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Yay. ty so much. It's bed time here so it will be a while before the real fun begins. I did have time for a very quick play... It's a bit sneaky of you not to mention the new Rail Gun!!

I can't remember the last time I stayed up late waiting for Santa Clause to deliver the presents. Wait. Yes I can! It's right now -------------------------------- The solution used in the demo vid is so simple I'm almost embarrassed to reveal it, though the great contributors to that simplicity are the routines and magic provided by SQUAD. Implementing the solution from scratch would provide me a lifetime supply of nightmares. I certainly considered the Moar engines solution, a kind of staggered array with keyed enables and disables. Possibly effective but not weight efficient. The fuel balancer is great if you have sufficient mass of fuel to balance the load and if you have somewhere to send it. The craft I'm playing with does not necessarily have either and to further muddy the puddle, is not balanced to start with. Ha! Love it! In our universe these quads work by varying the thrust of the motors. I guess for us it is the most simple solution. It's a shame you can't very the thrust of individual groups of engines in KSP. Except. You can. At least I can, I'm not aware of any existing mod which allows this?

<sigh> If it is what we have been doing for some thousand years then I would call it a continuation of our current and so far only plan, plan 'A'. Plan 'B' is the answer to the question: what do we do when there is nothing left to mine?

Interesting take on things. Animals are a renewable resource, their number can be increased in a short time frame. Horses and humans are of course animals so renewable, as are trees, wind and water. For most of our history we have lived off renewable resources with the occasional dispute over local reserves. The world wide industrial scale exploitation of non-renewable resources is a relatively recent phenomenon and the realisation that these resources are truly finite and that some may dry up within a human lifetime is an idea that didn't strike home until sometime in the past 50 or so years. So, no. Up until maybe 50 years ago we did not have a plan 'B' with respect to when these resources run out and there is no where left to get them from because no one considered such a situation could exist. There are no hundred plan 'B''s, there are only two. The first is to stop the exploitation and I'm fairly sure very few people consider this viable or desirable. The second is to find and exploit non-terrestrial reserves. Sure there are some who propose restrictive practices, export bans, trade deals and the invasion of other countries as solutions but all these practices do is perpetuate the current plan 'A'. While this can gain popularity and ensure a comfortable retirement for some it is at best a short term and selfish plan.

So, are you saying the reserves of all these materials are infinite? We need a plan 'B'. We need plan 'B' working before the resources start to run out - whenever that may be. Given the reserves are most certainly not infinite, when do you think we should start work on our plan 'B'?

Many thanks for the offer That would work if you had the extra mass available, rails front/back, left/right, top/bottom are possible. It's certainly worth considering as a supplement to variable CoT and maybe a preferred solution in our real world. The most efficient source of extra mass comes in the form of fuel tanks and this is where the problem could become tricky. In a static situation, one where you are not burning fuel, it's quite simple to manually balance the fuel load. The ship from the previous post http://forum.kerbalspaceprogram.com/showthread.php/37707-0-21-Magic-Smoke-Industries-Parts-Infernal-Robotics?p=576307&viewfull=1#post576307 has fuel tanks front and rear and a set of tanks you cannot see on the bottom to allow for static balancing when driving over the surface of a moon - keep the CoM low and balance the front and rear for level 'flight' between bumps. In a dynamic situation when you are burning fuel it's the same fuel that you are using for your counterweights. So you need to not only adjust the position of the counterweights but also come up with some plan as to which fuel tanks to empty first. If you want to enable time warp while running the engines you need to implement this counterweight+fuel balancing strategy in software which could become complicated. And for a general solution applicable to many different ship designs the complications multiply many times over (I'm guessing). The problem may become much more simple if, as you say, the counterweights consist of fixed mass items, though don't necessarily consider Kethane tanks as fixed mass. The ship above can run the centre engine and Kethane converter at the same time, effectively running off kethane.

It may be worth taking a quick look at this resources stock check produced by the BBC about a year ago. http://silvervigilante.com/bbcs-global-resources-stock-check-portrays-world-on-the-edge/ The information may be out of date, new reserves may have been discovered, new technologies may use different resources, but does this matter? If antimony is still used in batteries and drugs then 7 years, 8 years, 16 years makes no real difference as all these estimates mean 'real soon'. And indium, silver, copper... Our resources are finite and we are using them faster than ever. We need a plan B, and we need to implement it while the resources still exist. My nightmare scenario would be watching our very last drop of oil used in the production of a Lady Gaga CD.

Thank you, this is part of the idea though there will always be limitations. My first test design used big fuel tanks on the sides and I'm puzzling as to why it was always flipping out above a certain height... Doh! The rail is only so long, I was running out of travel. There are also caveats. At the moment to make an engine even close to x4 physics safe it must be mounted directly to the rail, using a cubic or any other structural part in-between allows the physics to twist the engine off centre - I do not think this can be fixed which is a shame as the only way to mount a stock engine to the rail is by 'surface attachment' for which iirc you need to use the Editor Extensions mod, it also looks odd as the engine appears half buried in the underlying fuel tank. So, not perfect and certainly not a panacea. Haha! Got ya. Guess I was confused by all those big engines.

