Omicron314

Yes. Do this. I'll be watching.

Awesome! Just caught it!

Well, finally the IAU is beginning to name the ridiculous number of extrasolar planets that have been discovered in the past few years. Unfortunately, they have begun taking suggestions from the general public. So, in order to prevent having planets named things such as Star Trek or Football Planet, we as a community need to suggest better names. We could do this individually or as a group, perhaps naming several hundred and sending one obnoxiously huge email to the IAU. Either way, it would be better than the alternative. From the IAU's website: The full pdf can be found here: http://www.iau.org/static/public/naming/planets_and_satellites.pdf I think we should try to take this seriously, but I also think Squad would love it if the IAU officially recognized "Kerbin" as the name of a planet somewhere in the galaxy. So, thoughts?

I say we should colonize space because why the heck not? We don't exactly have anything better to do with our time. Besides, if we can make a large enough generation ship, we could convince all of our annoying politicians and despotic dictators that it would be a privilege to be on it and such, and then send it off to some obscure corner of the galaxy. There go most if our Earthly problems right there.

I've always been interested in space and spaceflight, but KSP is what really fine-tuned the spaceflight part. I don't think I'm really interested in becoming an aerospace engineer, though.

Granted. You are now an Old Person. I wish to (safely) visit the Moon and return.

Honestly, I have no idea. That's just what it said in the article. Here's the wiki article, though.

That's not necessarily true. As far as special relativity is concerned, it is impossible to travel backwards through time. Going past the speed of light creates a time dilation effect of imaginary numbers. Just look at the equation. If you traveled at twice the speed of light for a year: t' = t/sqrt(1 - 2c^2/c^2) = y/sqrt(-1) = -(y)i Where t' is perceived time, t is actual time, and y is just shorthand for a year. So in the end, you would travel a year through an imaginary time flow. But even if that were possible, the Alcubierre Drive is not actually going faster than light. It's just moving the space around it faster than light. Therefore, relativistic effects such as time dilation do not occur.

My account was sacrificed to appease the Kraken, but I wasn't very active before that. I had something like 15 posts. And 5/10 for you.

8/10. I've seen you around quite a bit.

Minor update. 0.2.1 polishes up the texture of the monopropellant tank a bit, removing some colors that shouldn't be there.

NASA physicist Harold White has announced that the space agency has gotten a step closer to creating Alcubierre's "warp drive". In a lab, he and his team managed to create a device that, when activated, shortens the optical path length of a photon. However, White was quick to say that this may or may not be the warp effect needed for faster-than-light travel. Another step forward in this field has been the study of quantum-thrusters, which are likened to the propulsion system of a submarine, except they are for the "cosmic soup". In theory, these quantum-thrusters could produce negative vacuum energy, a vital component in the Alcubierre drive. White and his team also managed to whittle down the amount of energy needed from that of the mass of Jupiter to the amount of exotic mass the size of the Voyager 1 space probe by changing the shape of the rings and having them "oscillate over time". Best of luck to NASA in this intrepid endeavor. Source article here: http://www.space.com/22430-star-trek-warp-drive-quantum-thrusters.html

Update! Version 0.2 improves the existing model, texture, and collision mesh. It also adds toroidal RCS tanks and fixes the placement bug. I didn't keep the texture I showed before due to it's erratic-ness at the edges of the darker shades, which were especially noticeable on the larger tanks. Still not completely satisfied with it, expect further improvement in future updates!

Progress report: New texture! Still not quite optimal but it's an improvement over just plain white. I've also been working on toroidal RCS tanks, but the 2.5 meter one always reverts to the 0.625 meter size outside the VAB. I'm not quite sure what's wrong, though, because the rescale factor is fine. I'm still working on it, though.

Yes, I saw that as well. It stopped happening after I logged in to SpacePort, but I'll see what I can do. EDIT: It should work now.

That is an interesting idea; I will have to look into how to do that. These are really for show, though. But your suggestion has been noted!

As my first published mod, I present a rather simple idea: toroidal fuel tanks! But not the wimpy kinds that look like flotation devices: these are serious-business, science-fiction-approved toruses. Recommended for any large ship on an interplanetary flight. The tanks come in 3 sizes: 0.625m, 1.25m, and 2.5m. This is a very early version, so the model and texture will most likely be redone several more times in the future. Known Issues: - None, so far! Planned Features: - Improved model and textures - Hitchhiker-esque toroidal crew compartment - Any good ideas from you! v0.2.2 - Modified base texture and strengthened color of lines along the sides of the tanks v0.2.1 -Polished monopropellant tank texture v0.2: - Improved model and texture - Added toroidal RCS tanks - Improved collision mesh - Fixed placement bug v0.1 -First release! Plugin licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NomCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License. Download here!

