Androsynth

Items like redone aerodynamics, re-entry heat, etc. all strike me as obstacles or challenges on your way to accomplishing some objective. There are plenty of obstacles already - balancing mass/thrust/lift, planning delta V requirements for missions of a variety of durations, learning to pilot a craft effectively and efficiently, performing orbital maneuvers, engineering stages and action groups, and on and on. But for KSP to be a great *game*, it also needs the objective side of the equation to be fleshed out. I think that was the driving force behind the push for moving more toward "Career mode." Why are you going to put a kerman on the moon? Well, to impress the Kerbin public and secure more funding for the program, of course. Can't do squat without funding. Why are you struggling to put rovers on the surface of Duna? To do science, of course. Can't do squat without science! So, I guess the biggest feature I'm expecting to see will be economic in nature. Some sort of system for evaluating the accomplishments of the Kerbal Space Program, and delivering a monetary reward for those accomplishments that can then be used to expand the program's reach. Only then are we truly running managing a space program.

The slowest part of launching the game is waiting for the hundreds of little model files to load. I'd like to suggest packing as many of the small, miscellaneous files as possible into a single file, which can then be read into memory as a single file, unpacked quickly in RAM, after which the packed version in memory can be disposed of. Just combining hundreds of small files into a single larger file should result in considerable time savings, especially for those using mechanical hard drives. If I had to take a shot in the dark, I'd guess loading time for those files could be cut by half to two-thirds. Note that I'm not necessarily suggesting compressing these files, although compression might result in more time savings. A lot of these small model files compress down extremely well even with the fastest & least computationally intensive compression methods available. The extra computation associated with decompressing the package in memory will be offset by the fact that the disk read only takes 20% as long to perform (Testing suggests the model files could be 80% smaller on the disk.). Depending on the speed of the compression, it could result in longer or shorter load times, difficult to say at this point.

Might as well aerobrake at Eve while you're at it, rather than doing all the legwork of dropping your solar periapsis. Right?

Delivering little diplomats to their targets potential allies, daily!

I call this the Multipurpose Diplomacy Rover. It has a diplomatic range of about 20 kilometers.

Reptile2001, I didn't have any issue with the GUI. Do you mean the in-flight GUI or the main menu? Protip: the glasses filter out red and blue, but not green. If you want the image to have fewer artifacts, go into your monitor's RGB settings and turn Green down to 0. The way I figure, I'm already giving up color by going anaglyph, so I'd might as well do it right and go all the way. The screenshot I posted doesn't have green filtered out, only because MS Paint wouldn't let me do it. I could possibly record a video, and I could upload it to youtube or wherever, and it would capture the 3d.. but not very well. I suspect that the compression I'd use to create a small enough file to upload would degrade the image, and Youtube et al would further compress and distort the image. Quality loss seems to really hurt the quality of the 3d, as you'll get a ton more artifacts. With green turned off, you wind up with a nearly perfect 3d image, better than some polarized glasses I've used, and FAR better than any anaglyph you've ever seen before. Ironically, KSP isn't even the best game to show this off with, because all your objects are either super close together or extremely far apart.. the depth becomes boring under those conditions. Docking is where it's at though, and it definitely has utility if you like to perform an unassisted visual dock. I'll never dock 2D again! Edit: I just had my first ever collision between two objects in opposite Duna orbits. I wish I'd filmed that in 3d!! Tonight at 11, spacecraft slams into space station at 3.5km/s in stunning anaglyph ;D

Hm, looks like you lose a bit of the effect when imgur converts to JPG.. where can I host a 1 meg png file?

I spent $5 on some nice anaglyph glasses to use with my nvidia card. Usually I see nvidia's 3d vision driver as a gimmick, but not any more! I was teaching a friend to dock, cursing about how frustrating it is to lack any sense of depth. It looks like you have the ports all lined up, until you change camera angles and realize it was an optical illusion. That gave me the idea to turn on 3D and give it a whirl. Makes a world of difference! https://docs.google.com/file/d/0B2yhZQB52MYcTGh0RzlESkxKejA/edit?usp=sharing Here's a google docs image with no quality loss, it makes for a better 3D viewing experience than the jpg IMO. That's assuming people have red/blue glasses. It's only a couple of bucks to get a really cheap pair; I went high-end by spending $5. Heh. I don't like to spend a lot on gimmicks so this was a great way to go, i thought. After all, I had the graphics card already, and the 3d vision driver is free, so.. oh, plus it works with most games.

