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Creideiki

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Everything posted by Creideiki

  1. I'm encountering an annoying bug; perhaps, I could just be a moron and can't figure it out. But the Flight Plan Management window can't be moved. Which is extremely annoying, as I have Kerbin Side GAP, and it massively increases the number of flight plans. Most of which are off the bottom of my screen and thus inaccessible. Is there any chance the Flight Plan Management window could be made movable, and a scrollbar be added to the list of flight plans? Other than that: Excellent, excellent add-on, and I cannot recommend this enough.Now my landings are actually survivable!
  2. Also helps if I could proofread better... but yeah where I said VAB, I meant the SPH. I've not tried building a zeppelin in the VAB, and probably won't. I've actually not gone into the VAB since installing Heisenberg, because the zeppelins are way too fun to build. But yeah, the issue with part placement and replacement continues in mine and my friend's game. I've absolutely no idea why though. Guessing I'll have to see which mod combination is making everything unhappy in the SPH.
  3. Just tried this delightful mod last night, and I have to say: All of my yes. They make really good transports for the Kerbin Side GAP contracts, and a general mobile lab. Now I just need to figure out a way to haul one to Laythe. I (and a friend of mine) are having a problem with the Heisenberg mod though. Namely, the VAB acts really strange. In both cases (mine and my friend's) when can place parts, but then are unable to select them again; I've been able to figure a way around that issue by repeatedly swapping between the standard part placement mode and offset mode, and clicking and dropping new parts from the part list. What would be needed to help in diagnosing the cause of the problem? I'm thinking I might spool up a second install and try adding mods one by one until the issue occurs again.
  4. This is the most wonderful pack I have ever used in KSP. Hell, it's unseated KW Rocketry from my "must have" list; because this has all of the parts I've wanted. I haven't had a chance to try out the newest version; right now I'm on the quickfix for 1.1 that was mentioned in the thread a while back, the most current version can be gotten via the GitHub, right? I can't decide if my favourite rocket is the Atlas D or Titan I. And I absolutely love the AVCO Mark IV re-entry vehicle for the Titan I and Atlas (well, it should be on an Atlas E or Atlas F, but Atlas D is close enough); when North Kerbin Dynamics updates to 1.1 I'll take a stab at seeing if I can make that AVCO Mark IV do it's originally intended job... @CobaltWolf Would you be willing to add in the parts for the early KH-1 through KH-4 CORONA, and KH-7 and KH-8 GAMBIT reconnaissance satellites? We have the three nice science cameras implemented already, but implementations of the CORONA and GAMBIT camera payloads would be amazing for nice recreations (and also would look much better than gluing the existing cameras and some batteries into a service compartment); especially since they fit perfectly on the Agena uppers (which is what they, and the KH-5 ARGON and KH-6 LANYARD, were built on). Only other NRO satellite I'd ask about would be the KH-9 HEXAGON; the big Titan III launched beasts. As for a use for the HEXAGON satellites, since they were geared for broader views than the GAMBIT or CORONA, and later on included a dedicated mapping camera bolted to the nose of the satellite, they'd do excellently as a resource scanner and of course SCANsat (SCANsat can also be added to the GAMBIT and CORONA as well). Plus, since the MOL (also called KH-10 DORIAN to the NRO) is being implemented it would be awesome to have the rest of the NRO's film satellite line up (less the ARGON and LANYARD).
  5. @Lack The ASET avionics props do have loads of very lovely analogue flight instruments. I remember there was a module manager patch before that let you have a steady "upgrade" path from all analogue instruments to modern glass cockpit with the standard Mk. 1 in career mode. But I think that died with KerbalStuff (and the revamp of the Mk. 1). But yeah, RPM glass cockpit might not be good for some of them ("He-111 with satnav? Now this will have an impact on the war effort!"). I know you don't take direct requests for parts, but I'd like to ask if you'd think about giving us the cockpit+nose of the beautiful Avro Lancaster (B Mk X; since that's the model of the one I can go take photographs of; VR-A is a sexy plane, and boy is it amazing to see her fly...)? Since we already have the wonderful He-111 cockpit (I swear I'm trying to glue that and the Otter cockpit on everything...; 'cause who doesn't wany an He-111 in space?), and the Merlins to power the thing (and the Mk3 cargobays to deliver all of the ordnance science). But it might be a bit redundant what with having the MRBL-8 for our Mk3 strategic bomber science delivery vehicle purposes.
