Carraux

I do apologize for the misunderstandig that the cause of Lunas motion were either tidal or centrifugal. I took Luna only as an example for the kind of motion you can observe. Sorry for that. Let's see: If you shoot a grenade in a - say - 45° angle into the air, the grenade will follow a ballistic path and will hit the ground with its nose and not its butt, because it will turn along the flight path. This turn is accomplished by constantly adding the force of gravity to the flight vector. The grenade turns. This turn is also present in orbital flight, it won't vanish. Of course is additional rotation possible, this is only a matter of adding vectors. Thank you very much, you explained it better than me.If wee look at an orbiting space ship, the inner side (faced to the celestial body) has a lower orbit than the outer sides. Different orbits mean different speeds, the outer side of the ship is faster than the inner side. The size of the ship doesn't need to be big to get this effect, any size > 0 is sufficient. KSP hasn't do much math to correct this. Only one addtional vector addition per orbiting object each frame. Now I found this interesting thread here in the forum: http://forum.kerbalspaceprogram.com/threads/53016-Orbiting-Satellites-Orientation-Attitude-question/page2 The video there is really good. At last: I do not discuss against the conservation of the angular momentum. I am only missinng one rotational component.

Hi there, I'm new here so forgive me, if this bug has already been posted (though I searched the bug forum, but found nothing). The bug is quite obvious so I wonder why nobody(?) noticed it. How it should be: An object orbiting a celestial body with no further movement/rotation will always face the same side to the celestial body. This is caused by the centrifugal force (the gravitational pull is acting like a string between celestial body and the object. Try to attach a string to a ball and spin it around and you will see what I mean). Best example for this is Luna. The effect: If the object completes one circumnavigation, it turned around it own axis once/one full rotation. How ist done now (wrong): The object does not rotate at all. It stands still in the unversal coordinate system. (pardon me if I mixed up spin/turn/rotation/circumnavigation, but English isn't my mother language) I know that some mods (like MechJeb) depend on this behaviour, but...

I agree, the best lifter ist the one, which gets the job done. Design depends on the job, of course. So different needs create different types of lifters. I wanted to build a space station at an orbit of 400km height. It should serve as a refueling base for further space missions, haven for a tugboat, escape pod and a debris removing vessel. The goal was to put 100t into 400km orbit. During space station assembly with a standard design lifter I came across two annoying problems: 1. Space station parts tend to be massive (not that problem) and either long in size or rather wobbly. Or worst: Both. I got serius trouble with center of mass or structural integrity. The solution was not to put the payload on top of the lifter but to build the lifter around the payload. 2. Each further part I assembled put me in trouble of how to disconnect the payload from the lifter without giving the half build space station a strong push from the decoupler. The result was often a spinning station or worse, it broke apart. The solution was not to eject the payload from the lifter but to eject the lifter from the payload. The lifter docks with the payload onto the station. Then, the weakest decoupler available comes into action along with a bunch of retro rockets to leave the station smoothly without interfering with it. So the final design looked like this (uses asparagus, but not all stages are needed if the payload is lighter than 100t). For display reasons the lifter is showd without payload. Payload would be mounted in the center of the cage. Design is nearly finished (needs only some additional batteries and thrusters). Only stock parts where used (except MechJab).

Pardon me, but what is the functional difference between "active" and "passive" docking ports? I don't get it.