Diche Bach

Anyway with Mechjeb or any other addon to auto-deploy my sputnik's parachutes (say when vel < 200 m/s) on the auto-land thingy?

Quoted for emphasis

Listening to Emotive now and I do like your stuff! I'm a big Paul Van Dyke fan. Will try to listen to the whole thing and give you a more inclusive 'critique' vis a vis how well it fits with KSP. But here is my first impression just based on a couple minutes of Emotive (will have to see if other tracks might be different): 1. This music definitely has a "space game" feel to it. 2. I could see it being used in a space game, indeed it almost seems like it was created with that in mind. 3. The tracks remind me a good bit of the soundtrack for Eve Online (which btw you should check out if you have not already) 4. It is perhaps a bit intricate and 'sophisticated' for KSP. There seem to be many different instrumentations in tracks and the 'chord's (or whatever they are called) seem fairly complex to my naïve ear. The stock KSP music is not nearly so complex and indeed its appeal is I think largely that it is repetitive, simplistic and perhaps evena bit 'child-like.' 5. Yes, listening to track 3, this is definitely more along the lines of an Eve Online sort of space game, more of a 'space Opera' which focuses more on the social/political tensions than a 'Space Cartoon' that focuses more on the physics. However, I wish you the best of luck! Maybe the developers will spot a track they like It is very good stuff and you merit success!

It is certainly debatable whether the Space Race is the "single most important . . . defining positive and ascendant periods of human history." I don't mean to convey that I am a devout believer in this premise, though I am convinced it is among the top ten. I've studied anthropology for most of my adult life, something like 30 years and I have a pretty holistic knowledge base. Call it intuition if you will, though I don't mean to convince anyone so much as provoke thought and discussion. Lets just start with a simple point: what we are doing right now. I am sitting in a lazy boy in Western Massachusetts where my wife and I have cozy little house (God I cannot wait to get out of New England! ) looking at your text on a 43" plasma screen TV. Now, while the text and the language in which we are conveying, as well as a great deal of the underlying semantics are all quite, quite old, the medium and the fact of our communication is exceptionally novel. Visionaries like 20th century Science Fiction writers certainly foresaw such things, but the fact that it has been brought into fruition as soon as it has is I would argue anomalous relative to where the world was in say ~1950 when the seeds of the Space Race were being planted. The Arab Spring could be argued to have been an indirect outcome of the Space Race in that it relied quite heavily on mobile telecomms and web-based social media. I think if you take this inclusive view of the Space Race, it becomes hard to identify what aspect of life it has NOT dramatically altered, and moreover, at a rate of accelerating change that I believe has never EVER been seen before in any social dynamic for any species in all of Earth's natural history. Indeed! I think you may be quite right! I was playing Minecraft and got to poking around on wiki, etc., learning up on gold mining. A couple of points struck me. 1. It is estimated that all of the gold (which it seems is an exceedlingly useful element in myriad devices and functions, and not merely a pretty metal for jewelry) humanity has extracted from Earth would fit within a roughly 20-meter cube. Wow . . . that little? 2. It is hypothesized that most of the gold that is accessible in the upper crust of the Earth was not present when the Earth originally formed, but in fact has been brought to Earth after its coalescence into a planet by meteorite impacts. 3. The "Tau Tona" mine in Witwatersrand district of South Africa is 'in' one of the impact zones of one of the most notable deliverers of gold. This mine has been in operation for many decades and is CRAAZZY deep (4 km if memory serves). Despite its being less than 50 years old, it has already produced the majority of the gold humanity has ever extracted from Earth. 4. Rocks in space are likely to have untold fortunes of this metal (and I reckon lots of other ones, e.g., I was reading up about "metallic hydrogen" which is only a confidently hypothesized elemental state at this point. But assuming it does actually exist under the surface of Jupiter it would seemingly promise incredible possibilities). The "Age of Discovery" was certainly driven by the fact that the "New Worlds" of the 1400s promised untold riches for European kingdoms and their subjects, but surely the distant celestial bodies of our own solar system must promise millions of times more?

I am confident that the consensus of history will regard the Space Race as one of the defining positive and ascendant periods of human history, if not the single most important one. Despite the paradoxical fact that this scientific and exploratory 'movement' emerged out of a potentially apocalyptic ideological competition between to nuclear-armed superpowers, I would say the Space Race has done as much to accelerate human cultural and intellectual evolution (or perhaps 'revolution') as did any of the preceding eras of exploration and 'conquest' in our long natural history. It is difficult to contemplate how much 'worse' life on Earth would be for humanity if _not_ for the Space Race. It troubles me slightly that, at present there seems to be a lack of a comparable solidary spirit of discovery among any humans (much less all of them). As such I fear that the 'momentum' gained during the Space Race might have been lost or risks being lost? What will/would it take to spark a similar social/political/scientific movement, a "21st Century Space Race" if you will? Will it happen? Does it matter? Is the superficial perception that we 'need' such a thing wrong? Is there in fact a 21st Century Space Race already underway? I would love to hear what all of you Kerbonauts think of this topic.

