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Unstable ships, tehe There was this one from a distant past, I call it 'The Somewhat Insane Space Wheel' Thread: http://forum.kerbalspaceprogram.com/threads/22251-Showcase-SPACE-STATIONS!-Post-your-pictures-here/page49?p=531483&viewfull=1#post531483 One of the flights was so memorable I turned it into a short story I've been playing with SSTOs recently, one is perfect for this thread. I'll post some pics of 'Flappy Bird' later

Biomes. Biomes biomes biomes. Kerbal Space Program is a game that's fundamentally about having fun with space exploration. Exploration means finding things and biomes give every one something to find on every planet. I do admit however that the current implementation requires more detail, more detail to discover and more varied ways of discovering - long term planetary base or rover mission etc. I did momentarily toy with the idea of expanded aerodynamics as I'm sure there are good lessons to learn but there is already a mod for that and relatively few planets have an atmosphere, so on the whole I think official SQUAD work on this should take a back seat.

I would split this test into three segments: Technological, medical, social. The easy one to talk about is technological and I'd measure this by the ability to produce and/or harness energy, as the various methods and levels of energy provision are mastered all other technological progress follows. There is a scale devised by someone whose name I cannot recall right now: The lowest level, level 3 on the scale is harnessing all the solar power that falls on the planet, level 2 is harnessing all the solar power within the planetary system and level 1 is harnessing all the energy in the system's galaxy. Or current technology puts us somewhere on the very lowest limits of level 3. Medical: The treatment of disease and infection without resorting to butchery would be a worthwhile measure. Our knowledge of genetics appears to be making good progress. Social: To say we are still stuck in the bronze age is perhaps being overly generous. We worship the supernatural, criticise the pursuit of the rational and place totally arbitrary and variable value on life - even, some would say especially, within the scope of our own species. There is so much work that needs to done and oh, so much resistance to change. For those wondering about the big 'E' word, economics is, mostly a social issue and just one of the big problems which needs addressing for civilisation to progress.

It picks up pace and entertainment value in the second 45 minutes, even the final 25 minutes Q&A has some squirming uncomfortably in their seats. Some of the highlights: Elon Musk: High on credit but low on credibility? Should serious businessmen be allowed to speak outside the board room? Comments that sound egregious when removed from the sycophantic cocoon. Are we so invested in our economic system that we find it impossible to even imagine an alternative? America: Motivations for space exploration. How a fall of 1mm was declared 'death defying' Where does all the money go? Hint: It doesn't vanish into space. Do you have an asteroid containing $16trillion of platinum? How to make the most of your investment.

History, humour, speculation, a smattering of politics (sorry mods, it is just a smattering), economics, numbers, some tough questions and a couple of incidents of near slander. It may be a little slow to get going but a seriously good watch. Enjoy:

Robots could eventually make many of our current economic dogmas obsolete by increasing efficiency and shifting the means of production allowing greater wealth and free time to be shared amongst the majority but it is more likely they will serve to increase the poverty gap allowing those in control to further strengthen their positions. I'm not trying to pick on you here Red Iron Crown, but your post provided a most suitable base for discussion Yet our current financial systems strive to create an illusion that defies this reality. Fiat currency is effectively infinite, abuse of this system does of course lead to rampant inflation, but that's okay. Under our economic system those closest to the source of wealth are effectively insulated from the time dependant effect of inflation while the true price is paid by those furthest removed from the source and, lets be honest, who really cares about them? No one, at least no one worth talking about. Revolt or revolution may be a risk but in the short term this can be avoided through welfare and in the long term, given a sufficiently large shift in the balance of power, other more radical means of control can be employed. And all that was required in exchange was the dedication of x years of their life to the whims of their pay masters. The system is as old as written history, only the working conditions and benefits have changed. If there were more people trying to find an alternative and fewer trying to invent new ways to make a fast buck off toxic derivatives we could perhaps make some progress. While we accept the illusion presented by our fiscal policies and are content to exchange the hours of our finite days for shiny beads there is little incentive for change. Because there is little profit to made from equality. Meanwhile, keeping the peons hungry, fighting amongst themselves and arguing over trivia limits the chance of any organised challenge or threat to the status quo.

Post updated. I must have been typing while you posted and not noticed. Good luck.

Yes! (10 char) tehe Yes indeed, about 20 minutes ago this same problem with the small antenna, I'm still investigating. I've just reached the point of restarting the game and switching to the Kerbal only to find him frozen in the classic 'T' position, just grabbed the latest KSP download* and about to try again. Edit: The update did allow my kerbal to move again but did nothing for the missing KAS right-click menu problem: Grab the part, close the menu, right click will never show the KAS menu again. I tried the enter/leave ship trick, it didn't help but did improve my eva skills Finally, I went back to a save, eva'd, grabbed the part, DID NOT close the KAS menu and went on to attach the part. So, my fix for now is grab but do not close the menu. *I had the original 0.23.5.459 release, SQUAD has since released an update 0.23.5.464 which I believe fixes some frozen kerbal problems.

