NovaSilisko

The relatively low levels of atmosphere on Eve and Jool were indeed due to KSP's aerodynamics and the way the drag system works in general. Duna's atmosphere was increased compared to Mars' so aircraft would be more feasible, and landing in general would be easier. Duna's atmosphere is very short (as in, in overall altitude) compared to Mars' (which stretches almost as high up as earth's), and as a result, you generally will smack into the ground at about 90% of orbital velocity with a mars-like atmosphere - there's not enough time to slow down. I am not sure what the super thin atmosphere on Vall or Tylo or elsewhere would actually do though, it would only just barely be noticeable and would likely serve as an annoyance for those wanting to orbit at very low altitudes. A faint visual could perhaps work, though, even it it has no real effect.

You also launch one in the original Half-Life.

http://n2yo.com/?s=1314 Most of the soviet ones have reentered by now, I believe. If any are left, though, they can be tracked. Anything much bigger than a tennis ball can be easily tracked from the ground.

Perhaps if it were simply resting on top of them, but with an impact of great speed, the stacks of blocks will buckle (especially so due to the round shape of the ball - the inner edges of the blocks are pushed downwards before the outer edges, giving the blocks nowhere to go but outward), making a sort of cascading motion as everything is shoved laterally. But, neither depiction can be completely realistic anyway as these are completely rigid bodies - nothing would be able to withstand that impact without deforming. The ball would easily smash the blocks in the center (and actually would probably yield a result quite similar to the latter image), and receive a large dent on its underside. That's not simulated here, of course. Though time will tell if we want to become total psychopaths and try to make everything deformable. Anyway, the whole point of the demonstration was to see how gracefully both physics systems handled the same ridiculous scenario. In this case, "Not" and "Quite well", respectively. The increased physical accuracy is just a bonus, too. The real prize is that physics uses double precision for calculations now, thus avoiding most of the issues inherent with floating point numbers that have affected KSP over the years.

Okay, here's something more interesting than a desk! We've gotten an alternate physics engine (Bullet, www.bulletphysics.org) partially implemented into Unity, but it's enough to showcase the differences in similar test cases. Unity's implementation of PhysX: And our new implementation of Bullet: The cubes are all 5x5x5 meters, and weigh 100 kg (technically they're arbitrary mass units but they can be assumed as kg if you like), the sphere is 50m diameter and weighs 25,000 kg. The insane mass difference causes some problems and jittering on both sides, but as has hopefully been demonstrated, Bullet is somewhat more graceful in its errors than PhysX! As a bonus, we've modified Bullet to support double precision, meaning it's ultra-precise in its positions and rotations. Also note I tried to make both cases as similar as possible, so the same friction and bounciness values, timesteps, etc.

I might just need new glasses (I do anyway) but I haven't noticed any normal maps on any of the asteroids we've seen so far. I think that would improve their appearance a ton. It would also be fantastic if random boulders could be scattered around their surfaces (not movable things, just stuck there for variety).

The soviet union and US have both launched actual factual nuclear reactors into space http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SNAP-10A http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/RORSAT

Some of the criticisms are valid, though. They still don't have a valid target for the mission, and I think it's unlikely they'll have an asteroid in lunar orbit by the previously planned 2021 timeframe. That being said, cutting the budget of the thing doesn't exactly help it go any faster.

What's the guarantee dropbox will still be around in 2017 though? Or, rather, any particular dropbox account.

I'm not sure to look at this seeming mass outrage with bemusement or bewilderment.

The Virgo lander is based on the LK, actually: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/LK_%28spacecraft%29 edit: That's what I get for starting to type a post then waiting 20 minutes to finish it...

I am disproportionately proud of this desk I made so I am going to show it to you

I really want to shake the hand of an Apollo astronaut, before they've all passed away. I also really want to get my game finished without major incident...

That's a unity setting, actually. Easily changeable in code: http://docs.unity3d.com/Documentation/ScriptReference/Physics-maxAngularVelocity.html Quick, somebody make a mod to increase it to something like 10,000! edit: Missed post above mine. Good to hear.

oops I've read before it's not a silencer, but a piece of testing equipment. Still, what a shape they built it in.

Perhaps it's time we resurrect Rendezvous With Roche http://forum.kerbalspaceprogram.com/threads/33693-Scenario-Rendezvous-With-Roche Practice your techniques!

Dangerous but timely bump! I believe I may be making a v2.0 of RwR after the ARM patch comes out... if possible, it could even be a selection of bodies in Eve orbit to choose from.

Personally I'm a bit torn on the IRL asteroid mission but it would be cool to see. I also hope to see the hardware used for other purposes, which has been brought up recently. Also maybe this isn't the best subforum for this, since it technically isn't directly tied with the ingame mission apart from the similarities in parts.

The suit looks like a thumb with a big blister on it

Stress testing can be pretty... Well, I've got a backstory in mind for the origin and advancement of the program before the game starts, but after that, how things progress is entirely up to you.

60 dollars down AND 15 per month? Count me the hell out.

Neither, it's an elaborate hoax perpetrated by the lizard people in conjunction with the sub-illuminati. (it's a free update for the game)

The goal is to explore and discover. For the most part, it's completely free-form, but in addition to the player's own self-decided actions, there will be broad objectives given to you occasionally, by the government, or a scientific organization, or what have you. An example for an early game scientific goal might be to figure out how such small planets can have so much gravity. To accomplish this, you might attempt to probe its subsurface with radar, or blast your way down to the center of the planet and see for yourself. Beyond that, there is no real end goal to the game. But an overarching theme is "no bucks, no buck rogers" - you need to make money in some way to sustain your operations. A small trickle comes in from the government, but for the most part you'll rely on exporting mined products and more-or-less auctioning off practical scientific discoveries.

Nope. Check the scale diagram on the blog http://www.scienceofthespheres.com/in-orbis-parvum/