Eric S

How will kerbaled vs probe missions factor into that? Not that it has to, but one of the reasons to do manned missions is that an astronaut can collect more scientific data in an afternoon than a probe can in a week or two. I agree that we don't want to have time spent playing a strong factor, but I think a manned mission should have a better scientific data return than a probe mission. It could be done as a multiplying factor, or there could be probe science packages and astronaut science packages, with the astronaut packages being different experiments that return more science data. The later would eliminate the problem of a thermometer mounted on a probe giving less science than a thermometer mounted on a munar lander. Another alternative for some types of experiments is that the apparatus for the experiment could be lighter if it doesn't need any automation. As for where the science happens, you could have modifiers for celestial bodies, or just have diminishing returns per experiment per celestial body (or even region within a celestial body). Wait, don't like regions, diminishing returns based on distance from the closest place you ran the same experiment? So two thermometers on the same munar probe won't tell you much more than one, but using a rover to take a measurement 1km away would be better, and someplace entirely different would be better still. I also hope to see science packages that are unlocked through science. Say you've done all the basic experiments on the Mun to the point that diminishing returns is kicking in hard, you could then decide to research more science packages that can be done on the Mun (or anywhere else), or you could research propulsion, so you can do the basic experiments somewhere else. I'd say that I don't want to see someone be able to continue gathering scientific data conducting the exact same experiments in basically the same place on the Mun, but to be honest, I'm so excited about this whole concept that I'll be flying missions non-stop for days even if this is exactly how science works in the first release. I would expect it to get better, however :-) Ultimately, I'd like to see science being something that encourages but doesn't require doing as many different experiment types in as many different places as possible, and having an astronaut there to do the experiment as often as possible. I do agree on the idea of being able to radio back the basic results and then get the difference upon an actual return. Especially important for grand tour missions.

That's pretty useful info for people making mod engines, thank you :-)

It's even worse than that, really. I get the impression that of launch failures that aren't attributed to human error are usually turbopump failures, especially when you realize that a lot of launches that are blamed on engine failures were actually turbopump failures, since the turbopumps are really part of the engine in most rockets. In KSP, you might be able to get an asparagus-staged rocket into orbit if one engine fails. If one fuel line fails? Forget it, unless you get really lucky. To make matters worse, the difference in efficiency between asparagus-staged rockets and traditional stacks, even assuming no launch failures, would be much less in reality than in KSP, because KSP has very low TWR engines and high-dry-mass fuel tanks. I usually sum it up as: Asparagus staging is the natural and inevitable result of the combination of low TWR engines, fuel tanks with a high dry mass, and high throughput, high reliability fuel transfer ability. If those three conditions applied to reality, we'd already have asparagus staging in real life.

Editor Tools hasn't been updated by the author in quite a while. Editor Extensions has been kept up to date and contains similar functionality. I've heard conflicting answers on whether or not that mod increases the VAB/SPH size.

I'm all in favor of Skorpion or Kegereneku's suggestions. A save that I can revert to, whether I revert with ctrl-z or by manually reloading an autosave, would take less of my time than either having to rebuild ships after accidentally hitting new instead of save or having to confirm all the new clicks that aren't mistakes.

Not true. A more realistic drag model would significantly reduce drag for all but the worst rockets. I think the delta-v lost to aerodynamic drag on a Saturn V launch was on the order of 200-250 m/s. I've done quite a bit of launching asparagus rockets using FAR, which does have a more realistic drag model, and the drag loss of a seven-stack asparagus launcher compared to a single stack launcher didn't come close to making the single stack launcher more efficient. Yes, more realistic drag will have a significant impact on the more... audacious?... asparagus launchers that are wider than they are tall, but that's really not the majority of asparagus launchers. Tiron has it right, the problem with asparagus staging in real life comes from the fact that asparagus staging is very dependent on fuel pumps, and fuel pumps are one of the most common non-human failures on launch vehicles. Given that asparagus' advantage over single stack launchers would get reduced just by the lower TWR of engines and higher dry weight of fuel tanks, it's just not worth risking a payload on a rocket design that is so dependent on such a weak link.

