Specialist290

If the ship has docking ports, dock it to the space station. The evil doppelgangers will try to overpower the real Jeb, Bill and Bob in a knife fight, but the good guys will win, because Good Always Prevails. Alright, the "evil-clone-knife-fight" bit is some artistic license on my part, but putting two of the same kerbalnaut on the same ship seems to cause one of the duplicates to vanish, since there's technically only one in the actual persistence file; he's just showing up in two places at a time. At least, I think that's how it works.

One of my latest Mun rovers pays its respects to a less fortunate older brother that ultimately made its success possible.

1. Unfortunately, there's no way I know of to actually get the icons to combine reliably. It seems to be a rather arcane and inscrutable quirk of the programming. 2. If you use your scroll wheel while your cursor is over the staging column, you can scroll it up or down. EDIT: Ninja'd by three people. My reaction times are slipping.

I remembered this one from before the crash. It's helped inspire my own modular and semi-reusable space program at present. Glad to see it's back up and running again!

Awesome find! Always thought it would be cool to try something like this. If Telemachus works over the Internet, maybe some people could get together for a collaborative livestream. Or to kick it up a notch in another direction: Get somebody to try it in real time, without time acceleration. Hope they don't have plans for the next few months...

Calculating delta-v ain't hard; it's just long and tedious (if you do it by hand). It's basically a function of your engine's efficiency and the ratio between the mass of the fully-fueled rocket and the mass of the final payload. There's two pages that I always recommend whenever the subject comes up, because they explain the basics in fairly simple terms and using no more math than you need to operate a calculator. Of course, if you're willing to use mods, then things like MechJeb and Kerbal Engineer Redux can do all the math for you.

Generally, movies tend to get things very wrong. I seem to be linking to this site a lot lately... Space fighters in particular get argued about a lot. This page (warning: TV Tropes) has a fairly comprehensive discussion of the pros and cons, but I'd say that the biggest blow against them is the fact that there's effectively no horizon in space. Your weapons are only limited by accuracy, not absolute range, and bigger ships would have the space for both bigger weapons and better targeting computers. But yes, you're not likely ever going to see space fighters turning like airplanes in space, no matter how good the engines get. Spaceflight just works differently from atmospheric flight, to keep things short and sweet.

Another site you might find useful is Project Rho's Atomic Rockets. Tons of useful stuff all over the place, and even has the advantage that you don't really need to do any advanced-level math to get the basics down.

Makes me wish I actually had decent video editing skills myself. Nicely done!

Welcome to the community! ...Is it a bad sign that I can recognize both of the TV shows your avatar is referencing?

The principle's the same, though. The world's first EVA was conducted from a Voskhod capsule, too, which was basically a scaled-up Vostok.

The joke * ---> .......... .......... .......... ..___... ..|- -|... ..___.... Your head

Square brackets keys let you switch between any objects that are close to one another.

Another handy thing to learn would be Tsiolkovsky's rocket equation, which lets you calculate the delta-v (potential change in velocity) of your rocket as a whole. These two pages explain the process in detail, but also in fairly simple terms. It takes a while if you do it all longhand, but it's handy to know the equations even if you let a plugin do the actual calculating for you just so you understand what's going on. For reference, the delta-v target for getting into LKO is ~4,500 m/s.

So a thought just struck me a moment ago. As many of you know, (SPOILER WARNING if you don't) there are two incredibly deep wells at Moho's north and south poles. No one's ever able been to reach the bottom of one successfully, but some people have managed to get quite deep. (Unfortunately, I think the thread detailing this was eaten by the Great April Forum Kraken.) Meanwhile, here on Earth, there's a region of the planet's lithosphere called the Mohorovicic Discontinuity -- or "moho" for short -- that defines the boundary between the crust and the mantle. A number of scientific groups have tried drilling "moholes" all the way down there, but nobody has made it all the way just yet. The question I pose is: Is it possible that Moho gets its name because it has a pair of natural moholes that reach all the way down to Moho's own moho?

Honestly, I found that mildly amusing. Maybe if you combined it with a chibi art style, or used it for a series of reaction images...

His question also seemed to imply that he was getting different results between MechJeb's initial calculations and the actual amount of delta-v the rocket actually took to get into orbit. Perhaps it's your own reading comprehension that's at fault here, and not his phrasing. But to answer that concern in particular: MechJeb's autopilot isn't perfect, and the minimum targets on delta-v charts generally assume a perfect performance. You're probably seeing a discrepancy in the stats as a result of things like gravity, drag, and steering losses. Depending on how your ascent profile is set up, those losses can get pretty heavy as you pass through the atmosphere.

A good number actually never leave Earth orbit; they're just pointed at the Sun to take readings. Of the ones that are (or were) intentionally placed in heliocentric orbits: * The two STEREO probes were deliberately placed in orbits slightly inwards and outwards from the Earth to provide stereoscopic images. * WIND, SOHO, and ACE are all currently hanging out at Sun-Earth Lagrange Point 1. * Helios 1 and 2 are the probes that got the closest to the Sun with a perihelion of ~0.29 AU, but their orbits are highly elliptical, reaching all the way back out to Earth's orbital trajectory.

And now the "cut comms with Outreach" line actually registers. D'oh! Oh well. Waiting eagerly for the next chapter!

Looks to me like they're doing just fine:

Nicely done! Glad to see you got him home safely. Rescue missions are always a real thrill.

True. I was speculating about this little bit, though, from the most recent chapter: Although maybe I've just been reading too much into that.

Doesn't seem to be a KSP fanwork, so I'd assume it goes better in off-topic. That said, I'll be on the lookout for it. Seems like an interesting premise.

The plot thickens. Now it seems we're looking for the Libra as well as the Zodiac.

You all should be ashamed of yourselves. What did those satellites ever do to you? ( )