lincourtl

I think you had a good idea. Your mod idea sounds like it'd be fun for people more into the tycoon play style as opposed to the sim aspect. There are jerks everywhere you go. Try not to let it get to you. As someone who loves the realism mods, I'm nonetheless quite happy overall with the balance Squad has struck in 1.0.x sans some expected tuning and bug squashing. More importantly they've left the game open for serious modding which is what allows the realism mods to exist.

I have my opinions, and they're probably far more left of center than you might think, but rather than injecting my own political biases here let me just throw this out for a bit of perspective... You all realize that the Apollo program was private-public venture of unprecedented size, right? Private sector involvement in human spaceflight is nothing new. A large list of Saturn V subcontractors: http://history.nasa.gov/SP-4206/app-e.htm A chart from Appendix F of Chariots for Apollo showing major Apollo spacecraft contractors and subcontractors:

Minor problem, but not really. It's outputting as tab delimited rather than CSV. Not a big deal given the nature of the data, but you might want to change the file extension to just .txt or use commas instead of tabs as the delimiters. I am pleased as punch to see this back though. Thank you!

I don't know if you're aware of this, so my apologies if it sounds like I'm lecturing, but there is a stage lock function. ALT+L -- very handy for preventing the bump of failure.

Apollo CM also executed a Passive Thermal Control (PTC) maneuver; i.e. a barbecue roll. There's an extended discussion of the maneuver in the Apollo 15 Flight Journal starting with this passage. Phil Karn's technical discussion immediately following is worth the read. - - - Updated - - - Exactly. The big silver bits are the radiator panels.

Oh, I know. Plus you are limited by the lack of proper rope modeling in KSP (I understand why it's not there). It was just funny to see balloons inflating and staying horizontal. I love that the balloons expand volume as pressure decreases with altitude, and that they burst at <4kPa (about 17.5km on Kerbin). Too bad we don't have wind in KSP either. It'd be awesome to see a dozen of these lofting over the space center drifting this way and that.

Fantastic work! Oh hey, that's interesting. Kerbals: We're capable of interplanetary travel, but we can't make bendy rope.

No, it's the same thing, just a different intensity. The heat gets transferred because the air can not get out of the way of your vehicle fast enough, so some of it is at an effective standstill (zero flow). This gives it time to convect the heat to your vehicle. This happens to anything traveling through a fluid whether it happens to be a swimmer, a submarine, a bicyclist, a car, a train, a jumbo jet, or a reentering spacecraft. It's just that for ordinary applications the heating is negligible. But once you're moving at Mach 20 or so, even at 100km the atmosphere is going to be thick enough where it just can't get out of your way fast enough. Also, space capsules are designed to create a detached bow shock so most of the heat is dissipated to the surrounding air rather than the capsule. I'm sure NathanKell can explain it much better than me.

Well, that's what I was trying to say. KSP is by its nature science fictional, but I like it on the hard sf side of the spectrum versus fantasy space opera like Star Trek which is why I seek out the mo' realism mods but haven't yet gone the full RSS/RO route.

Because of KSP's conceits to gameplay (1/10 size Earth, entire Kerbolar system would fit almost inside Venusian orbit, super-powered jets and ion thrusters, little green guys with no obvious civilization yet an advanced space program, etc.) I think a little science fiction-y is just fine. Apart from the RSS/RO crowd, I think what most of the mo'-realism community wants is hard sf'ish versus fantasy space opera. At least that's what I'm looking for.

