KSK

Just to add a wrinkle to that, in some countries you get a 6 or a 12 month grace period between disclosing your invention and filing your patent. In theory at least - in practice, the rules for figuring out whether the grace period applies are complicated and vary from country to country. So as a rule of thumb, file your patent before disclosing your invention. The debate over grace periods is a long running one. On the one hand, they make things much easier for the inventor, particularly in an academic environment, where publishing your work is key. On the other hand - what cpast said basically.

Atlas V - three RP1/LOX burning Common Core Boosters with an LH2/LOX (Centaur) upper stage. Previous generations of Atlas have also used RP1/LOX. Not LH2/LOX the whole way.

I'm seeing something related to this. Started a new game last night, ran one mission with Bob - he got his ribbons and mission recorded. Loaded the game this morning and Bob's ribbons are still there but apparently he got them for flying a desk because his mission count is zero. I've installed into the right folder and according to the persistence file, Bob has got a mission, but FF isn't picking it up. Does anyone have a workaround for this? Or an idea of what might be going wrong?

What a great way to finish the prologue! Sounds - and felt like Octavian just got the best job on Kerbin. Hope you do post more - I like your writing style and I'm definitely curious to see where a story that starts in Satellite Development goes!

Sounds like Billy should check any RTGs they might be using.

Yo dawg...I heard you like missiles? Man, it's internet meme day today. You're welcome!

Somebody set you up the bomb... Nice craft though - I liked having two SRBs for a rocket assisted take-off and the lifting body design for Bomber the 2nd was sweet.

Heh - sounds like "Can you make it bigger?" is going to be a catchphrase. Storming chapter! Didn't quite get the 'gravity is a particle' stuff but loved the show-stealing kerblets and very much enjoying Jeb the slightly down on his luck entrepreneur. I'm also guessing that we'll be seeing that C7 business card again sometime.

You know it is actually possible to post a suggestion without including a snarky comment about Squad. Try it sometime - it'll make your posts a lot nicer to read.

Well I have my answer. This thread hasn't really helped me figure out how reaction wheels work in real life (I think we're largely talking past each other), but I have figured out how they should work in KSP. 1. Leave them as they are 2. Get rid of them entirely. Well almost entirely. 1. (my emphasis added)Fine, but in that case I don't care about realism in this context. If I can't visualise what's going to happen if I hang a reaction wheel off a spacecraft in a particular place, then I'm far happier abstracting it out. Stick on a 'reaction wheel module' and assume that my engineers have set things up so that everything works as advertised, i.e. I have a certain amount of control authority about each axis. In the same way that I can put a monopropellant tank anywhere on my ship and just assume that the monoprop gets properly routed to my RCS thrusters. Let the purists write a "Real Wheels" mod if they like but keep stock the way it is. 2. Get rid of the wretched things. Maybe have a small underpowered (compared to current values) reaction wheel part for satellites and possibly let the Rockomax hub have torque values, so folks can add momentum gyros to space stations if they like. Everything else, lets use RCS like we do in real life. Replace the current Reaction Wheels parts with a correspondingly sized Attitude Control Ring. The ring includes a store of monopropellant and four symmetrically placed mini RCS quads around the outside. It's intended for attitude control only and players will probably want to include the current RCS parts in their designs if they intend their ships to do any serious translation manoeuvres.

You've just contradicted yourself, unless I'm misunderstanding you. First you say that a freefalling object will rotate about it's CoM, but then you say that the rotation centre is not the CoM but where you apply the torque? In which case, why do both of your cross shaped example craft rotate about their centres? For the first craft (reaction wheel in the centre) it should, but for the second one (reaction wheel at the end of one 'arm' of the cross) it should not - if what you've just said is correct. You are applying the torque at the end of one arm, therefore it should rotate about that arm.

Looks interesting. You're missing a lot of unmanned probes but I don't know how fussed you are about those. Couple of suggestions if you do want to add them, the Lunar Orbiter and Surveyor probes would go nicely with your Apollo equivalents (bonus points if you land your Apollo 12 near a Surveyor ), recreating the Soviet Venera probes would let you fly a couple of missions to Eve if you wanted, and the US Viking probes would let you add a couple of early Duna landers.

Hmm. Actually I wouldn't have a problem with that, provided that they're not shoved in your face every five minutes whilst playing the game. That's the main problem I have with the free-to-play model. A link to the official store from the launcher/updater is fine, in-game pop-ups (You don't have enough Funds to buy this rocket. Remember - you can buy 10,000 funds for only 1$ in our store!) - are most definitely not. DLC that is purely cosmetic, totally optional and which doesn't impact gameplay, multiplayer or other mods at all, sounds OK to me. If some players think they're being ripped off or don't see the point since they can get similar stuff from free mods - that's fine. Don't buy the paint jobs (or whatever). The key words here are totally optional. On the other hand, some players might quite like making the odd impulse purchase to support Squad, so why not make that an option?

