DerekL1963

That's correct, Gemini had a four axis guidance platform that could not get into gimbal lock, the why is because of quirk in space history... most people don't realize that Apollo was designed *before* Gemini. The Apollo CSM was originally born as a general purpose earth orbiter, sort of a supersupersized Mercury. When Kennedy made the call to go to the Moon, it was uprated for the lunar mission and eventually the LM added to the package. (Originally the CSM itself was going to land on the moon.) That's why there were Block I and Block II command modules - Block I was the original version, and Block II the upgraded version. Because it was born as a general purpose orbiter, not only did they not think to install a 4-axis gimbal system (virtually a requirement for docking), the Block I _didn't even have a docking system_. Like the oversized propulsion system on the Service module, the gimbal was one of the things left 'as-is' because changing it was a hassle and at the time (this is still the early 60's) they didn't realize it (the gimbals) would be a problem. Gemini came about as a bit of a kludge... NASA officialdom realized that not only would Apollo take years to develop, but that it's expense and complexity meant fewer flights would be possible. Together this meant that not only would their be a politically unacceptable gap in flights between Mercury and Apollo, but also that it would be hard to get the flight experience and testing needed before heading off to the moon while also meeting the "end of the decade" deadline. So they flailed about a bit until they discovered an unsolicited proposal from McDonnell (it wasn't yet McDonnell Douglas) for a Mercury MK II - a two man Mercury orbiter. This proposal was accepted, and rather quickly became Gemini. Since rendezvous and docking was part of the program goals, a four axis gimbal system was part of the specifications... (voice = "Paul Harvey") And now you know... the rest of the story. (/voice)

One thing I found helps is to turn off as many gimbals as I can. I had a Duna bound station that bucked like a bull on front of it's tug that had eight LV-N's pushing - turning off all but two of the gimbals and the ride was smooth as glass. Though the same thing applies during the boost to LKO, yeah, you generally have to strut around the docking ports for the ride to orbit. Quantum Struts are also an option.

It would be worth testing, just for completeness sake. You're probably going to be asked when you release it, so letting people know up front how it interacts with the rover autopilot might be a good thing. Mine clocks in at 900 tons and 553 parts including an uprated version of one of Temstar's Nova boosters. It's designed to enter Joolian orbit just outside of Tylo and dispatch it's probes from there. There's no propulsion on the central core, that's just a fuel tank. All propulsion come from the probe's engines. You end up with a spare probe, I use it to grab the Jool impactor badge. (There isn't one on my ribbon bar because it hasn't got there yet in my main save file, only in my separate "test & simulation" file.) Note that it was designed before I knew about speed scanning.

Since we're communicating in English - how can it not be important?

I'll grab a pic of mine just for fun later... But I do have a question on your tutorial, can you still use the navball as a compass for surface navigation? (I.E. will MechJeb's rover nav still steer the rover in the correct direction?)

It's an issue many have reported.

I should make a dropbox account and send you mine.... six nuclear propelled ISAMapsat/Kethane probes on decouplers around a larger fuel tank.

.craft files would be handy.

A trick is to use the 'R' key - enabling RCS briefly when needed and disabling it when not.

I don't normally do this... but it's "berm" not "burm".

Nit: Most of Biospheres II's problems stem from the fact that much of it's design was dictated by ecological 'wizards' and stems from their philosophies and politics. It really was not all that well engineered (the expansion chambers were added at the last minute because it hadn't occurred to anyone that air changes volume with temperature), and great deal of the budget was spent on frippery like importing tons of "authentic" soil and sand for the various biomes. So yeah, it was scientifically useless, just not for the reasons most people think. That being said, building a recycling system that's 80% efficient will be a herculean task - especially as it involves not just processing human waste, but composting vegetable matter as well. Not just food scraps but the inedible biomass food plants produce along side the edible portion. Another problem is preventing the buildup of any kind of toxins. (I.E. the residues of cleaning chemicals, lubricants, etc...) Keeping them out of the atmosphere is a huge problem for submarines on long patrols (so we just exchanged air with the atmosphere every week or so), but you'll be accumulating them in the biomass as well.

