Vanamonde

Wait, you were aiming for the Mun but 'landed' on Minmus? Logically then, you should aim for Minmus to get to Mun. Or heck, aim for Kerbin. Who knows where you could end up?

RedDwarfIV, is this what you\'re refering to (from Wikipedia): I hadn\'t remembered that. It is interesting.

How do you define embarrassment? (Figure #1) Flying all the way to Mun surface, only to get stuck on an obstacle you brought with you. I ejected my de-orbit stage from so low that it didn\'t explode, then landed on it and hooked the rear wheels. It was pretty tricky getting off of there without turning turtle or exploding anything. But once free, there\'s some pretty interesting scenery in that weird, deeply wrinkled terrain around Mun\'s north pole. In figure #2, in the lower middle you can see the fan of my headlights near the bottom of one of those steep canyons. (Is anybody else fascinated by the scenery in this game? I take scads of snapshots wherever I go.)

Ouch. This is painful. Are you all really too young to know this stuff? Am I really getting this old? Yes, Asimov wrote the classic short story collection I, Robot back in the 40s and 50s, though I\'ve never heard anything about a collaborator, as he was quite capable of writing his 400+ books all by his lonesome. The stories were so well-thought-out and influential that his 3 laws have been used by many other authors, and even actual computer scientists take them seriously. Asimov returned to his robots in several later novels, and eventually tied them into the Foundation series as part of the same future history. Having been dead for 12 years at the time, I should say not. Also checkout The Robots of Dawn, in which Dr. A predicts where the internet seems to being going, even though he wrote the book in 1984. On the world of Aurora, nobody leaves home and they just telepresence wherever they need to go. It\'s a locked room mystery.

Yes, the distribution of mass with the tricouplers did seem to be the problem. I guess I was hoping it was a glitch instead because I didn\'t want to avoid using these things that group the engines so tidily and securely. I hope they\'ll eventually introduce bi- and quad-couplers to get around the problem, but in the meantime I build kind of bulky rockets on a 4-surround-1 symmetry. They fly straight, but are hard to rotate with all that mass so far from the centerline.

Not in this instance, anyway. While practicing rendezvous I used ASAS (which it seems may be a factor?) to stabilize one ship, and it stayed that way for a while, then I hopped to the other. The first started off stable as I had left it, then developed up a random spin. Definitely not residual. Right. That\'s actually the camera POV rotating. On the subject of rotations that may be glitches, is it me or do rockets built using tri-couplers seem to wallow around a lot? Trying to yaw you get unintentional pitch and roll, for example. Setting control surfaces or RCS thrusters at 120 angles seem to have similar issues, so I\'ve taken to avoiding trilateral symmetry altogether because they\'re a nuisance to steer.

As soon as you switch away from personally piloting a vehicle, it picks up little random rotations. Why? In real life, escaping gas, imperfect vacuum in the vicinity of a planet, tidal effects, and a number of other things can exert an off-center force on a vehicle. But I don\'t believe KSP simulates any of those things, so what\'s causing it in the game? For that matter, how come these objects always seem to spin gradually? Shouldn\'t the rotation be either speeding up or entirely absent? There\'s the reaction, but where\'s the force? (Oops! Meant to post this in 'general.' Sorry mods!)

Yes, for one brief, shining moment, my van was going 248.6 miles per hour:

Ugh! I hate it when something I thought I understood turns out to be somebody\'s bad analogy. I know it\'s hard to explain some of this stuff in plain terms, but it\'s just so annoying to find out I\'ve been told something that isn\'t true. But how does one get it right? By asking dumb questions. To wit: 1. If virtual particles are just a useful fiction, how do they get anything done? Don\'t they at least have to have the *properties* of actual particles, however ephemeral their lifespans? And since one of the properties of normal particles is mass, shouldn\'t virtual particles have mass as well? 2. Rogue planets are not wholly a fictitious idea: http://www.time.com/time/health/article/0,8599,2072290,00.html I don\'t actually believe that this is what dark matter consists of, but I am curious about how the possibility can be ruled out. But as I said, 'conveniently accounts for this one phenomenon' but has no other apparent properties. Just the gravity needed to make galaxies rotate as observed. Isn\'t that somewhat like ether, which they thought was necessary to explain light but was otherwise indetectable? Of course I\'m being silly. That\'s why I was posting this on a website devoted to crashing little spaceships full of green people, instead of, say, Scientific American. I don\'t actually believe that I am right and all of the scientific establishment is wrong. I want to improve my understanding by finding out why I\'m wrong. I do regret and apologize if I have in any way besmirched the good name of dark matter or neutrinos. They both pass through me constantly, and have never done any harm in the process. My aspersions upon these harmless and inoffensive particles were indeed uncalled for. I am ashamed. 3. So the background radiation was released from everywhere in space at all directions and just the fraction of it that was randomly heading our way reaches our detectors? Okay, I think I get that. 4. I checked several sources before posting, and I suppose the numbering is arbitrary, but action/reaction is traditionally ennumerated as Newton\'s 3rd. I\'m afraid I still don\'t get how gyroscopes fling the reaction 90 degrees from the action, though. It has occurred to me that it might involve the same principle that requires me to make Kerbal orbital-plane-change burns a quarter of an orbit before the effect becomes fully evident, though I struggle with visualizing how the forces play out.

