Gargamel

Grats on the article and this awesome mission. I'm rounding out my 1.3.1 career, and when I finally get to 1.4x and MH, I know this will be one of the first things I try.

Stealing that one for future use. @Just Jim 1.5 better be bug free.... or we all know who to yell at

Wow... LOL 10,000 type VII Uboats with a bumbling evil mastermind at the helm? Restrict shipping until the Tommies have given up.

I really hate the Fermi paradox for those very reasons.

I try to get down there every few years or so, it's only a few hour drive for me. The one thing that upset me last time I was down there was one of their IMAX offerings. I don't remember the details, but it was a movie produced by the USAF, about the USAF, but for some stupid reason, they had to resort to using CGI special effects for bomb blasts and such. On actual targets, on an actual bombing range. The effects were horrible, and I figured it would have been easier and cheaper for them to just use real bombs for the movie.

Hey! Me Too!

I knew it! Congrats Jim! Can't think of a better person to take that spot.

*mumbles something about his excellent google fu about squiggly NASA roads getting upstaged by some stupid octopi with stone hammers*

You do know Eve is considered the EndGame for KSP right? It's supposed to be hard. After the third time my kerbal ran around my rover fixing wheels, I just turned off crash damage so I could get somewhere. Yes, yes... we'll just simulate the wheels breaking and being fixed every 5 minutes.

You're really not intending on applying data gathered from KSP to real word physics are you?

If you have just staged to a new engine, and haven't fired it up yet, the estimated burn time is really really really off. You need to 'burp' the engine to get it to read properly. Just a quick Shift and then Ctrl to get it to burp.

How would this be better than just using a challenge thread like we already do? Our challenge threads already allow one user to set up a game (establish a goal), and then select the scoring criteria. Then any user on the forums who want to play in this game can, and they post up their scores, usually with screenshots as proof. Aside from the potential of automated scoring, how is this an improvement? The goals would be limited by the code itself, devs can't think of everything (just look at every release of KSP ever), and the scoring system would be very strict. Also only a limited number of players can join. I think you might be on the right path for one version of MP in KSP, but it needs some fleshing out.

Thanks... now I have the Rolling stones stuck in my head....

Tom, try reading through this thread: Yes, there are some references to mods, which are not available to you, but there is also a lot of good tips for stock players.

Massive quantities of DDT were applied here for what was reported as mosquito control (probably dumped too) between 1946 and 1951, other insecticides were applied thereafter. A study/proposal was conducted in 2000 and these "roads" were constructed throughout the flatlands, wetlands, and marshes for drill rigs to move about to set shallow, intermediate, and deep groundwater monitoring wells. https://ntrs.nasa.gov/archive/nasa/casi.ntrs.nasa.gov/20000116077.pdf

The mod will show you the current estimated landing spot based on aerodynamics of your craft. With a little practice, you can set up a manuever node an orbit ahead, the mod does account for planet rotation, and then you can very accurately follow your node for your reentry burn. Play with the mod for a bit before committing an active mission to it, there some settings you'll probably want to get familiar with.

The fact that we have kraken drives in the game may prove using KSP as a data source moot. If we can create acceleration from nothing, then that negates any findings from any zero thrust experiments in the game for real world applications. Scott Manley did a video a while back where he had two orange tanks out on long booms of struts. He set the structure spinning slowly, and by shifting the fuel back and forth between the tanks, he could move the COM up in altitude, and created a 'spinning ladder'. I forget the details, but since KSP uses CoM point physics, it's just another example of how not useful KSP is for this experiment.

That doesn't add up in my head. I don't do a lot with the math of the game, but that's roughly 2.5 m/ss, over 9,000 m/s, which works out to 3600 secs, 1 hour worth of burn. How are you even getting a 15 day burn from anything? A 15 day burn at full thrust would get you about 3,240,000 m/s of dV. Which.... is more than luminal. Course, my math may be off a bit... I'm guessing you haven't actually fired up these engines yet, and are relying on the Manuever node estimate of the burn time?

Huh?

Oh, and a cool little program I found a while back that helps in designing rockets from scratch, us KSP'ers should love this app, even if you never build one, as it will do full flight sims too: http://openrocket.info/ Gorilla glue has the habit of expanding a bit into a foam like material. Which has it's plusses and minuses. It is also water accelerated when curing. For woodworking projects, I would wet down one piece with a damp rag, and apply the glue to the other piece. The expansion can be good for slight gap filling when that gap is not a structural element, as the 'foam' is not very strong.

Oddly enough, when introducing my nephew to my old hobby of rocketry, I had hard time finding any nice 3d printed launch pads. So I designed and printed my own. Feel free to download and print if you have access to a printer: https://www.thingiverse.com/thing:588121

I made a 10" diameter spud gun using this technique once, minus the vacuum of course. It'd put a nerf ball 50+ yds at a good velocity, and more ballistically oriented projectiles quite a bit farther. Built it for a high school production of The Pirates of Penzance, it was a cannon on the ship. I had to lower the pressure a bit as the during the first show, the "cannon ball" knuckle balled down into the ,orchestra pit, flipping the trombone player over backwards. Compressed air at around 70 psi would rupture 12 layers of tin foil (the diaphragm), sending the ball, baby powder and gold and red glitter flying out of the barrel. Loud boom too.

Moral of the story.... don't use weird outside apps that scramble your game.

I recently picked up a equitorial solar contract, then quickly learned it was a retrograde orbit, and then realized it was at the same altitude as Jool. I was on board for attempting a solar retrograde orbit, just for kicks, but not if it wasn't going to last more than one orbit.

I mean... he could possibly just let KSP run on it's own for 4 days... This brings up some questions in my mind. Either your ship is way over built, or way under powered, probably both actually. While it's probably a moot point on this particular mission, if you continue to build "under powered" ships in the future, you might want to start adding some gravity assists to your mission plan to help reduce the amount burn time you have to endure. While granted an "under powered" ship may be way more efficient, in game and IRL, this is a game we are talking about, and you have now run into the fact that it exists on a different time line that real life. I have always tried to build my ships so that and big burns won't take up that much time, obviously at the cost of efficiency. I still have some weakly powered vessels, but they are all designed so that any burn I have to do can be accomplished within a game play session, even if that means setting phys warp and going to make dinner