Make sure MapSat's scan function and position indicator are turned off before launching, any remaining lag issues are game issues not Mapsat issues.

The 2D map doesn't have a night side. And using an ISA Mapsat type interface you can see all the planets from a single vehicle without having to switch. And you can see the whole planet at a single glance. Etc... etc... You'd have the same disadvantages and problems that Kethane's 3D map has, with very little advantage. 3D maps are cool and high tech, but they have usability problems. I've been a cartography geek for nearly forty years, and yeah, it's a shortcoming in the 3D map in this context.

That's like placing a proof-of-concept base for a Antarctic habitat two hundred feet down in the Atlantic off of Charleston - you'll spend 90% of your budget solving the engineering issues unrelated to your proof, and leave 90% of the things you need to prove untested. Apples and the thing most unlike apples you can imagine.

If that's a return of the ingame map, I'm all for it. The hex map is cool, sexy, high tech, buzzword, buzzword, buzzword - but nowhere nearly as useful as an actual map.

You'd like to think so, but in reality not so much. It's really only about as important as which flavor of kool-aide.

There is no mineral on Earth so expensive, even thousand plus carat gem quality diamonds, that you wouldn't go broke fetching it home from space. None. Nada. Zip. (The current record for a diamond is a hair over $16 million USD.) In order to not go broke, you have to get price per lb into LEO down in the same range as terrestrial transport. After you've spent a few tens (or hunrdreds) of trillions establishing sufficient LEO infrastructure to make hauling asteroids around economically sensible... you've probably got sufficiently efficient ground to orbit transport that it isn't economically sensible. And that's the real problem with space exploitation, chicken-and-egg problems everywhere you look.

Which differs in reliability from most other space launch systems by about .1 or .2 percent. Big fat hairy deal. (And by the standards of any other branch of engineering, it's an absolute piece o' krep.)

If oil or space based solar were the only options - you'd have a valid argument. But like so many others that have drunk the kool-aid, you ignore all the *other* options, because they utterly destroy your argument.

I suspect it has *something* to do with the giant blowtorch they're mounted next to, and plume of hot has they're flying through on descent.

Well, that's a correct statement, but a hopelessly superficial summary of the situation. The only reason they didn't have much hope for profit is because of the large percentage of long distance sea voyages that failed for one reason or another. But they did expect that if there *was* a profit, it would be huge - literally millions of times cash return on investment, not to mention the political and military advantages accruing to a nation that ruled a major trade route to the Orient. It was a gamble, but a carefully considered one and not made frivolously. The money was spent knowing the odds against a certain return, not simply tossed away for the sheer hell of it. That's some tasty kool-aid you're serving up there. But it's nonsense. We're not running short of space, minerals, or energy here on Earth - and won't be for the foreseeable future. Our current problems with those are political, not fundemental natural constraints. As far as the others... well, that's all theory, but pretty much none of them offer any reason to spend the trillions required to see if they exist. (And yeah, the only private space race going on is a race to lap at the goverment's trough.)

It's a basic test of the guidance and control theory - zooming around at high speed just makes thing more difficult, so there's no point to it.

"Nuttin' to do on this planet but throw rocks at cans... and ya gotta bring your own cans".

The problem isn't getting a President to say things - the problem is getting the President to invest political capitol and getting the Congress to pay for it. It's debatable if Apollo would have happened in the form it did had Kennedy lived, within months of his speech the mounting costs began to bother him and he began quietly exploring other avenues. But he was assassinated, and LBJ (who had something of a fascination with space) pushed Apollo as a monument to Kennedy. Even so, it wasn't sustainable - by FY '65 Congress was already in a cutting mood and LBJ lacked the juice to halt the bloodletting. By '67, Apollo was gutted.

They could also be keeping them for the same reason I once drove a crappy car for years, it's what I had and what I could afford. Just because they keep it, doesn't mean it's optimal. SpaceX is, like anyone else, limited by schedule and budget.