Deadweasel

Oh, I see. Sorry, didn't realize it was necessarily specific to an application; I thought it was a more a general "how it do?" question.

Silk fabric Polyester Superman's outfit (don't tug on the cape, dammit!)

Man, wish I could get it to actually do something like this. Still haven't wrapped (warped?) my head around its interface enough, I guess.

Actually, why have the six middle wheels at all? It should work fine with just the four canted out, yes?

Likely high school-level animation classes won't teach very much stuff of any relevance to this. Heck, honestly I think most college-level courses are a waste of time and money for this stuff. BUT, Blender, Sketchup and YouTube are all free. All it really takes to start coming to grips with this stuff is motivation, time and perseverance.

[TABLE=width: 800] <tbody>[TR] [TD] ....oh hell. *headdesk* So you just made me realize something I had totally forgotten, which calls the entire A/MACT line of these planes into question. I have a seperately-modified version of those fuel generators that produce fuel at a slightly faster rate than stock. I didn't realize that those config differences weren't translated to the .craft files themselves, which means unless you also have the modified versions of the generators in your parts installs, you won't be able to fly these things at all. So... I went back and played around with the configs for the wings to get them to carry fuel like real world aircraft do. Know what I discovered? It works. The only issue is that while their configs ostensibly allow for fuel-passthrough, they can't act as a fuel source. Why? Because Unity, I guess. The way around it is to just slap a fuel line from the wing to another body part that can transfer fuel, and by George Takei, it works. I need to play around more with some of this, especially where the pWings are concerned. There needs to be separate versions of them for straight structural use (like the wingtip vertical stabilizers on Windjammer), and one that scales the fuel content with the size of the wing, probably based on the surface area calculations for it. The same modification could be done for other parts that honestly should have fuel capability, like those engine nacelles. I mean, they weigh little enough that it could be assumed they're hollow anyway, right? In the meantime, the quickest way around this pickle is to modify the FuelTastic50L part, and slightly bump up the rates under OUTPUT_RESOURCE in its config. Leave the power requirement alone, and if you tweak just a bit, you can get it to extend the flight time to a more realistic range while not allowing for infinite flight, by generating fuel just a teensy hair slower than the engines consume it. Thanks for the call-out Logan; it helped to have outside input on this for sure! I've got a lot more test flights to run now, to see if adding fuel to all the relevant wings has any kind of detrimental effects.[/TD] [/TR] </tbody>[/TABLE]

Commenced with a little re-tooling of the MACT-101, resulting in the MACT-101/EC Windjammer! Now features a pressurized cabin (which reduces part count, and trades six seats for four). Turns like an absolute pig, but screams in the straightaway like a stabbed rat. Looks pretty, and still flies well enough to commit nice soft landings

Oh. Well for that, I'll need to get more pics on the next test flight. I'll be sure to share them up once I've got the design refined better.

Currently, yes you're right. However, Burt Rutan had designs that went far beyond sub-orbital hops. It's just that since Branson sponsored and subsequently bought the whole thing up, he's focusing on the aspect that's capable of being commercialized the quickest. Rutan has always been the pioneer and biggest champion of composite airframe designs, but the X-Prize competition was the best and most public way for him to demonstrate just how much those materials can do (and how cheaply). It was especially needed to help soften the impact of John Denver's crash, which happened in a Long EZ, one of Rutan's designs. (The media focused hard on the plane, not so much on the fact that Denver was doing touch-and-go's with one tank running dry like a newb.) He gives a brief glimpse of some of those designs during a two part Discovery special about SpaceShipOne called "Black Sky: The Race for Space", and "Black Sky: Winning the X-Prize". Thing is, Rutan is the kind of guy who doesn't just doodle. When he gets an idea in his head, he'll run it right up to the build stage if left unchecked. I think the only limiting factors to his orbiter ideas are money and effective affordable propulsion. Nobody's going to replicate the Shuttle's lifting system these days. While its engines were among the most efficient in the world, the rest of the launch system required ridiculous amounts of money, complexity and manpower to produce, operate and recycle. Sadly, the White Knight approach would not be feasible for an orbiter capable of carrying any appreciable load -be it equipment or passengers- up to orbital altitude and velocity, so unless Branson comes back for seconds (which I kind of expect he will if Virgin Galactic takes off, so to speak), he's kind of stuck in a Howard Stark situation. "I'm limited by the technology of my time..."

If the train is powered by massive boosters, and Jeb can be seen at one end of the tunnel trying to make off with a section of the track, then yes. Yes it's a kerbal subway station. XD

Of course! It's a departure from the rest of the series, in that it has a real pilot (hence the MACT designation), but it feels like a Learjet!

Heh, okay, it's absolutely understandable that SQUAD would be protective of the likenesses of the kerbals, now that I've seen these: http://www.cafepress.com/kerbalspaceprogram http://www.shapeways.com/shops/kerbalspaceprogram?s=0#more-products EDIT: Huh.. I thought the Shapeways models were plastic, not granular binding. Interesting.

Then again, it's one thing to be on the team of folks who are building a satellite, and another to be on the team who are launching it. Shoot, unless it's a very small outfit, I would wager there's yet another team entirely who will be actually communicating with/operating the satellite.

In Soviet Russia, pig is always look better. Always. (sorry, couldn't resist)

I'm rooting for Virgin Galactic. SpaceShipOne/Two have a special place in my heart.

