Martijn404

Thank you so much HarvesteR for the most brilliant game i could ever imagine. I still can't figure how KSP manages to let me fly from one whole world to another, when other games force a loading zone when going to the next room it's just amazing, and beautiful too. Never took so many ingame screenshots, from another approaching moon, crazy contraption or lazy sunrise. Never spend so many hours planning and preparing for a (nearly) perfect mission. Never stood away from the PC with my hands in the air celebrating, till my first KSP docking. All the best and I hope you find happiness in your next projects Oh... and just imagine.. I am quite certain that the first astronaut who will land on Mars, 10 or 20 years from now, will have started his space dream playing Kerbal Space Program. How's that for a recommendation?

I actually just did 2 missions to Dres and found that you save quite a bit of delta-V by getting a Jool gravity assist. Sure your initial burn is a bit larger, but using Jool you can 'circularize' your solar orbit quite a lot, making the subsequent Dres insertion burn much much easier! I think this route can save 1000m/s. Dres has a very nice Biome map too, compared to, say, Duna (which is very underwhelming. .. not a single unique geological feature).

Thanks NavyFish! For me as well, the docking port alignment indicator is one of the first things to reinstall after Kerbal is updated again, without it docking just becomes a mess. Been using it for (literally) years now!

thanks again, I was staring myself blind on whether I did apply the (^2/5) to the correct part, missing the big obvious "youre dividing by the wrong STARMASS" So now at least i know where these mysterious lines come from in the middle of the blue part of the porkchop plot in the Launch Window Planner... patched conics artifacts.

Thanks Red Iron Crown, I dont know why but now I see i had M1 and M2 wrong-way-round in my calcs apparantly triple-checking my formulas isnt enough... im embaressed now I will correct my original results. With regards to the mentioned effects though, I guess it is just the patched conics approximation that causes these sort of effects.

Im not sure whether the formula from the KSP wiki page about SoIs is correct, or used in game. edit: it is correct As I mentioned, I plugged in the numbers from this formula and came to a completely different result then the KSP SOI (6210km). I looked up where this formula came from, it's in Orbital Mechanics, equation (12.17), and that formula is for a definition "The points measured with respect to the gravitational centers where the ratio of perturbative to primary gravitational accelerations of the centers are equal. So this deals not with primary gravitational accelerations but with perturbations thereof. The section above that, "Sphere of Gravitation", seems to be much more applicable to what KSP terms a Sphere of Influence.

I have noticed for a while now that the Sphere of Influence around certain bodys felt wrong. In the case of going away from a heavy planet or moon, it is nearly impossible to "just" escape the body, as the escape speed of the body is so high, that once you are in the SoI of the parent, your orbit is highly modified. For instance, escaping Tylo from low orbit, in retrograde position puts you on or under Vall's orbit immediately, the in-between orbit cannot be achieved. Or another example, it takes only 100m/s from barely escaping Kerbin, all the way to a Duna transfer orbit. Or escaping Slate (Outer Planets Mod) prograde, immediately throws you out of the parent's SoI too, which can't be right. In short, it felt like the vessels "clings" to the body it is orbiting for way too long. Now I assumed that the SoI determines the equilibrium point where the gravitational pull of ie. Mun exceeds that of Kerbin, and therefore you go into another SoI. That means that the gravity pull at the SoI boundary from both bodys should be equal right? Well, no, Kerbin's gravity is more then double that of the Mun, at the Kerbin altitude of the Mun (12000km). Leaving Mun for Kerbin, you now see the effect stated in the beginning; I stay in Mun's SoI for too long, thereby giving the trajectory a sort of "dead zone" where you cannot have your resulting Pe end up. Anyway I verified a few other "common" ways of calculating an SoI from the M1 and M2 masses of both objects: The "SoI calculation" in the Kerbal Wiki came to 6120 2430 km (edit: this is indeed the value KSP uses in-game) The orbital L1 calculation (Hill Sphere) came to 2115km So I hope that someone can enlighten me what formula is used to determine SoI boundaries, so I can stop worrying about bugs in KSP in this matter. Or worrying about discontinuities in the Gravioli sensor when changing SOI's. (i can understand 20% discontinuity from the patched conics approximation, but not 400% as in some cases...) This also with the objective of having some guidelines for modders to take into account when placing heavy planets or moons close to others (looking at you, Slate )

As a port to Unity 5 is necessary *eventually*, the question is when to take that pain, before release 1.0 or after. My opinion would be to seriously investigate the work to port it before release 1.0, spend even a few weeks (QA cycle) on it. Major consideration is that Unity 5 will likely break all mods and that would be a bad thing after 1.0. If it is much more work than that (and or undeterminable) release 1.0 on Unity 4 and make a KSP-2.0 on Unity 5 somewhere in 2016.

How about Kerbalizer integration? That would be about time, for 1.0 release! Customize your kerbals, in kerbal! edit: forget it, its about partnerships.. but still, Kerbalizer integration would be about time

Ohw how I wish the Rovers were better in KSP. There are hundreds of driving / racing games around, its just a very nice thing to do. But KSP is not a good driving game yet. It could be, and should be, for a few small changes: 1: Camera viewpoint connected to the car, not to the compass. I wanne see where i'm going. First-Person EVA might help there. 2: Better driving model. The tyre grip is so very wrong. The most basic traction circle does not seem to be implemented. 3: Better suspension model. Suspensions are shocks and springs, and both need to be changable for surface and gravity levels. I'm not asking for iRacing-like 4-dimensional tyre-grip formulae and dynamic tyre wear and heating here, but just the basics to make driving fun. Oh and why do wings never work in KSP to improve the tyre grip? Downforce should increase the grip of a tyre on the road, but in KSP the grip of the tyre doesnt seem to be affected.

I would suggest a mod that changes the spring and damper settings on the Rover wheels, so you can tune them to work in different kinds of gravity and different loads. Currently the suspension is way too stiff for low gravity worlds. It would be just a right-click menu box with options to soften or stiffen the suspension. That is something i have liked to see since the wheels were introduced

Thanks! For me, Steamgauges is usually one of the first things to download after a new version is out, Primarily just for the Radar Altimeter needle arcing gracefully across illegible numbers with irregularly spaced dividing lines, but the other ones are useful too Any thought of integrating the availability of certain gauges with R&D or building-tiers?

http://www.laboiteverte.fr/wp-content/uploads/2013/12/goddarfussecabane.jpg This is Robert Goddard ( I think); that seems like a pretty "temp" shed made of wood.

JPL/ Nasa published this map of 67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko To which i can only say "that looks like a map of biomes!"

I've sent and returned Kerbals to all celestial bodies with a surface to walk on. At least once in every version, since 0.18.2. All Jool moons in a single trip, Eve sealevel ascents, Moho returns, you name it, been there done that (no mods, no nukes even). Ohh I remember the wonder, coming up to a new planet or moon for the first time, searching and seeing a little light in the distance growing larger and revealing itself... How I miss that ever since. Time for some new planets!!