Vanamonde

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?

I also use the method of directing my attitude to kill horizontal speed. I find it easier than using RCS. However, as you\'re changing attitude to direct part of your thrust horizontally, that component of the vector is no longer being applied to vertical thrust; therefore, your descent speed can vary. Furthermore, if it builds up while you\'re steering, when you resume vertical flight you\'ll need to shed the additional momentum as well as resume counter-acting gravity, which would require throttling up from what had been an adequate setting for a slow descent before you built up the vertical momentum. Which would subsequently require throttling down again, so that you don\'t overcorrect and bob up like a cork. Rather than throttling up and down to maintain my rate of descent against these factors, I get it close to where I want it, then fine tune with RCS bursts. Then I can leave the throttle at a constant setting, and it\'s one less thing to worry about. I doubt their burners were scaled to make a serious change in the ship\'s momentum, but the ones in the game are, so why not? Also, I imagine their throttle was more sophisticated. For me, the difference between climbing, hovering, and sinking is about notches 1-3 out of 15 on the game\'s throttle scale, so changing it at all can make a huge difference in my trajectory. It\'s too gross a tool for fine control. Anyway, we could have a thread for landing strategies if somebody wants to start one, like the ascent path discussion. I\'m sure there are other valid methods. This works for me. And like I said, the RCS can come in handy in other ways. Once crews persist and gain experience, I will definitely bring them back. For right now, I just figure they\'re camping out and toasting smores. ;D

I notice that at night on Minmus you can see the stars and milky way, but they fade from view when the sun is out. Since in real life that would only happen if an atmosphere was scattering the sunlight to overwhelm the lesser lights, does that imply that Minmus has a considerable atmosphere? Or is it just an aspect of the game\'s lightning effects? I\'ve had a ship orbiting 4000-6000m for game-days, with no apparent slowing due to air resistence. The same conditions apply on Mun, which I think is supposed to be a scaled-down version of our own Moon, and therefore would seem to be airless by intention. Then again, it\'s larger than Minmus, so if Minmus does have an atmo, why not Mun?

Au contraire! It\'s true that even big ships can turn without them, so I leave it turned off until the final phase of my landing approach. Then I have 4 of the linear RCS thrusters aimed straight down, which I use for bursts to fine tune my descent rate, and then to bring myself to an almost complete stop just before touchdown. It\'s MUCH easier than trying to throttle-up/throttle-down continually to maintain descent rate because you have finer control and faster response time. So as long as I have the tank installed anyway, I might as well go ahead and add the 4-way thrusters, for versatility. They don\'t weight much, and can add to the vertical thrust. Besides, I\'m still pretty new at the game and not that great of a pilot. On several occasions I\'ve limped a crash-damaged or out-of-gas ship home on the delta-V of the RCS system. When your weight is down to your last stage, it can serve as an auxiliary propulsion system, if you have time for the sustained burns it requires to build up effect. I\'ve tried to build a Minmus lander that uses RCS instead of regular engines, but it burns through the little tanks too quickly. Produces more than enough thrust to liftoff, though. RCS: don\'t leave home without it! Attached: closeups of the RCS arrangement of the lander in the pic above, and my Minmus lander.

At first I was so happy to land alive that I just left the guys there so I could come back and marvel at my achievement. Now if I land in a place that turns out not to have nice scenery, I take off and practice coming back to Kerbin. Otherwise, I leave them there so they can pose for postcards:

'Warning: this vehicle makes frequent impacts.' 'If you can read this, your fate is also sealed.'

Oh my god. Who\'s flying the ship?!

I still have trouble staying oriented as well. There\'s up on the screen, up on my instruments, and up relative to the local world as well. Very confusing, especially when you\'re flying backwards for a deceleration burn or landing. I like to put some clearly visible part, like a fin, over the windows on my capsule so that I can tell at a glance which way is 'capsule up' or 'instrument up.' Then pitch-up will turn my ship in the direction of my fin, pitch-down away from it, and of course yaw-right and -left are to the right and left of my fin. In this otherwise radially symmetrical ship, for example, the curved fin is pitch-up:

No hurry. Thanks a bunch for doing it at all. Okay, now I can visualize the video. Thank you.

AAARRRGH! Pant! Pant! AAARRRGH! I just spent 3 hours trying to rendezvous. It can not be done! You guys who think you did it just imagined it! The attempts drove you insane, and you were delusional. Kosmo-not, I\'ve read your instructions 3 times and I can\'t visualize them. Is there any way you could make a side-view sketch?

Science bulletin: close examination has unlocked the mystery of the dark green patches on the surface of Minmus. They are dark green patches. Also, a nice view of the Murky Way from the northern lattitudes of Minmus.

It occurred to me while I was posting. Relativity says acceleration is acceleration, regardless of the cause. ;D By the way, when I was talking about how hard it was to be precise, I was thinking of my attempt to use this method to dock with another orbiting ship. It wouldn\'t be that hard to make a reasonably round orbit this way.

