RadHazard

61 = 4! + 4! + 4 + !4

Typing the phrase, "Typing the phrase, "[phrase]", with my left and right hands swapped, and not looking at the keyboard:", with my left and right hands swapped, and not looking at the keyboard: Ti[tbg tge . " p][jsdw]"Jj/ wrrh my lwdr ans yokhr haxds siappwd. amd kpt lookilh at the kw,oarf: I managed to get pretty good near the end there.

60 = (Γ(4)! /Γ(4)) / 4) * √(4) EDIT: 60 = (Γ(4)! / Γ(4)) / (4 / √(4)) It's the same thing, but it has nicer symmetry

I used the launch window planner at http://alexmoon.github.io/ksp/ to predict roughly how much dV it would take to get to each planet. It suggests Moho needs a 3000 m/s ejection burn and a 2000 m/s insertion burn using a ballistic (i.e. no mid-course plane change) trajectory. The delta-V map on the wiki suggests it needs 1500 m/s to land on, giving a total of 6500 m/s. That's how I got the current score. If I switch it to mid-course plane change, it gives me a 1800 m/s ejection, 1000 m/s plane change, and a 2500 m/s insertion burn for a total of 6800 m/s (including the landing). Does that sound about right, or would you think it'd be even more than that? I was thinking of adjusting a few of the scores, including Ike, but I didn't want to step on Jasonden's toes and reduce his score, given he already landed there.

Okay, I removed all the mods except interstellar and the stripped-down version of Near Future I got the solar panels from. I built a quick test craft to confirm the solar panels are loading the waste heat module, and then swapped directly to my satellite, which still isn't loading it. I saw in the log that I have a couple errors from some parts who's model paths I forgot to change when I renamed the folder, but none of those are the solar panels that are giving me issues. Link to log EDIT: Interesting. I took a look at my persistence file just to see what was there. I found that all the solar panels on my three satellites had this: MODULE { name = FNSolarPanelWasteHeatModule isEnabled = False EVENTS { } ACTIONS { } } While my test craft's solar panel had this: MODULE { name = FNSolarPanelWasteHeatModule isEnabled = True EVENTS { } ACTIONS { } } For some reason, the waste heat module is present disabled on all of my satellite solar panels. I don't know why, but I hope this helps narrow down the problem. I'll try editing them all to enabled and see if that fixes it. EDIT2: Actually, I did a search and I'm seeing a lot of disabled solar panel waste heat modules in my file. My Gigantor sats (which were launched before the Near Future ones) have it enabled, but plenty of my landers I launched before that have it disabled. All of those have stock solar panels. EDIT3: I can confirm that the solar satellites work as expected after I did a find/replace on all the disabled waste heat modules.

I'm still having issues with solar panels. I loaded up a test ship on the launchpad with the exact same solar panels as my satellites, and they loaded the waste heat module. However, I went to the tracking station and swapped to one of my satellites, and they still aren't loading it. I'm not sure what could be causing this problem. Link to my log file. I couldn't find anything that looked like a related error to me in the log. I linked it as it was rather long, as it's full of a bunch of "Parsing int/bool/string". I cut off everything before I launched my test craft to keep it at a reasonable length. I didn't touch it otherwise, apart from deleting approximately 3000 lines of "MissingMethodException: Method not found: 'EditorLogic.SetSoftLock'.", which I'm fairly confident isn't related to my issue. I marked the place where they were just in case, though.

Why not a set of small, radial attach LF-only and O-only tanks? That way, if you need just a bit more liquid fuel than you can get from a single jet fuel tank, you can use the tiny LF tanks. If you need most of the liquid fuel a jet fuel tank gives you but not all of it, you can strap on one or two Oxi tanks to turn the rest into rocket fuel. Sure, you can use tweakables to adjust how full the tanks are, but there's no sense in carrying around the dead weight of an entire tank when you only need half the fuel it gives you.

My entry: I managed to make it to Duna. I would have been able to return to Kerbin, but alas I didn't have quite enough fuel in my lander to rendezvous with the fuel tanks I left in orbit. Rockomax has honored the sacrifice of those brave souls by slashing their prices across the board -- This weekend only! Buy now! Score: 100pts * 1x SoIs = 100 points