I'll release it if I can get it fully working. At the moment it's single axis only and I've not tested any kind of part rotation, but this is all I need so, we'll see. I'm dreading any 3d transforms as I do not posses such occult knowledge, neither do I have sufficient virgin chickens to make the sacrifice to gain such knowledge. Lookign forward to your next release. Just now I use the Lock function and MoveUp/MoveDown, this limits the speed of reaction and also limits the resolution to how far the rail moves between fixedUpdate calls. I can certainly make use of the configurable speed option but I would love a "move by 'x'" function - I think My kind of VTOL, love it Landing with jets is very difficult due to their wind up and wind down times. Use rockets if you can. And if you can't use rockets then change things so you can use rockets Only advice I can think of for tail first landings is: Do not let the nose drop. Never. Ever. You don't need to keep it pointing upwards just keep it above the level of the tail as once it drops below the level of the tail it can be very difficult to get it back up. Only use the engines you need to use, these should be the tail engines and you should have sufficient thrust to kill your vertical speed. Only use the tail engines to kill your vertical speed. The Kerban atmosphere will take care of your horizontal speed. Once you get the hang of things you can start trying for precision landings. So, just let the ship fall tail first from the sky. Keep the nose up. Aim for vertical about 2km off the ground iirc. 290t with only 9 RCS units iirc... From http://forum.kerbalspaceprogram.com/showthread.php/33503-Show-off-your-B9-Designs!?p=508910&viewfull=1#post508910 The big benefit I have here is the length of the vessel. RCS is more effective when far away from the CoM. I can make a vid of that one landing if you think it will help. Meanwhile, here's a little 90t ship I was experimenting with a while back... Skip to around 2:50 for the start of the landing. I love these big ship tail first landings, they look so improbable but can be so graceful

Continuing on from my 101 uses for Adjustable Rails post http://forum.kerbalspaceprogram.com/showthread.php/37707-0-21-Magic-Smoke-Industries-Parts-Infernal-Robotics?p=576307&viewfull=1#post576307 Dynamic and automatic alignment of the CoT with the CoM, I have the first test code working. This is exactly what Scott Manley should have been using in his latest 'Rovers can make for an imbalanced load' video! Here's a short vid of the test flight The rocket is designed so the tanks on the left empty before the tanks on the right, this is of course a very bad idea. I have no idea what the little tanks in the middle are up to, they are there to help make the fuel route. The little rail keeps the engine aligned all the way to orbit. Speaking of the little engine, I wish I could remember where it came from, I used it to better see what was going on as I tried time and time again to find the correct CoM variable. All came good in the end

The problem appears to be related to inertia or shock pulse I guess I could call it. Add a little flex and the parts survive, even if your creation starts to look very strange. Okay. Time to play "Spot The 'Splosion" a game in which you take a copy of the following images and mark the parts which you think will explode at launch! Great Fun! Big Prizes! <Since humour is very hard to judge on the internet I'll point out the above as a joke. Though it is a game you could still play I will give the answers after the pictures> Image 1. Using 3.5MN charges http://www.i2net.me.uk/files/Games/KerbalSP/Ships/OrionBased/Orion+RCS5a.craft Image 2 Using 3.5MN charges http://www.i2net.me.uk/files/Games/KerbalSP/Ships/OrionBased/Orion+RCS5b.craft Spoiler (Highlight to read): Image 1: The only tank to explode is the top most RCS tank. Add a vertical 'Modular Girder Segment XL' between the two 'Rockomax Brand Adapters' and all parts survive Image 2: Normally all parts survive, though one of the large grey tanks may occasionally go bang. End Spoiler.

This is exactly the point I went on to try and get people to think about. We don't know. 0.1G or 0.5G, we have no idea of the mid to long term effects. Twelve months, twenty four months, again we have no idea. The safe answer is close to 1G, any other answer lies somewhere between possible and public relations nightmare. Feel free to pick any reason from the following: 1) Attempt at diplomacy. 2) The Terry Pratchett principle of counting: One, two, three, many. 3) Standard English: One, a couple, a few (more than two but less than a lot), a lot.