Just starting to fiddle with MJ a bit. Seems great for learning more, though yeah, if you just want to make it do the work it could be used to not learn more too. Like any good tool it can be used for edification or used to avoid it. Good job on the landing though!

Here is the thread that was mentioned above with the charts and such. Great stuff! http://forum.kerbalspaceprogram.com/showthread.php/37327-Atmospheric-Landing-Chart-Pinpoint-landings-on-Duna-Eve-Kerbin-Laythe!

Sweet! Sweet!

Ahh!PINPOINTS! Thank you!

So basically, the way to get that extreme barebones one without any command module on it except the EAS seat, is to have it start 'attached' somehow to an 'official' command module and decouple it?

I am trying to set up a few ground-based antennae to simulate what I think there realistically would be on Kerbin (RemoteTech2 mod). After many attempts I managed to get one on that largish island about 400km or so northeast of KSC. I'd like to put one on the peninsula that resemble Korea that is on the eastern side of the large sea east of KSC. I've put several landers with antennae up into low Kerbin orbits and have so far failed to get my landing site much closer than about 100km from the peninsula, which is actually reasonably wide. I've scanned through the list of all tutorials here on the site, watched a couple Pebblegarden videos that I thought might address this, but cannot find anything that specifically addresses the basic principles for how to land in a rocket/capsule on a specific site on Kerbin. Appreciate if anyone could point me in the right direction.

I've been looking for this thread

Watched you Orbital Mechanics 101 and that is great stuff Pebblegarden! Do you have one that specifically focuse on how to land on Kerbin (in a rocket) at a specific spot?

Not sure if you've seen this one, but it helped me a lot to start getting into orbit consistently.

Agree that running multiple copies of the app is a beneficial feature and wouldn't want to see it somehow disallowed.

I use a Steam version, which might be slightly different than non-Steam. However, I get the impression the directory structures are identical even though their location on your computer can be different. Figure out where Kerbal Space Program lives on your machine. For me it is: C:\Steam\steamapps\common\Kerbal Space Program Inside there you will have a C:\Steam\steamapps\common\Kerbal Space Program\GameData That is where the RT2 folder(s) you will download will go so you'll have: C:\Steam\steamapps\common\Kerbal Space Program\GameData\RemoteTech Inside that RemoteTech you should have at least 3 sub-directories "Parts," "Plugins" and "Resources" as well as a Readme.txt, which btw here it is: If you want the stock science/communications parts to have Remote tech functionality then you should also install the C:\Steam\steamapps\common\Kerbal Space Program\GameData\RemoteTech_MM_ProbeCompatibility Not essential for installing but a good 'best practices' mod installation procedure that I follow for manual mod installations. 1. Once I understand how mods work with an existing app, create a backup of (at least) those sections of the vanilla app that will be overwritten. This way, you can revert to vanilla without having to reinstall the entire program. In the case of Remote Tech, I do not believe any stock files are ever overwritten. However, for say, MechJeb 2.09, the stock command pods are overwritten so that they all have mechjeb functionality. So in that case I copied the contents of the whole Squad Game Data directory and created this C:\Steam\steamapps\common\Kerbal Space Program\Backup of Squad Game Data\Squad I didn't actually need to back up that whole thing, only the C:\Steam\steamapps\common\Kerbal Space Program\Backup of Squad Game Data\Squad\Parts\Command but it isn't really that much disk space and it was just easier to copy and paste the whole thing. 2. Before I ever start to download any mods, I create a sub-directory in a place that I'll be able to find, such as: C:\Steam\steamapps\common\Kerbal Space Program\Downloads Then I create additional subdirectories for each mod I download, so I have for example: C:\Steam\steamapps\common\Kerbal Space Program\Downloads\B9 Aerospace Pack R3 C:\Steam\steamapps\common\Kerbal Space Program\Downloads\Chatterer C:\Steam\steamapps\common\Kerbal Space Program\Downloads\HOME 1.03 etc., The archive files that you download from the SpacePort go into their appropriate download sub-directory, and get extracted there, and then you can examine how the modder has packaged it and what you need to move where. I find this is a much less headachy way to do it than to simply download the archive directly into the Game Data where the mod files will live and work. That tends to result in a lot of clutter and redundancy and makes it more difficult to know what goes where. Once you have examined what you have downloaded and unzipped, then I typically copy and paste to the place they need to be to function with the game application, and leave the original copy alone so that I can always reference what the download included (in the event that I make any changes to the files myself later). Again it is a bit more typing and you will have two copies (actually three counting the archive) of the files for the mod, but again, I find it can be helpful when you want to reverse the process of installing and or keep track of what you do and do not have installed.

Can't seem to get something like this to work. When I try to use the EAS-1 command seat as the command module it makes everything faded out like it doesn't have a command module. Moreover, I tried one with a Probodobodyne OKTO2 as the base and when I was done and put the external seat on it, it said it didn't have any crew spots?

His tutorials have been a big help to me in getting going with the game.

