jordanjay29

Has anyone looked at the Science Station mod? [insert generic rebuttal about using any sort of mods here] It basically does do the kind of science over time that seems to be of interest here. It's a mod, and it's intended to work in space (it can be landed on non-Kerbin worlds, but docking is SO much easier in space), but at least it's something.

It's not late Christmas, today is only the second day of Christmas. You've got 10 more if you had wanted to procrastinate.

Oy, you're right. How did that happen? I guess I'll need to send up some fuel and figure out what to do with these actinides. Thanks!

Okay, so a fission reactor on one of my space stations just died. I sent up Jeb to restart it on EVA, but even when getting close enough to trigger the restart option, I can't get it started. I click the button, but nothing happens, and when I switch back to the station the reactor still says 'EVA Maintenance Needed." WTF?

Oy vey! I had that happen to my manned Eve lander as well. I got my Kerbal out and thought, "well, nothing to do now but swim for shore." Sometimes I wish MJ worked with Kerbal EVAs.

Sometimes I wish there was a 1Mm antenna that wouldn't break off in atmo. I've had issues with the 500km version when deorbiting probes that were intended to land safely, I wind up opening the parachute far too early in order to ensure that it will open.

I frequently have these when I send missions to some airless body, only to find that my return stage has no parachutes. I actually launched about three Mun missions with this configuration, failing to realize it each time until I got back to Kerbin. At least they left their little flags on the Mun's surface. Actually, my latest blunder came with my recently-built space station (between KSP Interstellar and Science Station, I have actual parts to build a functioning science station in orbit, woo-hoo!). I sent up an experiment for the Science Station mod, only to find that I had forgotten parachutes. And this experiment was actually the second version, in the first I forgot the batteries, which makes deploying the parachute rather difficult once the power runs out of my experiment probe. Thankfully, I was about to send down one of my manned crew capsules to relieve some of the crew, so I docked the capsule to the experiment and brought them both down safely with the capsule's parachute.

You opened parachutes BEFORE you hit the thicker atmosphere, and they didn't burn up? I'd be suspicious about that...

Running the game in Windowed mode should resolve this issue. No addon required.

I'd really love to see some promotion for this version. It sounds like a wonderful educational tool to get kids excited about science.

I agree, someone needs to spend the time. Unfortunately, you can see that I barely have enough knowledge right now to play Interstellar, much less help others. I'd much prefer to leave the task up to someone with more wisdom. If you want to publish those guides, I'm sure someone would be willing to help you polish them.

I don't know about the poster you quoted, but for me as a Computer Science student, documentation and guides are the first thing I check to learn something new. I don't see the point in reinventing the wheel when someone has written some documentation that explains it. It saves me time and effort, and then I can spend that time and effort on creating something useful with that new knowledge. Your approach is fair, but realize that there are those who don't see it as you do.

I'm interested. Even somewhat capped, it would still be useful.

Will there ever be a feature in which users (or Kerbals) can adjust the output of a reactor? I've noticed such a feature included in Near Future Propulsion for its reactors to run at a custom percentage output. This is quite useful if one somehow manages to underestimate the amount of radiators or a radiator gets damaged/destroyed by unforeseen circumstances.

Thanks. So that just means I poorly designed this ferry.

Okay, now that I have my antimatter collection farm up and running, I'm encountering another couple problems. Around MET: 537:03:27:00 the station goes behind Kerbin for a longer period than normal, and that winds up draining my batteries completely. I pulled out of time warp before any shutdown explosions occurred, but I noticed the Thermal Power completely depleted. I deactivated the Electric Generator to build up more TP, but this started my explosion countdown. I couldn't find any way to turn the generator back on, or to shut down the Antimatter Containment Devices, although at one point I thought they had a 'Stop Charging' button. A similar problem occurs to the antimatter collector ferry I docked with the farm station. I started transferring antimatter to the ferry, but once I undock the electric charge starts draining like mad. It seems like the collector got used to having Megajoules and getting an Antimatter charge right from the collectors, rather than a mere transfer. Like a drug addict, once it was hooked....well, things went downhill for my ferry after that. The electric charge ran out, and even my small little solar panels couldn't help it, so the containment unit went into explosion mode and detonated. What did I mess up here? Or what should I be doing instead? Does the containment units need Megajoules even when not charging/collecting antimatter? What happened to the 'Stop Charging' button that was present on my test vehicles before?

I rather like the idea of checking for connections within the same sphere of influence. If that's not an option, what about a (short) list of connection priorities? Sometimes I have rockets that travel between different regions, hence different satellite networks, and often I seem to lose connection just as I'm starting a burn. Having the ability to set a priorty would let the rocket auto-switch to the next connection that I've set up without making it overpowered and cheaty by looking for every connection possible. This would be very critical in case of my rocket losing contact with its satellite just as it gets into a ballistic orbit (for landing, transfers, etc). At that point, EVAing is probably not a likely possibility.

Earlier in the thread, folks have confirmed NovaPunch and Procedural Fairings working. I think Lazor was listed on the first page as broken. There seems to be a dev build for MechJeb that works with the newest 0.23. Not sure how stable it is, though.

Ahh, that's what I was doing wrong. I was using a radial decoupler/attachment piece from Novapunch that allows things to stack above and below. I had the collector above and the container below, the decoupler doesn't allow fuel to flow through it stackwise either. Now it's working, thanks Fractal. Just a bit more and I can start warping in career mode!

I'm having trouble getting the Antimatter Collectors to work. I have built a craft that includes a fission generator, electric generator, antimatter collector and antimatter containment device. On the wiki, it claims that Kerbin has some antimatter that can be collected, so that's where I'm testing at the moment. So I have a few questions to try to figure out what I'm doing wrong. 1. Do any of the parts need to be directly connected to one another? Sometimes engines need to be directly connected to a reactor, is this the case for the collector to the containment unit? Or anything else? 2. Is there a reference for the ideal orbit height for Kerbin flux? 3. Am I missing any parts or resources?

I always hit the red X from Space Center. I figure that by the time I get back there, my ships are in a stable orbit and my game is safe. I've never had problems with it.

I like this idea, it would more closely mimic the science collected from real world space probes that transmit their findings continuously, serving to map regions and find trends rather than simply deliver a snapshot of data. It would have to be balanced properly with the rest to ensure that there's less chance for exploit, but it seems like this would be a better use for space probes than currently. Once/if life support is ever implemented, sending a long-range probe to study Moho's gravitational field, for example, would be far less costly than maintaining a crew in orbit of Moho.

Samples that are returned allow for repeatable experiments and long-term study. Data cannot be re-verified or tested under different conditions.

I've always just assumed weight is in Tons and liquid is in Liters. That's probably a terrible hodgepodge of unit systems, but that's how my mind worked it out.

Which is probably appropriate. We don't call our sun Sol unless we're referring to the whole star system. Our star is the Sun, but it's the center of the Sol System. So Kerbin's star is the Sun, but it's part of the Kerbol system. An outsider might call the star Kerbol, but the Kerbals wouldn't.