The Rockomax Conglomerate needs your help! With the rise of spaceplanes and C7 Aerospace in the space exploration market, Rockomax has seen the lowest stock prices in years! The board of directors had hoped the new R.A.P.I.E.R. engine designed in conjoint with C7 Aerospace would help boost their revenue. Unfortunately, due to it's less-than-stellar performance, Rockomax has found that many customers prefer the Turbojet/Aerospike combo - both C7 engines, of course. Rockomax needs something to boost their sales, and like everything else they do, they're thinking of something big. This is where you come in. Rockomax has provided KSC with a massive amount of funding for one of the most ambitious missions yet attempted by kerbalkind -- land a kerbal on another planet. But there's a catch. Rockomax wants you to endorse their flagship product: The "Mainsail" Liquid Fuel engine. Specifically, they want you to land a kerbal on another planet and (hopefully) return using nothing but Mainsails! Rules You are only allowed to use Mainsail engines. You cannot use any other thrust-generating parts, including SRBs. Separatrons and RCS are fine, but may only be used for separating stages and rendezvous maneuvers, respectively. Launch, circularization, transfer burns, and landing must all be done using only Mainsails (or parachutes). A landing is considered successful if the Kerbal lives long enough to plant a flag. You are only eligible for return points for that body if the kerbal that planted that flag is returned to Kerbin. This challenge is limited to stock parts only with one exception: Any information mod that requires a part is allowed (e.g. MechJeb, Kerbal Engineer, etc.) MechJeb and any other information mods are allowed -- this is primarily a design challenge. Part clipping is allowed, but infinite fuel and other debug menu options are not. Multiple launches and in-orbit assembly are allowed, but once your craft is complete and begins it's first transfer burn to leave Kerbin's SoI, you may not launch any more crafts. You may refuel your craft in at a station in Kerbin orbit at any point before you begin your first transfer burn. Once you leave you cannot use any fuel you did not bring on your craft. Pictures required: VAB or Launchpad Shot, intercept for each planetary SoI, approach for landing on each body, planted flag on each body, ascent for each body (if applicable), and one pic of the kerbals splashed down/landed if you returned to Kerbin. Scoring Scores are determined by which bodies you have landed and planted a flag on. Each body has two scores: One for landing and placing a flag on it, and one for returning the kerbal to Kerbin. You can only earn each of these once. Additionaly, for each planetary SoI you enter and then land on a body (either the planet or one of it's moons), your gain a multiplier. You can only gain this once per planetery SoI (i.e. Going Eve -> Duna -> Eve only gains you a 2x multiplier. Landing on both Duna and Ike will only net you a 1x multiplier) Your score is equal to the sum of the landing scores, plus the sum of the return scores (if you successfully bring your Kerbalnauts back to Kerbin), times your multiplier. Planet Scores: Moho: Landing - 650 points Returning - 450 points Eve: Landing - 100 points Returning - 1500 points Gilly: Landing - 200 points Returning - 200 points Duna: Landing - 100 points Returning - 250 points Ike: Landing - 150 points Returning - 150 points Dres: Landing - 500 points Returning - 200 points Jool: Landing* - 200 points Returning** - Infinity points Laythe: Landing - 250 points Returning - 600 points Vall: Landing - 450 points Returning - 400 points Tylo: Landing - 650 points Returning - 600 points Bop: Landing - 400 points Returning - 350 points Pol: Landing - 350 points Returning - 350 points Eeloo: Landing - 650 points Returning - 200 points *I think this might have been done before **Good luck with that (Scores are roughly based on the dV costs to intercept and land to the body, and then to take off and return to Kerbin) High Score List ThreeMartiniLaunch - 850 points (Eeloo, returned) Jasonden - 300 points (Ike, returned) RadHazard - 100 points (Duna, didn't return) Good luck! Tips: Use tweakables to limit the thrust of the mainsail you use as your lander engine(s) Use the mainsails as you would LV-Ns, that is, put as few as possible on your transfer stages while retaining a tolerable TWR (it shouldn't be hard!) Mainsails are heavy! Dump useless mainsails as soon as possible, especially on your transfer stage. (Rockomax won't mind, since you'll just have to buy more )

To directly answer your question, you need to calculate the mass flow rate of the ion engine. From wikipedia: We start off with this equation: V[SUB]e[/SUB] (effective exhaust velocity) = g[SUB]0[/SUB] (surface gravity) * I[SUB]sp[/SUB] g[SUB]0[/SUB] is actually 9.81 m/s^s, but I believe KSP uses 9.82 m/s^s for mass flow calculation. For the ion engine, the effective exhaust velocity is 9.82 m/s * 4200 s = 41,244 m/s To find mass flow rate using Ve, we use this equation: Thrust = V[SUB]e[/SUB] * m (mass flow rate) We rearrange it to get m = 0.5 kN / 41,244 m/s = 0.0000121 kN*s/m, or 0.0121 kg/s Xenon in KSP weighs 0.1 kg per unit and electricity is weightless, so we get a final flow rate of 0.121 units of Xenon per second. Since the ratio listed on the stats determines how much electricity it uses, we get 14.52 units of electric charge per second. Stock Gigantors produce 18 EC/s in Kerbin orbit, so 1 Gigantor per ion engine is a decent rule of thumb. Unfortunately KSP doesn't have a proper inverse square relationship with solar power, so it's more difficult to calculate how many you'd need in, say, Jool orbit.

