softweir

Try that again, only add RCSBuildAid in first (after EVE of course!). It might be it was the number of mods that was causing the issue.

That was an interesting bit of history! Thanks for linking to it.

I have in the past modded the 1:3 adaptor to have a "spare" attachment node at the centre and slightly lower down , then attached a beam to the spare node and added the decoupler to that. The spare node has to be dropped a bit so the beam doesn't interfere with the engines! These days I put a procedural fairings base above the 1:3 adaptor (with its floating node down!) and attached a second PF base to the floating node by its own floating node. Then I strut the whole thing solid, and add fairings.

We need one more option: "I have never used enough mods to require 64bit. I don't plan to use it."

At present there is no 64-bit version of KSP for windows or OSX. This is because KSP is based on Unity, and the Unity 4.x system couldn't produce stable 64-bit builds for those OSs. (The 64-bit build for Linux is stable and much enjoyed by Linux users.) However, Squad are in the process of rebuilding KSP to run on Unity 5.x, and it is expected that this will enable 64-bit builds. Aaaand, I was ninja'ed by Red Iron Crown. As RIC says, the only advantage in using 64-bit is for those who use huge numbers of mods. The game plays at similar speeds regardless of word size, indeed some players find 64-bit is fractionally slower. This is because the game uses only 32-bit words for most entities, which are less efficiently manipulated in 64-bit mode. This is true of the vast majority of games!

Try putting an aero-brake on the underside of the craft? If you put it on the normal way round then it might tend to push the craft out of the water, but if you put it on back-to-front then it will tend to dig the craft in.

@The Yellow Dart: Nice shot! Thanks for posting that.

MechJeb also gives atmospheric landing predictions, and you don't have to use the autopilot features if they feel "cheaty" to you.

If a company has the launch capability, then there is a good chance its existence will create the demand. Projects have to be designed to fit the available launch capability - raise the bar, and customers will be able to consider more ambitious projects.

Not yet. If anything, it is costing SpaceX a lot of money (and reducing profit) because they are going to all the expense of landing them but they aren't yet reusing them. Eventually, once they do start reusing rockets, it will save them money.

Your point that icing up is easily predictable is entirely correct. ANybody who drives a car in certain climates can tell you that! However, any comparison of a human tragedy on the scale of the Challenger disaster with "oops, our rocket fell over!" is always going to raise eyebrows. It will be seen by others to be in bad taste. There are so many other, less emotive examples available that picking on Challenger might be showing a lack of imagination.

Cool vid! However. Balancing a motorbike in that way is a dozen orders of magnitude a smaller problem than that of keeping a ship level when acted on by waves. That one is "easy" (it's not) doesn't make the other possible.

The gyro would have to deal with hundreds of tonne.metres of torque to stabilise a barge against wave action. That just isn't on the cards - it would need to be too big, too heavy, and way, way to expensive! In all probability, by the time it was big enough to be useful, it would be big enough to sink the barge. A much better idea would be to have deployable, deep-level stabiliser surfaces. The further you look beneath the waves, the less the waves move the water. Even a couple of hundred feet down submarines notice almost no wave action except in the heaviest of seas - further down, they experience none. Have a horizontal surface attached to the barge deep down and when the barge starts to move up it has to drag that surface through the less active water. This would reduce the amount of pitching. If it is made deployable - ie it can be lifted out of the water when not needed - then it won't increase the draught of the barge which would be a nuisance when docking it, and it won't increase drag when trying to tow the barge either! Another system used is active: a load of thrusters (propellers) are added to a vessel such that they can thrust up or down. As the wave starts to lift one corner of the barge, the relevant thruster thrusts down, dragging that corner down against the wave action. This doesn't really work well with flat-bottomed craft like the barge, but for a purpose-built, round-bottomed craft it can work very well.

