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Everything posted by KSK
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For that matter, do rocket engines fail through overheating in real life? Turbopump failure, combustion instability, busted engine bell - I can think of other more-or-less likely failure modes. But overheating? My (not-really-a-rocket-scientist) gut tells me that if you can get your engine going at full blast, then almost by definition, it can handle the heat its throwing out. KSP style steady-build-up-of-heat-then-boom never seemed that likely to me. Although I'm probably missing something obvious.
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I gotta build me one of those! And for those who havn't seen the launch video - do it. Do it now. It's worth it for the choice of music alone.
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Thread subscribed for those days when I need a picture of a cute kitten to cheer me up. From the name, I'm guessing you're a Calvinist.
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Cheers for the acknowledgement, Sumghai. I have some other flora and fauna I could contribute but I'm also conscious that this is your fanon and appreciate you may not want it swamped with other folk's stuff. Drop me a pm either way - happy to do short write-ups as per your SPICE thread, as required.
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Space Professionals Institute of Culinary Excellence (SPICE)
KSK replied to sumghai's topic in KSP Fan Works
Love the backstory! -
What do the new radiators do?
KSK replied to MattW93's topic in KSP1 Gameplay Questions and Tutorials
Quick question folks - what are the stock parts to be aware of when it comes to generating heat? LV-N presumably, although I gather it's been toned back in 1.03. Any others? I ask because I'm midway through a science game at the moment and everything was working fine, although I haven't unlocked the LV-N yet. Just wanted to check whether I need to redesign any of my ships and or send a hasty radiator module up to my space stations. Thanks. -
If it works the way I think it's going to, it sounds useful for probes where I'm working with a mix of 0.65 and 1.25m parts. Not so much of an issue with capsules where the diameter tends to be matched to the diameter of my final rocket stage (so the auto-fairing works well enough). NathanKell - many, many thanks for the hotfix. Definitely going to try that tonight - my 1.0 save is just getting interesting and, like Wheffle, I didn't fancy starting over yet again.
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Dimnishing Biome returns
KSK replied to SirJodelstein's topic in KSP1 Suggestions & Development Discussion
I see what you're saying but I think the biomes are OK at the moment. New players can grind out the science within Kerbin's SOE, perhaps doing a trip to Duna as a grand finale before going their own way with a fully unlocked tech tree. More experienced players can mix it up a bit and go interplanetary earlier. Just because you can complete the tech tree at the Mün / Minmus, there's nothing that says you have to. As an example, my current Science mode game had a couple of self-imposed restrictions: 1) Build a space station in LKO before sending landing missions to the muns*. 2)No solo landings on other celestial bodies. It's been an interesting change of pace science-wise, I'm going to want a second trip to Minmus to unlock all the instrument goodies for my first Duna probes but I expect to get quite a lot of science there and at the other planets as launch windows open. Then it's going to be a full on infrastructure push to explore the Mun in style! Just as an aside, I'm not sure I'd agree with "If I vist 4 biomes of a planet/moon, I should have learned enough about it to not really have a reaon to come back" either. The Apollo missions only scratched the surface of things we could learn about the Moon - if the funds and the political will for more missions had been there, I'm betting the geologists would have been all over those too. *I had hoped to get the station in place before doing anything outside of LKO but that turned out to be a restriction too far - couldn't unlock the required techs without at least going to Munar orbit. -
Hey! Whatabout some new parts?