New project for the kerbal space program. Build a monument, visible from orbit, that spells out: "Install Environmental Visual Enhancement pls."

Appreciate the shout-out but I'm not sure I can take the credit for Kermin. Kerman and Kermol, yes, but they're designations of ethnic group (for want of a better expression) rather than gender. Well - in my headcanon at least.

Still trying to get my head around this. We're assuming that the reaction wheel block has the same mass as one of the structural blocks, so the CoM doesn't change when you shuffle the blocks around? Otherwise the second craft wouldn't rotate about it's centre in the same way that the first craft does. Then we're applying a torque to one 'arm' of the cross by spinning up the reaction wheel. But we're applying that torque about an axis that doesn't appear to intersect the CoM at all. I get that the thing has to rotate about it's CoM (or more accurately, it seems intuitively correct and I'm prepared to take it on faith lacking the maths to prove it for myself ). Is the simulation correct? Will the cross then start rotating in the same plane as before? Edit. But if the reaction wheel block has the same mass as one of the structural blocks, then shuffling the blocks around not only keeps the CoM in the same place (dead centre) but also keeps the moment of inertia, about the centre axis, the same. So assuming that we're spinning the reaction wheel up to the same speed in each case, why do the two craft spin at different speeds if the relevant moment of inertia remains unchanged and the net angular momentum remains unchanged? *scratches head*

Make them lighter but not heat or impact resistant. So they're no good for atmospheric reentry but are light enough that they have an advantage over a capsule for landing on other celestial bodies.

Yes, I'm not really understanding what point the video is trying to make. The front craft (with the reaction wheel in the centre) - I get that. It's symmetrical so the rotation axis passes through the com. Reaction wheel spins one way about that axis, ship spins the other way about the same axis. Net angular momentum zero. But I can't figure out how the second craft works at all. How is it still managing to spin about it's centre?

And the tension ratchets up another notch... You hear that twanging? That's my nerves, son.

You're welcome! If you don't mind another plug, the Fanworks Library (stickied thread) has a, somewhat out of date, list of stories you could browse through for more inspiration.

And having posted a shameless plug for my own story, I highly recommend: The Kerbal Khronicles by Deadweasel. Definitely not a humble origins story, but a beautifully written (and illustrated) take on kerbal culture. It does seem to have been abandoned though, which is a great shame. Farlight by Ten Key. This one's just getting started so head over to the thread and join the ride! A very different take on the Original 3 combined with a darker and grittier Kerbin than you normally see, adds up to an intriguing tale. Edit: There's a load of good stuff on here but I can't think of any other origin stories off the top of my head. I'll add them here if I do.

So what about free-to-play games? Whether you like the model or not (I don't personally), its a very successful one, it depends entirely on micro transactions and it's hardly killing gaming. If a blindly-loyal fanbase is the problem, maybe that fanbase needs to be a bit less blind and a bit more discriminating. Back to KSP. Squad are in a tricky position regarding expansion packs because they are competing with a lot of high quality mods. But if they add new and interesting stuff to the game and package it up into a decent sized expansion, I'd be tempted to buy it. If it included mod written content, I'd still be tempted to pay for the convenience of official support and having fewer mods to keep track of.

I've written quite a lengthy backstory (link in my signature, or check out my forum blog) which might be the kind of thing you're looking for. Part humble origins story for the space program, part exploration of kerbal society, history, psychology etc., and increasingly, how the two start to collide. Fraid its a bit of an all male cast (alhough a small one) to begin with, but that changes fairly quickly, and the story is pretty gender-blind on the whole. Good is in the eye of the reader, so I make no promises there, but you're very welcome to give it a try!

Oh I'm sure it could work at the UAV scale, I'm just less convinced about it working economically for orbital flight, for the reasons I mentioned before. Sorry - I didn't put this very well. Targeting the spaceplane - I can see that working, at least until it flies over the horizon. I was just wondering how easy it is to target the right part of the spaceplane throughout its climb? How easy will it be to position the rectenna(s) or microwave absorbing heater or whatever, so that they work reliably at different angles of attack and orientations relative to the emitter array?

I think I would have bought the game anyway but the kerbals definitely made it easier. Building my own rockets, learning to fly them, figuring out transfer orbits and rendezvous - all good geeky fun. Having these ridiculously enthusiastic little portraits in the corner of the screen, or seeing Jeb grin with pure joy as he steps onto the Mun - priceless. Plus I actively like the 'parts found by the side of the road' meme, although I totally appreciate that opinions differ widely on that. I've got at least as much fun out of the fan-works side of this game as I have from actually playing it, and the kerbals were a big part of that.