Eric S

With patience yes. For those that can't manage the patience do NOT use 8-symmetry, you'll waste a lot of RCS fuel that way. You'll want the same 4 symmetry above and below the center of mass by equal distances, and you'll want them at least 2.63 times as far above or below the center of mass as they are out from the center of mass. So if you're doing this on a 2.5m central stalk, you'll want the RCS quads at least 3.27 meters above/below the CoM. If you don't, then the quads can do odd things trying to compensate for the fact that the thrust they want isn't exactly on a cardinal direction. NOTE: I haven't done testing to see at what point the RCS quads start firing two at a time, so you may not actually need them that far, that's just the value I use to be sure. I think he's talking about balanced above and below the CoM, which doesn't change translation, only rotation. Not having your center of RCS thrust in the same place as your CoM is just plain bad in every way, if that's not what he's saying.

True of SAS, ASAS is a different beast in that by itself it doesn't provide any torque, it only uses other ship parts (RCS, parts with rotPower, and control surfaces) to keep a specific heading.

People don't understand that often enough it's often called magic torque, but really, it's a gyroscope that can be manipulated in such a way to produce torque. Quite real, though the KSP versions can be more powerful than real life, I think.

Yes. The lower gravity of Minmus makes a major difference.

Actually, if I remember correctly, when Matt Smith became the doctor, the first few things things he checked after finishing regeneration was "Humanoid. OK. Hands. OK. Adam's apple. OK." I think the next thing he checked was hair color, and was disappointed that he still wasn't a redhead. I don't remember the exact words he used.

Early on in my KSP play, while I didn't actually listen to it, I'd catch myself humming Heather Alexander's "March of Cambredth" mostly because the line "How many of them can we make die!" would get stuck in my head as I tried not to laugh at my latest self-destruct mechanism... er, experimental orbital craft. Other than that, there's nothing specific, though I tend not to listen to music when I'm doing a lot of launches, because the launch is all I can hear.

To answer the original question, mostly by disabling gimballing on engines above the CoM, and having enough control authority elsewhere to keep the ship under control.

I think I'd like it, but the problem is, the demo makes me motion sick. Not sure why. Not a totally new reaction, I get motion sick whenever I watch someone else play a first person shooter, I've just never had it happen when I was playing instead of watching. It might have something to do with the fact that the demo really doesn't take up much screen space, or it could be that my eyes are just getting old (along with the rest of me). Don't think any of my friends have it so I could try it on their computer, and I'm not excited about spending that much money on a game that might make me sick.

Yup, Duna. Followed by Eve, then Eeloo (I wanted to go there before it got downgraded from planet, turns out I could have taken my time). Then everywhere else but Jool, as I was saving Jool for my first massive mothership mission. Well, originally it was going to be a six-probe single launch mission but there was... ahem... mission creep.

That would be correct.

Also, try locking the gimbals on your skycrane, gimballing engines above the CoM turn the wrong direction and make things worse instead of helping in many cases.

I'm gonna save you all from the long rambling post that I wrote on sentience vs sapience, and I'll summarize the parts that were even halfway interesting. To say that an intelligence can't be predicted is to say that either we lack the knowledge to make that prediction, or there's something non-deterministic going on. Unless there's something going on at the quantum level, there's not a lot of room to say that the chemistry of the brain is non-deterministic (though the level of detail that would be necessary to make a prediction probably goes beyond just the state of the neurons, since chemistry can affect thought). This kind of leads to the assertion that if we truly have free will, then it comes from something beyond our physical body. At which point, my free will simulation triggers it's coping mechanism and makes an attempt at humor. When I was in college (computer science), friends would ask if I thought that we'd ever have artificial intelligence. I'd always look at them and say "Why not? Anyone that works with computers half as much as I do can tell you we've already got artificial attitude."

Mods that are still using the old structure install the same way that they always did. Mods that use the new 0.20 structure (it's not a floating point number, 0.2 was a version back before the game was publicly available) will have a directory that you copy into your KSP{whatever}/GameData. Within that directory, you'll then have folders for parts, plugins, and whatever else you want. Or you could have directories that contain other directories, that then break down into the parts you want. It's pretty flexible from what I've seen. Try not to install anything into KSP/GameData/Squad, that's for the stock parts.

A very valid point. I've been mentioning the difference in reentry velocity ever since people started getting worried that reentry heat was coming. The devs plan on dealing with reentry heat without involving heat shields, so I suspect that they're aiming for "You can either be cautious and enter from a reasonable orbit, or you can aerocapture and pay attention to where your more heat-sensitive parts are." They could be just aiming for "don't be stupid." Of course, the more important point of view is yours. Personally, other than needing a heat shield, I never really felt that 1.3 made the game much harder. As long as I wasn't doing anything stupid and was actually behind my heat shield, I wouldn't even see a heat bar. Then again, I never did try aerobraking inbound from Jool into a nice low orbit with DR. As long as I slowed down enough to stay inside the orbit of the Mun, I was willing to finish up on subsequent passes. I guess I'd say somewhere in between but not so much earth-hard as something you have to think about, even if that thinking is just "I'll settle for a light aerocapture and use another pass (or passes) to brake enough to reenter rather than change the design of the craft."