  6. I just got back into playing KSP, and decided to try out SXT. Well, now it's become a permanent feature of my KSP install. Absolutely wonderful modelling and delightful set of parts. I'm in love with the He-111 cockpit, and the DHC-3 Otter cockpit as well. I'm just curious, by any chance would it be possible to give the cockpits RPM internals? Especially those wonderful avionics from the ASET Avionics pack, those would take these already amazing cockpits "up to eleven".
  7. Sorry to be a bother, I think I may have missed this information. But I'm trying to see about adding the transmitter function to another part. Namely the lovely TRANSIT 2A satellite model made by raidernick (since it a recreation of a satellite used in the old US Navy TRANSIT/NAVSAT network). And I'm not quite clear on how to add the transmitter function to the part. Any help would greatly be appreciated.
  8. (Image trimmed for the sake of space savings.) I'm finding I'm using the HGR Soyuz-alike quite a lot. I used to almost always use the Mark 1-2 with the SDHI Service Module, but yeah now I've just kind of migrated to the Soy-Juice. Though instead of an R-7 I use a FASA derived Titan IIIE. Mostly because the Mark 1-2 I've just used so much, and also because the IVA in the Soy-Juice is lovely. That texture work looks beautiful, and the umbilical is just superb. I'll second the request for the Apollo D2-alike orbital module. Having just discovered the D2 I find it quite neat, and while I think Beale's work is lovely it's just too small. I'll also poke my head in again and say a TKS-alike would be grand. (I know one can be built out of other parts, but one unified look would be much nicer.) There is one weird thing I have found involving RealChutes. The recent update to HGR with the RealChutes config ended up casuing a second RealChutes module to be put into the stack chute. The result was much weirdness.
  9. As an idea, perhaps, would be to make use of the XT Landertron plugin to turn the LES rockets into landing rockets. From my brief experiments and a quick little module manager patch, the LES rockets seem to work well using the Landertron plugin. MODULE { name = Landertron heightmultiplier = 1.25 offset = 1.0 endheight = 0.1 endspeed = 0.5 boom = false mode = 0 electricrate = 0.1 } }@PART[TaurusHCV] { Of course, the asymmetric thrust does result in the pod torquing over (and then thrusting sideways and eventually into the ground) if you are coming down way too fast (which tends to result in copious amounts of exploding). At less intense speeds, if you have the Landertron fire too high you will torque slightly, and depending on how badly the torquing is, you might end up with an upside-down (but intact) pod.
  10. Oh I must have missed it. Any chance you could provide a link to the forum post? I'd go looking through the thread but... Seventy-two pages is quite a lot of posts.
  11. I've been playing around with HGR, and avidly following the development for about a month now, all I can say is: This is glorious! I'd share some screenshots, of some of the stuff I've done, but I run enough mods I have KSP running at low texture quality (and I'm pretty sure no one wants to see screenshots taken with a potato). One thing I would love to see is a nice stock-alike rendition of the TKS+VA spacecraft, and the Salyut stations. I know, of course, about Kosmos but I find the visual style clashes with a lot of things. I would try my own hand at making a stock-alike versions of those craft but... well suffice it to say previous attempts resulted in what could best be described as "I accidentally a Lovecraftian horror." In any case, keep up the excellent work, this is an awesome addition to the game.
  12. Only problem I found other then the small graphics flibble on scene change is that one can't put maximum persistent debris up to unlimited without the game imploding. Also, I realized I might need to acquire more RAM now that KSP is happily thrumming along at ~6 GB of working set.
  13. REQUEST Thiokol TU-122 (M-55) solid fuel rocket. Yes, it is the first stage of the Minuteman I, but the proposed Saturn II/INT-19 was to use up to twelve of them as SRBs on its (S-II) first stage. Since I am going to doubt anyone wants a Minuteman first stage, I'll also put a vote twoards another request, I will pitch in with "I'd like to see the Centaur." Also, why is everyone continually asking for Skylab, when Denny is (going to be) doing Skylab?
