Wolfos31

I think I sit somewhere in the middle of all this, probably leaning more towards the side of "trim as much as I can and still have it work". I'm not a spaceplane guy either. I love planes but I struggle to make a good cargo spaceplane, and when I do manage a SSTO for passengers I got there almost by accident. I like aesthetics, I'm all about adapters and fairings and it annoys me when I see designs that I don't feel would actually be feasible in real life. So when I see massive cargo planes with disjointed sections or whackjobian creations making it to orbit I'm impressed, but it's not something that would ever show up in my game.

I'll be honest and say I've almost never used the merge function. But I have used subassemblies and those work fine usually. Have you tried saving your LM as a subassembly yet?

You're going almost straight up? That's your problem right there. Try to arc your trajectory more so that you spend more time in atmo which will slow you down better.

Ah thank you! It all makes sense now. I really wish that "mod" would be included in stock already, I can't think of a reason everyone wouldn't want it.

I've been playing around in 1.0.5 and while building a rover I noticed that I couldn't find the large fixed solar panel. After checking several times and filtering the part list different ways I still couldn't find it. I can't find mention of this in the hotfix or original release changelog. Anyone know what happened to this part? I used it in several of my base builds. :/ I should mention I'm playing all stock 1.0.5 before the hotfix.

A typical gallon of household paint weighs about 10 pounds and covers about 300 square feet with one coat. The SLS is a cylinder with a radius of 14 feet and a height of some 250 feet before it tapers (I am MASSIVELY averaging here just for simplicity's sake) So the surface area of the SLS main stage is about 23,000 square feet. Divide that by 300 gives us 77 gallons needed for 1 coat. This would weigh 770 pounds. It's not insignificant. Some things to consider is that they'll probably be using nicer paint then you slap on your living room wall, in other words lighter and stronger. That said they would still probably need more than one coat if they wanted the paint to look nice/perform it's protective function. I'd say by stripping out the paint they may have saved between 500-1000 pounds on the launch vehicle. Possibly much more. This seems tiny compared to the weight of the vehicle which is over 2 million pounds but as we should know saving a little weight can make a big difference in where you can go.

It is extremely frustrating. I don't have a stellar computer, 32 bit, quad core processor though I forget the speed. 4 GB ram. Decent Nvidia graphics card. I can't run anything above medium graphics for any amount of time at all. (If I set it to high and save I can't even launch the game until I change the config files to knock the graphics back down to low.) Even on low graphics I might get an hour of playtime if I don't do many scene changes. Usually only happens when I launch directly from the pad and stay with that one ship for a long mission. Changing scenes (jumping around to different ships, going in and out of buildings, etc.) are the worst for my personal situation. I can crash the game in less than ten minutes if I say... accept a contract, research a tech node, build a ship in the VAB, and then try to launch it. 1.1 is supposed to address a lot of the performance issues. But they've said that pretty consistently every update and personally my performance has gotten worse with each update as opposed to better. I still love the game and play it a lot, but the frequent crashes (tied with it taking about 5 minutes or so to get back to the point before it crashed from desktop) really sour the experience for me. I'm hoping to upgrade my computer soon to 64 bit to take advantage of that mode once it's released. Until then I can only cross my fingers every time I launch it.