That seems to make sense. I wonder if one of the developers can shed any light on this behavior.

Actually, it wasn't the "parachute part" that broke off, it was the parachute itself, which simply disappeared. I think it has to do with the angle of the chute relative to the part, perhaps an attempt to simulate the cord being cut from rubbing against the rim, or I don't know what.

My KSP is telling me that etchasketch's part count stands at 282, to your 187 on the G model. Yours also uses a LOT less fuel. Am I missing something? Also, I had issues with the parachutes breaking off the command pod upon final descent to Kerbin. I was probably going to fast when I deployed them or something, although I've had this issue in the past, but only when the chutes are attached at an angle. Did you run into trouble with this at all?

Heheh. I not only flew it manually, I also didn't bring a SAS module of any kind. I always liked to skip the extra weight, and it gives me good incentive to try to keep the craft stable. My first attempt at putting my lander on Laythe involved a powered landing, with no SAS, no parachutes, and only jet engines for thrust. The latency on the throttle for jet engines made it almost comic. I had to ask my girlfriend to leave the room after the fourth failed attempt, because it was getting embarrassing.

The updated craft file works great. Oh man, antbin, you've outdone yourself. This rocket is unlike anything I've seen before. I can't believe you got the 3-man pod there and back. That maneuver where you graze Jool's atmosphere on the return trip, that blew my mind! Very nice work.

Foursch, excellent work! I'm with kepicness, Vulcan is an awesome craft. Although I see in the screenshots that you're using RCS thrusters to ease your descent to Minmus, and I don't see any thrusters on the craft file I just downloaded. Am I missing something?

Hey Antbin, it seems like both versions include modded parts. Would you mind uploading the stock version?

Thinking about it now, it would make more sense to circularize at a much higher altitude above Laythe. I'd spend a lot less fuel adjusting my course to hit my desired landing zone, no? Also descending to the planet would require lower delta-V. Maybe next time I'll try circularizing at whatever apoapsis the aerobrake happens to give me - this generally tends to be high.

I just figured, since the 3-man pod is 5x as massive, that that's going to be the real achievement. I'm fairly certain I wouldn't be able to lug one of those off of Laythe, not with any design I've ever created. Thanks though! The flight plan was just a straight burn from Kerbin to Jool, using the 7 nuclear engines that the first stages are able to deposit into orbit. No slingshots or anything fancy, just conserving momentum from my orbit and using it to assist with reaching escape velocity. Those nuclear engines are heavy, and 7 may seem like overkill to a lot of people, but they're critical during the Kerbin ascent stages as well. I keep those puppies firing from the moment of launch until their columns start to detach ten minutes later, and they only operate at low fuel efficiency for the first 10 seconds or so. I realize the trip to Jool could've been done with just 1, but it would've put me to sleep moving that much payload with a single engine, and a rocket with a sleeping pilot isn't worth anything. I use some last minute tweaking to directly intercept Laythe. I'm going pretty fast relative to Laythe at this point, so I aerobrake around 21,000m above its surface and then circularize around 80,000m. There are still two stacks of fuel tanks (unassociated with the lander) left at this point, so there's a decent amount of fuel to maneuver onto a path that gives you the landing site you're looking for. Landing involves deploying two of the smaller class of parachutes. Those keep the craft upright and slow it down considerably, but it's still a powered landing, with 4 jet engiens and the one nuclear still engaged. I'd disable the nuclear at this point if that were an option, since the jet engines would be sufficient on their own, and would use much less fuel. Still, there's fuel to spare for the trip home, too, so after the landing you can actually buzz around the atmosphere quite a bit before heading up to around 10km and kicking in the two aerospikes. The only thing that gets back into orbit is generally the capsule, 1 tank, and the nuclear engine. If you choose to skip flying around inside the atmosphere, you may also have about 400 extra fuel and the two aerospikes, but you won't need them. Getting home was just another straight burn, setting up my position around Laythe so that I'll be thrown away from Jool in the direction of Laythe's orbit around it, and waiting for Laythe's position around Jool to reach a point where I'll be thrown from Jool in the opposite direction of Jool's orbit. This path took me straight home with about a third of a tank to spare, allowing me to do some final adjustments and land pretty much right at the space center. I will say that getting back from Jool is very time sensitive as to Kerbin's location in the solar system. You can head out and realize you've missed your window for an intercept by about six months. For this, I lowered my apoapsis and eventually found a point where I could achieve a rendezvous with very little additional fuel expended.