  14. If I recall correctly, I believe Frizzank isn't taking any kind of requests. Also to make a Saturn C-2 you would also need an S-I (not S-IC) stage with adapter plate. You could always just "cheat" and use a single F-1 in place of the eight H-1 engines. That only leaves the S-IV stage with its six RL-10s, which is a little less than half the thrust of the S-IVB. So just use an S-IVB and thrust limit the engine. For the fourth Centaur stage... just use the current Transtage.
  15. Having had to take a break from KSP due to university coursework, I am so amazingly happy to come back to find FASA in such an impressive stage of development. The Saturn V is amazing, and I've had quite a bit of fun playing with the parts to create some of the alternate variations on the Saturn family. I mocked up the Saturn II/INT-19 configuration (using KW Rocketry for the SRBs), and it flies beautifully. I'd provide screenshots, but I'm a lazy git. Anyway, I love how FASA is progressing. Though the fact the Gemini reaction wheels are monoprop powered really threw me for a loop.
  16. I've read through the entire thread up to now, and there is one pressing question I do have to ask before contributing. Which English is the one being used? I'm Canadian, so I use the Canadian spellings and idioms (e.g. "colour", "neighbour", "centre", "realise", "travelled", "controllable", "going to college" is not the same as "going to university", my final exams were supervised by an "invigilator" not a "proctor", metric is the preferred measurement system...), as opposed to the American, or British spellings (yes, Canadian English spellings are much like the British ones, but some of them are close to the American ones; e.g. we use "tire" and "gasoline" instead of "tyre" and "petrol", but use "cheque" instead of "check"). Canadian spelling seems to get everyone confused, and melts the faces off of both British and American proofreaders. I ask as mixing the various styles of English can result in some odd dissonances if you have one message pop up in American spelling, and another show up in British spelling.
  17. A very fun read so far. I quite enjoy this. It's too bad you started before FASA updated to the point of having an actual Mercury capsule, and an actual Atlas. I noticed in "Aurora Borealis" it looks like you flew the Atlas wrong, in that the Atlas didn't keep all three of it's engines; it dropped them after a certain point in flight. (In 0.23 I tend to get away with dropping the boosters once the Atlas is around >500 m/s.) Will you be following the path of the actual space race, now that BobCat has put out an entire N1-L3? Or will you decide on who wins by luck of the draw, or some other method? If you're interested in mod suggestions; the Near Future Propulsion Pack has an excellent nuclear reactor (the M-EXP) which would do well if you wanted to recreate some the experimental SNAP-10A nuclear reactor satellite made by the US, or the Soviet RORSAT nuclear reactor powered surveillance satellites. The rest of the parts in the pack aren't altogether useful for recreating the early space race. When it comes time for Apollo, you might want to consider making use of nothke's 6S Service Compartment Tubes to make the CSM look less Kerbal and more NASA. Another suggestion, from the world of "not implemented in real life (thankfully), but drawn on paper, and made in KSP" is everyone's favourite environment destroyer and the most Kerbal of propulsion systems, the Orion Nuclear Pulse Propulsion Rocket. Cheers, and keep up the excellent work!
  18. I have to say, I'm in love with this pack. Mercury and Gemini were neat and the Atlas is wonderful. By any chance, would you be willing to include the NRO's very neat spy satellites in FASA? That is satellites like the KH-7 GAMBIT and KH-9 HEXAGON. An image from thespacereview.com showing the family of KEYHOLE spy sats: The KH-9 and KH-7 are the ones I find most interesting. Although the KH-9 is a bit of an odd shape. Again, photo from thespacereview.com: Plus, including the KH series spy satellites does match up with including the KH-10 DORIAN; also known as the MOL. The only real problem with the KH series spy satellites is that the KH-1 through KH-6 were launched on Thor-Agena rockets, necessitating the creation of the Thor first stage. KH-7 and KH-8 used the Atlas-Agena while the KH-9 used the Titan IIID. Keep up the wonderful/excellent/awesome work!
