Blacksmith

Option 32 in the HORIZONS table settings is the IAU2009 right ascension and declination of the body's "north pole" in the ICRF. However, even that has it's limitations because more obscure bodies like Dysnomia aren't in HORIZONS. Probably have to just make up reasonable numbers in some cases

@"Our Benefactors" Don't mean to badger you, but is it possible to get RealMoons, RTNOs, etc. working with Principia? I was super excited to find this mod because I was disappointed with the lack of Jovian moons beyond the big four and the lack of Eris, but I would really like to keep Principia in my set of mods, and it seems like from your replies here that it was planned at some point but not currently possible or WIP. I know basically nothing about modding but I'd be willing to dig in and do some tweaking if compatibility is possible with minor changes. In any case, thanks for your work on these mods! @AloE Your linked post is awesome. I might give a try to porting select bodies using your methods. I take it from your wording there that RealExpansion is compatible with Principia, but not the mods which add more bodies to the solar system? If that's the case, it simplifies things greatly.

I tried to make a legit personal motorcycle. I got the body to look quite nice, but it was really awkward making a wheel. I tried clipping a ring of mini wheels inside of each other, but the ones facing the motorcycle freaked out. The other wheels are too wide for a regular motorcycle, so I kinda abandoned the concept. :/

This is the Ymir Carrier a built a while ago for Macey. As you all probably know, he's been gone awhile, so I thought I'd put it here for you guys. My PC simply can't handle it going into orbit, so for right now I just cheat it there. It has about 700 parts without fighters. The Bay is permanently open, and the hanger has room for 5, albeit a bit cramped. The carrier itself has 8 reloadable self-guided torpedoes. The weight is balanced really well, and it's got about an orange worth of fuel and 8 nukes. The fighters included are beefed-up mosquitoes, with safety ERPs. [ejection, reentry and parachute] They also include auxiliary solar cells for outer solar system operation. The Carrier has a 4 man bay, a probe core, and a 3 man cockpit. [The Mk. III] Enough to crew all five fighters with 2 extra crew. The bay has full interior lighting, and reaction wheels and power supply for the rest of the ship. In addition to the reaction wheels, it also has a crapload of RCS stuck all around the hull, and many a tank inside the bay. The whole thing is strutted up, and the fuselage is made of entirely armour and wing plates. Even the cockpit is coated, except for the windshield. It has Dv to get to anywhere, except for moho. Also included is docking support for all three types of port, so interchangability is not an issue. The download file includes the carrier, as well as the supply ship that takes up fighters, cargo droids, and ammo. https://www.dropbox.com/s/yieh9261vz67ix7/SW%20-%20Ymir%20Carrier%20Pack.zip Pics, or it didn't happen:

So if any of you like to read about advanced physics or even just rocketry in the real world, you'll probably hear about propulsion technologies that we know are possible, just don't have the ability to produce yet. I'm not talking about anything crazy, like Space-time warping or hyperspace, just some of the more exotic forms we don't have yet. Fusion - Fusion is a step up from the kind of fission rockets that we see in NERVA, it achieves a high level thrust with a similar level of efficency. Ramjet - If you can build an intake big enough, it's possible to power nuclear rockets with the interstellar exosphere. That so very thin level of hydrogen that permeates through all of space. Through this, you would be able to fire your engines indefinitely. Solar Sails - The idea of a solar sail is that you can build a surface to get pushed by the light waves from the sun as a means of propulsion. This, obviously, requires a very large sail, about the size of Texas, to get reasonable thrust, because the impact caused by photons is almost negligible. Antimatter - This is kind of the penultimate thruster. Neutrons, Protons, and other hadrons are made up of smaller particles called quarks. Quarks are elementary particles, like photons and electrons, which means they are not made up of smaller parts. There are many different kinds of quarks, and for every one, there is an antimatter version. Most atoms are actually made up partly of antimatter. When an antimatter particle is separated from the rest, it will annihilate with whatever regular matter it comes into contact with. This vaporizes them both into pure energy in the form of two highly charged photons. This produces massive amounts of thrust with literally atoms of fuel. NASA calculates that, should we be able to create and store antimatter, their antimatter engines could fuel an expedition to Mars with 10 milligrams of fuel. In addition, it's possible to assemble the opposite version of regular atoms. Anti-Hydrogen, albeit briefly, has been created. Another form of storing it is in positronium. Basically getting an electron to enter binary orbit with its antimatter equivalent, a positron in a kind of pseudoatom. Its very hard to assemble a stable pair, but if you do, it's much easier to store than pure antimatter. You simply destabilize it to get it to annihilate, the regular matter would be self contained. I know there are other propulsion types that I don't know enough about to write down here, and also ones that aren't mainstream that we already have in real life, such as magnetoplasma and SABRE. Do you guys think adding these kind of endgame technologies would harm the game? Or maybe just don't fit the overall theme? Tell me what you think.