KSK replied to Ferdoni's topic in KSP1 Suggestions & Development Discussion
I can't do much about the bugs but if you want culture, check out Sumghai's thread on kerbal space cuisine. For story, the Fanworks forum has stories of all styles and lengths. The Fanworks library is a bit out of date (mea culpa ) but is still a reasonable place to start browsing. -
Space Professionals Institute of Culinary Excellence (SPICE)
KSK replied to sumghai's topic in KSP Fan Works
A couple more ideas. White beans. White beans are a staple crop on Kerbin and provide the base for a wide range of dishes, of which white bean stew is a particular favourite, especially in the equatorial regions. A classic white bean stew consists of white beans, onion and mixed mushrooms, stewed with marrowort for flavouring and served garnished with yellow clover. However each Regionality and in fact, almost every village, tends to have their own version of the classic stew. The one thing almost all of them have in common is a lack of meat as an ingredient. White beans are a hardy crop that grow well in a range of conditions, including very wet soils. Experiments with growing them under zero-g conditions suggested that they should be emininently suitable for the space programme although they were originally rejected as being a relatively high residue food. In the words of Geneney 'Gene' Kerman: "I do not believe that white beans are compatible with our current air recycling and sanitation equipment." The rise of hydroponic modules on larger orbital and off-world bases has prompted a cautious re-evaluation of this stance. Greenleaf Another crop that has only really found widespread acceptance in the space programme with the rise of hydroponic farming, the greenleaf plant is a small, compact bush, resembling an oversized Terran lettuce, with large, dark green leaves each supported by a central fleshy stem. For cooking purposes, the stems are normally removed and used separately - relatively few dishes use the whole leaf. The flat parts of the leaf have a mild peppery taste and are popular as a fresh salad, wilted in butter as a side vegetable or baked in layers with stewed vegetables and meats. Greenleaf rolls are a common alternative to sandwiches, consisting of a single greanleaf half, wrapped around a savoury filling. Egg (scrambled or boiled and chopped) and greenleaf rolls are a common breakfast dish. The stems are a versatile foodstuff that may, for example, be eaten fresh as a salad vegatable, boiled and served in a cheese sauce or dipped in breadcrumbs and deep fried. The latter are a popular bar snack and appetiser across Kerbin. Greenleaf has a mildly laxative effect when consumed in excess, although this only tends to be a problem in very young kerbals with their proportionally lower body mass. Creva The nearest Terran equivalent to the creva is probably the ibex, although creva tend to be larger and heavier set. Their tough but flavourful meat is normally used in stews or sliced thinly and baked in layers with various fruits. Both meals are eminently suitable for freeze drying and creva stew wet-packs were a favourite meal for the early Kerbonauts. Tubers Tubers of various shapes, sizes and colours are grown and consumed in most parts of Kerbin and freeze dried tubers seemed like an obvious base for space rations. Unfortunately, in the words of space programme chef, Derny Kerman, early experiments: "were a horrible slop with awful consistency and all the taste of wet plaster." Kerbonaut Sherfel Kerman (navigator on Pioneer 1, the first circum-munar voyage) suggested adding dried pepper cactus to add fibre and absorb water, which turned out to be a huge improvement. The resultant mixture did eventually prove to be a staple ration pack on the early mid-range spaceflights. -
Thank you very much! With regard to art - there's one scene coming up that I would love to see somebody put into a picture. No details for now because spoilers but I'll definitely flag it up later on. Apart from that, I hadn't really thought much about illustrations yet to be honest, but feel free to borrow any scene that grabs your inspiration!
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Is gravitational force represented among the orbital elements?
KSK replied to T.C.'s topic in Science & Spaceflight
Ahh - missed that. Sorry, my bad - glad more knowledgeable folks were here to help out. -
Putting a science station into orbit around Kerbin - and forgetting to include an antenna to send the science home. Time to redesign the crew transporter capsule so that the next crew rotation can phone home.
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Space Professionals Institute of Culinary Excellence (SPICE)
KSK replied to sumghai's topic in KSP Fan Works
Thanks! I'll have a dig through First Flight when I get a spare minute and see if I can find some more space worthy foodstuffs that I've described in enough detail to submit for the list. Great thread by the way - this forum needs more world-building! -
Is gravitational force represented among the orbital elements?
KSK replied to T.C.'s topic in Science & Spaceflight
If you don't mind spoilers, TC, the bottom of this page includes a derivation of orbital position as a function of time, starting from Kepler's laws. -
Is gravitational force represented among the orbital elements?