  19. There are a few videos, I think. There are also videos from the rather... annoying... people who claim the moon landing was a hoax, and use their total non-comprehension of the technologies involved to say the AGC never worked. (It did work, quite well. And even if they don't believe it flew a man to the moon, they can't say it didn't work since the AGC was also used as a fly-by-wire computer in a US military test air plane.) Fun fact, the IBM System/360 actually supports both ASCII and EBCDIC. The bit in the PSW which controlled ASCII/EBCDIC mode would, in the System/370 and later, end up becoming the extended PSW mode bit (you trade ASCII mode for 31-bit memory addressing; I think that's a good trade). The '360 did a lot of nice things. Count-Key-Data DASD devices were, and are, very interesting. Plus, you just gotta love how a big System/360 setup looks (yes, their blinkenlights are a part of it, but it's amazing when you realize "I'm not sitting AT the computer, I'm sitting IN the computer!" Since you mentioned being a mainframe programmer, there's actually a software package out there that'll let you emulate any IBM mainframe from System/370 on upwards (yep, even a z/10). OS wise, OS/360 is free, so is the 3.8J version of MVS, and there's a few distributions of VM/370 as well. The more modern OSes, and the program products (CICS, IMS, ISPF, DB2, the language compilers from MVS and upwards except the assembler, et cetera) are not available... well except by special means (you can run z\OS and z\VM if you can get the CDs, though technically you shouldn't because they are tied to hardware and blah...). Ah yes, analog computers. They're quite neat, even if somewhat forgotten. I didn't really count them in my post as I was referring to digital computers. I don't know if you'll count it as an analog computer, but my physics professor -- I'm still a university student in his 20s -- still makes use of a slide rule, in class, instead of the pocket calculators everyone else has. (I use a TI-89 Titanium as my calculator... Mmm do I love its CAS (CAS = Computer Algebra System).) But yes, if you include analog computers, and slide rules, you'd probably see an analog computer or two in the backroom with the engineers, slide rules for all of the engineers, and I'm going to guess that there was at least two slide rules in the Apollo spacecraft themselves.
  20. The flight control computers for the Apollo and Gemini spacecraft are very "neat" machines. While true that the Gemini capsule was more advanced than the Apollo capsule for several reasons, least of which was actually asking the astronauts what they think the capsule should have, its flight computer was not as advanced as the main flight computers of the Apollo capsules. Of minor interest, the Apollo missions -- that carried a LEM -- actually had four flight computers. Two Apollo Guidance Computers (the AGC), one Abort Guidance System (AGS), and one Launch Vehicle Digital Computer (LVDC). One AGC was located in the CM, the second AGC and the AGS were located in the LEM; the two AGC's had different sets of program in their ROM, of course. The LVDC is often ignored, but it was the computer that actually flew the Saturn V (and Saturn IB) rockets. The AGS and LVDC were quite similar to the Gemini OBC actually. While many people assert that the Apollo missions were done with less computing power than a modern calculator... I would like to state, categorically, that saying that is very wrong. While true that the spacecraft does have less computing power than a graphing calculator (take my TI-89 Titanium for instance; uses a Moto 68K processor, with 256KB of RAM and 4MB of flash memory for firmware), when you add the ground computers to the mix, you'd probably get away with something like an IBM 5150 (the PC) or an IBM 5160 (the PC/XT), without any of the reliability. It's interesting comparing and contrasting the architecture's of NASA's Apollo and Gemini computers with the computers that were available at the time. At the time of the Apollo and Gemini programs in the 1960s, there were roughly two "types" of computer system one could get a hold of: large systems (large as in terms of size, and usually capabilities; please note also, "large" does not necessarily equal "mainframe"), and minicomputers (which means a computer which instead of taking up a room with all of its parts, can usually fit into one or more 19" equipment racks; minicomputers are not, and never will be, considered mainframes). Large systems were machines like the IBM 709x series (1959), Burroughs B5000 (1961), IBM System/360 (1964; the defining example of a mainframe, period), and Digital Equipment Corporation PDP-10 (1966). Minicomputers were machines like the Digital Equipment Corporation PDP-8 (1965), Varian Data Systems 620i (1966), Hewlett-Packard HP2100 (1966), MIT's Lincoln Labs LINC (1961; the design is public domain, most were built by DEC), and Honeywell DDP-516 (1966; used in 1969 as the central machine of the "Interface Message Processor", the first (internet) router). Note, the two lists of computers I made were machines either contemporaneous to the Apollo and Gemini programs, or were used in the Apollo and Gemini programs; NASA had several IBM 7094s, and eventually purchased IBM System/360 machines, NASA actually kept a 7094 up and running at least until the completion of Apollo 11, since not all of their software had been ported to their 360s. The AGC has an instruction set that is