Kerbart

Also: Community: “when I do [exotic thing], my Kerbals explode” Squad: “well, don’t do [exotic thing] then.” community: “That’s not enough! Prevent us from doing that!” I’d rather go easy on this and use it as a showcase that software is hard, and even simple decisions can have unforeseen consequences. Whenever we complain about something not being fixed—it’s not always that easy.

Let’s see. Centripetal acceleration is: a = v2/r, with velocity being v=ωr (ω being angular velocity). That makes a = ω2r2/r, or a=ω2r. Note how we’ve gotten the whole equation down to something rather simple without using π once. At this point we can plug in one revolution per minute, being 2π/60 or approximately 0.1047. Instead of littering “pi” all over the place, so yes, it does make a difference in readability. As to “that’s they way I’m used to doing it” as an excuse to post equations as unreadable as possible... Sure, it’s an excuse. But wouldn’t you rather have more people read what you write, than less? A little bit of effort goes a long way in communicating your ideas. Engineers often claim that people can be swayed by “pretty pictures,” but the opposite is true as well; if your message is hard to read, it won’t be read by many.

Well,done! Two minor remarks: Using superscripts for squas makes things a lot easier to read. The forum supports it, so why not write x2 instead of some arbitrary x^2 notation used by some programming languages? I’ve never done kinematics with anything else than radians as the angle unit of choice. Why make things so much more complicated using degrees? You get rid of a giant bunch of 2π in your calculations that way.

It’s hard to conceive that the center of gravity would be at one end. Hence, a 900m radius would be half the length, making the limit (for the, as others pointed out, rather arbitrary one rev/min) 1,800m #pedantry. It is practical, though, that there’s a limit to the rotation speed of a vessel, which scales up linear with size and with the square of the desired rate, something I never thought off. Making behemoths does impose limits on maneuverability, unless some handwaving is done (artificial gravity?) to explain it away. The side effect of crippling an enemy vessel’s artificial gravity generator would hence reduce its ability to maneuver, which is an interesting side effect.

Add some code to confirm that the kRPC connections works - chnage the throttle, print a “connected” statement. Looking at the code I suspect it’s not getting through the connection phase but it’s hard to tell. Did you activate kRPC inside KSP? Having the mod is not enough, you actually need to start a “server” from within KSP.

Sarcasm aside - given its age, KSP can't be selling that many fresh copies, and DLC is a great way to keep game development alive. With that in mind, and BG arriving in the first half of 2019, it's hard to imagine that Squad would wait until 2021 to publish the next one. I'd be exceptionally surprised if we are not going to see a new DLC arriving every year.

Life-support together with cryogenic sleep. There should be some penalty for putting Kerbals to sleep or waking them up (a limited supply of required medication?). Obviously, cryogenically sleeping Kerbals can’t do a thing, but they also don’t consume snacks and air. they also leave room for rescue missions if something goes wrong.

The necessity of a positive cashflow for a company to sustain itself.

Thank you, @Steven Mading, not just for figuring this all out but also for sharing that with us!

Yes, I felt quite accomplished by using it that way.

Can you post a clear picture (ie properly lit, from an angle that shows the motor) of the craft? You did a good job in providing essential information (it’s using propellant, it works in atmo) but having a picture would reduce the guesswork significantly.

I hope the fix involves the Kerbals being still uncontrollable, but now instead of being motionless, stumbling around mumbling “brains... brains...” Probably not happening but one can always hope. How cool of a mod would that be? “Sebastian Kerman has turned into a zombie and is now attacking the rest of the crew. Send in a rescue vessel equipped with Space Marine Kerbals to save the survivors before they get eaten”

[snip] So, as you finely left out my point that any part in the game can be left out from a space simulation perspective, the point of these parts is not to provide a function per sé, but to full-fill that other premise of KSP, which is the joy of making cool looking space craft. Is there any need to have a graphical representation of antennas on a ship? Wouldn’t a checkbox, or drop-down, with “has antenna xyz-123” suffice? Because the actual antenna is exactly as relevant as having an operating gravity ring on a ship; it doesn’t have a real purpose, it’s just some optical decoration that doesn’t do anything. Once you go down the slope of “it doesn’t do anything” you can basically ditch the entire graphical part of KSP. Because you can run the entire simulation without it. The people who are creative, and who like creating things do appreciate the opportunities rotors offer, I’d say. [snip]

Being a game about orbital mechanics, the game could entirely be text-based and run in a console. Enter the components for each stage, list them as you’re progressing through launch... The graphics in this game are completely irrelevant. What is that? The game would be boring? Not immersive? Ok, now that we have established that the “optical” part of the game is essential to gameplay, you can use rotors for many things to spice up your vehicles: rotating radar dishes artificial gravity rings scanning arrays large, special shaped wheels anything someone can come up with The applications may seem limited, but how could Squad release a DLC with robotic parts that do not include “continuous rotation actuator” (aka rotor) parts?

