with technical details as well. Do you have any recommendations?

too bad i aint got no time to be playin this game because this craft is be lookin awesome!!!

KSP has definitely piqued my interest in the history of rocketry and spacecraft. As I\'ve played the game, I\'ve been introduced to a number of concepts that I never knew existed. As such, I\'ve been doing a lot of research (mainly reading), and it\'s more fascinating than ever. I\'d be interested to get recommendations on documentaries about rocketry and/or spacecraft that you found really interesting. I watched the 'When We Left Earth' series about a year ago, but will re-watch soon as I\'m sure it will be a lot more interesting now.

I\'m happy to send you my ship and make a video if you\'d like. The ship is using a bunch of NP parts, though - maybe I can replicate with stock parts. If not, I\'ll send you the parts I\'m using as well. I thought maybe the black box was causing a drag issue, so I moved it to a different part of ship. Same behavior. Sorry for the bad news - I know it must be frustrating.

I too bought the game after seeing a video of it on Youtube. And I\'ve recommended it to a bunch of people.

I\'m not sure if I\'m doing something wrong or there\'s something about 0.15 of KSP, however, I can\'t seem to get my battery for the ion engine to recharge. I finally figured out how to get it to work / recharge in .144, however, with .15, the ion engine will work but never recharge. If user error I\'d love to know what I\'m doing wrong. I have renamed 'Kreuzung.dll' to 'Zreuzung.dll', but still no luck.

Note - I tried this plug-in out for the first time last night. I have 15. Launched a big rocket, it was wobbly, but made it up into orbit. Add the little black box, and launched, and my rocket leaned straight north. Note that while on launch pad, I usually press 't' right away and then launch. With the little black box, my ship noses over towards the north. Without the box, it goes straight up. Weird.

I haven\'t spent much time using planes in the game yet, so I downloaded this one and gave it a go. I really like it. Thanks for sharing. I also like that you used feet. I constantly do the math in my head when playing, but I do wish the game gave us the ability to switch between meters \ feet and km \ miles. Maybe I\'ll figure out how to create such a plug-in.

Such drama.

Hooray!!!! What a nice treat to come home to after a very long day. Thanks!!!!!

I\'m orbiting at around 40 km. The Pe does drop over time, but I re-circularize every 8 hours or so. For some reason, though, just random 'Boom' and my ship is gone.

I\'ve been trying to map the Mun over the past week, and inevitably, when I get past 4 days in orbit (Kerbin days), My ship has some sort of catastrophic failure and explodes. Does this happen to anyone else?

Hi Muka, Yes, I did the math in your reply, however, the conclusions were fairly far apart. So, who is closer?

So, I\'ve seen some prior attempts at math, but I wanted to give it a go myself and then check my own findings against the ones here. I haven\'t looked at a math problem in 15 years, so the past few evenings were spent refreshing myself on a bit of geometry. Note that this all should work if the large detector is a sphere with a 150km radius. I assume that\'s how it works, but it would be good if someone could confirm. I approached the problem from an 'intersection of spheres' angle. Further, I used two completely different methods to cross check, and the results were exact down to the meter, and then the rest was rounding error. The first approach is pretty easy. First, it\'s to determine the distance from the midpoint of the moon to the mid-point of the chord (the imaginary line / plane drawn through the spot where the two spheres intersect). After determining the distance from the chord to the center of the moon, I then plugged it into a calculator I found online and let it do the rest. http://www.easysurf.cc/circle.htm#cltorccc (Calculate Chord Length given radius and circle center to chord midpoint distance) To get the distance to the chord from center of moon, use the following: (combined distance of altitude and moon\'s radius)2 - (radius of detector)2 + (radius of Mun)2 ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- 2 x (combined distance of altitude and moon\'s radius) If my altitude was 70 KM, it would look like this: 2702 - 1502 + 2002 -------------------------------------------------------------------- 2 x 270 The result is: 90400 / 540, or 167.407 km. Next, I take that number and plug it into the 'Calculate Chord Length given radius and circle center to chord midpoint distance' calculation here: http://www.easysurf.cc/circle.htm#cltorccc Radius = 200 Distance to chord = 167.407 This returns 218.86. Divide in half to get the radius, which would be 109.430. So, at 70 KM circular orbit around the Mun, the effective range on the surface of the Mun is 109.43KM in every direction. Now, there\'s another formula that\'s a bit more complicated, but doesn\'t use a magic calculator to get the answer. Perhaps the magic calculator uses the same formula - I don\'t know. I doubt it - I\'m not very bright and the magic calculator looks like someone pretty bright made it. Note, in order to simplify, 'd' will be the combined distance of moon\'s radius and altitude. (1\(2*d)) x [(-d + detect radius - mun radius) x (-d - detect radius + mun radius) x (-d + detect radius + mun radius) x (d+ detect radius + mun radius)]1/2 Example at 70KM circular orbit: (1\(2x270)) x [(-270 + 150 - 200) x (-270 - 150 + 200) x (-270 + 150 + 200) x (270 + 150 + 200)]1/2 Which is: (1\540) x [(-320) x (-220) x (80) x (620)]1/2 .00185 x 3,491,840,0001/2 .00185185185185185185... x 59,091.8 = 109.429 So, while in a 70KM circular orbit around the Mun, the detector will have 109.429 KM of coverage in any given direction on the ground. Is there anyone on these forums that is is good with math like this? If so, am I on the right track? Next, I want to figure out the optimal orbit to ensure the least amount of overlap on each pass. That may be hard to do on the Mun give it\'s slow rotation, but the equations should work just as well for Kerbin. And perhaps someone who\'s good at making calculators could whip something up quickly that lets you plug in your altitude on Mun or Kerbin, and it quickly returns ground coverage. Alternatively, I might have good enough skills with Excel or SQL to create a table of values - perhaps incremented in each 1KM of altitude. Thanks for taking the time to read (if you managed to get this far. ;D).

