NovaSilisko

Very glad to see this change being made.

True. I just remembered the existence of their Facebook page... I shudder to think what the comments there might be like.

Regarding articulations and coherency of the reddit community, have you actually looked at it for very long? The people being really angry and insulting get downvoted really fast. There's a number of big, nicely-thought-out posts of constructive criticism there.

And leave the scientific community without a visible light space telescope for an indeterminate number of years? I'm glad they're trying to milk it for all they can get out of it, personally. It's an invaluable instrument, and I'd rather have it orbiting earth doing good work til the bitter end than see it switched off and stuck in a museum before its time.

Keep in mind that the delta-v is calculated back on the ground most of the time, and generally is done so long before the mission happens unless something goes really, really wrong. Generally they would base their estimates for changes in delta-v remaining based on knowing how much fuel was available at the start, the ISP of the engine, and the burn time. It's very hard to know just how much fuel is left in a fuel tank in free-fall.

They aren't going to let it reenter uncontrolled, either. The last maintenance mission fitted a docking port - it could be used for a maintenance mission to it, but that would require lots of equipment that doesn't exist. And, more importantly, funding for that equipment doesn't exist. The shuttle really was the only vehicle that could do it effectively. It's much more likely the docking ring will be used to accommodate a small vehicle that will dock to it and burn retrograde to safely deorbit Hubble over the pacific before it comes down on its own, to avoid the possibility of the giant mirrors (which likely would survive in part through reentry) coming down over a populated area. I still am a fan of proposal to have captured Hubble in the payload bay of a shuttle and bring it home to be put in the Smithsonian, but that was deemed unnecessary risk for not enough payoff, in the wake of Columbia's destruction. Unlikely. Unless you send it very far away (which means more fuel and thus a bigger tug to move it and thus more money), it would become a major source of debris (via shrapnel thrown off from other debris hitting it) owing to its size.

Uhm. There isn't going to be much left to put in a museum after that.

Exactly. I really never understood the idea that having information available somehow makes it impossible to improvise and do silly things...

It reaaallllyyy hates small colliders. As well as small things being encroached upon by big things, even with a relatively minor mass difference. Its method for dealing with interpenetrating bodies seems to most of the time be "don't".

Nope. Made the switch a while back, I uh... sort of assumed the massive differences in what the pictures looked like would give it away. It was time to move to the modern era. Source code access to the entire unreal engine is a nice bonus too. Originally the plan for P1 was to use Unreal's newer version of PhysX, but that has its own bothersome issues involved, so implementation of bullet into unreal has been pushed up a bit. Mostly the ease of converting it to double precision, but also just because it works quite nicely. It handles stuff hitting other stuff at high speeds fairly well, for instance. And small bits and pieces flying around. My favorite comparison, between bullet on the left and Unity's physx on the right: Edit: Updated the first post a bit

Would I count as the actual first person to know about it, seeing as I put it in there?

Jesus christ. I want you to stop. I want you to stop right now.

Bullet = the physics engine we implemented into Unity that worked much better than its stock physics Unreal = the game engine the game is on right now, which will soon also have Bullet implemented into it.

Been very slow. Working on other stuff recently and just generally trying to replenish my creativity gland. Though soon am going to be working with r4m0n as he implements Bullet into Unreal 4, as Unreal's version of PhysX won't work very well for us.

It may not be "like KSP" but I'm using Unreal 4 for Science of the Spheres. Maybe that counts?

Parachutes are horrible, all that fabric gets into the ocean and breaks loose and ensnares all the sea creatures in Kerbin's oceans that don't exist. Don't you care about the imaginary dolphins, you jerks?!

I hope he's picked out a nice life insurance policy...

Ever heard of https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Asemic_writing ? Could be a neat thing to try. Just some writing with no real words in it - focused purely on looking pretty.

Ah, the plywood flyer. I remember those days... While we're on the subject, here are the ancient downloads of some of my old mods: https://www.dropbox.com/s/c5idxv8pwebtiuk/BACE%200.31.zip?dl=0 https://www.dropbox.com/s/wys2xbnziplls25/KSP%20Silisko%20Edition%201.2.zip?dl=0 (Replaces old parts, so delete the original contents of the parts folder) https://www.dropbox.com/s/okmoj11rdo47oz1/Silisko%20Edition%202%20-%20Alpha%201.zip?dl=0 (same deal) https://www.dropbox.com/s/l0qa795jau4vy8f/landerparts_1.1.zip?dl=0 https://www.dropbox.com/s/wngfkkhbtjm4hp2/SIDR_Parts_1.3.zip?dl=0 https://www.dropbox.com/s/b8t4ty4vlud7a9k/Space%20Shuttle%20Vanguard%20-%200.1.zip?dl=0 Don't ask what the last version these will work on is. I have no idea.

Worrying about other things lately. Sorry. Here's a compensatory doodle:

I certainly feel like/fear the changes in PhysX brought on by Unity 5 will require a lot of reworking of many parts of the game, and will probably break many saves/crafts. To do that on the release version sounds a bit... tricky. I'm not really sure where the whole narrative of "U5 will fix All The Bugs!" came from, anyway... surely I'm not the only one who remembers engine upgrades bringing tons of little bugs that persisted a few versions before it got properly stable?

In the best case scenario, you'd go through some release candidates first, iron out problems, and then at some point simply promote the last RC to the "final" build. As few changes as possible when going into the big 1.0 But I'm repeating stuff that's been said a hundred plus times on this thread...

Also, on the subject of custom fairings for real-world payloads, a whole new regime of aerodynamic testing needs to be carried out to make sure the rocket will still fly stably.

That crack's probably been there for hundreds or thousands of years, really. The chances of it splitting just in time for us to have a spacecraft near it are astoundingly small.

Oh lord, it's into petitions now... The polls were enough.