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Everything posted by Kerbart
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Would a random* part accident mod be good?
Kerbart replied to AletzN1's topic in KSP1 Mods Discussions
I think it's great. Personally I think it'd be a disaster, but at least it would quiet all the requests to add this to the game because. I think my quote was embedded in something along those lines. Heroics because of random failures are great. But I suspect that 95% of those failures will just add frustration. Of course, I'm wrong most of the time so consider this an endorsement for success. -
There's two aspects on rendez-vous: at a given point in time, you need have have matching positions, AND matching velocities. Just being close is not enough. If you're matching a 400x400 orbit but you're in a 400x75 orbit then your velocity at apoapsis will be much lower (although not 1000m/s lower, more like 200m/s I think) and similar when you're coming in from a 1000x400 orbit.
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The space station was at a 400km orbit. What orbit was your craft coming from? If you're coming in from a highly elliptical orbit there might be a large velocity difference (although 1000 m/s sounds like you were coming in either straight from launch or in a return orbit from another planet). That, or some bug. You're not the first one to mention it. So it's either a bug or you're not the only one making this mistake.
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THE POINT IS THAT IF YOU WANT PEOPLE TO HELP YOU ITS BENEIFCAP DO MAAAK E SUR E THAT THEUY CAN REDA IT EASILYU INSTEAD OF FEEDING HTME HART RRO TEAD TEXT THAT TAKES A LOT OF EFFORT TO DECIPHER IT IS ACTUALLY IN ONES OWN BENEFIT TO KOMMMUNICATGE CLEARRYL INSTAD OF DOING OTHER SMAKE THE WORK FOR THEM BUT APPARENTLHY THAT DOESNT' TMATTER AND YOU CAN JUST RELXHA AND TYPE WITHOUT CARING IF IT LOOKS OK OR IS EASY TO READ TO ME THAT IS NOT THE RIGHT WAY TO ASK PEOPLE TO BE KIND OENOGH TO ANSWE A QUESTION BUT OBVIOUSLY I AM WRONG THE GOOD THING IS THAT IT SIS GOING TO SAVE HME A LOT OF WORK BWNE TYPEING HERE THANKS YOU COFR POINTNG THAT OUT Whoops I noticed I left my capslock on. Well it's easier and quicker to leave it this way.
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Why all the hard to read 10^13 notation? Why not just write 1013? Unless you want people just to ignore the post and what you're writing because it looks messy, of course. Now some back-of-the-envelop calculations. You're saying that the Tsar Bomba released 50×106 tons of TNT of energy, and that one ton represents 4.2×109 joules of energy. Multiplied that gives us about 200×1015 or 2x1017 joules of energy. (If you're going to work with scientific notation, use it to your benefitâ€â€sofar I did not need a calculator). Now, with kinetic energy being ½mv2 we can say that v2 = 4×1017 ÷ m, with m being 3.6×1013 kilograms. That leaves you with v2 = 1.1×104 and v rougly equal to 100m/s give or take. Of course that's from a starting point of zero velocity. Your argument is that the asteroid is moving at 20 km/s, but that only applies if the bomb (assuming we manage to convert all its energy to kinetic energy which is a GIGANTIC if) is not moving itself and meets the asteroid at 20 km/s. A more likely scenario would be to explode the bomb while it matches the velocity of the asteroid, in which case the energy would amount to a delta-V of 0.1 km/s which is quite impressive for such a massive body, but does nearly nothing in regards to 20 km/s.
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Saturn V stage recovery... there wasn't any?
Kerbart replied to Motokid600's topic in Science & Spaceflight
It's unavoidable, given the used trajectory, that those engines land in a very deep part of the ocean. While these machines were use to fly to the FRIGGIN' MOON, at the same time this was the late 1960s/early 1970s. To put things into perspective: Germany was still using steam locomotives for express trains. There was little technology to locate the engines at the bottom of the ocean, let alone for retrieving it. So, if you intend to retrieve the first stage, you'll have to keep it into reasonable state after splash-down (sending astronauts up in a banged-up first stage? "Meh, we think it will hold") AND it will have to float. That will add considerable weight in turn, a luxury that not really existed in the Apollo program. The primary concern was getting to the moon and back. If the goal was to save money, not running the Apollo program at all would have been a much easier and effective strategy. -
Orbit? Your orbit will always contain the point where you stopped your final burn. Unless you're using a RAPIER that will be in the atmosphere, so it can never by a sustainable orbit. You'll have to bring a rocket (even if it's just a handful of separatrons) to circularize.
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Hahaha. Now that capsules come with RCS tanks I don't even bother putting them on my shuttles anymore. Docking takes me 2, 3 RCS max. (3 RCS is for my Jumbo 64 fuel tankers). My best sofar was docking two ships in five minutes. Game time. Really, the navy fish docking alignment indicator makes it peanuts.
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Lowest Possible Mun/Minmus Orbit?
Kerbart replied to feldman26's topic in KSP1 Gameplay Questions and Tutorials
According to the KSP Wiki you can go as low as 6200m for inclinations less than 50°. After that it climbs rapidly but it levels out at less than 7200m. -
Obviously switching your code from single-threading to multi-threading is probably a case of just adding a line like #PRAGMA MULTITHREADING I mean, seriously, how hard can it be? And surely it won't break anything. Heck, even if it breaks all existing Unity applications, who cares! It's absolutely unimaginable why unity hasn't implemented multi-threading. I mean all it takes is adding one pragma directive to switch your entire code-base over right? And nothing will break. Amazing that they didn't do it yet. Couldn't you post that BEFORE I posted my answer? Now I look like an idiot
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Gameplay similar to KSP? I thought it had more wing commander style flight dynamics.
