Kerbart

Before I started playing KSP I watched many rocket launches on TV. In case you haven't seen them: the rockets in real life are long, thin, and start their turn pretty much right away after launch. One minute into the launch and the rocket is, if not near horizontal, at least at an 45° angle. Enter KSP (pre 1.0, even pre the entire, endless range of beta version in which all major bugs were hunted down. I lost count of the number of beta versions, but by Jove, it was worth it!) Struggling to get into orbit, one peruses this “youtube” site and learns quickly that you have to leave the Souposphere as quickly behind as possible, and then turn. The practice of slamming your rocket in a 45° angle at that point, or the pancake designs, never really attracted me. Yes, there’s game efficiency and then there’s I want my launches to look real, which neither pancake nor abrupt turn doesn’t achieve. And then, after beta after beta (it never seemed to end, did it?) release, when 1.0 was released... KSP suddenly matched what you learned from TV and books a lot better. Sure, there was the endless assault on the forums—why does my rocket flip at 10km when I slam it into a 45° angle? and so on, but if you built and launched your rockets in a way that vaguely resembled real life, there’s not really an issue. Now, and sorry for the long intro, this is where new players/beginners/kids/students come in. Without any prior knowledge to the early versions, or one of the many, many, many beta versions, what is more likely for the model of rocket they would use, and the launch profile they would choose? The .21 pancake and “ignore aerodynamics, just put your rocket perpendicular to the air stream at 10km altitude” profile, or models and profile as seen in real life? In my experience, it’s some of the old hands that struggle with the new model. Not the newbies who just take for granted that the aero model in KSP at least vaguely resembles that of earth, and at the very least requires a similar approach.

Energy goes up with the square of the speed. Flying into a planet at 300,000 km/s will deliver a lot more energy than at a mere 20km/s. Not to mention that fact that once we get close to light speed, we get the double-whammy of the mass increasing due to relativistic effects as well.

Aah! The Krakenport!

I start to like them. They seem to be a bit more clever about their jokes than The Onion. Mars water... a mirage...? Very well played!

C'mon, when you read the article and come across gems like “and Uranus Puckering at that moment” or “will most likely collide with the Earth on May 10th, 2061, probably at around 10:15 pm EST.” you seriously think that they were completely serious when writing it?

Have you ever watched the squadcasts? I don't think they actually play the game...

Some will argue that choosing where to place it is the most important part...

I must be misguided. I thought the whole point of “on rails” is that there are no physics calculations, making position and velocity mathematically pre-determined. The only reason timesteps are needed in “on rails” is to resolve SOI transitions and surface boundary intersections. Not sure if this would fit in with that.

One look at their front page reveals that it's equivalent to The Onion at best, and The Inquirer at worst. The fact that The Guardian took over their reporting says more about The Guardian than about anything else.

There were a lot more but at one point they got all reset back to the default markers. Not sure if that will happen again.

You're showing a picture of Michael Jackson. Aside from having the same initials as MechJeb it's not really clear how this illustrates the story. However, if your point was that the space shuttle is perfectly oriented for its pitch (or as we amateurs call it, “gravity roll”) — think again! The space shuttle had to make a 90° roll first before it would pitch over (simple geometry was cause to that: if oriented properly for pitching straight from the launch pad, the wings wouldn't fit through the doors of the VAB). Which, kinda... invalidates the argument that “it's done like that in real life” I’m pretty sure it is done the way it is right now (since it wasn’t always in the past) is because now at least the way your craft is oriented in the VAB is the same as it is oriented on the launch pad. Which makes sense as it is a straight run from the VAB to launch pad. Having your craft not make a magical 90° turn when it is put on the launch pad has advantages as well (as: no unpleasant surprises).

What's the angle you're reentering at? What's “more ballistic” for one, is “dude that's waaaaay too steep” for someone else. I’d aim for 45° or maybe even shallower, for starters (haven’t done them in ages so not sure what should work, but that should be a good starting point). Also, do not add too much to your ship. The Mk I is pretty aerodynamic. Add too much weight to it and yes, you’ll be able to study a lot of high impact lithobraking.