It does indeed say 1g and there is indeed no rule against a smaller structure. The big questions are: What is the scientifically proven minimum g required to negate all harmful effects? At what point do the the Coriolis forces become a problem?

not really hundreds of meters Well, split the difference, a couple of hundred maybe ? http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Artificial_gravity

My contribution to 101 uses for rails With only 3.8k of fuel and the capacity to carry around 58k of Kethane the centre of mass of this ship, which is already asymmetrical, changes quite considerably between near empty and fully loaded. The solution? Vary the centre of thrust by mounting the engines on rails The most critical part of the build turned out to be ensuring the engines don't wobble under thrust, I now have it x4 physical warp stable (1). Varying the engine height is a manual process based on guess work, but it works very well. If only there were some way to have a part on the rail that dynamically sensed the CoM and the rail adjusted accordingly... I may look into this. The rails themselves are quite beautiful, the detail of the dove tails - love it (1) Have you seen what x4 does to engine thrust and the effect this has on the vessel? Ouch!

Depends on the type of craft. When I was playing with big jet powered lifters they were somewhere between 1000 and 3000 parts - over an hour real time to orbit - weighing in somewhere under 1000t. Slightly older and wiser, 300 parts makes for a mostly lag free experience, if that's putting 6 jumbos into orbit you're talking 400 to 500t, a big space wheel around 800t or nearer 1000t at launch or the inter moon lander I'm playing with around 70t (?) empty and 160t fully fueled.

Glad you like it. My first ever play with Photoshop. In my day it would only be possible with snopake, scissors and a photocopier lol.

From the latest NASA press release... Looks like they've been planning this for quite some time

My head appears able to cope with Shift for select outside of the game and Alt to select tanks for fuel transfer. What my head cannot grasp is Shift within the game to zoom the camera in the VAB and Shift during flight or after landing to operate the throttle. In the worst case I'd just finished connecting up the units of my little Mun base using KAS, swinging the camera around to admire my work and... you guessed it, zooming in for a closer look. Engines roar, cables strain to take up the load and the whole base sets off to explore the adjacent crater. Explosions were pretty at least.

The crafts, the planning, the video presentation are all stunning. Makes me glad I didn't push the stop button 10 seconds in. The music! It's not bad by any stretch of the imagination but I like to hear the clicks and clunks and whooshes of the game and the music is just way too loud.

Looking at this again a couple of questions come to mind... On the runway, why are you supporting the craft by the centre section? Trying to support from the centre section each outer section is secured by a single radial arm, if you were to support the outer section the inner would be secured by all 16 radial arms. A massive difference in strength and rigidity. If most of the mass is at the centre can you redistribute some of it to the outer sections? Where are the launch engines to go? Engines on the outer ring have the advantage mentioned above and should be capable of straight lifting you out of the worst of the atmosphere, say 36km. There is also space for a lot of them, thankfully all perfectly balanced, another reason to move as much mass as possible to the outer ring. Engines in the centre give you an advantage when it comes to turning the craft, but I don't think you'll be doing much of that in atmosphere. Once the engines start you can almost forget about gravity, chose the engines such that the acceleration of the outer sections closely matches the acceleration of the inner section - less stress = less need for bracing.

So. I had to go looking for the image myself. The story appears to have originated on Reddit, something about a penis. Have you ever tried searching Reddit with the keyword 'penis'? Highly educational. The tracks shown in the image were not made by Curiosity. Tracks made by Curiosity have an arrow like or chevron pattern with a repeated stripe that apparently 'spells' the letters JPL in Morse code. http://aaronparecki.com/articles/2012/08/22/1/tire-tracks-on-mars Spirit and Opportunity both leave tracks that match the image, take your, I'm double checking my spelling and typing, pick. As for the contamination, yes, it is a shame that it could spoil some of the mission results. I guess you have to accept compromise when you cut a mission budget to one third the cost of a bag of snacks.

Yeap, that's bad, as is the general dumbing down of science for the masses and the need to sex-up and sensationalise ( Martian Mega Rover ) stories that are already sufficiently interesting and sexy. But people only watch shows with mega, extreme, ultimate in the title. The general media do a pitiful job, but why should they try to do better? They make a handsome profit feeding off the ignorance, scientific or otherwise, of the masses while at the same time ensuring that ignorance persists. In technical terms, a nice little earner. Anyway. If you weren't depressed by the above, here's a little fact that should get the job done.. How much did the Curiosity project cost? Around $2.5 billion according to wiki and the linked youtube video. How much do Americans spend each year on potato chips? The first numbers found by google are for 2009, http://www.sciencenews.org/view/generic/id/63647/description/Potato_chips_A_symptom_of_the_US_R+D_problem , $7.1 billion. Americans are not alone in this so don't feel victimised, it just the figures for the US are the easiest to find.

I've done some experimentation, even in large numbers they are somewhat lacking. Ion Flair Mk I, I forget the total part count but with over 450 Ion engines you can imagine the rest. The Ion Flair series is so environmentally friendly and earns so many environmental credits that an atomic lift stage is not so much justified as it is mandated. Both launched to orbit by an Orion nuclear pulse stage http://forum.kerbalspaceprogram.com/showthread.php/28428-Orion-aka-Ol-Boom-boom

That's one hell of a lot of snacks!