sporkafife

An orbit at the L4 and L5 points can sort of be fudged on KSP by just putting your satellite in a circular orbit identical to Kerbins, just 60° in front or behind it. Ironically enough, this is possible because the patched conics system doesn't model the gravitational perturbation of Kerbin when you are outside it's SOI, and the planet orbits perfectly around the sun instead of them both orbiting the barycentre as if Kerbin were massless. So L4 and L5 orbits are possible aesthetically, only because of KSP's innacurate physics However it is purely aesthetic, and you are not actually orbiting around the Lagrange point, it just looks as if you are from a long distance off. Edit: And I see you are a Sixty Symbols viewer, good on you! I had the chance to go to Nottingham Uni, but unfortunately let it pass as I didn't think I would get the required grades to be let in... annoyingly enough, I got the grades needed after turning it down

I agree with this one! My ideas are here: - Teasing the fuel containers (I guess you have to read the part descriptions to get that one, lol) - Planning unplanned disassembly - Building regolith castles Or "what is this, a loading bar for ants?" Because after installing a bunch of mods that's how I feel

I only have 4 Kerbals outside Kerbins SOI right now and they are all at Duna. 2 are in an orbital science lab and another two are down on the surface in a ground base. The two on the ground have a lander that can bring them back up to the station, where a return vehicle is docked ready to take them home. I was planning to bring them home pretty soon but then realised I had made a rather large oversight: the Kerbin return vehicle only has 3 seats. With the Duna-Kerbin transfer window coming up in only a few days, one of the brave Kerbals is going to have to "volunteer" to stay in orbit on his own until the next Kerbin-Duna transfer window where I can send him a return vehicle, and then wait until I can bring him back home... it will probably be the longest time any Kerbal has spent in space on my save file

It can be argued as much as you like by the smartest people in the world (and by the love of Jeb, it has been). I would argue straight back saying that no matter how dim a star was, if light traveled infinitely fast then there would always be photons of light reaching us from even the dimmest stars. At the end of the day, this is still a topic that people much smarter than me still disagree on. I don't know what would happen, and nobody will ever know for sure. Human bias can convince you that you know the answer. But that's all it is: bias. Even armed with all the physics, theoretical physics and mathematics that exists in our collective minds it is impossible to know what would happen if the speed of light was infinite because we cannot observe it and collect data on it. As far as I can tell there are many fine arguments for and against it. That's why I'd rather treat it as a nice little brain straining exercise that just makes you think instead of a full blown debate. Anyway, I think the idea that the universe probably couldn't have condensed out of the energy created in the big bang cancels out the point of any argument anyway

The patched conic approximation works great in a two body system where long as the mass of one of the bodies is completely negligible compared to the planet (i.e. just a ship orbiting a planet). So if you just have a ship orbiting a planet, the way KSP models the forces is almost perfect. It doesn't model relativistic effects but as of right now relativistic speeds are impossible to reach in KSP without cheats anyway. But the patched conics system only ever models the gravitational influence of a single body on your ship, which while it is an okay approximation it cuts out the ability to use lagrange points to your advantage for low delta-v interplanetary missions. The fact that the orbits of the planets are fixed, and the moons simply orbit the planets as if they were massless instead of both bodies orbiting the common barycenter is a bit more of a fudge that isn't very accurate, but it's an approach that is close enough for the scope of the game as it is right now.

I'm pretty sure that if light moved instantaneously (i.e. c=inf, c wouldn't stop existing ) then the sky would always be lit up as if it were daytime. Because the universe is homogeneous and infinite (probably), then whichever direction you look in you will eventually meet a star, and because the light traveled instantly the sky would be full of bright lights and would never be dark. The sky would probably still be blue due to Rayleigh scattering though. In terms of spaceflight and relativity, if you were to make the speed of light infinitely high then special relativity equations would all cancel down to every time and distance appearing the same to every observer no matter how fast their reference frame is accelerating. This would mean almost instantaneous travel becomes theoretically possible. Also, just pondering the Equation E=mc^2, if c was infinite it means you would need an infinite amount of energy to create any mass. And seeing as the first sub-atomic particles all condensed from energy at the big bang, there wouldn't be any universe because energy would not be able to condense into matter in the first place to do anything interesting... This is all theoretical, and everything I said is the ramblings of somebody with only two years of university physics... so don't think everything I say is right

Where does the fuel go? 0.o

I may buy a mouse mat or mug, but the most hilarious product to me is the "I brake for lithospheres" bumper sticker

Jeb also looks suitably impressed by its stability

Minimalistic, but the idea made me laugh at first so I stuck with it. Will probably prettify it at some point, but I actually quite like leaving this on random planets

If you're not subscribed to Scott Manley on YouTube yet, you should be! He plays KSP, is generally hilarious and has done some great tutorials in the past! This one was made in december last year, but it's still relevant at helping you get into orbit for the first time

Honestly, I didn't even notice this new engine when I booted up the game. I did the obvious Kerbal seat on SRB first, then flew to minmus in the new lander can and planted a flag... I had to log back on to my game to check out that this engine actually existed I haven't used it yet but I instantly see how it can be useful when you don't quite need mainsail POOWWWEERR but the Poodle won't quite cut it...