It actually has higher ISP than the 24-77. If you put 50 48-7S engines on a rocket, it has the same thrust as a mainsail, less weight (5t instead of 6t), and a higher ISP (300s - 350s instead of 280s - 330s). The only disadvantage is part count (which admittedly is a somewhat major disadvantage). Again, on topic, based on the numbers people are posting, I can see the RAPIER is at a disadvantage compared to turbojet/aerospike, but I can't see what the devs could easily do to fix it. If they upped thrust and ISP to match turbojets and aerospikes, there'd be very, very little reason to use either of those engines. They could up the mass of all three engines so that the mass savings the RAPIER gives is more significant, but that'd nerf the other two engines. It's a fine line to walk, I think. On another note, has anyone had issues with asymmetric thrust with the RAPIERS? I built a test SSTO with them and as I started getting into the thin atmosphere, my left engine started throttling down (I assume from lack of air). My plane started spinning to the left pretty badly before the automatic mode switch kicked in and they went to rocket mode.

Fractal, would you consider unifying your resources with what we have come up with in the Unified Resource Guidlines thread? I believe we've finally come up with an agreement on how to standardize resources. I know that some of your resources (e.g. UF4 and ThF4) require specific flow modes and may not fit with the standard, but I don't see any reason why you couldn't standardize water and other simple resources like that. The spreadsheet linked on the first post contains a catalog of all the resources we've come up with so far. There's a unified resource name column and an in-game densities column, so that's all the data you'd need to keep to the standard. It's all your choice whether or not to do so, of course.

I've taken courses on graphs and other data structures. I don't know how intertwined trees are to Unity's physics engine, but since things like struts which allow cyclical physics connections work, I assume it's not too deep. Swapping from a tree to a graph structure would involve a major re-write of a lot of game logic, but it shouldn't be too difficult to do, just tedious. You'd have to replace a whole bunch of game logic with algorithms designed to handle graphs. There are plenty of already-made algorithms out there to determine things like connectivity, bridges and articulation points (to determine if an exploding part splits your vessel into two or not), and there are search algorithms that could easily handle things like fuel flow (breadth-first search is one simple example, but there are other, better ways), so it'd just be a matter of actually implementing them in KSP The hardest part would likely be adding editor tools to make handling multi-connections for vessels. A simple (though not very efficient) way to do it would be to simply connect any parts that intersect with each other and aren't already connected, but letting the user handle connections manually would make them much smarter. Of course, this would mean a large amount of developer time, and I don't know how big of a benefit it would provide. It may not be worth doing at this point because of how much work it would take, versus the rather marginal benefit it would provide, given we already have struts and multi-docking-port connections to handle most cases.

Behold, the ROCKET MISSILE BOMB, contender for the airplane-launched-rocket leaderboard: Link to the album for higher-resolution pictures EDIT: Oops, forgot a VAB pic as per the rules. Here's one:

The panels I'm using are from the Near Future pack, and I don't think I touched the config at all. It uses ModuleDeployableSolarPanel, so I dunno why it wouldn't work. Here's the .cfg if it helps: // Solar Panel - Modern Large PART { // --- general parameters --- name = solarpanels-modern03 module = Part author = ChrisAdderley // --- asset parameters --- mesh = panel-modern03.mu rescaleFactor = 1 // --- node definitions --- // definition format is Position X, Position Y, Position Z, Up X, Up Y, Up Z node_attach = 0.22, 0.0, 0.0, 1.0, 0.0, 0.0 TechRequired = experimentalElectrics entryCost = 8000 // --- editor parameters --- cost = 5000 category = Utility subcategory = 0 title = KR-XL Megalador Solar Array manufacturer = Kerb Kastria description = Disputing the Gigantor-XL's claim of 'single largest solar array available', the Megalador is large, unwieldy, fragile and heavy - but, if you can get past all that, is packed with loads of concentrated solar cells. // attachment rules: stack, srfAttach, allowStack, allowSrfAttach, allowCollision attachRules = 0,1,0,0,1 // --- standard part parameters --- mass = 0.9 dragModelType = default maximum_drag = 0.2 minimum_drag = 0.2 angularDrag = 1 crashTolerance = 8 maxTemp = 3100 MODULE { name = ModuleDeployableSolarPanel animationName = ExtendPanels sunTracking = true raycastTransformName = suncatcher pivotName = pivot isBreakable = true resourceName = ElectricCharge chargeRate = 72 powerCurve { key = 206000000000 0 0 0 key = 13599840256 1 0 0 key = 68773560320 0.5 0 0 key = 0 10 0 0 } } }

Ah, right. How much battery space do I need? I do remember reading about that when I made the satellites, so they already each have a 12k battery pack. I would assume it's 1 ec per kw of production, but if that was the case I would think they would be producing 12 MW each rather than a little less than 6.

