Corona688

The ant engine is nice for tiny stuff isn't it? It's a poor man's ion drive in both senses of the word -- cheap and efficient, if not in terms of ISP, certainly in terms of mass. You can squeeze several km/s out of sub-ton craft. Don't be fooled by the spider, though. Its efficiency is the pits.

They don't, but at one point they planned to, hence the inclusion in all command pods. It's uncertain whether they'll follow through on that.

Rocketry is a weird combination of delicate finesse, plus brute force and ignorance. For me KSP about finding my own way (no matter how stupid) to combine these principles and solve things in entertaining ways.

KSC scientists got a little overexcited at the idea of combining 'rocket', 'miner', and 'jet'. Opinions were mixed on whether a jet at sea level would hasten Kerbin along to its long-awaited Duna incidence window. Some called the self-fuelled engine a 'portent of doom', others decried it a 'machine revolt waiting to happen'. When it was demonstrated how one kerbal and a sturdy shovel could dismantle it if necessary, the project went ahead. The unit failed to achieve break-even for electrical generation or fuel generation, resulting in a "very pretty" stream of continuous sparks from the badly choked jet. Perhaps with a better generator and a richer mineral source.

High enough for a reasonable level of timewarp. My stations at 120,000m can't timewarp as high as I want. It does not cost twice as much to orbit 200,000m as it does to go to 100,000m. It costs some, but not a lot. An elliptical orbit will have a long annoying wait while you wait for it to get to the low point for a nice intercept. The vast majority of the orbit will be the slow, high part with only a brief interval it's swinging low in its orbit. It will cost less delta-v to intercept IF you get it right. If not, you either spend a lot to catch up or wait a long time. A circular orbit, on the other hand, is less picky. You can always have stations at more than one height, anyway. I keep mine nearly all the same height and transferring anything between them is either a long process or an expensive process. They must return to KSC to retake their exams or something. The more data you put in that station, the faster it will work. Two scientists will work faster than one. Higher level scientists will work faster than low level. I've got some working out 5+ science a day. Haul back some nice data for them from mun or minmus and that will kick them into gear. Or land a science pod there, whatever works. It's also the way Squad kicks career mode into a long-term game. Suddenly you've got a reason to timewarp ahead instead of running 19 missions per day.

Ah, it looks something between space shuttle and interstate bus XD

As I understand it, debris can impact performance, but not consistently. When debris is far away from anything else, it's just an orbit on rails. Not so bad. When it approaches something else, physics kick on and the game has to decide whether it hits anything or not. Plus, there's also the unavoidable losses of having to check n x n objects for proximity to each other. So a single piece of debris isn't so bad. It's when it's nearby, or there's a lot of them, that they're trouble.

I actually liked the leftmost one the best, and don't know why it needed changing. Any pics of it? I probably missed it. I skipped a bunch of KSP versions.

Just that you're answering the wrong question. If nobody ever said the CoM or CoR moved, "the CoR doesn't move" isn't helpful. People keep mentioning where the torque comes from, not because it changes the center of rotation (how could it possibly?) but because it seems relevant. Anyone who's taken introductory physics at this level intuitively knows that the moment changes depending where you apply torque -- which is wrong. The moment changes depending where it rotates. And here, unlike all our high school examples, it's not being forced to rotate anywhere but its center of mass, so the lever-effect torque equation does no apply, distances do not matter, etc.

Of course it rotates about the CoM, I don't see anyone saying different.

Yes, most of my landers are horizontal these days. I don't much like the hitchhiker container -- absurdly heavy, very poor visibility -- so for carrying tourists around, I need grids of the airplane tubes. It needs more fuel though, it can't quite make it on its own.

Tourii are thrilled to hear that their HORSE has arrived at Station C's lower gantry (Horizontal-Oriented Retrobraking Shuttle Engine) It was sent up sans pilot for obvious reasons -- no parachute -- but so far I'm quite happy with its balance and performance main thruster wise and RCS wise. Passengers will embark once it's refueled.

I noticed that anything mounted even nearby the wheels makes them 'blocked'. I had to just stop doing that.

Why on Kerbin would you let the skyhook touch the atmosphere? What possible point? It's not like there's a lot of delta-v involved in going 2km higher anyway, the vast majority of delta-v is expended getting something up to orbital speed. THAT is the skyhook's job.

Yep, that's why I keep stations at a fixed orientation, to mostly remove that variable from the equation. A bit of eyeballing is still needed to get yourself above / below the station as appropriate, but from there you can navball it.

I hope my amusement with this question causes Squad to improve KSP's docking screen to the point it actually gets mentioned in a conversation about docking Fortunately people get by quite well without it. I use the stock navball, and keep things simple for myself by keeping all my stations oriented north-south. This makes the horizon and angle markers actually slightly useful. My rules for docking and intercepts -- all homegrown hayseed nonsense -- are as follows: When you're headed directly for a target, the prograde reticle will be inside the target reticle. (duh.) When you're headed directly away from a target, the retrograde reticle will be inside the target reticle. (also duh.) The prograde reticle gets "sucked towards" forward thrust, the retrograde reticle gets "pushed away" from forward thrust. When zeroing a high velocity intercept, you want to slowly "push" the retrograde reticle into the center of the anti-target reticle bu thrusting close to but not quite retrograde. If you do this carefully -- watch the ETA to intercept in the map screen and keep it some dozens of seconds in the future -- you can get a really close encounter without further corrections. Worryingly close, even. Do not live solely in the map screen. 3 m/s is good enough for an encounter. From there you can make fine adjustments in the space view when intercept happens. The target reticles can be moved around, once you're really close. The prograde reticle "pushes" the target reticle, the retrograde reticle "pulls" it. Line up the angles you intend to be at before you dock, and push around the target reticle to a roughly close match. Be bold -- tiny, slow movements will drift off course in the minutes they take to arrive. This is because neither you nor your target are flying in straight lines. 1-3 m/s is a good speed to approach at if you can slow down in time once meters get into the single digits. Don't be stupid. Don't watch the navball exclusively, you'll hit something. When you're really really REALLY close, the cockpit view can be useful, since you can zoom in and basically fullscreen the cockpit navball.

Oh, I know they break it, but apparently not in this particular way. Thank you.

So, when KSP crashes it's their fault, but anything else is his fault. Good to know.

OK, one final question then. Are KSP reaction wheels breaking traditional physics by applying "pure torque"? Or is this how a reaction wheel on a space telescope would really act?

No. If that's what you think I'm claiming, no wonder you think I'm so far wrong. Should a torque 9 miles from the center of mass be as efficient? This may be my misconception... So the resultant change in angular speed has nothing to do with the distribution of mass around the torque? But moment is related to where you push, no? Not exactly separable.

Huh? I never claimed that it's coM or center of rotation would move in the first place. If that's what you think I'm claiming, no wonder you think I'm so far wrong.

You had me on ignore, remember? But I'm curious why it's intended. So does a wrench of length L with force F. Where you put the wrench matters. This is because you get different values of inertia depending on where the torque is applied. See also mass-centered vs rim-loaded wheel. KSP doesn't do this, and probably should, as they did their physics homework in most other areas.

Two technicians and four mun-tourists have arrived at Station C (via the pronged craft above.) for complimentary crackers. They now await their transfer/lander craft. That is by far the smoothest docking I've ever done. Finally getting the hang of it, I hope.

Oh, are you taking 'base' missions? The 'must have 11 kerbals and 4 pilots aboard' kind of missions.

Just do a rescue mission, you get paid for hiring kerbals.