NovaSilisko

Making some scenery objects that you'll be able to see from the MEA HQ/lot. First up is a gas station, with mouth-watering 1970s prices

That fuel tank is going to look very repetitive if you use more than one of them... There's too much detail really for it to be repeated a lot. Also, 18 sides...? Argh.

"This page has had 56,615 visits" Do I win anything

No, just personal preference. Not pictured is my mouse cursor hitting the color selector buttons.

In action

If the building is reusing the same textures that the existing KSC buildings use, there will be no memory footprint from it.

Failure was caused by something that would've been caught in a normal F9 setup. Has no effect on the regular Falcon 9.

Sensor block mockup. Not set it up to display decimal values yet. Just getting a good layout first. Edit: Now with decimals Speed value is being read from a rigidbody just to test it out.

Now that the Unity 4.6 beta is out, I've made a separate project for prototyping the game's UI using the new system. The first thing I'm working on is a multipurpose 7-segment display. Right now I have it set up to pick numbers for each individual digit based on a number put into the shader. 0-9 yield those numbers, -1 makes a blank image, and -2 makes a minus symbol. Next will be writing a script to control a number of these digits to display any provided value. Also, it can be set to

Hmm... my turn! Using the original Earth Impact Effects Program (which spits out much more information than the graphical one), I've calculated what would happen if a body with the same size and density as Kerbin were to hit the Earth at the average velocity for an asteroid... Parameters: - Distance from Impact: 2500.00 km - Projectile diameter: 1200.00 km - Projectile Density: 58484 kg/m3 - Impact Velocity: 18.00 km per second - Impact Angle: 45 degrees - Target Density: 2500 kg/m3 - Target Type: Sedimentary Rock I suspect the ridiculous numbers here might be screwing up the parameters a little, but either way, it's going to be quite Fun. The results here tell us a few things: - Earth's rotation period could change as much as 14 hours either way - The entire crust of the earth is completely destroyed and melted and a good amount of it is blasted into space. - The blast energy is approximately 2050000000000000 megatons - The amount of rock melted or vaporised is approximately 2.5x the volume of the moon - "Your position was inside the transient crater and ejected upon impact" - "The Earth is not strongly disturbed by the impact" However, given the estimated potential energy of this impact is approximately 2.05 zettatons of TNT... the handy Atomic Rockets Boom Table tells us that this is a bit over one quarter the energy needed to completely obliterate earth. This is of course assuming ALL the energy of the impact can be transferred perfectly to the earth, which is unlikely. Still, the end result is something akin to shooting a watermelon point blank with a shotgun slug.

Sorry, it's just been a bit slow again. r4m0n's had a lot of work to do and I've been a bit dry on motivation, been doing work on a few other things lying around http://vocaroo.com/i/s0JXQhtvDfeK

I feel sometimes that KSP makes people think spaceflight is a lot easier than it really is, and it doesn't really promote learning in a number of areas without mods. It teaches orbital mechanics through trial and error quite well*, but the lack of basic rocket science information such as delta-v or thrust-to-weight ratio dampens how much it could help people learn about how spaceflight really works. We'll see what KerbalEdu brings to the table whenever it surfaces properly, though. An argument from the past comes to mind, where one party who had only KSP as a reference point, was arguing that NASA was stupid because they didn't "just" send up a Soyuz to maintain HST. I've seen other people use KSP as justification for why something should be done in real life, not listening to why it won't work, and it makes me sad. *assuming the player is willing to listen, I would put the number of people who have really learned and understand orbital mechanics as a direct result of KSP at probably less than 10% of players

Viking 1 and 2 were put into orbit first as they were accompanied by orbiters. The Mars # landers from the USSR did the same as well I believe.

The eccentricity of Pluto and Charon's orbits around one another is exceedingly close to zero. Neither would really move relative to the other. Thus, there's likely not much tidal stress going on between them. But Triton is on a minimal-eccentricity orbit as well, just retrograde around Neptune. The solar system likes to surprise us...

Yes, that's my current thought. There can be a circle of the maximum diameter of the gate shown in the construction screen to help you size your ship, perhaps.

Probably. The larger issue is fitting it through the portal.

Seen some of the most recent SE development pictures?

When all the required systems are in place there will be a proper demo. A selection of parts, and a single solar system to explore (the portal device is locked to a single target and the transmitter range isn't enough for interstellar travel), and everything else more or less functional.

And some heat effects. 400 replies in eight months... perhaps nearing the levels required to get an official sots forum up and running. Who knows. You will be able to place explosive-bolt loaded assemblies wherever you please and trigger them with action groups, so yes.

Forgot to post this. The three engine models so far, space boss for scale.

Playing with planet sizes and thruster effects.

Rosetta was the first front-page story on the BBC website for a time, and is currently the #2 most-shared story there. I'd say that's not bad!

It took me a while to find it when it was first stickied. I think most people develop a tendency to just glaze over the stickies since they so rarely change.

Working on engines again. This is the Ferrodyne FR-100, a pressure-fed lox/kerosene rocket engine, with 5 kN of thrust, and a specific impulse of 302s. Better performance than many of the hypergolic thrusters available, though extreme care must be taken to make sure your liquid oxygen stays liquid.

Philae will land on it in November.