LameLefty

Nope, not really. "Mach number" is a defined term in the physics of compressible fluid dynamics. Now, that being said, it IS simpler in KSP than the real world. For instance, atmospheric temperature isn't really modeled realistically so far that I know, and pressure change with altitude is much smoother in the game than it is in real-life. But even though the model is simplified, the speed of sound on Kerbin is, by definition, different at sea level than it is at 30km because the atmospheric pressure - and density - is different.

Mach number is a function of the speed of sound in the medium. Speed of sound, in turn, is dependent on the density of the medium. For a compressible fluid, density in turn is dependent on pressure and temperature.

Gotcha, thanks.

What gives you the idea that discussion of new stuff is on tap tonight? Did the devs or community leaders mention that somewhere?

I read about the game in the earliest versions but the cartoony graphics put me off ("Pfffft! I have a REAL aerospace engineering degree! This stuff is just silly.") I was still intrigued by the premise and when 0.19 came out on Steam, I picked it up after all. I was hooked immediately and spent weeks mentally kicking myself for waiting so long.

Fantastic. I'm rarely so happy to be wrong.

But NASA isn't releasing this KSP expansion/mission pack/DLC/whatever you want to call it. SQUAD is. And they are free to charge whatever they want. I'll go on record now and say I would be shocked if this little mission pack thingie is free for existing users.

I'm glad to see others having a problem with the stack winches! I just started experimenting with KAS about a week ago and thought I was doing something wrong, or that stack winches were a special use case and I had just missed the details. Has anyone posted a formal bug report about it for Majiir to look at? I doubt he scans through these threads much for user reports (I know he generally doesn't for Kethane).

Um, why are you talking about Targetron? That's a totally different (useful) mod than Navyfish's DPAI.

Personally I wish there was an option to set the Map view to hide every other object EXCEPT the active vessel and the target. I'm about 4-1/2 years into my current Career Save and I have far too many objects (tugs, stations, several interplanetary vessels that have returned and parked for possible re-use) in LKO. Now, I will almost certainly do a few things differently when 0.24 comes and I start over, but for now, it can be a real pain to keep situational awareness through the Map for a rendezvous when the Map is crowded.

I built a big, heavy nuclear transfer stage once, with a fully-crewed lander docked up front, and sent the stack off to Moho. My transfer stage had a big supply of monopropellant and a giant set of lovely solar wings. It also had a set of four large drop tanks mounted on radial separators so I could carry more propellant yet dump excess mass along the way. Towards the end of my burn, I realized the drop tanks were empty and hit the key I'd set to jettison them with - while I was still under acceleration. So of course they didn't just shoot away radially as expected - they went away and back relative to the stack, taking out both of my solar panels on the transfer stage. Fortunately my lander had smaller solar panels so I deployed them to provide power en route. Of course after separating and landing, I realized that while I had mounted a good arrangement of RCS quads on the lander, all of the actual monoprop supply was on the transfer stage in that big tank. So after returning from the surface, I had to dock with a powerless transfer stage using a lander with no RCS. That was an exercise in patience. And once that was done I still didn't have enough dV to get home and had to send a rescue tanker.

It may be limited to certain models but my 3 year old Early '11 MacBook Pro can do it.

Just put different versions wherever you want and separate shortcuts to each. You really do NOT need to copy the entire game folder to your desktop.

I did this through screen-sharing my Mac's screen through my AppleTV. My teenaged nerd son so enjoyed the explosions he wanted to play the game himself. He's downloaded the demo and as soon as I see it on sale on Steam again I'm going to gift it to him as a surprise.

I use Kerbal Alarm Clock and just set timers for all the planetary windows upcoming that I'm interested in - both from Kerbin to other planets as well as from from those places where I've got missions going on back to Kerbin. Then I go on and do other things while in-game time passes, like launch space stations, setup a kethane refinery and fuel tank farm in orbit around Minmus, whatever. When the alarm gets within a few days of the window, I'll stage my next mission to parking orbit and warp 'til the start of the window, or if I get distracted and forget, the alarm will remind me. Then I'll jump to the VAB, put together my mission, and launch/depart immediately. Planetary windows are generally not THAT sensitive to time - a day or two before or after optimal time is not critical; if your mission is THAT tight on dV, you probably don't have any margin anyway. tl;dr version: KAC lets you try to operate a semblance of a real multi-mision program in parallel without missing a transfer window.

Well, yes. Certainly. But the thread is on page 411 with the default forum settings so that's quite a lot to wade through to find tips, amidst the usual complaints, pseudo-bug reports, etc. A general operational guide would be very handy for those of us who've dabbled and know how generally to find it, extract and refine it, but never built a serious infrastructure. Something like, oh I don't know, this maybe: Thank you! This is the kind of info that's good to know.

You know what WOULD be useful? For folks who've played with kethane quite a bit to chime in with examples of efficient operations plans. For instance, is it better to drill and extract kethane, then haul it orbit for mass refining and filling a tank farm? Or is it more efficient to refine it on the ground and then haul fuel/lox back to orbit? How does that vary based on the gravity of the resource world? Important usage considerations for various scenarios, etc.

Having been one of those who requested this feature a few weeks ago, I say the more the merrier to this party!

You don't have to copy the game folder. You can just put a shortcut to the exectuable on your desktop. KSP will run just fine without Steam running.

That's good to know! I haven't done a lot of KSP this past week, so I've been sticking with 1.7; I started doing some experiments ripping stuff apart with KAS in my Sandbox test save and, well ... I got distracted by all the explosions.

I know a guy who does it. He taught himself how the math works after starting to play KSP. By contrast, having done it "the hard way" in college lo those many years ago ... never again.

If I'd had access to stuff like KSP in college in the 80's (let alone Matlab or one of its clones, and PC's powerful enough to run it), my engineering education would have been a lot more intuitive and fun.

Well, actually I think it's kind of a good question. One thing I've noticed since the parts were last updated is that they don't seem to surface-mount quite like they used to. The models are often semi-submerged into the skin of whatever part they're attached onto. I have to do a lot more tweaking with them in the VAB to avoid that, and I don't remember do it at all in earlier versions. Also, physics is weird with them and water; I crash-landed a vessel a week or two ago and broke up many of the bits and bobs of the ship. I sat and watched one amber docking beacon light (I use them for docking beacons) splashed up and down in the water for about 2 or 3 minutes, over and over again in the same spot. If I'd had a way to record it, I would have. It was quite amusing.

Not quite sure exactly what you mean. What I do is I go to the Map view and then select the target at which I want to land on the surface - a flag, an earlier lander, whatever it is. I then go to the MJ Landing Guidance module and select Land at Target. The lat/lon display fills in automatically. After that it's just a matter of waiting out the landing sequence: high deorbit burn, which does any plane change necessary as well, course corrections if necessary, atmospheric entry if applicable, parachute deployment if applicable and/or final descent burn to landing velocity. Easy peasy.

Nope. KAS fuel pipes are really just sort of a hack; when two craft are connected with them, the game treats the two as if they are one vessel. You can transfer kethane like any other resource but it won't do so by itself. Similarly, if your converter is running, fuel/lox produced will NOT fill tanks through the KAS fuel pipe automagically.