Corbald

With the recent difficulties that the science community has faced both here in the States and abroad, I wonder if we shouldn't develop a ... simplified ... approach to explaining the process of discovery to our leadership. We must remember that when it comes to... well... anything, we have to explain it like we're talking to children. In that vein, I suggest that NASA (and other space/science agencies) take a page from Squad and start valuing experiments and projects in terms of SCIENCE! points. "Mr. President, with only $1 Billion, we can do 500 SCIENCE!" or, "Mr. Prime Minister, this project would net us over 100 SCIENCE!" would probably work better than actually explaining the benefits. If we then create a list of research programs, all of which we want, which they can 'spend' those SCIENCE! points on, we'd trap them going both ways! "Your Majesty, you can see here that those missiles you want are gonna cost us about 150 SCIENCE!. If we do that Mars mission, you'd easily be able to afford it AND Flying Cars!" Of course, we should take a page from THEM and tack on a few experiments to any category they seem interested in, like a rider on a bill. Thoughts?

Not to mention fuel transfer! Seriously, there's only five mods that I hate to play without: Kethane, Mechjeb, Kerbal Alarm Clock, Subassembly Loader, and... Kerbal Attachment System!

After reading threads like these, both after the primary release and after the hotfix, I decided to do a bit of poking around. I wasn't having any issues with the new SAS on my own desktop Win7 machine, but I decided to see if any of my other machines would. Of the five, very different machines I own, I was able to reproduce the SAS bug on the second one (my Wife's laptop). Using the Store Download, copied directly from my own install folder, with Save and Ships intact, NO joystick has ever been installed, first install of KSP ever on that machine, my test rocket, which flew just fine under SAS on my own machine, spun out of control very quickly, exhibiting seemingly random drifting, inability to maintain 'lock,' and appeared to have random inputs being fired, though I didn't touch the controls. Very Strange, indeed! However, this (at least) confirms that there is a bug present for some users, which appears to be computer dependant... I'm trying to figure out what might be different between these two test cases that would cause this issue... My Olde-But-Bolde desktop is significantly weaker of a system than my Wife's laptop, so I doubt it's the physics slider, as that would suggest that slower machines would spend more time in 'inaccurate' frames. My own spends greater than half of every minute in 'yellow' physics mode. :/ My own machine is a Dual Core with 8gb ram + the windows patch to use all 8gb in the Win7 32 bit environment and an ancient nVidia GPU. Wife has a Quad Core, 6gb, 64bit Win8 install, with AMD Radeon... Anyone match some of these specs? Is it 32 vs 64 bit? Win7 vs 8? Ram? Radeon vs nVidia?

My System is littered with the debris of my failed experiments (and in some cases, the debris of the successes!), so I'm glad for an excuse at a clean sweep!

Well, my regular lifter now has three (that's 3) large orange tanks in it's core stage, because, damn-it, I can't stop adding parts.... :/ (I should note that those tanks don't actually get used by the lifter, it's cargo!) How the heck Scott Manely can get seven parts to land on another planet, much LESS into orbit, is entirely beyond me! I can't manage to get ANYTHING to orbit, unless It's attached to a Lifter with at LEAST 50 parts! But, then, with this BEAST, why stop at 50? Strap on another hand full of fuel tanks, some GPS sats, a new module for the station, etc... My one mission Go-Kart launcher is now satisfying three or four MOAR missions, too. I'm sure I'm going to struggle with early KSP career missions, but once I can take a hand full of contracts and satisfy them all at once, I'm golden! ;D

Couldn't have said it better, myself!

If you are losing control after initial stage separation, consider trying a few test launches, only remove that first stage. Practice with the later stages ONLY and see if you can engineer some stability into them.

Personally, I skip the use of Mainsails, altogether, and prefer engine clusters. These supply more efficiency at similar thrust levels, but require a better computer, as there's more parts. As to your question on decoupling docking ports, IIRC, you can assign them to action groups. The comments about attaching Mainsails directly to orange tanks is no longer valid. This dates back to when orange tanks didn't handle heat properly and would cause rapid engine overheating. It's been fixed. Generally speaking, I have had luck with a central single orange tank with an engine cluster, surrounded by clones in asparagus staging. The Above lifted the Below (those tanks were emptied and considerably better trussed at launch) with little problem, if a bit slowly.