Strange occurrence, possible bug: I'd been hopping around several different ships, all with some IS parts and B9 and some IR etc, for quite some time. Switching to my 176 day old Eve probe which had recently watched enter Eve SOI I found it unresponsive to throttle control, one stage had a chemical engine the other stage a chemical and four ions powered off the small 'safe ' fusion reactor + generator - no mix active/inactive engines restored the throttle, even after some forced staging. Interaction with the science parts was fine, it was just the throttle that wouldn't move. Poking around: MechJeb DeltaV Status was showing NaN for all TWR values. UF4 was showing NaN in the resources pop-down, iirc actinides was also showing NaN. I used Alt-Enter + close window to exit so avoiding any writing to the persistence file. Made a copy of persistent.sfs. Restarted the game, returned to the ship... same problem. Quit the game. Taking persistent.sfs into an editor to see if the UF4 NaN etc were saved values or calculated I found MODULE { name = FNNuclearReactor isEnabled = True upgradedToV08 = True uranium_fuel = True upgradedToV10 = True IsEnabled = True isupgraded = False breedtritium = False last_active_time = 1.54568E+07 ongoing_consumption_rate = 0 reactorInit = False startDisabled = False ... RESOURCE { name = UF4 amount = NaN maxAmount = 22.5 flowState = True isTweakable = True hideFlow = False flowMode = Both } RESOURCE { name = ThF4 amount = 0 maxAmount = 22.5 flowState = True isTweakable = True hideFlow = False flowMode = Both } RESOURCE { name = Actinides amount = NaN maxAmount = 22.5 flowState = True isTweakable = False hideFlow = False flowMode = Both } } I changed UF4->amount to 22 and Actinides->amount to 0. Restarted the game and everything was back to normal and working fine. I had done way to much jumping around to pin down any cause, but the NaNs got there somehow and appeared to break the throttle control for the entire vessel.

A few of thoughts come to mind. If the rocket or payload are designed to be recovered then forget the xbee and just log the data + time stamp to flash. Quite a saving in power, cost and weight. How much data is there to be logged? One set of pressure, humidity, and temperature readings per second? 10 per second? 100? If your data rate is small wrt the available bandwidth you can either knock yourself out on error correction and hopefully increase the effective range, or investigate lower bandwidth greater range transmitter options. If the size of the required antenna is a problem on the way up, can you log the data, detach the payload with a small parachute and transmit the data on the way back down? Maybe even integrate the antenna into the parachute? There are so many possible microcontroller options. Here are two ready made to get you started: Easy option: Arduino Pro Mini 328 https://www.sparkfun.com/products/11113 More powerful: PIC32-PINGUINO https://www.olimex.com/Products/Duino/PIC32/PIC32-PINGUINO-MICRO/open-source-hardware Finally, the smallest Arduino I'm aware of http://www.frantone.com/CuteUino/cuteuino.html because Arduino does make life, or at least software, easy

Do what you must, I can maintain the ancient tribal robot part dance for a few more days

Dev Build #221: Docking. I've had one attempt get stuck. I just switched the autopilot off, gave the craft a nudge and switched AP back on and it fixed itself. I mention this because another 15 or more docking operations completed successfully. Standard clampo-trons but always using a single pair of B9 5 port thrusters. What I have noticed with docking: Excessive safe distance. Initial movement to starting location is not optimal, sometimes the craft will backtrack 60m or more before moving around the opposite side of the target craft and eventually coming almost full circle to complet the operation. A few times I've seen a craft undock and start spinning as it somehow inherits a SASS kill rotation setting. On occasion a craft has undocked and RCS has immediately activated and stuck on, Auto Dock, while no longer active was displaying as green in the menu, clicking it off allowed RCS to be manually switched off. I was using 136 and 144 with KSP 0.23.0 and while perhaps less cautious I feel docking was quicker and the path more predictable. All in all, I wouldn't be doing what I'm doing without this so, many thanks for the continued work