Has it been pointed out that you can actually see the arches while approaching Mun from hundreds of kilometers away? Occasionally you see little white specs on the surface, almost all of which are graphics glitches which either disappear or move along with your perspective. But if you watch carefully (and know where to look), 2 of them keep sparkling in the same places. Meanwhile, I wasn\'t looking for it, but just trying out my new cart and decided to check out the view from yon hill:

This site seems to attract a lot of knowledgeable people and science enthusiasts, so maybe someone can answer some long-lingering questions for a semi-self-educated layman like me. 1) If space is filled with an infinite number of virtual particles at all times, how come every point in space doesn\'t have infinite mass? 2) Why can\'t the dark matter that alters galaxy rotation consist of scads of rogue planets? I mean, we\'re pretty sure there are lots of rogue planets out there now, right? Why invent this weird stuff and assert that 90% of the universe can\'t be seen? To me, dark matter is too similar to the old idea of ether: something completely indetectible except in that it conveniently accounts for this one phenomenon. It\'s like physics invisible friend; 'Oh, it\'s there, it just doesn\'t want you to see it right now.' 3) Cosmic background radiation. It\'s got to be coming toward us, or our instruments couldn\'t detect it. But if it\'s said to be energy thrown out by the big bang, why isn\'t it heading away from us? What exactly is it our instruments are receiving? 4) Gyroscopes. I mean, WTF? Doesn\'t Newton\'s second law say that the reaction should be opposite to the action? Not 90 degrees in another direction. So are gyroscopes black magic or what?

Note the surface speed in the first one. The ground looked flat from above, but turned out to be the lip of a steep crater. I tobagganed downhill, reaching speeds of 9+m/s and scraping parts off on the way, but somehow stayed upright until I skidded to a halt at the bottom of the crater. The second one is looking back up the hill, where a torn off landing leg sits near my initial touchdown point, almost a kilometer away. Oh hey, I just noticed the altimeters: 273 vertical meters!

There\'s an Isaac Asimov short story in which they figure out how to get to hyperspace, but the speed of light there is slower.

Thanks for the guidance! My problem was that I was getting close and then trying to brute-force it, instead of setting up the conditions and letting time do the work.

BSOM180, a server glitch locked me out of the site for a week, so I haven\'t been able to thank you for your instructions. They worked, and I\'ve been having a blast driving carts around Mun for the last couple of days. Thank you!

Mun was starting to get kind of crowded, so I\'ve begun bringing my missions home. It\'s pretty easy once you know how, but figuring out the process was quite tricky and counter-intuitive. My first 3 returns hit atmo about 20 degrees from vertical at 3km/s, which I suspect is more like a Tunguska event than a landing. Did you notice that sissy little accelerometer in the cabin only goes up to a paltry 15Gs? ;D But I think I\'ve got the hang of it now, and it is rather satisfying to bring the guys home. Now to try it from Minmus.

Keeping in mind that it\'s not nice to make fun of the slow-witted, can somebody tell a newbie: Is the cart.dae the thing I need to unpack? How can I unpack if Windows says it doesn\'t know? When I have Windows look for help, it only finds commercial services that want me to download and register their products to 'fix' my computer, and I don\'t trust them.

That\'s needlessly harsh, and is the kind of attitude that turns excited 13 year olds off from science. How do people become not-ignorant? By remaining excited and curious, asking impertinent questions, and talking about the things that interest them. Misterspork should be congratulated for spending his time playing KSP rather than some mindless shoot-\'em-up. See? The poor kid is already afraid he\'ll be ridiculed if he shows any signs of intelligence or curiosity. Insulting him isn\'t going to help. The laws that we know about now say that it\'s impossible to reach or surpass light speed, but that\'s the thing, isn\'t it? Somebody often comes along and finds new laws, exceptions to the rules, or most often, that the laws we know about are special cases of larger laws that do allow things that were formerly considered impossible. Powered flight and faster-than-sound are completely apt analogies: they were impossible by the rules that were known in the 19th century, and then somebody who refused to believe the accepted wisdom discovered that internal combustion could make a powerplant strong enough to lift a heavier than air vehicle, and changing the shape of a plane could allow it to slip through the compressed air that builds up in front of something trying to exceed the speed of sound. New rules, new possiblities. Misterspork, try to find nicer friends who won\'t make fun of you for being curious and smart. Trust me: normal people are boring. The weirdos are nicer and have better senses of humor!

Am I intended to think that it\'s silly that they crashed? They landed within 20 feet of each other! I\'m envious of the piloting! ;D

Also, you\'re using the 200-thrust unit, non-gimballed motors. The greater power sounds nice, but actually the 175-thrust gimbals run through fuel less quickly, burn a little longer, and so end up being more of a match for the big ones than they seem. Once high up in thinner air, fins don\'t contribute much to control anymore, but the directed thrust of the gimbals keeps working even in full vaccuum. But they look so cool! How are you gonna impress the she-Kerbels in a rocket with no fins?

Near the Mun\'s east pole (so to speak), by Ansel Adams Kerman:

I know, I know, I\'m shockingly ignorant for someone living in the modern world, okay? But I\'m trying to get the cart mod, and I need instructions for the instructions. Is the cart.dae the thingy I need to unpack? And what doodad do I use to unpack it after Windows whines that it doesn\'t know how? When Windows resorts to the internet to find the appropriate unpacking thingamajig*, all it finds is 4 commercial services that want me to download and register their products to 'fix' my computer. I don\'t want my computer fixed! Or spayed or neutered! I just want little cars to drive around on the moons! Can some nice person help me with this? Go slow and use small words. Maybe some gestures and pictures, too. *Sorry for all the technical jargon.

I refuse to read the updates because they\'re too painful. When I hear about the things they\'re going to add to the game, I want them NOWNOWNOWNOW! Rather than inspire the mods to place restraining orders on me, I just try not to even think about it.

It amuses me that no/sometimes is consistently outpolling yes by 3:2. There are A LOT of stranded Kerbals out there!

Ah! That clarifies the thought in my own head. The point I was trying to get at is that since the game is a created thing, the makers could have had the stars out during the day or not, so what does it imply that they decided to hide the sky during day? Atmo or aesthetics?