Galane

I finally sent something to Duna, a Kethane scanner. Turned out it was a bit under two days to the transfer window. Would be nice if transfer to another planet had an option to just go for it right effing *now* cuz I've loaded up with fuel to burn. I backed up the quicksave in case things didn't go quite right. Going to start the mission over and change some things. I built the ship to use four boosters docked around the sides but took off with only two. Had plenty of fuel left over even after an ordinary insertion without aerobraking. The re-do mission will include a scanner for Ike, possibly some other stuff too.

Would be nice to be able to toggle any part setting and save that state in the VAB. It would free up action groups that currently have to be used to do things like lock a set of engines' gimbals prior to launch because they can't be toggled in the VAB.

In the early 90's at Universal Studios Orlando they had this thing where people could put on some Starfleet uniforms, follow a cheesy script then be green screen composited into a video with all the original main Star Trek cast. A couple of those VHS tapes have been digitized and can be seen here. http://www.wired.com/underwire/2013/11/star-trek-green-screen/

Make an extender twice the length of the current ones so vehicles can have a longer, more stable wheelbase and Dunabuggies can be built with dimensions like a real VW Bug based dune buggy. Long in front, short in back.

Please post one with the changes you made.

What would be nice is if all moving parts could be switched between their starting and deployed positions in VAB and SPH, especially if they could be set to start deployed at launch. Would make it easier to launch rockets without using launch clamps.

I never rotate docking ports, they just go on the ship how ever the VAB sticks them on. Is SASS *not* aligning force roll to the docking ports even when *both ships* are being controlled from their docking ports and targeting the controlling port on the other ship? Same ports, same control, same targets should equal same roll angle in both SASS and Docking Autopilot. ------------- Another issue I had last night with build 102 is with maneuver planner and two ships docked end to end, each with a single engine pointing in opposite directions. With one engine disabled and the control part selected on the ship with the active engine, it was hit or miss if it would throttle up when the time came to change the periapsis or circularize. It would rotate to get into position then sometimes it'd auto warp, sometimes not but instead of throttling up it would just fly past the node. Then I changed active engines and control parts and it'd work correctly *one time*. Then it'd fail to throttle up again until I switched active engines and control parts. For example, I'd set the active engine and control part then quicksave. If it didn't throttle up I'd reload, change ends and it would do the periapsis change burn at apoapsis. So I'd quicksave and try to circularize at periapsis. Nope, no throttle action until I'd change active ends on the docked pair of ships. I was being careful to make sure the controlling part was always on the same ship as the active engine. (Learned that one when my little deorbitizer probe almost managed to push a piece of space junk to a Mun intercept from LKO because I'd left control on the docking port of the booster I wanted to bring down.) It would always turn the correct direction to aim the active engine for the burn, but just wasn't running the throttle half the time. Took quite a while and many saves and reloads to get the orbit down to 15KM circular from the 16~17KM slightly elliptical orbit the ships had been pushed into after several dockings and Kethane transfers and fuel conversions. I could have undocked the two halves of the refinery/fuel depot and changed orbits separately, but that would've used more of the painstakingly harvested fuel to rendezvous and re-dock. Those little puffs of RCS to back away after undocking can accumulate into some fairly large orbit changes over time. Would it be possible for landing guidance and maneuver planner to detect and warn when there are no active engines on the same side of a docking port as the active control part? "Warning: No active engines on the controlling ship. Thrust may not go the direction you want." For example, if you have a booster with a probe core and a docking port but no fuel, then dock something with fuel to it so it can be de-orbited but forget to set control from here to the half of the docked pair with the fuel and active engine, Landing Guidance will aim the wrong direction and burn all the fuel going up and out with a prograde burn instead of a retrograde one. User error, would be nice if MJ could say "Hey, this might not do what you want, are you sure you got this right?".

Four things you can do which will often help a lot with a slow system. 1. Set texture resolution to half. Vehicles still look very good but the ground textures get pretty blurred. 2. Turn off antialiasing. So what if you're flying a jagged orbit (and everything else) your FPS will go up. 3. Turn off terrain scatter. It's only eye candy you can't touch. 4. Turn off the VAB and SPH crew. These guys can walk right through a Mainsail engine. That's creepy!

Y'know, the one in that Austin Powers movie?

If you do Stretchy Spherical Tanks, someone will combine them with Stretchy Tanks to make a replica of .

I said I tried that and it was a huge FAIL. It caused KSP to decide it had no parts available and wiped everything but the flags from the persistent file. I posted one of the original cfg files so someone could see what all is wrong with it and what it'll take to fix.