Just to add to what has been said... The ISS is a large, very complex, highly experimental machine. While a lot of the technologies are well understood, using them in a space-station is not so well understood. Like all complex machines, the older it gets, the more it breaks down. Many parts were custom-made and are irreplaceable, such as the reaction wheels of which they now have no spares working. (IIRC, if one more fails then the ISS will be dependant on reaction thrusters for some of its attitude control and will start to use excessive amounts of fuel.) At some point it is going to become unfeasible to keep it working. Another example is the solar sails: These were over-specified when they were fitted (quite a lot of the time some are "parked" not facing the sun) but are slowly losing generating capacity due to micro-meteor strikes and radiation damage to semiconductors.Eventually they will cease to generate enough power to run the station. There are also some political problems. The ISS was created by an international agreement with Russia for it to use some of their modules. This agreement is NOT open-ended, and the Russians have already expressed an interest in separating their modules once the agreement ends and using them as the core of their own space-station. At that point NASA has to provide a new thrust system or decommission the ISS. As I mentioned at the beginning, the ISS is an experiment. It, like previous space-stations, is a testbed for technologies and techniques. At some point our skills at building orbital hardware will exceed it, and it's job will be done - and we will build something better, that will last longer and be more useful.

... except those we think are fun! I play a lot of those rules, but just want to add one: "All manned launches have a tested and working Launch Escape System." I never hardly ever need it nowadays, but it feels like a good self-imposed rule.

If you include the huge number of private planes in the world, then yes, that may be true. But it is very unlikely for large passenger planes.

These days, it is highly automated. Backups exist, but for the most part switching to manual is pointless - if the navigation system fails during a launch then a pilot is likely to have no idea what course the rocket is on, and will have no choice but to abort. One of the few things that men can do as well as computers is to dock, so if any of the the docking technologies fail then a pilot can take over, once the craft is close enough to its target. They can also do things such as reboot systems when they fail, which is not automated for fear that "false" reboot situations could occur at critical moments. (Of course, the astronauts have some very important jobs on board the ISS! Replacing parts is still not something that can be done by robots, not even remote manipulators. But that's not "piloting" nor is it on board a rocket.) During the Apollo series of missions the astronauts were crucial - the guidance systems had to be recalibrated constantly by the astronauts using star-sight, moon-sight and Earth-sight readings which at that date could not be automated. Some of the readings had to be radioed back to Earth for further calculation (because of the limited computer power onboard) but some could be entered into the navigation system directly. The astronauts also had huge checklists to attend to during the mission, making sure equipment was working as expected: during the first few low Earth orbits before the trans-lunar injection they had to check just about every circuit and system before they could commit to going for the moon. If, during that stage, a fault was detected they would have to decide a) can they fix the problem, can they work around it (by, for instance, using circuit breakers instead of faulty switches or using backup equipment), or c) is the mission a bust? This was all done in consultation with ground control, but it was a job the astronauts had to do - none of it could be automated!

Me! I've been playing and contributing on this forum since 2011! I've been a lot quieter these days and I don't often play KSP, but I am planning to jump back in with 1.2.

Ironically, you misspelled "sentences"!

@Laughing Gravy: This is a known stock bug which is proving impossible to fix because it is so hard to reproduce. Still, it would be interesting to see if running without ScanSat will fix the issue! One way to test this is to create a copy of your KSP installation, remove ScanSat from that and test that, leaving your original install unchanged. That way you keep your maps!

A very merry Christmas to each and every one of you guys!

This is real physics, no tricks. I managed to reproduce this at home using a broken roller-blind bead string, though it was too short to really show the effect.

I doubt it's muck, I suspect it is charring from high-airspeed heating, and the white areas are where the LOX tank kept the skin cooler or the landing legs shielded it.

There's no certainty that they will. However there is a very good chance they will want to examine all the moving parts to look for unexpected signs of wear. It is true that they have fired many. many engines in static tests. However, that doesn't quite simulate the effects of an engine firing while accelerating at however-many-Gs the Falcon pulls, nor the effects of firing in near vacuum, not indeed the effects of retro-firing into an oncoming supersonic rush of air. And finally, they won't know for sure what effects re-entry has had on the engines. Only way to learn what those effects are is to disassemble the engines to check every bearing and the insides of every part of the turbos and the combustion chamber. The same is true for the tanks - ALL the tanks, including the pressurised helium tanks. And those famously critical struts! Do the tanks show signs of creasing because of unexpected stresses during launch? If so - chuck it out and redesign it, it won't last a second launch! Can they view every square millimetre of tank skin while in situ? If not, they have to disassemble the rocket to see every millimetre. And finally, what about the electronics and wiring? Do they look as if they need work before a relaunch? Are there worrying signs of re-entry heating on the electronics boxes? Do they need to raise the specs of those systems before thinking about reuse? Only way to tell for sure is to pull the lot apart and examine it on a bench.