Just thought that the ant needs some tweaking, considering that it's only benefit over the 24-77 was that it was in-line is now gone. The 24-77 Has more thrust, efficiency, and the same utility. Anyone else like to see it having a purpose? A high efficiency low thrust engine would be nice for bridging the gap between Liquid and ion in the probe category

So, as the later end-game stages fold out in career mode, we're most likely going to have a pretty complex system of space stations, mining posts, and transfer vehicles. Obviously, noone would be able to juggle everything in a complex space program with localized components in each system, so I was thinking of utilities that would aid with this, but still hold realism and etc. My first idea was a routine flight system in which you could tell any craft to set up a schedule, for example, every 6 days, undock craft [Fuel transfer X]- wait... How do you tell it to get it to the ground and back? This is where ascent profiles come in. If you could detail the deorbit and landing routines [The position along the orbit would have to be the same for ground targets, a big pain, especially with eccentric orbits. Its beyond me how the mathematics would work out. It would have to be more like, move periapsis to x (relative to surface), then land at target.] Anyways, you could then program certain flight events at certain altitudes, such as parachute deployments and engine switching [Especially important for SSTOs]. A simpler way to do it would be a non-selective Dv requirement estimate. Basically, calculate how much fuel you would need to land at the target, then following an autopilot on the way down. I don't necessarily like that, in terms of feel, though. I would like it if you could use this to basically be able to make flights from stations for science, research, or just fun whenever you wanted to, and be able to count on a consistent supply chain to make sure you had fuel, without micromanaging each flight. This would also be easy to tie in with far away features like offworld ship construction, and mining. Supplying an orbital station with the minerals for construction and fuel for regular flights would be an extremely dull process. Currently the closest you can get to a perfect sustainable outpost is a low gilly/minmus orbiter that uses crew jetpacks for surface-craft movement. But, that doesn't work for resources or equipment. Thoughts? The math is very complex to program it, but if the end result would having the network be completely autonomous and still be able to load up and pilot those vessels yourselfs at any time would be the best outcome.

When you think about how the reentry shock heating works, raycasting to find the surfaces exposed to moving air, it seems like it would be easy to hijack that and use it to make an accurate drag model. If you could somehow add the angle of attack to what the raycast calculates, you could then combine that data with the exposed surface area of the part to find it's actual drag. After the maths for all of the parts is done, you multiply each by the thickness of the atmosphere and then apply the force in the physics engine. The force should probably just use the center of mass of the part to apply the force, but it would be even more accurate if you could apply the force from the center of the exposed surface. [i Have no idea how you would code that, but it would be nice for larger parts that are only partly exposed.] You could even forget the angle of attack bit entirely and that would already be a huge improvement from the current system. You could even combine the two processes, so that the raycast would find the combined variables for both systems, then apply the GFX and physics on the part at the same time. That would probably help with performance and sync. It would be easy to slip in reentry heating to that system, since you would have the surface area and atmospheric thickness already implemented, you could add in a quick algorithm to come up with a heat value, which could then be applied to the object at the same time as the physics and GFX. Obviously, this would help immensely for streamlined designs, so that only the parts in the airstream would be getting pushed on, and if AoA is added, then aerodynamic nose cones would finally have a purpose. Also, Asymmetric designs and unstable designs would be discouraged better. [As a footnote, does anyone know if the raycast could be made to work from a plane, because if it comes from a single point, it would make wider craft become completely inaccurate. I have to assume either that is how it is in the vanilla game, or the use the prograde/retrograde axis to get the angle for the shock heating affects, because deorbiting large spaceplanes and space stations always looks normal in terms of angle on the shock heating affects.] Thoughts? Anyone know how viable this is in terms of performance and feasability? Has there been some mention of converging to a similar method from the developers? Thanks for your time.