This. One of the reddit challenges was to go to a different planet, land with parachutes without using engines at all from the time you enter the atmosphere, take off, get back to Kerbal, and land with the same parachutes, again without using engines. Hmmm... now that I think about it, without using engines may have been hard mode. Yup, found the challenge and checked the info, and linked to it. I did super hard mode, which was all of that with Deadly Reentry installed. I used a pretty small lander, but landing was easy. My attempt was documented here. Now, the reason I describe this is that because I wanted to include that challenge in the 50th weekly challenge, for which hard mode was to do eight of the prior challenges. My plan was to do eight hard mode challenges (still haven't completed that, but I haven't given up yet). Well, my testing was... interesting. Since the lander weighed quite a bit more, even with many more parachutes, I just couldn't land the lander strictly on parachutes. In fact, that's the current sticking point on that mission, I still haven't found a way to land that lander that doesn't involve either using engines or having parts yanked off when the parachutes deploy. TLDR: Duna is still pretty easy as long as you're not trying to land a heavy lander, though yes, Eve would be easier. Still, I'd say that Eve is the only planet easier to land a probe on than Duna is.

The orbit will decay very slowly, and not at all if that craft isn't the focused craft at the time it's in the atmosphere. And by very slowly, I mean be glad that life support isn't implemented, as getting that craft down without a rescue craft would be a very long mission. I'd do it by triggering the parachute (it will deploy when the craft eventually hits enough atmosphere) and letting the game run overnight or any other time you're away from it. Once you get the periapsis down to 40k or less, the orbital decay will be more noticeable, but as is, you're barely touching the thinnest portion of the atmosphere.

It doesn't work that way. As I said, I've tested this. Unless you place the quads wrong, only one nozzle thrusts at a time. If all four nozzles were thrusting at the same time, they'd cancel each other out. I threw two craft, identical except for one having four RCS quads and the other having four RCS linear thrusters, into a solar orbit, pointed them prograde and burned off the RCS fuel. Both craft had the same acceleration and burn time, resulting in the same final velocity.

Not true. Both have a thrust of 1.0, and I've done tests on that to confirm it.

I understand. The problem that would cause is with parts who's orbits wouldn't hit the ground.

Just played around with the new parts, and I'm really liking the modularity. I found a few minor issues that are probably due to the fact that they're not finished (textures/model jittered when viewed from certain angles, crew in modules not accessible, etc). The only feedback I could give on things that I think aren't related to the unfinished nature would be: 1) The HOME2 Hub module looks off when you stack it with round parts since it isn't quite round. Not a big deal, just noticeable. 2) The HOME2 Living module looks odd if you stack 3.75m parts on top of it (like another Living module) because of the tapered shape. Not sure if it's worth asking for an alternate version of the Living module that doesn't taper, and if the choice is one or the other, stick with the tapered design, it works better for any case that doesn't involve stacking something big on top of the Living module. 3) The legs are integrated into the HOME2 Living module, which means that if we try to use the Hub module in a design that doesn't put it right under a Living module, we'll have to fuss with things to get the legs in just the right position for docking ports to line up properly. Any chance we can get a stand alone part that either goes on top of the Hub module or under it that keeps it at the right height that's lighter and/or lower profile than a Living module? Wouldn't have to be too thin, the extended modules collide with each other if you try to stack Hub modules directly on top of each other. The modular nature of this is really nice. If I had this instead of the original HOME 3m stuff when I did my mothership to Jool mission, I could have used one Hub module with four greenhouses (or two greenhouses and two of something else) instead of two HOME Habitats, which would have resulted in a much more stable ship. This is definitely more usable for motherships/stations than the original HOME 3m stuff.

While I agree that this will be an issue for recovering launch stages, I don't think simply removing that function would be the best way to approach it, as it does fill a function for removing orbital junk that didn't quite make it to a real orbit, but won't impact the ground while on rails. As is, you can create orbits within the atmosphere as long as you stay above the cutoff point, by removing that, you're changing that limit to staying above the terrain. The problem is, parachutes only work within the physics bubble, so within 2.5km of the focused craft. Outside that bubble, the craft/debris goes on rails, which doesn't simulate aerodynamic drag, so the craft/debris impacts the ground and is destroyed. At one point I was using Romfairers plugin to increase the size of the bubble to almost 100km which let me get closer to making it work, but there were still issues.

Unlikely, unless you're saying that the first X of a given part are a prototype that may not be as reliable as the finished product. The devs have made it pretty clear that their desire is that failure is not random, it's in our hands. And even then, as X gets larger, it would start pushing against this goal.