Lot of good reasons why mods are not only not bad, but in fact exceptionally good already described above. Main thing is, you've got to be an informed player and make choices for yourself. For example, buying the game and _immediately_ installing mods might not be the wisest choice as you prevent yourself from learning the stock game. As another example, installing mods that you have no idea what they are or do and/or installing mods that you are skeptical you will like = probably bad ideas and a waste of your time and that of other users/modders when you go to ask questions. I wanted to point out one other thing about mods though that doesn't have so much to do with game play, but rather as they relate to commerce, gamer culture, creativity or 'art,' and 'education' for lack of a better word. In my opinion mods, or more broadly modding communities, contribute immeasurably in positive ways to all of these areas of life, fairly narrow though they may be. As far as commerce goes, it is pretty close to an 'ideal' system. You've got creative people on one hand (the design studio) who have released EULA's for an intellectual property. There are many such groups who would never, NEVER dream of allowing users to 'look under the hood' for various petty reasons that reflect traditional hierarchical and exploitative notions of consumer-producer relations. The irony is that, those overly protective design firms probably do more to harm their popularity and bottom-line than anything else. Then you've got firms like Squad who show some basic faith in their fellow gamers and realize the tremendous power of releasing a game that is moddable. They will, like all the other studios who have taken this bold leap (recall that it was not long ago that modding was quite the exception, though it is increasingly the rule I suppose), reap dividends I'm sure. The real beauty of this is not simply that the studio's benefit in a fiscal sense, but that really everyone involved benefits in terms specific to their reasonable expected needs. No one but the studio makes money, and that is precisely as it should be, but modders get experience and presitige if not visibility as potential professtional designers (I am aware of several 'famous' modders who have wound up landing jobs with studios despite being very young people). Presumably they also get some satisfaction from the simple fact of creating something they enjoy and seeing that others enjoy it too. The users get an unquestionable benefit too: if you don't like it, you turn it off, if you do like it, then the game is ever better. Having elaborated on the issue of how mods benefit 'commerce' it is probably fairly evident what I'm getting at about the other issues of gamer culture, creativity or 'art,' and 'education.' In sum, I think that mods for games, and the modder 'culture' is one of the most awe-inspiring and promising social trends I can think of. I have tremendous respect both for the studios who open their work up for modding and for the fellow gamers who provide us average users with such amazing works of creativity!

Totally reasonable on the tutorials thing Keep on trucking on the coding toward final!

The Mission Controller mod has a _very_ easy to use system for generating missions. I'd imagine it would be a snap to use its format to make missions http://forum.kerbalspaceprogram.com/showthread.php/43645-(0-21)-Mission-Controller-Extended-(Version-13)-(FORK)-(ALPHA)

I very much agree that not being able to easily get access to parts that are obscured is a general problem, not just the tanks. But yes, having the system by default take from the bottom first and then the top after bottom empty would be better. Even better would be a system that allowed the user to choose from say three options: 1. Even draw from all tanks 2. Draw from lowest tanks first 3. Draw from highest tanks first

I've kind've grown fond of the somewhat outlandish (by Earth standards) rocket ships in Kerbal, so I don't mean to complain. But it would be neat if the physics (whatever aspect of them it is) could be adjusted so that making tall thin spaceships like the Saturn V was more viable.

Thanks I will check that out The thing I love about this mod is it adds in that strategy element of calculating tradeoffs: leave a part or two off to make it cheaper or use less fuel . . . saves money up front, but will you be able to finish the mission? Been trying (without consistent success) to use absolute barebones probes to do the first couple mission (like 5500 and 6900 $ probes) and it really brings out the challenge more than the sandbox. Really terrific stuff. Okay, that is very clear. Thanks for that! Well I send you lots of good energy and encouragement to see if you can implement that, because neither (a) nor ( sound particularly useful. If you drop it under 2500 m then you aren't getting a whole lot of use out of it in the first place, so it is probably a fairly dinky rocket+tank that hardly seems worth using in the first place much less saving with a chute. If you carry the empty tank and engine into space with you . . . well I guess that isn't terrible, but it does seriously bite into the efficiency to not just jettison that extra weight when it is no longer adding thrust. It is a shame the engine works it that way. Would it be possible to do a work around like this: put a very light command module on each fuselage that you drop. After it decouples and as long as your still ascending stage is stable and can handle itself for a few seconds, switch to the jettisoned stage and make it active for a little while, perhaps activate its chute if it wasn't already set to blow with the stage change? Would that maybe work around it and make the piece count as a landed ship that wouldn't despawn? I'm guessing probably not and as soon as you switch back to the actual ascending stage, it would once again calculate distance to the dropped pieces and destroy them if it was >25km eh? Anyway, it is very nice to experience the game with some operational constraints that make one analyse the tradeoffs in striving toward a goal. Thanks for a great addition to KSP! ADDIT: Oh waitaminute. Lazor Systems can change view range eh? Might have to check that out as I have the Lazor docking thing installed!

Is there a "how to use the Flight Computer in RT2" kinda tutorial or guide somewhere? I'm completely baffled at trying to "queue" commands into it to get a sat to orbit and de-orbit despite losing contact.