The following also involves KAS so feel free to ignore any or indeed all... This is the set-up, KSC is 3km to the right. Lower right a small 8 Th4 tank refueller. Upper right 3 x science modules, 1.25m UF4 power, 2 x 3.5m antimatter storage. Left 8 x 3.5 Th4 power + 2.5m In-line Refinery + cooling + unused relay module. The 3 craft are connected by KAS and this appears to be root of the problem - maybe two problems. My findings, the 3.5m reactors are active throughout: 1) If the 2.5m refinery is omitted from the build the science modules cannot reprocess the nuclear fuel, iirc reprocessing mode is entered but remaining time stays at 0 and no reprocessing occurs. 2) When the science craft is disconnected the 2.5m refinery responds to the first reprocess click with an 'Unable to Reprocess' message, clicking reprocess a second time commences the reprocessing. 3) This is the bug I mentioned, the rest of this list is really follow up information: Science craft connected, 2.5m refinery included in the build ie, as shown above, clicking reprocess on either one of the science modules or the refinery starts the process and initially displays a reasonable time to completion, a second or two later the completion time jumps into the 1,000s of hours and the reprocessing of actinides appears to stop. At this point the only fix is a reload of an earlier save, no manner of ons and offs and reconnecting of pipes or even restarting the game will remedy the situation. 4) If the science modules are set to generate antimatter, each demanding 5GW, and the KAS pipe is disconnected, examining the science modules shows that they still think they are connected. 3 x 5GW demand even though, iirc, the management display shows only the power from the 1.25m power unit to be available. So, KAS and vessel configuration/reconfiguration?

I'm still planning my solar power relays but here's some traditional nuclear action... Almost totally black from most angles and big enough to throw perspective illusions it's a pain to image. The bottom half is just extra cooling, 2 halves, two launches using the new KSP engines With 56 x 2 of the big radiators I can say with confidence that the major radiator lag has much improved in version 0.11, I can also say with confidence that the radiators and reactors still present a large cpu overhead. Quick question: are you supposed to be able to reprocess the actinides in Th4 reactors while the reactor is running? If yes, I have a strange bug to report, if no then I would imagine a race who have mastered warp technology would have devised some way of dealing with the problem

Good luck and best wishes.

Many thanks Just had a quick play around: 2.3.0 & 2.3.5 : The antimatter transfer across docking ports, when the vessel is not focused quirk is still there, but I suspect this is a SQUAD issue. 2.3.0 & 2.3.5 (?): The tool button is nice, but only half working: Click it once to bring up the window - works, click it again and I'd expect the window to close - it doesn't 2.3.0 My fledging power network was delivering 9GW to the launch pad, 4GW from space + 5GW from near the pad. The contribution from near the pad now appears to be 1GW, I'm investigating. The delay when placing radiators appears reduced in 2.3.0 and very much reduced in 2.3.5. The difference between the two versions makes me suspect I have something strange gong on.

Sounds great, unfortunately I don't even have a probe at Jool yet never mind an antimatter station and warp drive technology. The idea was to start collecting the magic particles while all the other exploration was in progress. Basically... Image goes wibbly wobbly signifying the reverse passage of time... ...Image goes wobbly wibbly signifying the forward passage of time... And that is why my Kerbals started antimatter research before the first probe reached Duna never mind Jool.

Favourite just now is my 970km Kerbin orbit Antimatter collector... It took several generations to circumvent some Infernal Robotics problems and Interstellar quirks, but I got there. Each 6 arm section, the above shows two sections, weighs in at over 325t housing 72 collectors and a large tank. Single, 4.7kt, 793 parts, launch to orbit of course Shown here with half of the cargo bays open... If you are in any doubt, yes, that is a BIG rocket! With an earlier version I sent the arms up in batches of three and had great fun watching MechJeb performing simultaneous docking operations, sadly Antimatter doesn't cross docking ports unless the vessel is focused. Still, this monster makes me smile Why didn't I go for beamed power? Antimatter took priority and I need some more science before I reach that node.

OpenOffice is free and has a database application called Base. Apache OpenOffice, LibreOffice, NeoOffice etc are variations of OpenOffice and probably have similar functionality.

I'll try to think of some questions. I think answers could be interesting too: 1. What is your purpose in visiting Earth? Purpose? You were the next planet on the list. See? Earth, there it is near the bottom. 2. Why have you chosen me to converse with you? We've examined members of all the intelligent life forms, as for conversation, can you tell us what it is like to be a member of the most deliberately cruel and destructive species on your planet? 3. What do you plan to do with the rest of humanity? We will do nothing, just return our reports. Our military will probably find you of no concern but our medical staff may well decide to cure your planet of harmful parasites.

In career mode, I've not tested sandbox. This lag in the editor also happens when placing the large 'H' series B9 cargo bays, and possibly others. I put this down to the B9 bay open animation but thinking about it some more, the cargo bays act as Interstellar radiators so this could be part of the same problem.

She said I had to choose between the neurotoxin gas or making this thread. enjoy

Excellent! Feel free to post a link to the .craft file if you wish.

Nice looking plane A CoM Cubic should certainly move the rail and any attached wings, so it should work.

I use this compressor http://forum.kerbalspaceprogram.com/threads/59005-0-23-Release-2-15-Active-Texture-Management-Save-RAM-without-reduction-packs! The author rbray89 and many of the posters to the thread are more than willing and able to help out with any problems.