Well, I'm not getting the joke, sorry! ;( None the less, I have to stress that using the quantum mechanical principles to make a structure that still acts in exactly the same way as a classical transistor is miles away from what the D-Wave 2 does. Sorry if I'm not following where you're trying to lead me, but don't fret, it's not uncommon for me. :/

Well, only if you believe that using the "Fundamental Properties" of a claw-hammer works out the same way for the nail, regardless of which end you use. ;D

From the way I understand it (which is fairly well), the D-Wave Two over at NASA could manage it with some ease, which is exactly WHY NASA decided a quantum computer was such an important thing to have. The D-Wave Two doesn't use gate logic, like traditional computers do, so it has the advantage of being able to parallel process to the Nth absurd degree. This gives it the freedom of calculating the forces acting on bodies simultaneously, smashing records made by previous super-computers. (I seem to recall it was something like 2-3 seconds to solve equations that took computers like K 30+ minutes to solve, but I might be off) See, the problem is that simulating a N body system is fairly easy, even for a desktop computer (I think Universe Sandbox does this, but IDK for sure). However, SOLVING a system, that is: picking some random point in the future and figuring all the positions/forces at that moment is a HUGE processing sink, making time warp and patched conics impossible. Look at some of the issues we ALREADY have with the conics system! BTW... Does Quantum Computing jargon sound a bit like spell invocation to anyone else ;D EDIT: http://www.livescience.com/32080-google-nasa-quantum-computer-d-wave.html corrects some of the statements made above and is chock full of interesting tid-bits, beside!

Space Cowboys. 'Nuff said.

For all those aspiring Game Devs, there's a great series called 'Extra Credits.' Occasionally they do a "Games you may not have tried" video, and the most recent one has KSP in it! ;D

I had wondered about that, myself. Thanks for clearing it up!

Same here! Been checking the front page and the forums twice daily for a month!

Is this mod still being maintained?

The 'Launch' or 'Tracking Station' bug has to do with SQUAD having removed an art asset, which the game is still trying to load. When I click launch from the VAB or Hanger, or when I try to switch to the tracking station, the game CTDs. It's not EVERY time, but it's often enough to make it almost impossible to create a functional rocket (we all know how often we need a bit of extra space-duct-tape). Also, with the extra resources being used up, my framerate, as of .17, is so bad that I can't launch anything that has even the slightest wobble or drift during takeoff.

Not trying to rush SQUAD. I'd rather have a quality patch than anything. Just expressing my sadness that I can't enjoy the game I love. Que sera. I have XCom EU to tide me over! Also, I was reffering to today's news on kerbalspaceprogram.com/.

Another week without KSP. Damn launch bug is gonna kill me, I swear! Since it looks like it might be a bit, can someone get up on making a balloon mod so I can fling my Kerbals Redbull style?

Honestly, I find that switching to the IVA view on the properly equipped pods does me a WORLD of good for landings! I haven't had a hard landing in some time, due to the ease of finding the touchdown point -exactly- with the radar altimeter. Also, I altogether stopped looking at the lander and misjudging my vectors now that I -can't- see the lander!

Rather than ending the mission for the EVAing Kermans, I like to park them under the nozzles.... Saves on the inevitable future funerary expenses. EDIT: Yes, I realize the disparity of murdering a Kerbal to make a seat available to save a Kerbal....

It's clearly a mun. ;D

There's a few, actually! You'll probably be best served by using MechJeb, though.

Well, the payload it's self is running around 70 parts. It's intended to be a heavy use station, so I loaded it down with everything I might need. Fuel (and fuel transfer), docking ports, etc... @Ekku: I'll take a look at that thread, and thanks for clearing up my confusion on the orbit issue.

So, I'm having a hell of a time completing two self-set objectives... 1) I need to lift 100+ KMU of fuel into a low orbit. Something just above atmo' will do just fine, but my computer can't handle the computations needed to keep the ship from ignoring little things like struts and linkages.. Any advice here? (I would prefer to avoid the use of the Orbital Construction mod, but if I can't, keep in mind that I'll be loading the Delivery/Construction lifter with the equivalent mass for whatever I'll be 'Constructing') 2) I know that if you want to alter the ... er... rotational speed (?) of a ship, you alter the orbital altitude, but which way? If I thrust prograde, I'm speeding up, but I'm also increasing the diameter of my orbit, making my ship take longer to complete an orbit... So, if I have one ship in a parking orbit at 200km, and another that I START at 200km, which way would I thrust to make the second ship move FASTER around the planet than the parked ship?