I did consider several reasons I might be off, including the sidereal/synodic thing, but I confess it never occurred to me that Mun\'s 'altitude' might be measured from Kerbin\'s surface, since that\'s not a useful figure for orbital math. It\'s always the obvious stuff that one overlooks. So is the map\'s altitude surface-to-surface, surface-to-Mun-core, or what? And if I follow Mun at 542.5, will I approach or draw away or just sit there?

The distance covered (circumference of orbit) divided by the speed has to equal the time required, if the speed is constant, which it would be on a circular orbit. If the figures given by the game\'s map info are correct (and they may not be, I don\'t know), that comes out to 36.676 hours. (I\'m not trying to be argumentative. I just find this stuff interesting.) Your method is the more sophisticated one that works on different kinds of orbits, but in this simple sub-case where the orbit is circular, shouldn\'t my geometry come up with the same answer?

I calculated it by dividing the circumference of its orbit by its stated orbital velocity, which yields 36.696 hours. It works in this instance because Mun\'s orbit is circular; its altitude is a constant 11,400km. I\'ve noticed Minmus\' orbit is inclined a bit, but I haven\'t watched to see if it\'s eliptical.

Which ones? I\'ve left at least 45 myself. If we were all playing in the same universe, the place would be coated with them by now. I\'ve come to believe that this is why I\'m having so much trouble landing on Mun. I touch down ever so gently, then one of my spring-loaded legs snaps back and sumersaults my ship, which rotation the SAS doesn\'t stop until I\'m upside down, and then I land on my head. I\'ve tried switching to fins for landing gear, and then my ship doesn\'t flip, but the fins crumple and it falls over. I\'m experimenting with strut reinforcement. (After they fall off, the fins explode, which cracks me up. What? Are they made out of dynamite?)

I honestly don\'t know if it\'s fun, because like I said, the computers of the time really couldn\'t exploit its potential. I was always just in awe of the idea.

SimEarth was a pretty nifty idea, but you still could only tinker with the course of earth history, not come up with something new. SimLife? Now THERE was an incredible idea. 1) Make some creatures. 2) Allow them to evolve. 3) Alter their environment to see how they respond. Unfortunately, the concept was decades ahead of its time, and more than a few score critters on your planet swamped even the most powerful processors of the era. Heck, that would be an ambitious thing to try to do now, let alone in 1992.

Monolith means made of one stone, not that there is only one of them. There are also triliths. Such as: http://images.search.yahoo.com/images/view;_ylt=A2KJkCADitZPUHYAajqJzbkF;_ylu=X3oDMTBlMTQ4cGxyBHNlYwNzcgRzbGsDaW1n?back=http%3A%2F%2Fimages.search.yahoo.com%2Fsearch%2Fimages%3Fp%3Dtrilith%26fr%3Dyfp-t-521%26fr2%3Dpiv-web%26tab%3Dorganic%26ri%3D6&w=220&h=330&imgurl=upload.wikimedia.org%2Fwikipedia%2Fcommons%2Fthumb%2Fc%2Fcc%2FTrilith_Stonehenge.jpg%2F220px-Trilith_Stonehenge.jpg&rurl=http%3A%2F%2Fen.wikipedia.org%2Fwiki%2FTrilithon&size=22+KB&name=Trilith+in+Stonehenge&p=trilith&oid=35ddd54d3516be546747d3b526e42efd&fr2=piv-web&fr=yfp-t-521&tt=Trilith%2Bin%2BStonehenge&b=0∋=112&no=6&ts=&tab=organic&sigr=1164ns8hu&sigb=130oesfr0&sigi=135can8da&.crumb=aIRPxdcrbbb (Can somebody explain to newbie how I attach that link to the text? It doesn\'t seem to work like the boards I\'m used to.) Like this? Okay, thanks Mr. 111. But actually I wanted the word trilith to be a link to the pic, since most boards I frequent prefer that method. Do the mods here care? (Thanks for your patience, guys.)

By the way, I just tried it, and the capsule returned safely. Well, it would have if I hadn\'t botched the trajectory, anyway, honest! Fuel wasn\'t a problem. In fact, the thing can get airborne on RCS alone. And then I loaded my quicksave because it\'s just too satisfying to have the ship sitting there on Minmus.

Return? Who said anything about returning? You have to crawl before you can walk. I\'m just elated about doing something right as a break from slamming into Mun for 3 days.

I pronounce Mun as 'Throatwarbler Mangrove.'

There\'s something I\'ve been wondering about. Strictly speaking, every object in orbit is following its own great circle path, which means no two orbiting objects can stay precisely parallel because their paths will intersect at 2 points each cycle. But how precise is KSP\'s simulation? I have been wondering about ejecting something like a decoupler, matching its velocity precisely, and then watching it for a full orbit. If everything works ideally, it should drift gradually away for the first quarter of an orbit, then come right back and bump into you at the halfway point. I haven\'t had the patience to try it, but as long as you\'re going to be floating around anyway, why not? (Of course, one\'s ability to precisely match initial velocity has an error margin probably as big as the whole experiment.)