Diche Bach

Eh? How would recovering debris from past missions "break the spirit of the game?" Rendezvousing, docking with, else "grasping" space debris and recovering it for salvage or reuse would seem to be very much in the spirit of the game, no?

Hope this is not bad form to continue this thread given it is so old and went dormant for so long . . . however . . . I've been thinking about the shuttle history lately, and more broadly about the last 20 years of the last century. I reread much of this thread and it seems to me that a lot of the discussion was missing the forest by focusing too much on the trees. I think there are at least three different questions, or ways to parse the question posed by the OP: 1. Was the shuttle an optimum design? (compared to other options) 2. Did the shuttle achieve its mission(s)? (did it 'get things done?) 3. Did the shuttle achieve its "vision?" Or was the shuttle a "dead-end?" Number 1, I really cannot comment on, and I think you need to be a techno-expert to be able to. Ultimately it seems irrelevant to me in that, a bit of increased efficiency here or reduced cost there would not it seems have been a killer; this seems obvious from the fact that the STS flew for so long and so many missions. Number 2: Obviously the answer to this is YES! Hubble, that by itself is sufficient to confirm that the STS "achieved" success in individual missions. My understanding is that knowledge gained from Hubble has effectively revolutionized astronomy and our understanding of cosmology, so that alone seems to have been a gigantic "success." But then we add to that the myriad other payloads it delivered into orbit: Now to question Number 3 Did the shuttle achieve its "vision?" Or was the shuttle a "dead-end?" My understanding was that it was not intended to be a "dead-end" it was intended to be a watershed towards a new era, in which spaceflight would become cheap, commonplace and highly useful. I think that one can answer this question with "NO" fairly confidently; it did turn out to be a "dead-end." However, sometimes exploration requires one going down a dead-end to confirm it is a dead-end. One might have to ask: Would any of the other contemporary projects that intend to achieve the shuttles "vision" be remotely feasible (or even conceivable) had the shuttle never occurred? As someone who was a teen when the shuttle program began, I can tell you, looking back on it, and that era more generally is a bit bitter-sweet. In the late 1980s we really BELIEVED that we were going to be well-advanced toward something like "Star Trek" by this time. I believe this particular song/Youtube mix does a good job of conveying the sense of giddy anticipation, not only for the results of a specific shuttles "countdown," but of the STS program more generally as a "countdown" for humanity toward our "ascendance" into full-fledged space farers, a future era when "super-science Mingles with the bright stuff of dreams . . ." In achieving this "vision" the shuttle doesn't seem to have delivered, although, as I said, maybe the eventual model that does make space travel cheap, easy and comfortable will depend on lessons learned from the shuttle?

Now that I read the description, definitely gonna install and try this! Question: what about "debris" that is in orbital flight? I'm guessing this mod does not exactly allow for "salvaging" or recovery of stages (or derelict vessels) that are in orbit or adrift in space? Is there a mod that does allow for that functionality?

What happens if there are like 5 different versions of this .cfg in various different mod directories? Are assets in directories without a copy of TweakScale.cfg the reason some of them cannot be tweaked? I suppose that those assets need to be configured to allow Tweaking functionality to affect them? Can one file in root GameData directory make the functionality apply to assets from all mods?

Whoo hoo! I finally seem to have everything I'd like installed and running Yippee! Orbital Assembly! The one question I have remaining is: should I consider a couple more mods? Specifically, I note that just a few of the nodes in the Community Tech Tree do not have any parts associated with them: 1. Colonization & Advanced Colonization 2. Resource Exploitation 3. Colossal Rocketry 4. Advanced Solar Technology (and it's two child nodes) 5. Specialized Command Modules 6. Advanced Actuators and Experimental Actuators (robotics I guess?) I'm pretty sure I've installed all of your mods Nertea, is there anything else you (or anyone else) is aware of that affords assets to fill those nodes? I'd particularly be keen for colonization. This was very helpful Pony! As you can see, I've installed a lot of yours. I would've kept shopping those on your list but I'm literally exhausted from installing mods and would like to play the game a bit.

ADDIT: Oh LOL, I bet I know why this was happening: at one point I moved everything out of GameData in order to fiddle with CKAN and see how it functions. I must have failed to replace GameData\Squad and while the game WILL launch! (it did after I removed WarpPlugin) it seems that somehow the two conditions together caused the initialization to hang. Any idea why my game initialization would snag at this point? I'm guessing it is a problem with installing the assets listed in the image C:\Steam\steamapps\common\Kerbal Space Program\GameData\WarpPlugin\Parts\Electrical\AntimatterReactors\AntimatterReactor\TweakableAntimatterReactor But when I attempt to look in that specific directory no such thing: C:\Steam\steamapps\common\Kerbal Space Program\GameData\WarpPlugin\Parts\Electrical\AntimatterReactors\ which has three .cfg files, three .dds files and one .mu file There is no AntimatterReactor sub-directory and there is no "Tweakable . . ." file

Oh I'm definitely running it 64-bit. Generally I don't notice any performance issues. But if I run the game for quite a while, my rig gets a bit noisier. I'm about a year overdue on opening the case and sucking the dust out, but I suffered a disaster with my old rig when the hard drive dropped onto concrete so I'm a tad bit "gun shy" on opening this one . . . I'm off topic here, but just one last thing I think worth commenting on: CKAN seems pretty good and one thing I do like about it: it presents a lot of mods in one list. I learned of several I'm very hopeful about (an orbital construction one in particular) from the CKAN list.