"Combobulationg Discombobulator" took the cake for me Shortly followed by "Adding K to every word"

I used to deorbit debris and generally try to keep space clean just because of how incredibly difficult it got to select the right targets in LKO. There was many situations of "no KSP game, if I actually click directly on a ship I want to set that ship as my target. I don't want to set a target with a piece of debris that happens to have a similar orbit" Nowadays I use the haystack mod to select targets with most of my ships that have this problem, and that means I can leave debris orbiting Kerbin, I've always kind of liked having debris. I find it kind of nice to see a piece of debris 20km away, click on it and reminisce about the past mission that created that debris... Good times

http://forum.kerbalspaceprogram.com/content.php/164-Update-on-the-0-20-Update This post is HarvesteR's latest "update on the update" and he says at the bottom that resources will take a couple of updates to fully implement, purely because it's such a huge thing to put in the game.

After over 7 years in orbit it was time to retire SpaceLab, my first Kerbin space station. As the longest ship that was still active in my save file, I thought I'd give it a fireworks display to say thank you for the years of zero-G scientific study that it allowed. Of course that meant sending it tumbling into the atmosphere There was room for expansion so it wasn't completely necessary to retire it, but it was already starting to get laggy as I approached if for docking, probably because it was so inefficiently built with many needless parts. It will make way for a station in a more efficient lower orbit (this one orbited at 250km) and will hold much more fuel (I'm thinking 6-8 orange tanks), as it will be the launch platform for many future interplanetary missions. It will also have a counterpart orbiting the Mun and/or Minmus. I have just installed the Kethane mod, so these stations will store the fuel mined on the surface of the moons and regular transports will take the fuel back to the Kerbin orbit station ready to fuel future missions... this is an exciting time for the people of my Kerbal Space Program as they move away from simply exploring the Solar system and focus on harnessing it's resources I was originally afraid to install the Kethane mod as it would be replaced in the next update by resources, but hearing that it has been pushed back and could take a few updates to implement I decided to bite the bullet and go for the Kethane mod. The mod has opened up a whole new bunch of possibilities and really rejuvenated my interest in the game!

I think that the system squad has managed to forge out of the Unity engine is a great one, that could be used in a few different circumstances. A possible war type scenario is one of these applications and I can see how it would work amazingly. However on a completely personal note, I'd feel less inclined to buy a game where spaceflight is used for destructive purposes. For instance I don't see much interest in Eve online and I was always the guy who in the later stages of Spore would always trade with other planets and very rarely attack anyone. This is purely because I've always believed in keeping space neutral of all forms of weaponry and all working together to explore it and keeping our petty differences on the one planet. I could go on forever, but I would still fully support squad in making a game like this and wouldn't think bad of anyone for wanting it

I think not using the LV-N would be almost impossible for all of my missions, pretty much every single interplanetary craft I have sent up has used them as their main propulsion. I do however limit their use. Presumably LV-N exhaust gases are radioactive so I do not allow them to be fired within any atmosphere (except for Jool) unless there is an extreme circumstance where using them in an atmosphere can possibly prevent loss of Kerbal life. After all, we're exploring the cosmos, not trying to destroy any life form that may be out there

The advanced SAS (ASAS) uses other parts of your ship like RCS, thrust vectoring engines and pod torque to try and keep you pointing the direction you were pointing when you turned it on, where as SAS just produces a torque to counteract any rotation your ship was experiencing as you turn in on. I assume this is intentional, and I agree with it. There's absolutely no way a tiny little <0.1 mass probe core should be able to turn a gigantic ship as quickly as a >1 mass command pod. It's kind of annoying, but definitely needed to happen. Realistically, none of the command pods or probe cores should be able to produce any meaningful torque without reaction thrusters. They only produce torque for gameplay reasons as most players don't understand the full implications of Newton's laws when it comes to space.

I get almost as much lagg on the surface of Laythe as I do on Kerbin. I get almost none around the Mun however... I get a small amount around Duna and lots around Eve, but I only get lagg when I'm orbiting these planets below a certain altitude. This is because when you're high enough up it stops modelling the terrain properly and instead just uses a simplified model that needs nowhere near as much juice from the computer to model

Yeah, nothing happens when you approach light speed (except that the Kraken begins to devour your ship) because KSP only models your ship according to Newtonian mechanics instead of according to relativity, and in Newtonian mechanics light speed is just another number that your speed can reach with enough force. Personally I think it's a bit outside the scope of KSP to need relativistic effects, but well done for having the patience this must have needed

Lower orbits are more efficient in terms of Oberth effect for transfers away from the Mun/Minmus, and it takes much less delta-v to reach orbit from the surface of a body if the orbit you're trying to reach is as low as possible. I personally think it's quite a good idea for the orbits to be pretty low, but not too low you risk smacking into the surface. 30-50k is probably fine for the Mun, and I'd personally go for 15-20k around Minmus

I managed to put a satellite in Keostationary orbit above KSC, over 7 game years later it has only drifted to being above the ocean slightly to the east of KSC, so if you're relatively accurate it will take a long time for them to drift any meaningful distance

I think sepatron missiles is the most kerbal idea, mainly because it is likely to create even more debris

Yep, I agree My OCD means everything has to be completely symmetrical, even the struts