KSK replied to T.C.'s topic in Science & Spaceflight
From a very quick skim: Once you've found the semi-major axis, you can calculate the orbital period via Kepler's third law (which includes the gravitational constant and the mass of the larger body in your system). Combine that with Kepler's second law and the shape of the orbit determined from the other orbital elements and you can figure out how the system will evolve with time. The Mean Anomaly at Epoch gives you a reference point to calculate that evolution from. Admittedly, this is rather hand-wavy but I can sort of see how you could calculate positions given the above information. You can kind of treat the orbiting body as a 'moving bead on a wire' without worrying about what's causing the bead to move. Caveat - I'm also guessing that this doesn't work well unless you have a very significant difference in mass between your orbiting bodies, such that the barycenter of the system is (to a good approximation) at the centre of the heavier body. -
I haven't played the game so I'm not voting but personally I wouldn't be optimistic. A game where you want some level of spoiling behaviour from the players but not enough to ruin the game altogether, strikes me as a very very difficult balance to strike. In my experience, relatively few players are interesting in roleplaying - they want their possible actions to be defined solely by the game mechanics and if those mechanics allow them to do nothing but aggravate other players then so be it - 'it's part of the game'.
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Fingers crossed for you. Glad the surgery is done and best of luck with a swift and full recovery.
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An 18th century thought experiment which was put on a solid theoretical footing through General Relavity and later shown to be a generic result of General Relativity that doesn't depend on any assumed conditions. Black holes are also a logically consistent extension of processes resulting in other astronomical bodies which are observable - from Wikipedia: "In 1931, Subrahmanyan Chandrasekhar calculated, using special relativity, that a non-rotating body of electron-degenerate matter above a certain limiting mass (now called the Chandrasekhar limit at 1.4 M☉) has no stable solutions.[15] His arguments were opposed by many of his contemporaries like Eddington and Lev Landau, who argued that some yet unknown mechanism would stop the collapse.[16] They were partly correct: a white dwarf slightly more massive than the Chandrasekhar limit will collapse into a neutron star,[17] which is itself stable because of the Pauli exclusion principle. But in 1939, Robert Oppenheimer and others predicted that neutron stars above approximately 3 M☉ (the Tolman–Oppenheimer–Volkoff limit) would collapse into black holes for the reasons presented by Chandrasekhar, and concluded that no law of physics was likely to intervene and stop at least some stars from collapsing to black holes.[18]" Finally, they also account for other observed phenomena as mentioned by ZetaX. So, maths, observation and science but not trolling. Black holes might not be real but any alternative explanation for observed phenomena such as, for example, gravitational lensing, will also need to explain and be consistent with a lot of other observations and theory.
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The Wikipedia article looks interesting as well. Personal aside - and without wishing to pick on Brethern in particular, please can we mentally add 'so far as we currently know' to any comments on this thread? Black holes are plenty weird enough for us to have an interesting discussion about them that doesn't devolve into: "Science says this." "But science doesn't know everything, therefore I ignore your arguments." Which doesn't really get us anything other than heated tempers and a locked thread. Speaking personally, as far as I'm aware, AngelLestat is right - we don't (and won't) know exactly what happens inside a black hole and until - and maybe not even then - we have a working theory of quantum gravity. I might well be wrong.