I still had some sort of problem that I think related to the one of the mods I hadn't installed previously. The game initialization locked up when I attempted to boot the game with that manually installed list above. So, I cleared out GameData again, and gave CKAN a whirl: naturally this led to an even more bloated list of mods! 634MB left to download. Hopefully my rig won't explode when I attempt to boot the game. I noticed a mod in the list in CKAN: something about empty node, which I'm installing. It supposedly tech nodes without any parts to not display and will tree up the loose ends.

Any idea what this could be about? I've got that file installed like this: C:\Steam\steamapps\common\Kerbal Space Program\Mod Downloads\Cryogenic_Engines-0.3.5\Cryogenic_Engines-0.3.5\GameData\CryoTanks\Patches\CryoTanksFuelTankSwitcher.cfg The nearby directories look like this:

question: Should CTT be installed like this: C:\Steam\steamapps\common\Kerbal Space Program\GameData\CommunityTechTree\Tree or without the " CommunityTechTree" level parent directory? Hmmm . . . well I guess I'll just skip CKAN then . . . one less thing to learn to use properly . . . ADDIT: there we go! Unless I made some mis-clicks that should be correct

Okay cool. I'll install them manually then do a check with CKAN.

Those one click mod manager apps for games like Fallout and Skyrim have me spoiled! Actually just as you posted that response, I had deleted the entire contents of my GameData and I'm reinstalling everything and making sure I don't create redundant copies and so forth. ADDIT: Ha! of course there IS a "one click mod manager:" [url=https://github.com/KSP-CKAN/CKAN/releases/tag/v1.18.1]CKAN[/url]

Wow this is all so awesome looking . . . So I installed this mod and all the ones listed on the first post as being "good partners." My mod-list (is there a better way to collect this in text form or something?) My question: with that set of mods, would it be normal that some of the tech paths in CTT do not have any parts available? For example: Advanced Actuators (and several of its children) Recycling & Storage Technology and all of their children, Aerospace Composites, and Experimental Aircraft Engines.

I have your mod running as a result of running KSP Interstellar. I've been getting an error every time I launch the game I updated KSPI today and also installed the update you posted on Github on 6 July, but the Toolbar error persists. So far, I've simply clicked "CLOSE" and played many hours. However, I have recently started to suffer periodic crashes so I'm trying to pin-down what is wrong. In the interest of giving you an idea of what mods I'm running screen cap of my GameData folder. Is there a better way to share the mod-list than that? The crashes generally seem to occur when entering some of the sub-sections of the Space Center. Of course, with so many mods installed, I'm not even certain that it is this Toolbar error that is causing them . . . but it seems the most likely starting point. Appreciate any help you can offer and I'm happy to post error logs or whatever might help. I'm reasonably proficient with C++ and Java, but the folder structures and file inter-relations for this game and its mods are complex (and the error logs are both bewildering and enormous! 37,000 lines! ) . . . so any pointing in the right direction might save me a lot of time.

That is very cool about the increasing abundance of H. erectus material! So now, not only do "chimpanzees have culture" but ape-men do too! I've always thought that a specimen of Homo e would be an absolute nightmare to encounter in a dark alley if he/she was in a bad mood and wanted your ham sandwich. So are the early homo/australo forms still replete with "species" designations based on little more than single bones?

Holy Crap I just had an epic "noobish" Kerbalnaut adventure. I had three or four missions: Test the 2nd tier radial decoupler at 70km to 80km suborbital Get into orbit. Test the 2nd tier inline decoupler in orbit at 110km to 120km. I had a jaloopy space craft "Nova" with like 7 SRBs, and a couple of skippers plus one of the small ones (Terrier I think) on the top stage. I literally "succeeded" at this four times, but each time, I kept screwing up and having to reload! Lessons I learned: 1. Electricity is important for coming back down too! 2. You can "bounce" off the atmosphere if your peri is ~65km and your apo is ~1,100km (bounced four times, and finally the fifth round was the trick). 3. Don't try EVAs under ~75km alt and going 3000 m/s! 4. Don't let go while EVAing in orbit! (there must be tethers or something further along?) Epic, I learned a lot. Kerbals died but were reborn thanks to the wonders of save scumming . . . I tested magetospheres, I tested goo, I took temperatures, I fiddled with the orbital controls and "relearned" it a bit . . . in the end I netted ~125 science from the whole mission (probably more if you count the experiments I did in space, not sure if those add in to the end of mission summary). Career mode is epic.