Here's the maiden flight of the KSS Androsynth II. It uses 103 FL-T400 fuel tanks and 6 Rockomax BACC Solid Fuel Boosters to get a single Kerman to Laythe and back. The return voyage took a little detour, so I'm not even going to mention the total flight time. It's not a 3-man craft, so I originally wasn't going to post it anywhere, but I saw the challenge and figured I'd take part. <iframe class="imgur-album" width="100%" height="550" frameborder="0" src="http://imgur.com/a/aR902/embed"></iframe>

Very nice! Can you do the same thing but with the MK1-2 Command pod? You'll only need 5x as much fuel..

I've been trying to make a stock plane that I can fly around on another planet for a while, and still get it back to Kerbin. I achieved my primary objective of flying around and landing on Laythe for a bit before returning home, but I suck at designing planes. The best plane I can come up with is one that launches vertically and doesn't have any wings, i.e. a rocket lol. Do you think you can apply your aircraft design skills to making a plane that has 4 high altitude jet engines, and wings that can break away, leaving just a core module of 2 aerospike angines and a nuclear thrust engine? With, say, 2000 fuel remaining at that point..

It says I can't load these because the space craft did not have the following part: crewmodule Any ideas?

Any plans to rebuild either of these in 0.16?

I give you: The USS Awesome. It combines the most efficient and lightest weight engines, with the lightest capsule in terms of crew-to-weight ratio, to achieve SSTO status with 3 crew, while also landing back at the space center with fuel to spare. Deploy the chutes to stay upright during landing, and use SAS to keep yourself from rocking in the wind. Apply rockets liberally to slow the final ascent.

I just designed a stock super heavy lifter that expends 65 fuel tanks in order to deliver 83 fuel tanks into orbit. Either I\'m really good at this, or I\'m exploiting a bug without realizing it.. Honestly, I\'m inclined to think it\'s a bug related to fuel lines, but I\'m going to have to do some testing. I\'d might as well point out that I\'m letting Mechjeb do my launches for me, and the routine for that seems pretty efficient. I\'ve managed to beat it a couple of times, but not many. If you want to enhance your efficiency more, your angle of ascent could definitely use some work. You\'re getting up to 50/60km without much horizontal momentum at all. Overall I like your design though; minimalist with respect to payload and not overly complicated on staging, and nice choice of engines. I love that you\'re dropping the payload off with the front of the ship, and using the return vehicle to de-orbit your debris. EDIT: I can confirm that I\'m definitely taking advantage of a bug in the system to gain extra efficiency, possibly a rounding error. My rocket has 37 aerospike engines at launch, which should burn fuel at a rate of 281.2 per second. The first stage of 8 fuel tanks carries 500 * 8 = 4000 fuel, and so it should be empty in 4000 / 281.2 = 14.22 seconds. Instead, the first 8 tanks are taking 23 seconds to empty completely. Performing the same math on a single engine and a single tank yields a 65 second burn time, and physical observations confirm that it does indeed run out after exactly 65 seconds. Something about the long chain of fuel lines must be reducing the consumption rate, without hurting my thrust.

Has anyone noticed themselves scoring lower WPM than on a typing test where the words aren\'t completely unrelated to one another? Takes the brain longer to process a non-sentence than a sentence.