Deadweasel

It's interesting that this question comes up, regarding a game in which the kerbals themselves are test subjects for flights that frequently result in their deaths. The central attention is on the morality of sending up a potential life form for testing, but how many kerbals were sacrificed to get to the point where that was possible? I'm not willing to weigh in on the morality question one way or another, because while I have pretty much the standard level of empathy for other creatures, the fact is that animal sacrifices have already been made in real life space programs, and we have made great advancements because of it. Russia sent up a bunch of dogs for its research program, the most famous of which was of course Laika, the first Earth-born creature in orbit, aboard Sputnik 2. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Soviet_space_dogs She died after a few hours due to a thermal control system malfunction, but the satellite re-entered atmosphere 162 days later. Then there were the monkeys. The US, France, Russia and the USSR have all launched monkeys into orbit or at least on sub-orbital flights. Iran did it too, most recently on Dec. 14, 2013. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Monkeys_and_apes_in_space From there, I'm sure most of us have at least heard or read something about the cats, spiders, frogs etc that went up on Shuttle and ISS flights, all of which contributed valuable insight as to how weightlessness affects them. What's critical about using animals is that they don't sit there and ponder their lot in life, or spend hours analyzing what's going on. They just act as their instincts tell them to, and that's the most important aspect of those experiments. Humans actively work hard to adapt to new environments before they even experience them, which can result in misleading or even outright false conclusions. Meanwhile, animals keep trying to do what they know, and sometimes slowly adapt to their environment as they figure out what works and what doesn't. Case-in-point: cats (almost) always land on their feet. We think we know how, based on slow motion video, and yes, even vivisections. Now take the cat into space and see how it reacts. The studies have contributed -at least in part- to developing more reliable gyro positioning systems, something that will be critical if we ever expect to explore beyond the Moon someday. The bottom line is: animals will never develop a space program; we humans have. As such, (and as long as we're talking about morality), then it befits us to assume a custodial role of our world and everything living on it, because our actions already influence them far more than they would ever do on their own. Some bleeding hearts will cry "foul" at using animals for studies, but in the long term, would they still think they had a point if the advancement of knowledge and capabilities based on those studies resulted in new processes, technologies or behaviors that slowed or even reversed our own negative impacts on this planet, and therefore the other lifeforms living on it? A few (of millions or even billions) of those animals were selected to teach us something based on their unique capabilities and biologies, and in return, the things they teach can lead to knowledge that could benefit a great deal more than just us humans. TL;DR: "The needs of the many outweigh the needs of the few, or the one."

I derp'd. There is no chapter 10 (yet), but for some reason that's what I typed in the announcement post yesterday >_<

Haven't you read the Supervillain's Handbook? This is where you're supposed to twirl your mustache and gloat.

Chapter 9 - Black Shoal is now up! Enjoy!

Because I feel the need to crow about it, "Eff your crashes, Photoshop! I came back and did it even better, so nyah!" Here's a sneak peak at one of the images I've been working on for the next chapter

Today, I finished the next chapter of the Kerbal Khronicles, and moved on to the image work to go with it. I had done quite a bit with one of the images, but one thing I neglected to do was hit that SAVE every few minutes. As a result, naturally, Photoshop saw an opportunity to honor Murphy and flush all my work down the drain with a random crash it had never done before. Of course, there's no autosave feature in Photoshop CS5.1. Thanks Adobe. Thanks very much. Grrrr...