I started studying anthropology in 1984. It is remarkable how much more is known with some certainty now; but it is also remarkable how much knowledge has pretty much stayed the same. The other thing I came to realize about the paleo-anthro research clique: they like to make taxonomic speculation based on far less than minimal amounts of evidence, and are completely disinterested in anything like experimental confirmation. (e.g., tests to prove that the various fossil landmarks used to diagnose "species" are valid and reliable indices). "Discovering" a new species seems to get tenure, even if 10 years from now the consensus might be that your "species" was nothing more than a regional variant.

Without any knowledge of their sales figures, I'd say everything is pure speculation. Having quit playing 3 years ago, and come back in the past week or so, I have to say: I AM ABSOLUTELY STUNNED WITH SATISFACTION AT WHAT THIS GAME HAS BECOME, AND IN PARTICULAR WITH SOME KEY MODS ADDED!! I think some of you who have been playing it regularly over the years, and who may no longer appreciate it as much as you could, you should uninstall your most recent build (maybe just archive it): install something like 0.2 or older, basically go back before science and career mode, ca. summer 2013. That will put it into perspective I think . . . It was already an amazing game then (~8/10??), but it has most definitely been made better. It isn't perfect, but it is amazing: 9.9/10 even without mods. I'd just say 10/10 but that suggests "perfection" and nothing is ever perfect in consumer software. Hopefully, they've made good dough on this, and irrespective of people coming and going, will keep making good dough and making more game(s).

Stranded Five kerbals in space: 3 orbiting the sun (eh, kinda forgot how that whole "circularize" the orbit thing worked!), then the second 2 at about 200,000km in an orbit while I was playing around with stuff. Amazing how much you can forget in 3 years of not playing this game.

Thanks for that info Red Crown! Yes, I think this is the case. But it seems to be even more specific than that: It seems that the flea must be activated by staging WHILE the alt and vel parameters are in the specified range. If the flea is "staged" while the parameters are in range, that is not good enough. You've got to be in range, THEN stage activate it. This seems to be a bit of a trick, because at about 20km any speed less than about 300m/s seems to result in plummeting. So the paradox seems to be: you've got to accelerate beyond the specified velocity range to get to the specified altitude range, and then slow it down (while not losing altitude) and then, once you are between 30 and 210 m/s and between 30km and 37km altitude stage activate the flea. ADDIT: FINALLY got that sucker! Good mission I guess as it forced me to improve my control and intuition on the angle and velocity.

I've got this one "early stage" mission that is giving me a lot of trouble. Activate a Flea engine: Alt 30km to 37km Vel 30m/s to 210m/s I've found that is effectively "very slow" for an altitude that low, so getting up to that altitude and then retro-orienting to slow down is what I've come up with. Even then, the mission seems to want me to be "at that alt and vel" and THEN activate the engine. More than once, I've activated the flea (the last engine stage) when I was at about 29km and ~400m/s, point it up and retro to trajectory, and slow it down to the proper range while above 30km and below 37km. The text for each of the mission specifics goes all green (not the header part of it), but then when I start to drop and get below 30km it doesn't complete. Couple other questions: 2. What does "cross-feed" (an option on some of the de-couplers) do? 3. I seem to recall that those external fuel lines were really useful but now it eludes me.

I think I'm gonna roll with MechJeb and without KerbalEngineer for now. I can see that MJ allows you to plug in particular variables so you can see (for example) apoapsis, and speed at apoapsis, which is what a lot of the early missions amount to: get this part to x alt and y vel. Do you just slap that "computer" part on the hull of your command pod?

Couple more Questions: 1. main difference between MechJeb and KerbalEngineer Redux? I vaguely recall using either both or at least MJ, but cannot recall now. The one thing I'd really like to go ahead and get is whichever one allows me to "do the math" without having to do the math! (what is my max velocity, altitude, etc., etc.) 2. Anyone know what the current situation is with "Kopernicus?" I noticed some cool sounding mods on the Curse site . . . Interstellar or something like that . . . that led to a link to some other ones, then some other ones and . . . long story short, it seems that quite a few of these mods are not presently compatible with latest Kerbal build? I'll tinker with them (LOl! already downloaded about 8! and add them in one at a time leaving the most questionable compatibility ones till last, but if anyone has a quick summary of "best practices" if I'd like to experience the best of "interstellar KSP mods," appreciate it. The complete lack of "orbital mechanics" (might not be the correct term) in most space games is just so lame: spaceships that turn on a dime and can easily come to a complete stop and for which matching velocity with targets is irrelevant . . . I want to make a "Stellaris" mockup using KSP!!

Interesting . . . so it needs to be a fairly fast but low-altitude trip . . . Have to say, this science and other career stuff is pretty damn cool! I don't think issues with rover wheels is going to be a concern for me for many, many hours

So what is the deal with the specs on "Missions?" The "Test Mk 16 Parachute" mission is telling me something like: Alt: 8,000 to 11,000 m Vel: 210 m/s to 350 m/s (or thereabouts) Do I actually have to get the chute to deploy at those parameter values or just _achieve_ that altitude/velocity at some point in the mission?