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Perhaps the wobbly rockets are more realistic than we thought.
Kerbart replied to SuperBigD60's topic in The Lounge
"Thank you for flying with Kerbal Airways. On behalf of the crew I, Jebediah Kerman, thank you for your business" Seriously, it was a great landing. Good = A landing you walk away from Great = A landing with the plane in one piece. -
Obviously it depends from individual to individual case. Can it "ruin the game" for players who rely to much upon it without learning what needs to be learned? Yes. But it can also be a tool that helps to overcome hurdles that would turn the game into frustration otherwise. My autistic son is going through something similar at school with arithmetic. To cut a long story short: we're now using a calculator for his "math" homework. Would he get a better understanding of his math homework without it? I doubt it, because he wouldn't get anything done at all. But at least we cured him of the adversity of math which was getting so bad that he didn't want to go to school anymore (and he used to love school). On the other hand, I've been doing some SAT training on the side. It's very depressing when you tell highschool graduates that they really don't need a calculator to see that the square root of 45 lies somewhere between 6 and 7, after all 45 is between 36 and 49. "What's so special about 36 and 49?" "well those are the squares of 6 and 7" "How are we supposed to know that?" So obviously, introducing a calculator early can do harm as well. The same goes for mechjeb. Use wisely. If you're introducing youngsters ("juniors") to KSP with the intention of them learning more about physics, I'd say that mechjeb is probably something to stay away from. But in that case you want to give them a playlist of Manley videos to figure things out.
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Help reading Delta-V maps!
Kerbart replied to IriathZhul's topic in KSP1 Gameplay Questions and Tutorials
I assume your 1000 dV is based on reaching a parking orbit around Duna, which means you're spending a ton of dV on getting captured (reducing your speed to orbital velocity) The red arrow at the 250 pointing from "Kerbin/Duna Transfer" to "Duna Capture" indicates aerobraking. So the 380 really is for the transfer between the two orbits, and you're not paying any delta-v for capturing. -
The joy of an unplanned rapid disassembly after launch. Forget to spot the vampire engine laying around on the Kerbal shore, accellerate time for a Jool mission, return... and notice that Kerbin went missing. There is, where Kerbin's supposed to be, one vampiric engine saying *burb*.
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What was the best mission you've undertaken?
Kerbart replied to DunaRocketeer's topic in KSP1 Discussion
My first landing on and return from a foreign body -- in my case Minmus. -
How to get large ship into orbit?
Kerbart replied to donkey1364's topic in KSP1 Gameplay Questions and Tutorials
That was... interesting. Why so many RCS tanks? For pretty? And it proves. When in doubt or unable to get into orbit. Moar boasters... moar struts! -
If your keyboard has all function keys assigned to "system functions" (brightness, volume, wireless on/off, etc) then it usually also has an "FN" key that allows you to use them as a "regular" function key. You should also be able to toggle the keyboard preference between "system functions" and "F1-F12"
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Running a forum can be very expensive, especially when there is a good amount of users and more so if the user base is distributed globally. You'll need somebody to keep things running (not the mods, that's content. I'm talking about when the site goes down for whatever reason). You'll need hardware that runs 24/7 (it's amazing how quickly things break when they don't get one minute of downtime), reliable forum software is expensive and needs to be updated on a continuous basis (because of virusses and malware) and bandwidth isn't, contrary to what many think, free either. I have no problems with ads. They help providing a service for free that wouldn't be there (or that needs to be paid for otherwise). And when those ads are well behaved, like the ones I see right now (did Squad complain with the Ad provider?) I have nothing against it. It's when ads try to draw clicks by pretending to be something different than they are that I dislike, not ads in general.
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Here's the offending "view messages" ad that I've clicked a couple of times before I caught on. Yes, we're all rocket scientists here and if you pay attention you'd "obviously" see it's an ad. Or not?
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What do you think Jupiter's core is made of?
Kerbart replied to Sun's topic in Science & Spaceflight
Cheese is not an option? -
The one about "view messages" is especially annoying as it is in the same area as where you're looking for notifications,
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Struts 101-level questions
Kerbart replied to HoustonDave's topic in KSP1 Gameplay Questions and Tutorials
Four launch towers might also be a little bit on the low side. Those four towers carry the entire rocket. Most of your rocket is carried by those radial decouplers. Consider adding launch towers to the inner section of your launch vehicle as well. When you go to launch, your entire vehicle is all of a sudden exposed to gravity (which does not exist inside the VAB). That puts a lot of stress on all parts which is why you see it "bouncing" on the launchpad and that is usually where things break (press F3 to check before staging). Supporting a larger part of your rocket should help with that. Right now you're doing this: --> 4 -- 3 -- 2 -- 1 -- 2 -- 3 -- 4 <-- with the numbers being stages and only the "4" stages being supported. The parts in the middle will sag. Try to do this: --> 4 -- 3 --> 2 -- 1 -- 2 <-- 3 -- 4 <-- where the "2" stages are supported as well. Less stress.