Well, what this mod really needs is to become stock! It's not like it's rocket science (ooh... wait...) but really, the math involved is similar to what goes on in maneuver nodes (probably even simpler) so it wouldn't violate the LOLZ GUESTIMATE KERBALZ LOLZ rule in stock either, I'd think.

I'm pretty sure that's what everyone did so far. It's just that when you look at the map those markers will point *somewhere*; that's just the nature of them.

Hello @Dispatcher, if you want to leave a location, anyone of us can add you on the map (it's more like a document that can be edited by anyone than that you add your "own" marker) — just let us know where to place your marker, if you want us to.

That or they had a “Test the Merlin engine while in Earth Orbit” contract.

To be honest I'm clueless, given that they're the same (Merlin) engines using the same fuel. The only thing I can think of is that the stakes are a lot higher for the second stage. Failure to reignite means the mission is lost. Failure to reignite on the first stage... Meh. At this stage, landing is still the icing on the cake; putting the payload into orbit is in the end what really counts. So I'd be a lot more nervous about the second stage doing it's job (just like you're watching a superhero movie and you know he's going to prevail—the fights can still be nailbiters) than the first stage landing safely.

“Just” They have to be connected to form a sphere. Letting them orbit in loose elements will create fascinating traffic problems around the poles But ok, let's assume we can fix those traffic problems. Loose particles is it. To be a "sphere" and not a "ring", "swarm" or a "constellation" you will need a lot. Around. A. Freaking. Star Even if that's a tiny mini Jupiter-sized dwarf. That's a lot. As in enough to be a challenge lot I'm sorry, but saying that it's just a matter of scaling up is claiming that running the marathon under two hours is "just" a matter of walking fast enough. Unless this civilization is just a trigger-happy bunch that, after building said laser, decides just to zap every known planet in the hood just for the hell of it, they still have to figure out where to aim it too, e.g. know where the neighbors live. Unless, indeed, they decide to pre-emptively clear the neighborhood of any potential competitors.

As someone who has spent countless hours creating a workaround for a problem that wasn't caused by my software by people who were not supposed to be using it in the first place... I fully agree!

Boeing has their own astronauts, so I could see how they'd be putting up a Boeing flat. But SpaceX is a contractor who delivers the vehicle but nothing else. If NASA bankrolls the operation, I bet that NASA's astronauts will be carrying an American flag, not the flag of “some contractor” with them. If, on the other hand, SpaceX has a privately funded and self-managed mission to Mars... now that would be cool! Unlikely, but cool.

Have you ever seen a saguerro? They're stunningly large. Looking at the pictures the Kerbin ones don't seem spectacularly oversized. Maybe a bit larger (to scale) compared to the earth ones. But not that much bigger.

You're absolutely right. NASA should stop posting these despicable pictures that just generate a lot of positive buzz and hopefully some extra funding for these kind of missions. Instead, NASA should just post a statement "high quality imagery of Pluto confirms what we expected to be it; no need to publish them." And since this confirms in detail what we know of the outer planets, we should stop wasting money sending probes there. What's the point, as it only confirms what we already know?

I can confirm that the autopilot is fully functional. Here's the magic I use in my launch script: ap.engage() ap.target_pitch_and_heading(self.profile.value(alt), 90) And that works absolutely fine with me. Playing stock only, only mods are those that provide information (KER, DPAI, etc) or enhance visual experience (texture replacer, EVE, etc). Keep in mind that, contrary to most mathematical standards, kRPC needs angles in degrees, not radians. Which is fine with me, as I find that more convenient anyway.

Putting the origin of your system in the center is a bad idea. You're much better off putting the origin outside the system. Now you don't have to deal with dropping minus signs by accident, as all coordinates will be positive. Further more, you want to select the origin in such a way that x, y and z can never be confused (e.g. z is in the 0-1000 range, x in the 2000-15000 range, y in the 20000-35000 range or whatever). That's how some countries choose their national coordinate system these days* * with the origin outside their country, not outside the galaxy, just to be clear on that.

If you’re living anywhere near a Dyson sphere, my primary fear would be the fact that you’re living next to a civilization that can build one in the first place. I'm sure that laser is only one of many things they’ve invented over the years...