John Nowak

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NASA_Deep_Space_Network According to the diagram here, ground stations of the DSN don't seem to have a 180 degree cone of coverage; at a guess, it looks more like 150 degrees. So with three ground stations and no orbital relays (TDRS isn't up yet) there are actually blind areas out to 33,000 km. Sorry to keep prattling on aout ground stations, but it's an interesting subject.

You can pretty much do this in stock. In your staging profile, put the parachutes of a stage in the same group as the decoupler that drops it. This will "deploy" the chutes. The air pressure the chute opens and the altitude the chute unreefs are tweakable. Personally, I usually set the chutes to unreef at 500m and open at 0.3 ATM.

Depends who does it. The United States has well-defined steps for areas under Federal jurisdiction eventually evolving into states with direct representation.

Ah, gotcha. This reminds me of how I used to play RemoteTech's early releases. I had the size of a control station set to two Kerbals, so one would fly the ship while the other flew the drone.

Yeah, a ground control component would be fun, but I think it's only meaningful if you have signal delay. I know earlier versions of RemoteTech supported this, so it was possible to have a ship orbit the Mun and drop off landers with almost zero signal delay. Building up a ground station and have a bunch of antennas you could actually visit would be cool, but I kind of suspect that's out of scope. If someone's doing a "Build cities on Kerbin" mod, then it might be easier for that mod to put a bunch of antennas on the locations designated by AntennaRange than vice-versa. Sort of like "It would be neat if StageRecovery took the range to the nearest tracking station instead of KSC." Sounds like a great feature, but it would probably need to be done by StageRecovery.

One of the highlights of the Saturn V facility at Kennedy Space Center for me is the firing room display which walks through the launch of Apollo 8. Essentially, it's a great big checklist of things which need to take place, in sequence. That's basically what a countdown is. It's fascinating to watch them step through, but I'm not sure how to turn it into part of a game. ...Unless the game could actually perform a final checkout of your design, and give you the chance to ignore the warnings or revert to the VAB to correct them.

Right. Just define where the ground station is, and as phase 2 of the feature, allow the ground stations to be upgraded. I wouldn't see any need to visit the ground stations.

"Tedious" is a difficult argument to answer, however the observed fact is that people can and do add things like AntennaRange or TAC Life Support because they do enjoy the problem of working around them. Otherwise, every game would consist of a big red button that says "YOU WIN." In Easy mode, the button presses itself. That's an obvious point, but I think the more important takeaway is that you won't get many people agreeing on what an appropriate level of challenge is. That's why your mod has an interface that lets you drop the requirement to be in communication when controlling a probe. And of course, you could have a control that lets the player assume Kerbin is covered with antennas. As for the tedium of ground stations, I honestly don't see it. Of course, I see the interface as "Build ground station at (Lat, Lon)," maybe with a map if it's fancy. Then the game gives an estimate on how much it will cost, (Big station? Little Station? Oil-rig station?), docks you some kerbucks and that's pretty much the end of your interaction with it. Perhaps an upgrade or scrap feature. Realism, I think is already sold. In real life, ground stations exist. They are the biggest antennas in the communication network. The ISS isn't always in communication. Soviet / Russian missions ran into difficulties because of this. So I'd consider it an interesting option.

Yes, apologies. This came out of a conversation about AntennaRange and RemoteTech on the G+ KSP group. One observation that was made was that while AntennaRange assumed that Kerbin was covered with ground stations, RemoteTech didn't have any ground station apart from the tracking station itself. A suggestion came up that in career mode, at least, it might be possible to restrict the Tracking Station's area of coverage to the horizon (so it's effectively covering a hemisphere), and allow the player to pay to build ground stations at different lat-lon locations with more or less the same capability as the Tracking Station. Obviously, most players would probably start off by covering the equator, probably with downrange stations starting off fairly close to KSP and then getting further apart as the anticipated LOS to the vehicles heading to orbit allows spacecraft to fly above the blind spots. And then you run into potential issues with high-latitude coverage - are you better off setting up tracking stations up there, or orbiting satellites? Will keosynchronous satellites actually have a good use, because they can be positioned to permanently fill coverage gaps? I have to admit I was a little surprised to visit Mission Control in Houston and see dead areas in the communications network with the ISS - there was a countdown to loss of signal and another showing when the signal would be regained.

I think this is a wonderful change. I recently lost out on my first Duna probes because the big dish wasn't available yet. Now, if only there were career-mode ground stations...

I don't need to; I read the treaty. Did you read my post?

It was considered important enough to put into the treaty. At any rate, the impact is obvious: there are no nuclear weapons stationed in space, and we can't have an Orion.

There doesn't seem to be any clear definition of space. They seem to be working on one: http://www.unoosa.org/pdf/limited/c2/AC105_C2_2012_DEF_L01E.pdf Or maybe not... 5. The view was expressed that States should continue to operate under the current framework, which had functioned well, and that, at the present time, any attempt to define or delimit outer space would be a theoretical and academic exercise that could complicate existing activities and that might not be able to anticipate future technological developments. The Outer Space Treaty also specifies that nuclear weapons may not be placed "in orbit" without defining "orbit." I would guess an "orbit" means "periaps above lithosphere" but that doesn't seem to be backed up formally.