Ummm... Something's wrong, either with the files themselves, or with the editor you're using. If you're in Windows, DO NOT USE WORDPAD/WORD! They will screw up the line endings and cause issues like you describe. Those "ghost spaces" you referred to are most likely corrupted line termination characters (which can happen if you open the files in a screwy non-standardized editor like Wordpad). Otherwise, the files should look like this: PART { // --- general parameters --- name = lightbeacon_amber module = Part author = RPGprayer, BigNose, Why485, GROOV3ST3R, JDP, Deadweasel // --- asset parameters --- MODEL { model = AviationLights/Parts/lights/model texture = model000, AviationLights/Parts/lights/model000beacon_amber } scale = 1 rescaleFactor = 1 // --- node definitions --- // definition format is Position X, Position Y, Position Z, Up X, Up Y, Up Z, size node_attach = -0.025, 0.0, 0.0, -1.0, 0.0, 0.0, 0 // --- editor parameters --- TechRequired = electrics cost = 100 category = Utility subcategory = 1 title = Amber Beaconlight manufacturer = Kerbus Lighting Department description = Amber warning beacon. Use Action Groups to switch modes. // attachment rules: stack, srfAttach, allowStack, allowSrfAttach, allowCollision attachRules = 0,1,0,1,0 // --- standard part parameters --- mass = 0.001 dragModelType = default minimum_Drag = 0.01 maximum_Drag = 0.01 angularDrag = 0.01 crashTolerance = 20 maxTemp = 3200 MODULE { //Energy consumption rate EnergyReq = 0.005 // color changes the colour and intensity (0.1-3 recommended) // Intervals can be changed by modifying below name = ModuleNavLight Color = 1.00, 0.70, 0.07 IntervalFlashMode = 0 //Used only for reference - leave at 0 FlashOn = 0.15 //Used to define the length of time the light is ON during Flash Mode FlashOff = 1.35 //Used to define the length of time the light is OFF during Flash mode Interval = 0.8 //Used by standard Interval mode } }

I think that the system's simplicity is more of a reflection on how spread out the entire program was, in general. Sure, the actual interface is simple, but there was so much more going on behind it, monitored and sometimes managed directly by dozens of people on the ground. Also, the simplicity of the system, while presenting an easy to use interface for the ship's crew, could also serve to work against everybody in the event of an emergency. Case-in-point: Apollo 13. All they had to do was stir the cryo tanks, and when things went south, it took a lot of people analyzing sensors and relaying observations from the flight to determine wtf had actually happened, as the simple system could only indicate the fallout effects of the event. As a result, all they knew for certain right away was that power and air were falling, but it was up to the ground crew to collaborate with the flight engineers to determine what could have physically happened to result in the indications and observations they were receiving. The on-board computers could only store a (literally) hard coded set of instructions, so rather than try to anticipate every possible failure scenario and code the values relevant to the failures into the system, it was left up to the crews on the ship and the ground to work things out instead. Speaking strictly from the electronics aspect, a kid with a Speak 'n Spell could have virtually flown those missions, when handed a time stamped, step-by-step flight manual, and also being prompted for each specific input by ground control.

Easiest way is to remember red/left/port. Or, to make it stick better: "Big red has left the port"

I'll second this, and expand it to include most space-based movies (excluding Moon, which was just freaking sweet). Just watched The Last Days on Mars the other night, and near the end, a transport shuttle was departing from its mothership for Mars' surface. It disconnected and burned forward and downward for the landing zone, causing no small irritation on my part, ("that's not how it works!!"). Then there was Elysium, where transports could apparently just burn straight up and rendezvous directly with the station at any old time. Nothing about launch windows really mentioned, they just went up and out directly for the station whenever they felt like it, and next shot they were coming straight in to land directly on the wide-open and yet somehow still pressurized habitat grounds. Then there was Gravity, which at some points completely ignored Newton and human nature so thoroughly as to make me wonder what the heck all the fuss had been about with that movie. The tension was well-built during the first portion, but after that it started feeling like they were going out of their way to insult the intelligence of audience, or at least didn't care to maintain the level of realism they'd set out with. Oh yeah, those lengthy "no cut" scenes were impressive, but I really got the feeling that, like Avatar, the entire film existed solely to show off the director's Huge Super Good Happy Time Idea, and that was it.