Considering that supersonic parachutes are a highly specialized thing, I think it's a fairly realistic bordering on science fictional (which is not necessarily bad). Also, due to the scale height of the stock KSP atmos, the interval between shock heating and subsonic is pretty brief. I don't particularly find deploying any sort of slow-me-down device while heating is still occurring particularly realistic. BTW -- Good powerpoint about supersonic parachute design: https://solarsystem.nasa.gov/docs/11%20-%20Supersonic%20parachutes%20Lingard.pdf

Like I said above, you can have the best of both worlds. For ordinary/career usage there can be a variety of predefined part shapes and sizes, which can even show up as discrete parts on the parts menu. The parts are still procedurally generated, but the game ships with a selection of standard configs. At a certain tech level you can unlock full procedural ability (call it the "aerospace mastery" node or something), which allows one to make whatever shape and size you want for extra Funds cost. That way you get both the Lego-esque quality of discrete components and the freedom of procedural components. You could also add the option to save your new procedural part as a standard to the parts menu, which would result in lower costs the next time you use it.

Those of us on low end or older PCs appreciated the standalone functionality, although I suppose it really should be rolled into Enhanced NavBall which I like to think of as Myopic Friend NavBall.

I tend to be in the "Go Procedural!" camp, but I also think it's possible to have the best of both worlds. In career mode, pParts can have a base set of tweakable shapes/sizes which serve as the "standard." Heck, you can even have them appear in the parts menu as separate parts. But then you can allow the player to fully procedurally vary the size and shape in exchange for extra Funds. In sandbox we don't care about Funds so the pParts are fully procedural from the start.

Were you using the fixed heat shields configs, or the ones that shipped with 1.0? As soon as I applied the "fix", everything worked pretty normally. I still haven't managed a skipping reentry in 1.0, but I've got some travelers coming back from Duna so I'll try again. All my previous attempts were with the single crew pod.

Superb! I hadn't seen that yet. You are a modding machine, NathanKell! I'll have to try that out

Awesome. One step closer to perfection.

So is KSP now modeling heating from planetary infrared emission, and solar radiation, or is it just modeling heat generated by the ship? Also, do we need to worry about adding heat in deep space? Do we need, say RTGs, to warm up our lonely probes?

I must not have gotten my reentry profile right then. It may be the bug in the heatshield configs too.

I haven't seen this mentioned yet, but you really want to be concentrating on serial staging versus onion and asparagus. Plus it's a good idea to make your first stage last until you're in the upper atmosphere, if possible. It's not always possible, especially if you're playing career and you haven't gotten very far into the tech tree. Boosters should only be used to get you off the launchpad and moving in the right direction. Last but not least, when building rockets, design darts. Top heavy is good. You really want your CoM well in front of your CoL. This actually makes your rocket more stable.

Yep. That's the other way of doing it -- trading off shock-layer heating for time -- and it's a good one, especially when you're coming in from an interplanetary transfer. If I recall correctly, the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter did successive aerobraking passes for almost five whole months! Obviously this probably would not be ideal in the real world with real humans.

Ah! That's what I was forgetting. You're right there. I did not know RSS/RO did that. Cool idea! Yeah, that's what I was aiming for -- sort of a simulated skip. Oh well. Maybe next time.

Hmm. It seems like with the new aero we should be able to make it work with pods too.

This is something I miss from Orbiter -- being able to realistically manage reentry heating by skipping off the upper atmosphere. I tried yesterday bringing Valentina back from the Mün, but didn't seem to be able to pull it off. In fact, I just seemed to prolong the most dangerous part of her ride by coming in too shallow. I really thought I was going to lose her, but those new shields have amazing amounts of ablative material slathered on them. The thermometers radially attached to the upper part of the capsule weren't so lucky. Overall though, despite some of the expected buggy-ness, I am seriously impressed with Squad's new stock aero and heating system. They add to up to making for a great thrill ride. I'll probably still use nuFar, and Deadly Reentry, when they're ready because I like that level of realism, but I really think Squad did a bang up job on 1.0. So far it's shaping up to be my favorite update since we got bac9's lovely space center.

Fixed. I always forget and use the full Imgur URL. Heads asploding! Yeah, this definitely falls into that class of things you can test for hundreds of hours with hundreds of users, and nobody will ever discover it -- until you release and then it'll be found inside an hour. Plus it's one of the funnier bugs. "Close the cargo bay doors, Val. Whoops, what the...? Aiieeee!"