I haven't had a chance to play with this yet, but it looks fascinating. I've been thinking about this sort of thing a bit, and I hope you don't mind if I make some comments. With the addition of RP elements (level based class system) in 0.90, it's now possible to do bad things to kerbals without killing them, by giving them a (temporary?) penalty to their level. As Sanity degrades, it might be possible to make a L2 Engineer act like a L1 Engineer, and so on down, possibly to the point where the kerbal goes below L0 and has no skills whatsoever. Extra living space might mitigate against sanity loss. Suppose a ship had a whole Hitchhiker cabin for each kerbal; certainly that would be a more comfortable arrangement than three guys going to Eeloo in a 1-2. In reality you'd likely want a small sleeping chamber with shared entertainment facilities to encourage them to hang out together; but I don't see a problem in assuming that. Exciting events should increase Sanity, you've got that with landings and flybys. However, I'd suggest adding "Broadcasting Science home." Ultimately, that's what the missions are all about. I'm not sure how to simulate things like calls from home, making music videos, taking questions from schoolkids, all of which increase morale... maybe base it on the electric charge used to run the antenna? A way to trade electricity for sanity, up to a certain point? A larger crew should be a help. Adding Shannon Lucid to Mir seemed to provide much-needed relief to a stressful situation. Possibly add crew transfers or visits to sanity-increasing events. I tend to agree that murder is a good "worst possible" event, but it should be very difficult to get there, and I'd suggest making it a controllable parameter.

This is very interesting! Out of curiosity, how much fuel do you expend for how much electric charge?

Perhaps the poster didn't mean individual parts. Obviously a given LV-909 wouldn't get better as it's used, but the second LV-909 might credibly last longer than the first, but not as long as the 500th.

The Spud is a little strange, but so was the Vostok. I think that "large for one man" describes Vostok pretty well; they were able to cram three guys into it once. Kerbal Space Program stock doesn't really cover the notion of "roomy", though.

Weird! It was working, and then it stopped. Well, it's not worth a lot of time looking into; I can always slap on an Octo Probecore. Thanks very much for checking!

No, I'm afraid no. I'm using Antenna Range, but that was working fine with it before. I'll have to do more research; I suspect that this might have been caused by an upgrade to an unrelated mod. Many thanks for your work on this mod, incidentally. I'm playing with some informal house rules about habitability, and the orbital modules have been lifesavers. I originally installed the mod for the Radish, because Gemini does not get enough love. The new crew character classes emphasize the need for a two-kerbal pod: pilot and scientist to maximize return. However, to my mind the 1.875 engines and tanks are a godsend. They just "feel" right, somehow - struggle into orbit with 1.25, then start building serious launch vehicles reminiscent of Atlas and Titan before the 2.5m Saturnian heavy lifters. They appear just at the right part of the tech tree.

I ran into something slightly odd -- the Leek orbital module no longer seems to work as a probe core. I've re-installed HGR since, with no luck. What might cause that to happen?

It's probably out of scope, but I think it would be pretty amazing if Scott Lowther's Orion-based asteroid deflection suggestion could be implemented somehow.

Ah, too bad.

>I did consider a workaround where I remove the parts (which then disappear), quit out, edit my save file and drop the parts into the kerbal's pocket! But I think it will get pretty tedious on long missions and make maintenance unbearable. Thanks for the workaround. I agree that's not a great solution, but at present I'd prefer that to losing either of these mods. I'm sure this can be fixed, even if it's necessary to isolate the two mods entirely. One uses "DangItParts" and the other "MCParts."

The rules for broadcasting science already beg for some rework. "Jeb, we want you to EVA over to the thermometer. Write down what it says, but don't tell us. Carry your notebook back home." If you're concerned about exploits, perhaps a kerbal on EVA can only transmit crew reports, or science that can be transmitted at 100%. Then the effect is pretty much "I don't need to return to the capsule to transmit my EVA reports."

1 - I think that some sort of "fitness" stat is exactly what the game needs; in my opinion in most games with characters you need a way to say "something bad happens to you, but it's not lethal... yet" and it needs to be enforced through game mechanics. I recall a wry comment to the effect that players don't care about "you're cold and uncomfortable," but start knocking off hit points and suddenly they'll do anything for a parka. It's a bit abstract and apparently arbitrary to kill someone during re-entry, but have a Kerbal in orbit with a deteriorating Health stat and players will start working to fix the situation. This sort of thing can be very immersive. I added the DangIt mod, which gives the Kerbals Mechanic and Electrician perks, and suddenly I'm thinking "Okay, Bob needs to be on this mission because he's my only kerbonaut who can fix a broken engine." 2) Yeah, this is the "Deagle Effect." The story is the Desert Eagle is a popular pistol in some games because the gun's virtues are simulated, while its disadvantages are not. The Lander Can is light, but you can't pilot it when it's under more than two Gs, at best. 3) Yeah, this was more a general suggestion. Of course, if your mod did have a "fitness" rating for each Kerbal, then other modders could use that any way they wanted. 4) Right, I gathered that - just wondering if the nomenclature might be confusing. "What do you mean you can't Exercise in microgravity? They do this all the time on the ISS!" because you're using "Exercise" to mean "In Gravity."