This is actually a pretty sweet-looking mod! Going to have to check this out for sure, but I do have one nit-pick about it: "In real life, stars are usually too dim to see in relation to anything reflecting light from the sun" [with a camera]. If we're presuming to be playing the game through some kind of omnipresent camera (and I'm not referring to the actual game code mechanics here), then okay, fair enough and carry on as you were. Otherwise, playing from the perspective of the kerbals themselves, it would be a different story. Stars are invisible during the day or at night in urban areas because of light scattering through the atmosphere. On airless bodies, the stars would be readily visible to the naked eye, not so much to cameras that are nowhere near as flexible and adaptable as the human eye. Given the size of the kerbals' eyes, I'd have to assume they'd even be capable of seeing even more than us multiple light levels in any case. Anyway, like I said: minor nit-pick, more of a semantics argument, now that I think on it, and what a cool feature to be able to see your ships from a larger distance without dealing with the physics penalty!! No matter how you consider your point of view while playing, it definitely looks like it'll enhance the look of it by leaps and bounds!

I've found this happens most often if you're warping when you hit the transition from one sphere of influence to another. I don't know if there's a particular warp "speed" that's considered safe, but I do know that every time I have been left unable to control my ship, it's almost always just after I've switched SoI while warping.

Since the latest version is 4.0, probably not.

LOL that's a pretty sweet looking plane, but I'm seriously of the opinion that Jeb needs to legally change his name to Mikey. He likes every-darned-thing!

Strangely quiet around here regarding the last one... Too focused on characters, not enough action perhaps? Keep your clicking fingers limber; the action returns next chapter.

Not mine, but it suits this thread quite well: http://forum.kerbalspaceprogram.com/threads/36490-The-Grand-Voyage-Class-Colony-Ship Sadly, the ship can't run on the current game version, as it relies on some mods that are long out of date or vanished from the Intertubes altogether.

They're called Aviation Lights.

That's very true.

Uh yeah, how about some hints as to how others can do something similar? I'd love to have a more interactive view available on a separate screen, beyond a stream of numbers that need to be deciphered and visualized in my head. It would be incredibly cool to even have an interactive map view on another screen, which your implementation seems to have the building blocks for.

I think it might be possible to use a different animation, maybe? Check this out (in the A1-White.cfg for the B9 A1_Utility_Light_A) MODULE { name = ModuleLight lightName = Spotlight useAnimationDim = true lightBrightenSpeed = 1 lightDimSpeed = 1 resourceAmount = 0.015 [B][COLOR=#b22222] animationName = light_array_toggle[/COLOR][/B] useResources = true } Now reference the same segment in the vanilla lights MODULE { name = ModuleLight lightName = spotlight useAnimationDim = true lightBrightenSpeed = 2.5 lightDimSpeed = 2.5 resourceAmount = 0.04 [B][COLOR=#b22222]animationName = LightAnimation[/COLOR][/B] useResources = true } Try swapping out the animation name? Also don't forget to set the BrightenSpeed and DimSpeed to 2.5 to match the vanilla lights as well. I'll give this a try when I'm back in front of my system, but I'm not going to be around it for another three days.

Mmmm... Bring it on!

This was mentioned some müns ago: I haven't tried this fix yet because I keep forgetting about it, but I too have seen the CoM disappear, with more than just the SABREs. RESOURCE { name = ElectricCharge amount = 0 maxAmount = 0 }

ALT + W/S for up/down ALT + X to reset trim

Landing gear *are* sticks, where KSP is concerned, but they don't attach perfectly to B9 parts every time either. I've had no problems with ships based on the parts, but I have to look at the thing from every possible angle to make sure the gear are mounted perfectly. Most times, and especially when using the S2 parts, the gear will toe inward just a hair, just enough to screw up everything at launch. As for engines not animating, it sounds like you either placed the Firespitter .dll in the wrong place, or you have a redundant copy running. Mine is running from D:\Kerbal Space Program\KSP_win_23\GameData\Firespitter\Plugins Anywhere else (or again, having a second copy in GameData somewhere) is just looking for weird troubles.

From Chapter 8 of The Kerbal Khronicles.