I had two ships both with control set to a docking port and the other ship's docking port as the target. I then set one ship to Kill Rot then on the other ship (the one to be doing the docking) I turned on force roll in SASS with a setting of 0 degrees. I then turned off force roll, then click OFF on SASS so it'd go to auto when I enabled docking autopilot. Then I enabled force roll, 0 degrees in docking autopilot and the ship rotated 90 degrees instead of keeping the same orientation SASS used. Since the control parts and target parts were not changed between SASS control and Docking Autopilot control, the roll should not have changed.

I tried that and what I got was my persistent file wiped of all flights except my flags and KSP claiming it couldn't load anything because it couldn't find any parts, stock or otherwise. Good thing I keep a recent quicksave. // --- general parameters --- name = DRS1 module = MuMechServo author = r4m0n (code) || Damnyoujapan (model) // --- asset parameters --- mesh = cylinder.DAE scale = 1.0 texture = Rotatron.png specPower = 0.1 rimFalloff = 3 alphaCutoff = 0 // --- node definitions --- node_attach = 0.0, 0.0, 0.0, 0.0, -1.0, 0.0 node_stack_bottom = 0.0, -0.05, 0.0, 0.0, -1.0, 0.0 node_stack_top = 0.0, 0.25, 0.0, 0.0, 1.0, 0.0 // --- editor parameters --- cost = 50 category = Utility subcategory = 0 title = Suspensatron, full size. manufacturer = Damned Robotics description = Essentially a Damned Robotics Rotatron modified to act as a torsion spring for an independent suspension. Intended for large heavy rovers weighing 10-15tns. // attachment rules: stack, srfAttach, allowStack, allowSrfAttach, allowCollision attachRules = 1,1,1,1,0 // --- standard part parameters --- mass = 0.1 dragModelType = default maximum_drag = 0.2 minimum_drag = 0.2 angularDrag = 2 crashTolerance = 15 maxTemp = 3000 breakingForce = 999 breakingTorque = 999 // toggle parameters rotateJoint = True rotateAxis = 0, -1, 0 keyRotateSpeed = 20.0 rotateLimits = False jointSpring = 20 jointDamping = 0 onActivate = False rotateKey = left revRotateKey = right fixedMesh = Base servoName = New Rotatron

Build 102, force roll in Smart A.S.S. and Docking Autopilot are 90 degrees off from each other.

Though this deals with additions to the base game, it's very bad behavior by KSP. Some errors in part.cfg files will cause the game to delete everything from persistent.sfs except for flags and it'll pop up a window for every ship with a list of all the parts, stock and otherwise, claiming none can be found. KSP should just ignore any malformed part.cfg files and ideally should pop up a window saying which ones it's ignoring and why. I can provide an example of a part.cfg it won't load, and changes that make KSP nuke persistent.sfs.

Just did some mining on Minmus with two rovers 1,070.3 meters apart. I deployed the drills on one then hit [ to switch and deployed that one's drills. I warped until that rover's tank was full, dropped to 1x then switched back and... surprise... it had filled its tank too even though it wasn't the active ship.

Here's one of the files for the DR Suspensatron pack. http://kerbalspaceprogram.com/suspensatron/ I tried putting PART { at the top and a } at the end but all that got me was KSP finding no parts at all and deleting everything from the persistent file except for my flags. // --- general parameters --- name = DRS1 module = MuMechServo author = r4m0n (code) || Damnyoujapan (model) // --- asset parameters --- mesh = cylinder.DAE scale = 1.0 texture = Rotatron.png specPower = 0.1 rimFalloff = 3 alphaCutoff = 0 // --- node definitions --- node_attach = 0.0, 0.0, 0.0, 0.0, -1.0, 0.0 node_stack_bottom = 0.0, -0.05, 0.0, 0.0, -1.0, 0.0 node_stack_top = 0.0, 0.25, 0.0, 0.0, 1.0, 0.0 // --- editor parameters --- cost = 50 category = Utility subcategory = 0 title = Suspensatron, full size. manufacturer = Damned Robotics description = Essentially a Damned Robotics Rotatron modified to act as a torsion spring for an independent suspension. Intended for large heavy rovers weighing 10-15tns. // attachment rules: stack, srfAttach, allowStack, allowSrfAttach, allowCollision attachRules = 1,1,1,1,0 // --- standard part parameters --- mass = 0.1 dragModelType = default maximum_drag = 0.2 minimum_drag = 0.2 angularDrag = 2 crashTolerance = 15 maxTemp = 3000 breakingForce = 999 breakingTorque = 999 // toggle parameters rotateJoint = True rotateAxis = 0, -1, 0 keyRotateSpeed = 20.0 rotateLimits = False jointSpring = 20 jointDamping = 0 onActivate = False rotateKey = left revRotateKey = right fixedMesh = Base servoName = New Rotatron

Such exists, but you can't make the entire rocket one part.

