BubbaWilkins

Nice work. I would have never expected the coordinate system to have been derivative of position at the point of SOI engagement. I figured these were always absolute, but it does make sense.

I generally do any kind of mock up as a just a quick CAD drawing with a basic dimensional layout. Foam board is an excellent suggestion to basically do the same thing. Just draw out the layout you were thinking of for the various meters and labelling, and then do cut outs in the foam to mock them up. After that, you need to figure out size and shape of the enclosure and what you might want to make it out of.

That's exactly what I did there. My normal landings don't look that good either, often ending in a very Kerbal like explosion.

Enjoy!

Cross posting this as none of craft would have been possible without Firespitter. Thanks Snjo!

For grins, and if you don't mind humoring me: What are the returned values for that command: Stationary: At the KSP launchpad: At the North Pole: At the South Pole: at some point 1/2 way between KSP and the North Pole: In circleized orbit: 150km Equatorial: 150km Polar: time of day and orientation of the craft shouldn't matter.

Gaius, The system works on the simplified rules relative to sol as the origin at all times. First it calculates the position of the planets relative to SOL to determine their path of travel at any given time. Then for each planet it calculates the crafts and moons, and then finally the crafts orbiting the moons. That origin can't shift as it complicates all positional computations resulting in a separate system for each SOI. That said, obviously the physics window works on a much more complicated set of factors. Steve, I think you're over thinking it. Go back to the beginning and look at what the command you are executing. It's returning three instantaneous velocity magnitudes. Up/Down, North/South, East/West. This describes the path of travel of your COM relative to the source of gravity/origin in that SOI. Since these vectors do not curve, there must be a velocity in two directions to result in a curved path of travel. So at any altitude on an equatorial position, you will have only values in the Up/Down and East/West velocity vectors relative to Kerbin. On the planet, all other positions will result in lower orbital values the further you travel from the equator until you reach the poles at which point you will only have the DOWN value. If you have an exact Polar Orbit, than your values will reflect a North/South velocity and a zero East/West velocity. OR...I'm completely smoking something.

If what your saying is you have a giant pancake of solid boosters on 8x symmetry. Then yes, you appear to be having structural failure. Even if you managed to get it to stay together on the launch pad, I expect that it was pull itself apart the moment you launched it. those side connections are pretty weak and usually you'll not want to extend out from the core engine/tank more than one ring of boosters.

Kryten, If you look at the number of people who have been to space on the wiki link I posted, you'll see that the US has put over twice as many people in space than the entire rest of the planet combined. 3x than the Russians. NASA chose to retire the orbiter programs for financial and political reasons. Within a few years, Space X will resume manned flights while the Russians have nothing new on the horizon. To say that the Russian space agency is outperforming Nasa on any level is laughable. Shifty, Lots of non-US failures on that list, still you got me there. But that list is completely dominated by US missions as well.

It really doesn't matter how you define the race, by any quantifiable metric the US has achieved more than rest of the entire planet combined.

You're going to have to define what "Space Race" really means. Most people define it as putting a man on the moon. If you're talking about overall progress in space, than the US has accomplished far more than any other country in both manned and unmanned flight. It's not even close. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_space_travelers_by_nationality I didn't spend much time looking, but I was unable to locate a single non-US space mission which successfully left the Earth's SOI and travelled to any other location in our system...or recently, out of entirely.

It's a basic aspect of human nature to compare one's abilities and measure one's accomplishments against those of their fellow man (woman). This is one of the primary ways in which we distinguish ourselves from each other. To conquer a challenge in and of itself can personally satisfying for many, but the true measure of that accomplishment far more depends on the difficulty of the task and the rarity in which it is completed. Beyond that, you get into a whole host of personality traits which govern our interactions with one another. There will be those that achieve greatness and those that wallow in mediocrity. Those that seek attention and others content in the absence of same. Suffice it to say that we should strive to behave as follows:

I wouldn't expect it to break anything existing at this point. They haven't indicated that there will be any physics, existing parts updates, or environment changes. The only issue most of us should face is incorporating the new parts onto existing craft. That and a career mode base game with a tech tree will necessitate a new game save.

1) Arrange landing gear so you CAN lift off easily. 2) Attempt takeoff. If you can't do so at a reasonable speed, add more wing surface. 3) If you don't want more wings, then add more engines and go faster sooner!

I guess it's the decal, from a distance it has the same proportions as the cockpit. Now that I look closer I see that everything is in order. For some reason I thought you might have turned the cockpit 90degs to prevent collision with the booster tanks, so it seemed a feasible design challenge.

If you're bouncing off the runway, your craft is travelling too fast and coming down at too steep of an angle. You want to be almost at stall speed so that when your wheels make contact that your craft is unable to lift back up without additional power or speed. In this vid, I was going too fast and couldn't land well. Not much practice flying this one. In this vid, I had much more experience and was able to land very easily.

I usually set my mapsats up on a 1-2 deg polar orbit, and then leave them scanning overnight at the highest speed they can stand.

It doesn't seem to matter what they are connected to. The K-17 (100% Firespitter parts) does it. The K-4U Korsair does it as well that engine is connected directly to the round to oblong fuselage adapter. I'll experiment with some basic test rigs this evening. It might be FAR or DRE complicating things. Moose: Does that cockpit section rotate 90deg's at some point? Looks like your booster and orbit images show it oriented one way and the last image has it oriented another.

I'm optimistic that much of the functionality currently provided by the most popular mods will eventually be incorporated into the stock game. For those that aren't, there will likely always be someone who will either take up the mantle or otherwise produce a new one. Such is the nature of modding.

Here's the Flight Results: Note, all the parts listed are not on the active craft, but the inactive one.

Nice looking engines! And Landing Gear!

I think that's my first confirmed siting of a space farmer...which is to say awesome.

SNJO: I'll post the logs this evening when I get home.

Here's some K4-U Korsair footage with bonus radial engine spontaneous combustion. When physics kicks in on the non-active craft, every one of the radial engines give a "engine collided with structural engine pod" (paraphrased). I've had it happen on every craft with the radial style engine equipped. The other prop style doesn't seem to have the issue. Not sure about the electric one which I think uses the same model as the radial. And here's the Spruce Kerbal taking off...

It's rekindled my love for everything that flies and blasts off.