Almost, if you burn at apo/peri their positions don’t change. You want to burn in between them to alter their positions. As @KerikBalmmentions below, if there’s a node reasonably close by (where velocity is low) you don’t need to. It’s all about changing inclination when your speed is low.

Prograde/retrograde, at 90° from apo/peri. Or if you have a very elliptical orbit, raise periapsis first (that's cheaper than lowering apoapsis) “Even in a very elliptical orbit?” Especially in a high elliptical orbit, if the alternative is a plane change at low altitude (because of vis viva that automatically means high velocity)

Adjusting the apoapsis to coincide with an ascending/descending node takes very little DV Changing inclination, on the other hand, does; as you're adjusting the direction of your velocity vector. At 2000 m/s, changing inclination from 0° to 180° will take, obviously, 4000 m/s, but raising your apoapsis to 10,000 km will take far less than 1/4 of that and reversing your orbit at that point will only take a few 100 m/s. Then you have to drop your apo (same cost) but you end up doing the same maneuver for a little over half the cost. But don't take my word for it; look at real life spaceflight. That's usually how inclination changes are done; raise apo, change plane, drop apo. Much cheaper than doing it in low orbit.

But... but.., why?

Given that the game started in Early Access, “complete” might also indicate that it no longer is in early access mode, but rather “complete.” In that case it doesn’t say anything about future DLC. Indicating that you’re no longer actively developing content will surely not boost sales. Why would anyone do that? Regardless of what Squad’s actual future plans are, I doubt “complete” is intended to indicate “we’re not developing the game any further”

I’m not atomophobic but it does highlight the problem the nuclear industry faces. Radiation is invisble, and The Public has to trust experts who make claims that their systems are designed in such a way that it is impossible for things to go wrong. The same experts, after a slew of incidents, wonder why the public doesn’t trust them. I’d think it would make more sense to educate people, how radiation near a coal plant is often higher (due to the shear mass of the fuel), how it’s much safer compared to other energy sources. And enforce a rigorous safety culture which is obviously lacking given the preventable nature of both Chernobyl and Fukushima. But those disasters don’t affect hundreds of thousands of people, drive dairy farmers three countries away into bankruptcy, etc. Nobody is worried about a gas-powered plant 20 miles away, or a solar farm one town over, because it doesn’t have the potential to drive them out of their homes. On a global scale, with global scale statistics, nuclear power makes perfect sense. It’s a much harder to sell it to “the locals,” who wonder when it will blow up and destroy their homes. Of course, the technology is 100% safe and reliable. And yet, as much as it would make sense to put one in Manhattan, Washington DC, downtown Berlin or in the center or Paris, there is a curious reluctance by governments to do so. Not a vote of confidence either. Countries tend to build them near their borders. If the problem of nuclear energy is “between the ears” then very little is done to fight that perception, perhaps that’s where they should start.

What a great idea! what about providing custom indexing through module manager? [basename]&# where # indicates a schema listed in an MM config file, so you specify “dutch=een,twee,drie” and “german=ein,zwei,drei” or whatever names one wants to choose. That way, one could name [USS]&navy and get “USS Enterprise” “USS Constellation”, “USS Nimitz” etc.

I was going to ask why you insist on a Calculator class. Yes, drop it like a hot potato. why even insist on the arithmetic functions! If you need to multiply x and y, just do x*y. It’s not clear to me why you are wrapping that inside a function.

Even on Minmus your craft will cover 0.00001% of the surface or something like that. Chances of winning the Powerball are probably better.

import time def generic_check(check_function, duration, interval): start_time = time.time() while time.time() < start_time + duration: check_function() time.sleep(interval) print("Hello World") def check_my_sensors_yo(): ... # check sensors for 3 seconds generic_check(check_my_sensors_yo, 3,1) time.sleep(3) print("break") generic_check(check_my_sensors_yo, 5,1) Like this. Not sure how you pasted it.

I would not set the default for duration to 0, set it to 0.01 or something. Makes a huge difference on the performance of your code. Also, out of empathy with the ones helping you, highlight your code and click on the "code" formatting button ('<>') to make it easier to read. Don't forget to select "python" at the right bottom corner of the dialog when doing so.