I'm quite certain that there will be challenges posted along the lines of "starting in career mode with nothing unlocked..."

Which isn't squad confirming it, even in the video Scott uses words like "probably," "hinted," etc. Is it likely? Yes. But not confirmed by squad in that video, and the info Scott is referring to doesn't sound like a confirmation either. Not that I'm saying that it won't be there, but there has been at least one other occasion where something regarded as confirmed by the devs didn't make it into the patch. When asked about it, the devs said "Where did you get the idea that we were going to do that?" at which point the community just looked around confused, as noone had any clue where the idea had come from originally, and noone had tracked down the supposed confirmation, they just assumed that whoever had started the idea had verified the confirmation.

It really depends on what you find is fun, how realistic you want your rockets to be, etc. MechJeb has a version that runs under 0.21. You'll have to go to the MechJeb thread and find the link for the 2.0.9 (or higher) thread. This version of MJ has been problematic for some, but hasn't given me any problems. Then again, I tend to use its basic functionality rather than the more advanced stuff. If you want more to do, take a look at the Kethane mod and ISA_Mapsat. If you want to be able to do more once you get somewhere, take a look at Infernal Robotics. If you want more realistic rockets, look at Ferram Aerospace, Deadly Reentry, Procedural Fairings, and/or ... can't remember the name of the life support mod. If you want more options for spaceplanes, look for the B9 Aerospace parts pack. If you just want to be able to build ships easier, look into Subassembly Manager and/or Editor Extensions.

It's a valid question. I tend to go with solar panels except when I can afford the mass of RTGs and need constant output. For topping off the batteries of a manned mission, for example, I almost always go with solar panels because the weight is so minimal. For powering a combined kethane drilling and refining rig, I'd go with solar panels over RTGs as well because the necessary RTGs would have significant mass. However, with the new generator that runs off of kethane in the new version of the addon, I'll probably wind up using that on my kethane rigs in the future. On the other hand, I did a big 6 wheel rover using the biggest stock wheels, and found RTGs just worked better for that. The only solar panels that don't come right off a rover in an atmosphere would be the fixed panels, and when you're driving up and down mountains, it's far too easy to spend enough time at the wrong angle for fixed panels that you kill your batteries.

To what purpose? It wouldn't affect short term missions, only the kind of long term missions that people tend to have running while they're off doing something else. Do you really think having to pop back to Kerbin to correct your communications and habitat satellites several times during a long mission to Eeloo would be adding anything at all fun to the game?

And likely to happen, during the live stream weekend just prior to the 0.21 release, one of the devs mentioned that he wanted to redo the air intake system.

This. A is less efficient than B for rotating/translating in two of the three directions, as it wastes about 30% of the thrust in those directions. If those non-stock RCS quads are too large to use the ladder that way, you don't want to lose the efficiency of B, and you don't want to use the smaller quads, then put a probe core on top (or under, but that's heavier) of the command pod and rotate just the command pod. That way you can "control from here" on the probe, so you're not rotating your command point.

I took it that way myself, just didn't feel like getting into that since the movie is older than a lot of the players here, and at least some of the humor of the movie was references to even older stuff, and the main point was that the video was a lot more impressive than that poster was giving it credit for.

For purposes of playing any game I currently play, it would be overkill, but that's mostly because of the games I play. It's good for the price it sells at, which means its a good card for normal gaming, but not up to extreme gaming. If you want 60 FPS on a 4K display with the most demanding game, it probably won't pull it off. It probably will manage about 50-60 FPS at HD resolutions (1920x1080) for most games at medium settings, usually beating Radeon cards at or below its price point. If I needed a better but not great graphics card, it's probably what I'd upgrade to at this point, but I'm waiting for something with the performance it has but with a lower thermal footprint before I'd consider it a solid upgrade for my computer.

[snark] You have access to the mods. You have 30 minutes. Go. [/snark] On the non-snarky side, I will say that even though I've used most of the mods there, there was a good bit of imagination and work in that video, far more than just 30 minutes worth. Most of the attempts to duplicate NASA missions, real or proposed, tend to focus on a moon landing or a shuttle launch so this scores points just for being different. Is it the best ever? No, but it's better than most. Overstated subject line? That much I can agree on.

While I'm skeptical as well, I think that size wasn't for the final version, but just the next size up in testing, which won't manage that exit velocity.