Nope, it's how burning perpendicular to an orbit would really work. Turn the ship perpendicular to the direction of orbital motion and fire the engine. The resulting vector is then between the original direction of motion and 90 degrees to it. Thus the forward speed is altered. Any alteration in orbital speed changes the orbital altitude. Thrust prograde and altitude increases, yet you fall behind an object that was next to you at your starting altitude. Thrust retrograde and the opposite happens. It's counter-intuitive. You'd think by thrusting prograde to increase speed you could catch up to another ship that's ahead of you, but instead you increase altitude to a slower orbit. If you have a lot of fuel to burn you could do a forced orbit. Angle the thrust vector somewhat outward to both increase speed *and* keep to the same altitude. But as soon as you let off the outward thrust the ship's speed will carry it to a higher altitude. Forced orbit burns would be a nice addition to MechJeb. Useful to do quicker rendezvous, but once the distance is closed it'd have to do a big retrograde burn to get rid of the speed to stay in the orbit. That would take a LOT of fuel, thus the reason why forced orbits are generally only found in SciFi with torchships or other drive systems that don't yet exist.

Suspensatron. http://kerbalspaceprogram.com/suspensatron/ Rotatrons converted into torsion springs.

The problem with using RCS to counter the torque of a spinning part is that'll run out of fuel.

Dioxygen Difluoride O2F2 or FOOF seems like it would be more powerful as a fuel http://forum.kerbalspaceprogram.com/threads/57303-A-FOOF-fueled-engine Storing it would be a mite more difficult than CF3 since it's possible to lightly coat the inside of a metal container with CF3 to oxidize the surface then fill it up with more CF3. Just *don't* poke anything in there to stir it around which might scratch through the oxide coating and allow the stuff to have at the bare metal. Flaming hole in the fuel tank, right away. FOOF, yes a storage problem since it reacts and explodes with just about everything even at temperatures as low as -300F or -180C. Just think of it, a fuel that has to be stored at near absolute zero and can be lit off simply by "warming" it up to 300 below zero then mixing it with a bit of Hydrogen Sulfide. (Should be Hydrogen Disulfide since it's H2S.) Chemistry was the domain of some very brave people before computers were able to simulate the dangerous stuff. Brave or just didn't give a bleep about their own safety.

Any chance of getting the old DR Suspensatrons working with .22? I put them in the game data folder but they didn't show in the inventory.

Ohhhh, yeah. Torque reactions. To counteract the torque of one part spinning one way you need another part spinning the opposite direction. Easiest is equal masses at the same speed in opposing directions. Can also use a lighter mass #2 spinning faster or a heavier mass #2 spinning slower. If you're planning to steer a ship with spinning parts, you'll definitely want to use a counter torque system. 'Course there's always the SciFi method of a reactionless rotation device, powered by handwavium. One of the neatest SF universes without real artificial gravity ;P is C.J. Cherryh's Alliance/Union series. In it the stations spin around but instead of having a "2001" style stationary, zero G hub to dock at, the ships dock at the edge. Not sticking out like spokes but perpendicular. To visualize, put a CD down flat then poke a finger straight down at the edge. Ship, meet docking port. The ships all have some amount of rotating space for the crew, passengers and cargo that can't tolerate zero G. When coming in to dock the rotating section is stopped and locked. that results in most of the living area being either inaccessible (without climbing crazy angled ladders) or with a tilted deck. Military ships lock down their rotating sections when going into battle so they can maneuver easier. What she doesn't get deep into on the tech is that the ships would need something for counter torque and that even then the spinning parts would reduce maneuverability. Another bit of "Nobody needs to know all that." lack of detail is the stations would need some massive grappling arms to support the ships at dock, of a universal design to grab hold of any ship without damaging it, and the docking ports are all somehow universal, even for an alien ship from Earth which coincidentally is built pretty much the same way as ships of the Compact, including using the same jump drive technology. Yet another bit glossed over is that to come into the edge of a station spinning fast enough to simulate 1G, the ships would need belly thrusters powerful enough to lift the ship against that much gravity, and side thrusters powerful enough to scoot the ship sideways as fast as the edge of the station is moving. But if you have all that in mind while the story goes on about docking as if it's simply plugging Ship A into Station B... well the characters are "living" it and wouldn't do a running commentary about the tech they live with every day.

Thank you!