I once dislocated a finger while playing with an umbrella. Don't even ask.

My first Mun plaque details the landing in much detail, and then states that the flag was not planted because of the Mun landing, but because of the new flag-planting technology that was developed.

Truth is stranger than the strangest fiction. There is an asteroid called 3753 Cruithne that orbits the Sun in a 1 : 1 resonance with the Earth, in a bean- or horseshoe-shaped orbit. It can sometimes intersect Earth, but it never remains, and this is not qualified as a moon. But still, it's pretty neat. Wikipedia page: http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/3753_Cruithne

Thanks for the tips, everybody. I'll just ask one question for now: is it necessary to use Part Tools .20? Whenever I choose "Add New Component", there is no KSP folder, and if I select "Part Tools", it appears as "Part Tools (script)" and only lists one option, to "Set GameData Directory". Am I doing something wrong? EDIT: Nevermind, I got it, thanks to all of you!

I am pretty new to this whole thing, so I am not quite qualified for this yet, but I think you can make a giant version of a part by just copying said part's file, opening the .cfg, and changing "rescaleFactor" to 10.

Thank you. I will try this out as soon as I can. EDIT: More progress has been made! Well, sort of. First off, VintageXP, the tutorial you linked to was very helpful. I got Part Tools .20 and .18 (because I don't believe the .20 had "Part Tools" as a file; at least, when I tried to assign it to my empty game object, it didn't give me many options to change it.) and I believe I did everything right: I made a model, made a texture, imported both of those and the two aforementioned versions of Part Tools, made an empty game object, parented the textured cube, centered it, assigned Part Tools to the game object, made a collision mesh, exported the model as a .mu and the texture as a .mbm, and put that in the Parts folder, but this is what I got: Well, at least the texture is there, but the attachment nodes are off. That's strange, but I did use the .cfg from my previous attempt; all I did to it was reconfigure the model directory to model.mu. Also note how the part is not appearing in the staging. In game, it is unclickable after being placed. And the collision mesh is not working. That's even more weird. I could have sworn I gave that thing a convex collision mesh in Unity. So, what might I be doing wrong?

I would first focus on setting up settlements in Earth orbit as well as on the Moon, the main goal of that being to assemble large ships in orbit easily. Then I would send people to Mars because I think it's well past time, and many probes to the other parts of the solar system, specifically Jupiter and Saturn's moons. I'd send many automated submarines underneath the surface of Ganymede, Callisto, and Europa, and catalog everything I find. I would do the same with the moons of Saturn, then the same for the other gas giants. By this time, we will have a good amount of knowledge about our solar system, and we can begin setting up large colonies in various places. Asteroid mining would be commonplace, we would be harvesting gases from giant balloons floating in the atmospheres of the gaseous planets. And then, focus on developing stupidly fast propulsion systems, and venture to the stars!

Progress Report! Well, after much hard work and tomfoolery, I finally got a part to appear in the game: It's a red cube. However, contained within the same file is the texture I thought I assigned it. I was not sure how to reference this, though, because the the part.cfg that I am using is a copied Skipper .cfg with my own values. In order to reference the desired texture, I simply added a line below "mesh = (insert mesh here)" that stated "texture = Kyoob.png" (the name of the texture). As you can see, it did not work, whether or not the .png was in a folder titles "Textures". But I believe that mesh and other such things are set classes, so I can't simply add my own code willy-nillly. How do I do this in a simplistic fashion? Also, there's this: The collision mesh does not seem to be working. How do I set up a (specifically convex) collision mesh in Blender? I looked at quite a few guides and they were all either very outdated or decently vague. One last thing: I noticed that one tutorial (the one for adding hatches and ladders) calls for a .dae to be exported after using Unity. I know how to import a file to Unity, and how to export a file from blender as a .dae, but how do you do both? I could not figure out for the life of me how to import my Unity-modified cube back into Blender. Sorry to throw so many questions out at once, but I suppose it's better to get them all over with at once. As always, any (constructive) response is appreciated! EDIT: It appears I did not read the above post carefully enough. Okay, import .blend, export .mu. Got it. (Disregard my questions that were answered in previous post, please!)