Wow, Moreas, those are some of the best atmospheric craft I've seen. Amazing stability, even after dropping their payload.

Who are you taking to, Ann wn? I said anything stock that can fight fits.

Being placed higher than Macey is a huge complement. Thank you. Mind posting your tigers claw? I'd love to see it.

Yah, I just like seeing what people can do with the stock parts.

Rules: I don't really care what you post, as long as they're stock and can fight in some manner. I'll start with my carrier. (In the background is a resupply vessel) She's got 5 Fighters inside, and has 8 Self-Guided Torpedoes, and 8 Nuclear Engines. The Entire thing is armour plated.

Shuttle Submission: The Minimalist Stats: Part Count: 63 Weight: 6 Tons Propulsion: 2x LV-909 Liquid Fuel Engines @ Aprox. 2 Kerbin Gs acceleration. Cargo: 6 Seats for Kerbals, 440L of Fuel, 600 Electric Charge. Control: Okto 2 Probe, w/ ASAS. Utilities: 3 Landing Spikes, 3 Ladders, 3 Landing Lights, 3 Passenger Lights, 3 Radioisotopic Generators, 1 Regular docking port w/ Jrs. Testing: Edited it into a 15 Kilometer Orbit and proceeded to land in the vicinity of the Armstrong memorial. After landing, it had a little over 2/3s fuel left, and I honestly didn't do the optimum fuel efficiency landing, I don't think. Easily made it back into orbit with more than enough fuel to rendezvous with the station. Thoughts: This one I built with the idea in mind of quickest load time. Smallest and lightest I could do was this. The origional version did not have SAS, although it was very easily controllable still, so I decided to include 3 versions. Bare minimum, w/ SAS, and w/ SAS & RCS. It does the job well and seems to not have any problems I can speak of. If you want as little lag and loading times as possible, I think this one is your best bet. If you're willing to sacrifice performance for a more flexible design, I wouldn't blame you. Picture: [This is the Bare Minimum Version] Minimal: Minimalist B1 w/ SAS: Minimalist B1-A w/ SAS & RCS: Minimalist B1-B Thanks and good luck!

Shuttle Submission: Helion "Deluxe" Crew Transport Stats: Weight- 20 Tons [At Launch] Part Count- 87 Control- 1 Rockomax probe body, 6 Kerbal Seats, 2 Sets of RCS with 6 radial tanks, A.S.A.S. Propulsion- 1 Poodle Engine, 1100L of fuel. [Provides upwards of one Kerbin G of acceleration at launch mass.] Electricals- No Battery power [No Need], 8x Nuclear Generator, 4x Backup Ox-Stat Solar Cells. Aesthetics- Not a very orthodox design, but has a cool utilitarian look to it. Full Internal lighting for the Kerbals, as well as landing lights, and two Ladders. Testing: I save file edited it into a 15 kilo orbit, as if it had just undocked from the space station, and flew it down to the Armstrong memorial. When I reached the surface, I had 2 thirds fuel and about the same in monopropellant. Basically, I think it's a very viable crew transport. Also stores a lot of Kerbals in a small space. Bottom Line: Works well for the task at hand. Holds 6 Kerbals and exceeds all of the requirements. I was able to land it within a quarter of a kilometer without burning too much fuel, and I'm terrible at landing at precise locations. Here's a picture of it, after landing at the armstrong memorial. (The reason there's less fuel in the lander in the picture than when I landed it was because I hopped it around about 3 times to prepare the screenshot, ironically.) Thanks! If you want to test/use it, here's the download link! https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/48004927/Helion%20Deluxe%20Crew%20Transport.craft