superficially similar to that of the DEC PDP-8, although in depth the instruction set architecture of the AGC is quite different, mostly in regards to memory addressing and I/O device interface. The PDP-8 has a 12-bit word length with 3-bit instruction field and 9-bit addressing field (1-bit direct/indirect reference flag, 1-bit page 0/current page reference flag, 7-bit page address) for the six memory reference instructions, the I/O instruction is 3-bit instruction, 6-bit device address, 3-bit device flags, and the last instruction is 12-bits of "microcoded" instruction; the AGC has a 16-bit word length, with 3-bit instruction field, and 12-bit addressing field (2-bit bank selection field, 10-bit bank address). For I/O the PDP-8 has a specific I/O instruction to make use of its input/output devices (and certain internal processor options); while the AGC on the other hand uses memory mapped I/O space, like the later DEC PDP-11 system, however the way the AGC works it does provide specific I/O instructions because the I/O channel memory area overlaps with the permanently resident writable core. The astute, assembler literate, programmer will notice I have yet to mention general registers for either the AGC or PDP-8 instruction sets. This is because they don't have them. Both machines are "accumulator machines" with one register to which functions are applied (the accumulator); that is an instruction which adds two values would start with the first value in the accumulator register, and then reference the memory location of the second value with the summed value being located in the accumulator at the end of it ("AD VALUE" on the AGC, "TAD VALUE" on the PDP-8, where AD and TAD are the instruction mnemonics, and VALUE is an assembler symbol referring to the address of the value). For those who do not know what the difference between a general register machine and an accumulator machine is, what follows is a code snippet of what it would take to multiply two numbers and store the high and low results, on a PDP-8 and a PDP-11. On a PDP-8 (accumulator based) machine the instructions would look like: [table=width: 480, class: grid] [tr] [td] CLA CLL /CLEAR AC AND LINK TAD VEL /LOAD AC WITH VELOCITY MQL /LOAD MQ WITH VELOCITY, CLEAR AC MUY /MULTIPLY VELOCITY BY TIME TIM, (0 /TIME VALUE, DEFINED AS ZERO, MODIFIED DURING EXEC DCA HDIST /DEPOSIT HIGH-ORDER BITS OF DISTANCE INTO MEMORY CLA MQA /PUT LOW-ORDER BITS OF MULTIPLICATION INTO AC DCA LDIST /DEPOSIT LOW-ORDER BITS OF DISTANCE INTO MEMORY Of note; the PDP-8 multiply instruction (MUY) works by multiplying the MQ register by the value in the next memory word after it; resuming program instruction the word after that. So it would look like: MUY --> {Data word... TIM in this case.} --> DCA... when disassembled.[/td] [td] MOV #VEL,R0 ;Put the velocity into register 0 MUL R0,#TIM ;Multiply the velocity (in R0) by the time MOV R0,#LDIST ;Move low-order bits of result to low-order value of distance MOV R1,#HDIST ;Move high-order bits of result to high-order value of distance[/td] [/tr] [/table] The AGC, OBC, AGS, and LVDC were programmed similar to the PDP-8 example on the left, while the general register concept on the right only applied to the NASA's System/360 machines, the IBM 7094s that NASA had were accumulator machines. I mentioned earlier that the AGS, OBC, and LVDC were accumulator machines, they had their own programming paradigms. The AGS was an 18-bit machine whose programming method was very close to that of a PDP-8. The OBC conversely, had a much stranger architectural paradigm where each word in memory was 39-bits, broken into three 13-bit "syllables." During flight syllables 0 and 1 were writable, while syllable 2 was read only, with the result that never changing code would be stored in syllable 2, while data and loadable code would get put in syllables 0 and 1. Instruction format was 4-bit opcode followed by 9-bit operand field which depended on the instruction; the normal OBC data format was 26-bits wide, so one piece of data and one instruction could be stored in one 39-bit memory word. The LVDC was similar to the OBC in its architectural paradigm, with 28-bit wide memory words holding 14-bit "syllables" (13-bits of each being used for information, the last being a parity bit); instructions were 13-bits wide with a 4-bit instruction field and 9-bit operand; data was a full 26-bits wide. Both LVDC and OBC had paged memory like the PDP-8, with those instructions whose operands referred to memory locations having one bit dedicated to selecting whether the eight-bit address was on the current memory page, or on the "residual" (always accessible) page. Addenda: One set of computer architectures which the Gemini OBC and the LVDC were quite similar to were the Autonetics D-17B, D-37C and RECOMP computers. The D-17 and D-37 were -- and in the case of the D-37, I believe it still is -- used as guidance computers for Minuteman ICBMs. The RECOMP and RECOMP II were deskside computer systems which had a similar architecture. Something which some of you may find mildly comical, at the end-of-life of the D-17B Minuteman I computers, instead of scrapping them, the military put them up for surplus. Which resulted in several universities getting their hands on one and putting them to use as slightly odd laboratory computer systems. I could probably ramble on for longer, but I don't think one would find the nitty-gritty details of computer architecture to be all that interesting.