It's explained in the book, and possibly in the movie but I don't recall, that Watney was their mechanical engineer/repair person as well as the botanist. The idea of crew members having multiple expertise is not out of norm either. As early as Apollo astronauts were taught a diverse blend of skills so they would be better prepared for various situations. In Apollo they took dozens of classes on geology so they could better understand the rocks and formations found on the moon. So a botany/mechanic isn't unusual once you think about it. I think a line in the book specifically points out that as unlucky as Watney's situation is, he is about the best person you could hope to get out of that problem because of what he knows. As for Gravity, it's sort of hand waved away but Sandra Bullock's character was the one who developed whatever system it is that she's installing/calibrating at the start of the movie. That's still pretty weak, as lots of amazing systems designed by people on the ground get installed and maintained by different people in orbit. But there you have it. I personally think Gravity has close to no scientific accuracy. But I also really disliked Interstellar for the extremes it went to in liberty with science fiction. On the whole I liked both movies but both left me frustrated by some of the things that they did and treated as scientifically plausible. Gravity was the worst offender. The only way it would have been plausible is if the debris cloud was in a retrograde orbit. The Hubble, ISS, and Chinese station would all have to be in perfect equatorial prograde orbits at similar altitudes, and the debris would have to be at the same altitude, inclination, etc. But retrograde. Of course that throws the 90 minute interval out the window, it would be 45 minute intervals. Them moving between orbital stations is still a huge leap of faith. Either we need to believe that they made the correct orbital maneuvers to set up an intercept, or we take it at face value that they simply aimed directly at the next destination and hit go. I'm guessing the latter since she had to use the "one time use, solid fuel landing engines" to get to the Chinese station and then managed to slow herself down just by grabbing on. The Martian is great, I like when Hollywood makes movies about space, especially ones like this where they stay very close to scientific accuracy. It gets people excited about space exploration and pushes us to ask "Why the hell are we still spending more on military budgets as opposed to exploring our neighborhood?"

I play stock for now but I would like to add some visual enhancement mods. Just not sure where to start with it frankly.

Maybe, but I think they'd just be texture maps painted on the surface. Might look okay from space but really unimpressive up close. Also I'm pretty much okay with the space center being the only habitation on Kerbin. Sure it isn't too realistic but I don't think cities would add much for me. I'd love clouds, but one: Harv already said that we hadn't guessed it yet many pages back and clouds were some of the first posts. And two: Much as I like to stay stock EVE is a great and reliable mod that provides that sort of visual enhancement. I don't have any good guesses for what it is, but I can't wait to see it!

I would really love telescopes. I'd also love terrain maps of orbital bodies. I'm okay with it not being clever enough to map asteroids. But the terrain maps are already in the game, just set something up so I can scan a planet and have a room in the tracking station where I can look at detailed maps of the planets. Either of those features would add a lot to the game for me.

I don't usually watch Squadcasts but I guess this week I'll try to catch it. Can't wait for all the things they (hopefully) reveal.

This just became one of my most wanted features. I didn't even know I needed it lol.

When is the squadcast aired?

For me, definitely the fact that you can build your own ships. I've seen people create some truly epic designs. Archaic Alibi on Youtube does some really neat stuff. And I'm pretty proud of a few of my own designs too. But building ships without flying them would be very boring. So I don't feel like any feature in the game can really stand on its own.

Mat2ch, That's a really good guide. I've managed a few spaceplanes but nothing awesome. I think tonight I'll try building one exactly as you describe and see what I come up with. Looking forward to it. Thanks.

Actually a low power warning would be pretty great for new players and old. Also would require little testing and coding. Basically "is electricity below 5% of max? If so send message." But I'm not sure this warning will be as needed since the engineers report or w/e it's called in the VAB should warn you of no ability to generate power.

"ksp general thread + all new features" That thread is the closest I've seen but the OP hasn't updated the title post to include the latest information from the news we've gotten the past few days.

The closest humans have ever come so far to a Reusable Launch Vehicle was the shuttle. We've never made any SSTO.

I know there are one or two threads on the forums that have consolidated a lot of the information about the upcoming release but since the latest devnotes they seem to be out of date. Is there anywhere to go if you want to see a list of everything that is coming for 1.0? Also, I've asked a few times but it hasn't been addressed. Is the SPH zoom bug fixed for 1.0? Confirmation of that bug biting the dust would mean a lot to me.

I know that 42 is in the Hitchiker's Guide to the Galaxy, but what other significance is tied to it that would make you paranoid? A failed shuttle launch or something?

I doubt that they'd cut out a whole category of spacecraft. I think just like the real shuttle spaceplanes will still work given shallow entry angles.

Birthday?

I'm happy they fixed Radial Decouplers, it was annoying having to add Sepatrons and increase the part count just to ensure proper separation. Now does anyone know if they plan on fixing the zoom issue in the SPH? I haven't really heard anything about it since .90 came out. (When the bug was introduced)

Very hyped for 1.0 Does anyone know if they've fixed the spaceplane hanger zoom issue for 1.0?