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Space Professionals Institute of Culinary Excellence (SPICE)
KSK replied to sumghai's topic in KSP Fan Works
Couple of my headcanon food and drinks. Prickleberries One of the less imaginatively named fruits to be found on Kerbin, prickleberries resemble the Terran lychee, although with darker flesh and a somewhat stronger flavour. Prickleberries are a versatile crop which can be eaten as a fresh fruit, made into preserves (prickleberry jam is an excellent accompaniment to many cold meats and cheeses) or processed into a number of alcoholic and non-alcoholic beverages. First pressing prickleberry juice is normally consumed as a fresh juice, whilst the second pressing is laid down in specially prepared wooden barrels for up to a year. The juice absorbs tannins and other phytochemicals from the barrels, which act both as flavourings and natural preservatives. Third pressing juice and pomace is typically used to make prickleberry cider, a light, sparkling drink of no more than 3% abv. Sapwood Wild sapwood trees originated in the Kerbin rainforest and Kerbal scientists believe that they became insectivorous as an evolutionary adaptation to wet, nutrient leached soils. Long parallel grooves in their trunks exude a sweet viscous sap which traps insects and gradually carries them down to the base of the tree where they decompose and are absorbed by a network of near-surface roots. Sapwoods have long been cultivated by kerbals and in the equatorial and mid-latitudes of Kerbin they are very nearly as ubiquitous as the Kerm. Domesticated sapwoods are larger than their wild cousins and less dependent on insect consumption. This is partly due to centuries of selective breeding but mostly because they are grown in Kerm enhanced soils. Although sapwood sap can be fermented and then distilled into a strong liquor, similar to a Terran rum, this is not a particularly popular drink on Kerbin. The vast bulk of harvested sap is cleaned of insects and then dried to make a sticky, toffee like substance, beloved of kerbals and kerblets alike. The dried sap is also used to make a number of extremely popular non-alcoholic cordials, which are consumed with water, sparkling water or milk. Two notable specialist cordials are smoky sapwood (produced in old-fashioned wood fired evaporating pans) and wild sapwood (colloquially referred to as 'crunchy sapwood') which is harvested, insects and all, from wild sapwood trees. Djan chips. Popular snack food across most of Kerbin and equivalent to the Terran tortilla chip. Traditionally served as a street food in a twist of paper but could be more robustly packaged for spaceflight. Normally served with various spice dustings, SPICE chefs have experimented with applying the spices in a oil-based liquid and then second baking the chips. Kaya jerky Strips of dried or smoked kaya meat. Kaya are indigenous to the northern reaches of Kerbin and somewhat resemble the Terran yak. Early kerbal settlers relied on them for everything from food to needles and thread but in modern times they are still prized for their luxurious wool and tasty meat. Luffa-eye peppers Luffa are a very distant cousin to modern kerbals. In evolutionary terms they diverged from kerbals far longer ago than, for example, the great apes diverged from hominids on Earth. Six limbed, large eyed and long necked, they inhabit some of the coastal areas on Kerbin. Luffa-eye peppers resemble a small Terran bell pepper or a large Terran chili pepper but when properly ripe they are sweet rather than fiery. Herbs Crew members on Endurance, the first long duration kerballed space station experimented with growing herbs in zero-gravity, which has since become a tradition of the Kerbal Space Program. Having living plants aboard their spacecraft is thought to be psychologically beneficial in general and herbs provide the very tangible benefit of making space food far more palatable than it might otherwise be. Typical kerbal herbs include: pepper cactus, marrowort, citrella, saltleaf, yellow clover and firewhisker. -
Like reducing the capsule weight or tweaking drag on some other parts? No modification of the physics models but something to make the parts a bit more forgiving for certain uses? Edit: I'm fine with this in principle - there's no particular reason why, for example, the Mk1 capsule has the mass it currently does. The problem I see with this is that you could end up going round in ever decreasing circles. Tweak the parts so one set of designs becomes more feasible and you might break another set of designs. At some point, I think one has to just suck it up and design around whatever limitations the part attributes impose.
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Depends on the payload mass of course but yes. My stock satellite launcher for anything in the Kerbin system is still a BACC first stage and a Terrier second stage. Likewise, most if not all of my crewed ships based on 1.25m parts, use Terriers as their orbital insertion stage (which is usually the second stage). Get them high enough and they work just fine in atmosphere.
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Not a hope. They'd be far better going with jellyfish or firefly DNA.
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Hmm, actually that was one of the more subtle parts, I thought. The jaws and general head-shape - when it was roaring - were pretty similar to that of the raptors. I didn't pick up on this until that last plot twist, at which point it was obvious in retrospect.