allmappedout

Really good post from a newbie, very well laid out and informative; welcome to the forums by the way! A lot of your concerns have been brought up or addressed (or plan to be, anyway!) but I tend to agree with a lot of your points. Keep up the good testing and rocketry!

I think that's a simple solution, i'm sure there'd be lots of uses for it (particularly for launching rockets from aircraft, for example) as well as the one I mentioned above. We shall see....ISWT!! (In Squad We Trust)

Cheers; that's a shame. Like I said, I've been building for a while and it's just always bugged me that there's no better way to do it - I usually use the x-beam strutting idea to keep everything from shaking apart and that works fairly well, but hopefully this'll look like something that could be improved in future releases (obviously I understand the limitations in the parent-child structure of craft, I was talking more about the physics between parts).

Hi all, I've been building rockets for a while now, but i've never known how to solve one issue that has always bugged me - for long sets of fuel tanks (say, 3 or 4 big high), they can only have one connection point when you're using radial decouplers. As a result, they rotate and wobble around this point, which usually results in unplanned disassembly. Placing multiple decouplers up the length of the main rocket doesn't help because they're not connected to the outside stack and when they decouple they tend to explode in hilarious fashion. Apart from large amounts of strutting, there doesn't seem to be an elegant solution to this issue. Is it just me being stupid? Am I missing something obvious? Is there a solution, such as attaching docking ports to both sides prior to connecting the tanks so when physics loads all the decouplers are properly linked? (has someone tried this?)? Or do I just have to grin and bear it? For reference, I like to build pretty tall rockets, so I have Kerbal Reinforcement installed which makes this easier, but it doesn't seem to solve this issue. Alternatively, are there any mod sets that have really long decouplers that are, say, nearly the length of an orange fuel tank so the connection is stronger? Thanks for your help!

Imagine having a 50 part space ship, or even a 20 part probe in orbit around saturn. Then imagine that you have 1.5million 1 piece spaceships/rocks within 2.5km of your position. Imagine having to buy a new motherboard. Anything less and people will complain it's not a proper ring. Make them too big people will complain it's not granular enough, make them too small people will complain they can't interact with it. Make it too busy and people will complain they crash into it too often. The problem is that even after surmounting the technological issues with having rings, there's a ton of other issues which the devs will have to look into. It'll be interesting to see how they approach it.

The only way that this could be done is if you had a sub-program which contained all of KSP's assets and was solely used to render the craft. It'd probably be trivial to create for squad but on the other hand it'd require updating at every iteration so it probably wouldn't be worth their time to keep it updated as it'd just be KSP-lite.

vexx is right - a ring of any thickness lateral to the planet would have extremely strong tidal forces acting on it which would very quickly tear it apart, if it could even form in the first place. Something like the Halo in...Halo...would actually work better as it is thin in depth, and so the gravity gradient between the furthest point and the closest point is far lower. Obviously constructing something like that is unfeasible for any of us, but the theory is sound.

Cheers, that's what I was thinking, I just couldn't be certain! The Dragon looks like a very ambitious piece of kit once it's completed.

Hi all, I was reading up about the SpaceX Dragon module, and came across the Draco RCS module which is currently used for orbital maneuveuring. What I also saw was that they're planning to install SuperDraco engines, which produce huge amounts of thrust. Now, what I can't work out from any articles is whether this is in addition to, or as a replacement for, the Draco thrusters? Since the thrust is so high on the SuperDracos that it can be used as part of an LES, my thought was that there's no way these can be used for fine orbital control, but then it does mention that it has full throttle control and multiple reignition facilty. Does anybody know one way or another, and have any sources for verification? sources: http://www.spacex.com/news/2013/04/04/draco-thrusters http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DragonRider

It does, in that if you're willing to wait a long time, the ION engine will get you there more efficiently than the LV-N, presumably?

Yeah, you need to post something! You've got me intrigued!

I remember a long time ago that either C7 or Nova when he was a dev mentioned that they wanted to do it at some point, but it wasn't their highest priority

Honestly, after trying this mod it's better than I even imagined it to be. My rocket design principles are now so much more like real life, and instead of building asparagus carbuncles, you can now build a proper rocket that is thin and tall and cuts through the atmosphere like it should. It's just a magnificent achievement, thanks again Ferram

As others have pointed out, it doesn't work how people think it works, but it definitely is not arbitrary. Software version control is a very important thing. As I understand it: a.xx.yy.zz a = Full Version Release xx = updates containing changes which are significant yy = changes which are patches or fixes zz = usually for release candidates or different builds But it's better explained by Wiki, as usual: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Software_versioning These threads do keep popping up though. It might be worthy of a sticky of some sort.

I'm totally making a mod called 'Aaaaaaaah! Go Faster!', a set of overpowered SRBs which can only be used if Jeb is in the command capsule.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-24729073 Not only is it nice to see the BBC covering the article and actually mentioning some of the science behind it (It mentioned Hohmann transfers, no mention of the Oberth effect for Peri kicks though!) with a pretty picture, but the idea of a new space race between the asian nations could be a really good thing (even if we ignore why it's happening which is just a case of showing off who is better). So much good technology came from the first space race between the US and the USSR, so hopefully a new generation, using the latest technology, could be a really big boon for the planet as a whole.

^ This. So much this. "I Hate things that make my life better". I play mostly stock (through laziness mostly!) but the simple fact is that the game is not complete so there are some things that are practically must-haves. As I've said before, Mods fill the gaps that the alpha creates. You have hundreds of modders making mods vs 3 developers. You work out who is going to get something done first!

Good luck! We're all counting on you.

Yeah it's been in alpha a long time, but the dev team is 3 permanent staff, not exactly the hundred or so staff that an Infinity Ward or a Blizzard has available. Moreover, the dev team is made up of enthusiastic amateur programmers. By that I mean their focus has never been video games; they were originally a marketing firm who produced animations. That's not to say they're not talented as they clearly are, but it's going to have a longer development cycle than a AAA rated game because of that. Plus, you get to play a game that constantly improves month on month, which is actually really cool when you think about it. You're getting new content to play about with for a game which cost you $20 or so. They day KSP becomes a 1.0 will actually be a mixed emotion day because being part of the alpha is part of the fun of playing KSP.

Don't you want to switch SCE to Aux!?

y'all crazy.

Yes, but as I pointed out in a previous post, they can only use oxygen to respire if they have glucose generated from photosynthesis. Since that wouldn't be happening in the first place, anaerobic (or the plant equivalent of) respiration cannot happen since they have no fuel to burn. Simplification, and obviously 'Energy' is Adenosine Triphosphate, but it shows how the processes are reversible.

Whilst I agree with your point, Minecraft isn't an oversimplification any more; the fact that you can construct RAM, difference engines, and working logic gates certainly puts it ahead of KSP in terms of actual computational ability within the universe. I recall one user tried to create a working logic system using fuel transfer as a mechanism, but was unable to do so until fuel transfer was assigned an action group.

Agree that they can anaerobically respire, but that presumes that there is a way to produce glucose in the first place, which there wouldn't be in an oxygen-rich environment. Otherwise it's like trying to run a car without any fuel in it.

Whilst I agree in theory, what I'd like to see is something like Kerbal OS where you can program an entire set of commands, including something like shutting off the engine. That way it'd be a much more robust and flexible system whilst also accounting for your suggestion.