Fairly simple premise, really. Land at the highest point you can find on either the Mun or Kerbin. No need to post coordinates - just the altitude. Screenshots would be nice. I propose that the winner gets to name the mountain they land on.

A method I use is to keep the larger finder with lights on my cart. Then I work out the 180 range where it\'s red, and the 180 range where it\'s green. I then go to 90 degrees on green. I stop every once in a while and ensure heading is still accurate. Once I started doing that, I found one pretty quickly. I just remember checking bearings on last time and thinking 'no.... it can\'t be down there...Really? There\'s no way. That\'s insane - how am I supposed to do that?' But, I stayed true to the method and sure enough, there was one down there.

Ha, thanks! I stayed up way past my bedtime, but managed to get an almost perfectly circular orbit. 5 meters difference between Ap and Pe. It doesn\'t seem to stay that low for long - it goes back to being around 20 meters difference. I\'m going to be a zombie in the morning. ???

I must admit that I couldn\'t understand the point of this plug-in when I first saw it. Like, why would I want to spend my time mapping a fictional planet? Similar to how playing flight simulator to ship cargo from New York to London seems pretty pointless (unless you really love shipping cargo). But, having let it run for the past 24 hours (and no orbit mishaps), it\'s fascinating. The geometry is amazing. And it\'s fun seeing how different altitudes and inclinations impact what gets output. And now the perfectionist in me wants to try and create the most perfectly formed orbital map ever.

For the guy with the incomplete map - go a bit higher. 30km or so. And change inclination to 86 or so. I used this for the first time last night. Watched over it for several hours and all looked good. Hadn\'t touched a thing the whole time. Went to bed and woke up, anxious to see what happened - my ship crashed not 20 minutes after I turned off my monitor and went to bed. Go figure. It\'s like those little Kerbals knew exactly when to crash.

Question is for both the Mun and Kerbin. I want to have the nose of my craft pointing straight down at the surface during orbit. I know I can do this by pointing it down and then pressing 't' to lock it in place, but I\'m wondering if there is another way. If it is possible any other way, how can I go about doing it?

I love the suspension.

I found one!!! Hooray!! My life is complete. I\'ve been trying on and off for the past 3 weeks or so to find one of these. Never underestimate the importance of properly understanding how to use the tools being used.

Hilarious. I thought red meant it was getting closer and green meant you were in the vicinity, but actually moving further away! No wonder why I\'ve been having such a hard time finding these things.

I actually just finished my new lander / cart combo that does exactly this. I used the claws and rotated them to point down. If I fully extend them, they act as landing legs. I then bring them back to original position, and the cart is lowered. When the claws are back at original position, they act as support legs that prevent my rover from tipping over. I was doing 40-50 m/s and would turn full tilt and wasn\'t able to tip myself over. In fact, nothing I tried would tip me over. The challenge now is to see if I can fly it using non-modified parts. I\'m sure it will work - I\'ll just need to add a bunch of boosters to get it into orbit.