azazel1024

I would say no, they aren't required. I would say yes, you do want them for a fuller experience of the game. Some mod parts "cheat" or are "unbalanced". I personally go with the ones that are balanced with the existing parts. Even though I have Claira's add-on (I actually don't have all of the parts installed) I am glad a number of those parts are being added as "stock" in the game. It makes sense. Personaly hope is single kerbal landing can, space station hub part as well as the "weaker" 2.5m engines and smaller RCS tank. I am very interested to see what else she is working on. I can't imagine that all she has done or is doing is adding a bunch of her existing stuff as stock resources. I'd imagine that would be a one day job, if that, to add it to the resources files. Though I know she is working on the UI as well, but I am curious what her wonderful mind is coming up with (Nova too...well, supposing he is working on any new parts).

Yeah, I am kind of curious about the no weekly update as well...especially since now it is two in a row missed...though I'd certainly give a pass for missing last weeks with the several day long effort to restore the forums.

Dunno. I never did the math or paid super close attention, but, yeah, it seemed to be in the 2km/sec dV range for proper capture once I got there. I did change my orbital inclination in advance though and hit it at its AP. I also had reduced my orbit somewhat, so my AP was not still at Kerbin. My AP was maybe, roughly somewhere in the region of Eve's orbit with my PE at Moho's PE. If I had to take a WAG I'd say my dV to get to Moho was more in the 3-3.5km/sec range and proper capture and 150km circular orbit was in the 2km/sec dV range. I am pretty sure my overall design did not generate more than about 5km/sec of dV.

The two pieces of rebalancing I'd like to see are, as someone mentioned, slightly higher TWR for SRBs. Not a huge amount more, but maybe 15-25% higher thrust, roughly the same Isp. So yeah, they'd burn faster, but harder. They are best for first stage lift off, which means you want the maximum thrust you can possibly get. As it stands, their heavy weight means that the thrust they do provide only helps "a smidge" for very heavy lifters and are much less efficient than a liquid fueled booster + engine...which I understand is the true reality, but it would be nice to either reduce the weight slightly, or increase the thrust slightly. The other is, it would be nice if fuel tanks did not scale perfectly linearly. Since within reason, a fuel tank's weight is closer to the square of its size, but the volume it can hold is a cubed function (yes, I know, as you grow larger you also need thicker walls, but the wall and fuel vessel thickness does NOT scale linearly, probably closer to a square root function)...basically very large tanks are going to weigh less for the volume of fuel they can hold than small tanks. I wouldn't want to see a huge scaling change in this, otherwise there would never be a reason to use small tanks if this scaling caused a big mass penalty for small tanks. However, if for instance the jumbo 1.5m tank held maybe 20% more fuel compared to its mass than the smallest 1.5m tank and the jumbo rockomax tank held maybe 20% more fuel compared to its mass than the smallest rockomax tank and more or less scale everything in between, I think it would add a scooche of realism as well as making very large rocket designs just a small amount easier. I don't want "an easy button", but sometimes it can be rather time consuming and require rather intricate designs and/or massive designs to do something that shouldn't need to be quite so large and/or complex (like say, building a kerpollo style mission, which is not possible with stock pieces and resembling anything like the Saturn 5 or CSM/LM).

Missed entry really just meant bouncing too high and dying from asphixiation as your oxygen ran out waiting for another reentry. There really wasn't a "skip in to outer space and never coming back" issue with Apollo or any other. The issue is, once seperated from the service module, the command module as a very, very finite amount of breathable air and power. It isn't minutes long, but it is only a couple of hours. You bounce off the atmosphere to a higher orbit and you can't hold your breath for the hour or two it might take for you to reach apogee start descending and hit reentry again, let alone where you will be when you reenter (lets keep in mind all US manned capsules were designed for water spalsh down, NOT solid earth landing). In either case, too steep or too shallow was fatal. I just don't like the misconception of "skip right off the atmosphere" end sentence. When it should be "skip right off the atmosphere and run out of air and power before we hit it on the way down again"

Sorry...I probably should have read that the way it was intended. I am having a literal day today. See the sun is out, it is literally day!

It is impossible to armor a ship sufficient to stop anything but a micrometeriote sized impact. So, yeah, you can stop things like paint flecks, slivers, etc, maybe even a bolt if sufficiently designed. It will NOT stop a space craft on space craft collision, nor with any kind of even moderate sized debris (maybe something under 1cm). The ISS actually has something like this. It is a thin metal shield placed some distance from the actual hull (a few cm? a meter? Not sure actual distance). To stop something the size and weight of a human fist moving at orbital velocities would likely take something stronger than the glacis plate of an M1A1 Abrams tank. A seperate stand off shield will cause most debris to vaporize due to the collision velocities involved and then you need your hull or secondard armor to be sufficiently strong to absorb the micro-debris and/or gas/plasma cloud generated by the collision. Even with a stand off shield a super thick hull is not likely to stop even small debris (micro sized sure). This ignores completely the issues with trying to loft satellites or space stations with hulls composed of a foot or more of steel armor.

Ya don't, do you? Cause orbital collisions have occured several times, including disabling/destroying satellites in the past. Part of the issue is that the orbits choosen all tend to be in roughly the same spots for reasons of Earth coverage. So it isn't simply 30,000 objects orbiting in 30,000 different orbits. It is more like 30,000 objects orbiting in 500 orbits, of which dozens of those intersect/cross within dozens to hunderds of meters of each other...and a little orbital decay nudging, or solar radiation push and an orbit crosses and disaster. I actually had an orbital collision in KSP and I have debris set to non-permemnant. I accidently had a booster I dettached strike a satellite about a minute after seperation. Since the satellite was going a lot faster, both blew up (satellite in 200km orbit, booster had an AP of 230km and a PE of 10km).