I've got two things to report: I let the antimatter tank on an antimatter-powered tug discharge after I was finished using it as a way to dispose of it. The warning countdown appeared as it should have, but when it reached zero the tank didn't explode. The tug is just sitting there with no charge in it's antimatter tanks Second, there's something off about my microwave solar satellites. I put two sats in a ~2 Gm orbit around the sun with 12 stock gigantors. They produce ~6.8 MW of power each (or about 570 kW per panel). I later installed three more sats in a ~500 Mm solar orbit with 8 of the large Near Future solar panels each. These are producing only about ~5.7 MW of power, which doesn't match. According to the VAB screen, the Near Future solar panels are rated at 72 kW vs the Gigantor's 12 kW, 6x as much. I did the math and the Gigantor sats are producing the expected amount, but the Near Future sats should be producing about 435 MW each (6 times the power per solar panel * 3/4 of the panels / (1/4 the distance)^2 = 64 times the power production). Is this just the display bug that was happening to other people, or is there something different about mod solar panels, or is it something else entirely? I did note that the mod panels don't have a "Heat Production" line in their context menu.

While true, this does have the problem of leaving fuel lines stuck to your empty tanks after you decouple the lower stages. You could probably solve this problem with creative use of docking ports and fuel crossfeed, however.

I love the linear RCS port. That's how I can RCS-balance things like this: I'd say one of the least-useful parts is the shielded docking port. It provides no advantage (aside from aesthetics) over the regular docking port and has extra weight.

What mod is that large solar array from? It kinda looks like the Near Future solar array, but I didn't think it was so large.

I know this isn't related to your question, but what's the TWR of that monster (with payload attached)? If it approaches or exceeds 1, you'd be better off using LV-909s or some other kind of engine. LV-Ns only provide superior dV overall when you have a TWR somewhere less than one, due to how low their natural (i.e. without payload) TWR is. You can use the tool I have in my sig (or any in-game tool that can tell you your dV, for that matter) to see this for yourself. As for multi-port docking, I have seen Whackjob dock several monsters with 6 Sr. ports in a hex configuration, so it is possible to do. I've not done it myself, so I can't say how difficult it would be. EDIT: I actually ran the numbers for what I guess your craft is (7 X200-32 tanks, 28 LV-Ns, a few extra tons to compensate for monoprop/batteries/docking ports/etc.), and it actually looks like it'd have a TWR of 0.4 with a 200 ton payload attached. This gets it 2900 dV, compared to 1600 dV with the LV-Ns replaced with LV-909s, so it looks good to me. Carry on.

is there a reason why the OX-STAT panels are treated specially? it seems like a bug that waste heat has no effect on them, and their power output doesn't scale either according to this post. or is there a need for stock panel behavior? Fractal_UK, is this intentional? This was true a few versions back when I posted this, but has since been changed.

You need to unlock various tech nodes to unlock certain upgrades. If a tech node is required to upgrade a part, any parts launched after you unlock that upgrade spawn on the pad with the upgrade already unlocked. Only parts that were launched before the upgrade was unlocked and parts with "Per Part" upgrades need to be upgraded individually via science. [Per Part] Alcubierre Drive: Standard Field Geometry ----> Advanced Field Geometry (Faster charging times and higher maximum speeds) [ultra-High Energy Physics] Antimatter Reactor: Solid/Liquid Core Reactor ----> Liquid/Plasma Core Reactor (3x power output) [Per Part] Computer Core: Standard Mainframe ----> Artificial General Intelligence (AGI) Core (Guaranteed to open the pod bay doors while within warranty period!) [Experimental Electrics] Electric Generator: Brayton Turbine ----> KTEC Thermoelectric [Fusion Power] Nuclear Reactor: Solid Core Reactor ----> Gas Core Reactor (3x power output) [ultra-High Energy Physics] Plasma Thruster: Magnetoplasdynamic ----> Quantum Vacuum Plasma Thruster [Fusion Power] Thermal Turbojet: Atmospheric Thermal Jet ----> Hybrid Thermal Rocket (Basic version can only work in atmosphere, Upgraded version can toggle over to internal fuel) [Experimental Electrics] Heat Radiator: Mo Li Heat Pipe ----> Graphene Radiator [Antimatter Power] D-T Inertial Fusion Reactor ----> High-Q Intertial Fusion Reactor

I believe it's just because the current model doesn't look good stretched any bigger. It used to be the model for the 1.25m fission reactor before the models were redone and it was recycled as a fusion reactor. The other sized nuclear reactors had older models that wouldn't look good as fusion reactors.

This is how I did my satellite relay network for KSPI microwave-beamed power. I boosted up to a transfer orbit with an apoapsis of ~2869 km and circularized there. I then used RCS to tweak my orbital period to be almost exactly six hours using the orbital period readout from VOID.