Wait, I thought [naughty filtered word relating to smut] wasn't allowed on these forums... XD Awesome pics! Wish I'd been able to see a launch or landing before it all came to an end.

Heh, the skew is a result of the conversion to the .obj format during the capture process. Otherwise it also produces another format that works just fine, except that it requires an additional plugin to be installed for older versions of 3DS Max for import. The problem there is that I don't have an older version, and Autodesk can't seem to settle down and stop completely re-hashing their scripting system with every major release, so I settle for the little extra work this track creates. Unfortunately, I can't really script the correction process (easily), because I'm not familiar with coding Sketchup plugins. Also, this is the only time I ever have to worry about correcting deformations created from outside the environment, so it really wouldn't be worth the time it would take to learn the language and make a plugin to address it. Developing the process did lead me to discover some really cool tools that I didn't realize existed before though. Sketchup has been lacking any kind of ability to influence a model's linear deformation as a whole, but some crazy Russian guy went ahead and figured it out, creating a tool that makes short work of the needed adjustments, and does it in a very intuitive way. For the most part, all I need to get a model fixed is a couple of reliable points of reference. Usually what I'll do is stick a couple of docking port jrs at right angles on the ship before capture, then all I have to do is squish, squash and slant until those ports are properly circular again. Easy-peasy! Now I just wish there was a way to detect and delete duplicate groups that are overlaid on one another without having to "explode" the whole model and make it one singular mesh. Currently they come through with each part "grouped" as its own component, which is great for the smoothing stage, as some parts' geometries need more or less than others. As for exporting .svg... ooooh that would be nice, but I can't work very well in Illustrator, and Photoshop would just rasterize the things anyway. PNG export with transparency is a (plugin-provided) godsend enough as it is though.

Yes, that most of all, I had forgotten about that! It's amazing, all the little things that go into these designs and procedures to address problems that most folks weren't even aware were present!

"Oooohhh..." "MOOOOOOOODSSS!!!"

Those are maneuvering thruster apertures, basically RCS ports. You're seeing the protective coverings being blown open as the systems are pressurized and vented for operation. You can see more of those here

Uh oh, I think I did that previously too. Which section should it be in? I'm getting a bit of a track record for (unintentionally) doing that.... >_>

Thought you folks might enjoy this! Space Shuttle main engines firing in slow motion (LiveLeak) One of the little curiosity points I used to wonder about -and which I've actually been asked more than a few times- is "what's with the shower of sparks under the nozzles?" When I was a kid, I used to think that's how they fired the engines, like lighting an acetylene torch. Heh, silly kid! The Space Shuttle main engines operate with liquid hydrogen and liquid oxygen. They are stored in those big white rounded tanks on opposite sides of the launch pad area and loaded on the Shuttle only at the (virtual) last minute before launch. The reason they are kept so far apart is that when mixed, hydrogen and oxygen are extremely explosive. (I mean, duh, they're powering a ROCKET ENGINE with the mix, right?) Because of its high volatility, it's extremely dangerous to allow any leaks or seepage to accumulate around the pad. Liquid hydrogen is used to cool the engine nozzles and then re-circulated to intermix with the rest of it being injected into the combustion chamber. This pre-heats the fuel slightly, increasing engine efficiency as it warms up, so it's actually in motion within the engines a bit before ignition. The sparklers shower the area underneath the main engines to burn off any escaping hydrogen gas so it can't accumulate and cause an "unplanned thermal concussive event" (understatement of the decade) the second the Shuttle's engines light off. Another fun fact: Most of the "smoke" you see billowing around the pad is not smoke, but water vapor. Immediately before lighting the engines, the engine apertures in the pad are doused with a water curtain, which pulls the particulate byproducts of the booster engines' operation out of the air. A great deal of the water is vaporized in the process, resulting in massive clouds forming around the pad at the time of launch. The shuttle's main engines themselves also produce water vapor as an emission. The result is that the Space Shuttle quite literally made it rain behind it as it fired for orbit. Enjoy!

...or, when submitting a question, you get as far as "what", and Google's first suggestions go something like "What is the best way to transfer to Jool" or "What is the best engine to use for a lander" or "What are the differences between antennas for science"

You meant "f9", not "fml", right? ...RIGHT?! (Good job anyway!)

[TABLE=width: 800] <tbody>[TR] [TD]Thank you! It's actually kind of a tedious process, (and one I can't describe in initial detail for legal reasons), but basically the process goes like this: 1. Pull frame from game with desired ship waiting on the runway in .obj format 2. Import frame into Blender and strip away all other geometry that came along for the ride (runway, other ships, the buildings etc) 3. Export .3ds file from Blender 4. Import .3ds into Sketchup and remove remaining extra geometry that wasn't visible in Blender (the process actually snags everything that the game is rendering at the moment of capture, including a portion of Kerbin in camera view) 5. Re-align and de-skew model (the initial capture process usually skews the model in multiple directions) 6. Clean up model, removing duplicate groups and lines 7. Refine model, rounding edges 8. Change display style to simple outline, turn off camera perspective 9. Export .png images of standard angles and assemble images in Photoshop 10. With each imported image: scale, invert image and set layer to "screen" Tada! The end result is a nifty plan view of the ship, and leaves me with a clean model I can convert and use in Photoshop to produce additional artwork such as Or perform more detailed 3D renders in Sketchup, such as [/TD] [/TR] </tbody>[/TABLE]