Yes and no also. We could scale it up based on current ion engine techologies. However, there is more than one way to ionize and accelerate and ion. Even with Xenon. The Isp and thrust are based on not just the fuel source (Xenon in this case) and how much energy is put in to the fuel, but also how the molecules/atoms are ionized/de-ionized and accelerated. VASMIR is more efficient (thrust and Isp) per watt than current ion drives IIRC.

Well, it depends on how you are looking at it, on the low end it is around a factor of two. On the high end it is off by a factor of about 10 (for lithium Ion batteries). I guess my biggest complaint with the batteries is that has a large negative impact a lot of times either with probes running out of juice, rovers not having enough power driving in shadow or bases running dry through a long night. I certainly wouldn't mind seeing solar panels get scaled back by a factor of 2 or 3, but I'd like to see batteries at least double or better yet quadruple in storage density. I'd also love to see rovers be able to be throttleable as well, but that is sort of a different story.

I don't know that I'd say with no problems. Don't get me wrong, he NAILED IT. That said, he also nearly ran out of fuel because he had to pitch up and go long on the landing due to the original landing spot basically being a boulder field. I wouldn't exactly consider that no problem in regards to the landing. Also his practice on Earth wasn't a complication of the higher gravity, it was a complication of the test vehicle being used to practice landings had a malfunction. Yes, practicing on Kerbin can be rather disspiriting. That said, if you can do it on Kerbin (without parachutes) then you can do it on almost any planet. My test for landing vehicles for most planets is launch them direct from the pad, take it up to at least 5,000m and then bring it back down for a parachut-less landing. If I can do that and ge a smooth landing, then I know that the lander is capable of setting down on almost any planet (exception Tylo which would need a lot more dV). This is with no launch vehicle, this is just the internal fuel/engines of the lander itself. If I know I am putting the lander down on a very low gravity moon or some place I can use parachutes I only make sure I can take the lander up to 2,000m before setting it back down again (without parachutes). Yes, this means my landers tend to be over built a little, but generally not by a significant amount. Its a valid test for Moho, the Mun, Minimus, Ike, Duna, Kerbin, Dres, Eve and Laythe. Others, dunno. I'd assume so. If it is a lander with an ascent stage, then I generally go for being able to boost to 5,000m, set back down and then launch my ascent stage and get up to at least 5,000m (Duna I go for 10,000m). I haven't bothered with an ascent stage for Eve or Laythe yet, so I am sure those tests aren't even remotely valid as both need significantly more dV than just climbing to 5/10km on Kerbin.

I want to say they are in Earth-Sun Lagrange points.

You know, I read that one too quickly and I had a freudian mind slip of "bacon" rovers. My first thought was, "Bacon rovers...why would anyone want a bacon rover?", my next thought was, "Oh, man! That is epic. I must ask what mod he is using!" my third thought was, "Oh...he said beacon rover, not bacon rover

And look at the battery. Z-500 is .05. I assume that is .05 metric tons, or 50kg. If you assume half is casing, support and circuitry (charge regulation), and that is excessive, realistic is maybe 30% casing and other at most...you get 25kg of battery. That is 25wh per kg. Energy density of lead acid batteries are 30-40wh/kg, so even assume these are lead acid batteries, which would be stupid to use these days, you come in at around 60-80% of the real world energy density for KSP batteries. Now look at ni-cad batteries. Probably the "lowest tech" rechargable batteries you'd ever consider for space flight. You have 40-60wh/kg. Now the KSP batteries have between 40-60% of real world energy density. Now lets look at NiMh batteries, 60-120wh/kg. Now we are at 20-40% of real world energy density (NiMh would not be an ideal type to use unless there is an over abundance of generating capacity, but excessive periods of no generating capacity inbetween as NiMh have a charge/discharge efficiency of 66%, which means 33% of the energy put in to the batteries will be wasted as heat instead of extractable as electricity. NiMh have a lower efficiency than most "main stream" rechargable batteries. NiCad run 70-90% charge/discharge efficiency, lead acid are 50-92% and LiIon are 80-90%). Lithium Ion batteries run 100-265wh/kg. KSP batteries by comparison run 9-25% as efficient. So...please, please, please, please, at the very least increase the battery storage density by double. Preferably 3-4x higher. Or maybe in the future with career mode, offer different "technologies" of batteries, with higher storage density ones costing more and/or unlockable later down the tech tree or something. However, please make higher storage density batteries a possibility. I'd start at at least 50% higher and then offer at least one set of batteries with double the storage density of the base batteries. That would at least get batteries in to bunting range of real world battery storage densities. PS as a comparison my car battery weighs about 30lbs total, or a bit over 13kg and has a 90 minute reserve capacity. That is 20 amps for 90 minutes from 13.2v down to 11.5v. Roughly 380wh of capacity at a high discharge rate. At something lower, like maybe 2amps, the overall capacity is probably closer to 500wh. Even using the 380wh, that is 29wh/kg including casing, terminals, etc. KSP batteries, 10wh/kg including casing.

Yeah, I did see those dev blogs. I am very excited about it all. Mostly about the flags, but the program and interface work should be nice improvements as well. However...flags..HECK YEAH! Maybe almost more than the resource system I am excited about it. Resources give more to do...but darn it, there is just something...visceral? Elemental? about "space flight" where you want to put your darned flag in the regolith/dirt and say, "I claim this mun in the name of Queen Kisabela of Kespana!" Hopefully some kind of "sample" collection ability too at some point. I'd be happy with a first step just the animation to scoop up some regolith or pickup a rock action and put it in sample bag and then in your pack/belt. Later it would be neat if you could actually do something with it, like identify what material it was made out of (maybe by returning it to your ship and putting it in a rock identifier science instrument or something).