I'm not going to tell anyone that they should or shouldn't invest time in something like this, but I agree with what your saying and even think that a 3 month timeframe is rather optimistic (from the point of view of how soon we'll get it). The development of the Kethane mod has been mostly on hold since the developer post talking about the official resource stuff, but resource mining didn't make it into 0.19 or 0.20, and it doesn't look like it's making 0.21 either. Even when official missions do show up, they may not have all the features or the same focus as what's described here.

I'm sad, but not surprised, that the resource system got pushed back. I'm definitely looking forward to crew management and the beginnings of career mode. I'm actually looking forward to everything mentioned, even the stuff that doesn't look like it will immediately affect the players. If nothing else, it's small infrastructure steps on which better stuff will be built. Heck, even the thing about moving more of the parts over to the newer module system, as that means it will be easier for modders to combine functionality in parts, among other things.

Definitely CoM when talking about KSP, since not everything with mass has gravity. Shifting towards using that term everywhere, since it's generally the mass that you're concerned with. Yeah, I know, real world, same thing, it still feels more correct on a gut level.

I've seen two causes for phantom forces causing this kind of rotation. The first is as mentioned, part clipping. The second is more annoying since it's harder to avoid. Sometimes, struts just do that. The first time I encountered this and it wasn't clipping was when I was doing a mothership to Jool type mission, and the phantom rotation started up in LKO. I eventually found that by changing the position of the struts that the phantom rotation would go away. So I did a shakedown cruise to the Mun and Minmus, and the phantom rotation returned in Minmus orbit. I deleted all the struts and put them back in approximately the same place and went on the shakedown cruise again, and had no phantom force problems. The second time was on a grand tour mission, where there was no phantom force problems in LKO, the Mun, or Minmus (yes, because of precisely this issue, those are now required stops on any mothership-style mission that I do). However, it started up in Moho orbit, the first stop of the grand tour. This time, I did more thorough testing. I created a new drive section, hyperedited it into Moho orbit, and it started spinning. I stripped off all of the struts in the drive section, hyperedited that into Moho orbit, and there was no spinning, but the craft wasn't stable enough to launch. I then returned to the original design and stripped off the bottom-most 8 struts (out of 16 struts total, if I remember correctly), hyperedited that into Moho orbit, and there was no spinning. Several attempts at replacing the eight struts all resulted in spinning. So I went back to the reduced strut drive section, found it stable enough to launch, flew it out to Moho where it picked up the mission sections and completed the mission. The drive section with the problem is still in Moho orbit in that save file. In copies of that save file, I've both hyperedited the drive section back to LKO (and low Minmus orbit), and just flown it back, and the phantom forces only appear in Moho orbit. Maybe someday I'll take that drive section on it's own grand tour to see if there are any other planets/moons that cause that particular one to have phantom forces.

Count me in the two saves methodology. I don't do full missions in my test save, but I do test the more demanding parts.

Just clarifying what you're saying here, if FAR's aerodynamics are active, it will cause exactly the kinds of problems you're describing with non-aerodynamic payloads. Are you not using the menu, or is FAR not in effect when you launch?

Yup, I know just about the first thing I'm doing when I get done upgrading my computer. In fact, if I can get all the mods working, I think I've already got something in orbit that will do the job, I just have to throw the grappler onto a docking port, throw it into orbit, and grab it with a long haul tug. I'll have to try it again all stock once I do that, if it works.

Right. Waiting too long to start your gravity turn wastes fuel, and if you turn late and don't turn aggressively, leaves you overshooting your apoapsis or seriously undershooting orbital velocity. It's a balancing act. Turn too aggressively too soon and you waste fuel fighting atmospheric drag. Play around with it and find what works best for you and your rocket designs.

Was I the only one disappointed by the fact that 486 wasn't "KSP needs to run on my phone! and my toaster!" Maybe I only think that way because I still maintain some 486-based machines for a business. No, they can't be upgraded, the OS won't run on anything with as much as an EISA bus interface, and the hardware drivers needed only work for that version of that OS. Yes, I'm talking to the owner about replacing the whole platform.

I like having a fuel depot in Minmus orbit, but it only makes sense if it's either supporting Minmus operations, or you're using the Kethane mod to create the fuel at Minmus. Once you're mining kethane on Minmus, that becomes the most efficient way in terms of delta-V to supply fuel for an LKO fuel base.

Are those screenshots a test, or is that the original problem? I ask because even with light rovers, that much of a gap has always been enough to keep the magnetism of the docking ports from actually lifting the rovers on Kerbin. Works fine on lighter planets, but starting around Moho is where things get iffy.