  21. An interesting launch pad I must say; it's very similar to an Atlas F or Titan II silo. In terms of missile guidance, well there is already information on how the guidance equations used by missiles like the Minuteman; it's called Q-guidance. And there's a very good article on it, on Wikipedia (there's also a good paper on speedily calculating the Q-matrix needed for Q-guidance to work). The older Atlas and Titan missiles used delta-guidance, though the Atlas and Titan II may have had their guidance programs reworked later in their operational lives. Interestingly enough, Q-guidance can also be used as "proper" rocket guidance, i.e. for orbital rockets, not just for suborbital target interception. WARNING! Both of the following require knowledge of calculus to be understandable/useful. WARNING! A good overview of Q-guidance can be found on Wikipedia: Q-Guidance And here one can find a way to calculate the Q-matrix: An Efficient Algorithm for Calculating the Q Guidance Matrix (PDF 1.03 MB) Now, just because I can, I've attached an Imgur gallery of various missile silo diagrams and a photo. An interesting exercise would be to write up a guidance plugin whose GUI was the same as the Atlas F Re-Entry Vehicle Pre-Launch Guidance Control.
  22. Actually the MBM is different from a PBM by a few bytes, and an MBM is 20 bytes larger then RAW format. TGA uses lossy compression, I believe so a TGA is a bad idea to use (and an uncompressed TGA Is just as an MBM. PNGs don't have lossy compression but are vastly compressed. However, all of this is rendered moot as once loaded all textures become a DDS in your graphics card. So memory probably won't be saved at all (unless you decided to reduce your quality and use lossy TGAs. Though, disk space wise PNG is nicest (and once the Unity people fix their <REDACTED>, will load faster then anything).
  23. Gotta love how the modules are turning out and the IVAs look like they'll be quite interesting. Any chance you might throw in a few Easter Eggs into the IVA interiors? I.e. a silly example like the 2001: A Space Odyssey space toilet instructions. For the IACBMs would it be possible to have them equipped with APAS-89 style guide fins, so the station modules are forced into one orientation (well, one of three, either 60, 180 or 240 degrees alignment compared to the other node).
  24. Hello! I have a question; is it possible to replace the texture on the navball? Not the IVA navball (that was easy enough to replace...); but is it possible to replace the "main" UI navball texture? Thanks in advance to any responses!
  25. I'm not sure if there is a software license that prohibits commercial use; but there is a license which does provide a massive disincentive to commercial use. The old four-clause BSD license; the one with the advertising clause. The advertising clause basically says that any derivative software must include an acknowledgement of the original author's work in any advertising materials. Which most profit seeking ventures would not be too happy doing ("Why the hell should we give someone free advertising?") Then again that also works with the GPL since the GPL does have the requirements that derivative software must be GPL'd, and must have the the source code available. Which most commercial ventures go "NOPE" to. You can also copyright your work, all rights reserved, and require that derivative works be cleared with you. But that chases away many people. Creative Commons has a non-commercial clause; but CC isn't for software.
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