peadar1987

It would be handy for me to add extra righting/stability torque to my smaller rovers

Yeah, for my own game I'd prefer axial tilt, or at least orbital inclination, but for new players it would probably just make things too hard unfortunately. Not sure how hard it is to do, but maybe it could be an option when we have different game modes and difficulties, you could set whether you wanted a "hard" setting with inclined orbits and axial tilt when you were starting the game.

I don't really like the "data loss" mechanic, I'd prefer if you got a fixed amount of science for transmitting, say the temperature or gravity readings, another for in-situ analysis of stuff using the science bay or lab parts, and yet another for actually returning samples to Kerbin. If this was coupled with some parts, like a mobile science lab, needing Kerbals to operate it, this would be awesome

If we assume the Kerbals are advanced enough to build a functioning FTL "warp drive", we'd be playing a game called "Kerbal Space Elevator". Not nearly so much fun!

Just because you or I wouldn't do it doesn't mean there's any shortage of volunteers. Getting astronauts to go to Mars on a one-way trip is the least of their problems. Keeping them alive once they're there is probably the biggest. Who's going to supply the colonists if the company goes bust?

Yeah, if you want to designate something as debris, you have to be flying it, then right click on the probe core/command module, select "rename", and then you can choose what you want it to be

Just wondering what people thought of the idea of allowing the community to officially name features in KSP. I thought it could be a good way for Squad to raise money as well, they could auction off parts of the map, so an area of flat, featureless ice cap wouldn't get much, but I can see someone paying a fair amount for the rights to officially name the mountains near KSC, or the islands with the insular space centre on it. Perhaps you could click on features to see their names, or else it would tell you where you had landed (The Ferram desert, the Manley Mountains, The Jebediah Straits). It's something that would add a little flavour to the game, I think. Afterthought: So long as there were terms and conditions to your naming rights made clear, so you don't get people naming things "Mount Hitlercock", and Squad having to go along with it.

Well, the how, we don't know it it's even possible. The maths only works if you have negative mass, and it's hypothesised that perhaps there are exotic forms of matter for which this is true, in the same way that you can have negative charge.

Or a small probe core that can be radially attached to the capsule so you can test it without a crew (the standard probe cores don't always easily fit into my designs.

I can see it now. First Mun landing of my new career mode. Jeb hops down off the ladder. Oh no! All of the monopropellant is in Bob's jetpack from that EVA he did for SCIENCE over the twin craters. Never mind, I'll just get a soil sample from closer by and hop back into the... GRAH! NO LADDER! Jeb is abandoned on the Mun for all eternity because he's 5cm too short to reach the door to the lander.

Fertiliser and pollutant are not mutuallly exclusive terms!

Reaction wheels are weighted discs spinning really fast, so if you try and change the speed of their rotation, the reaction will twist the rocket in the other direction. For a small rocket, this is enough to change its heading pretty considerably. Bigger rockets need RCS to get any sort of meaningful control for a reasonable amount of mass.

I like the idea of random weather, so long as it's not mission-ending (like Tropical Storm Jeb). Launching through clouds, flying a plane on a windy day, landing on Duna in a dust storm, getting tossed about by strong winds as your probe drops into Jool's atmosphere... I think all of those would be really fun to play (and of course, you'd have the option of simply turning weather off altogether) I've gone off the idea of random component failures though, think they'd just be too frustrating if they were common enough to affect gameplay at all.

When visiting Moho, am I better off trying to shed energy at Eve by diving through its atmosphere, or getting a gravity assist? Or just going to Moho and forgetting about all that purple goodness?

I think the main problem wouldn't be with centrifugal force, it would be with the force from a pressurised interior. Unless you had whatever space colony or whatever laid out as interconnected pressurised modules on the inside surface of the ring, I suppose.

Is there a mod out there that does this? I've been looking, but haven't found one.

Yeah, our system was for boosting a 500kg payload from earth to lunar orbit, so it was to have, as a best case scenario, an accuracy of +-100m. If you're interested, I can try and dig up some of the graphs and data and stick them in another thread. You're suggesting that you match velocity with a point on the surface of the station, and then provide centripetal force by thrusting inwards? That's probably a far better idea for something that has the fuel budget and thrust to do that. The brief for mine was to be something as passive as possible, so I was kind of working off the same assumptions for this as I was before. I'm happy enough to take your word for it on the numbers. I don't have the knowledge of dynamics and control that would be required to actually give you decent numbers to plug in.

My masters' dissertation was on a capture and release mechanism for a tether system for boosting payloads in orbit (and doing research for that was how I discovered KSP). You're going to have a tough time doing a normal docking procedure, as your window of opportunity is miniscule, the best option is a net placed so it intersects your outbound path, but not your inbound one. Alternatively, have a stationary ring and reaction wheel at one end of the station. Dock to the edge of the stationary wheel, then spin it up to the same speed as the rest of the station using the reaction wheel, that way you can use solar power instead of burning fuel to match the rotation of the station, and you extend your docking window considerably.

The épée??

Presumably you'd get some pretty crazy air circulation going on as well, a lot of shear going on to get from 0 to 1000+ km/hr in such a short distance.

As far as I'm concerned, SSTO is just a title. Build the design you want and worry about titles later. In reality, I'd class yours as an SSTO anyway, as the gear cart is more of a launching aid than a stage, presumably in a "real life" space programme, it would be stopped before the end of the runway, wheeled to the SPH, and put under the next spaceplane.

What's mathematically possible is that a small region of spacetime can move faster than the speed of light. However, it would require the object to have negative mass, which would require exotic types of matter we don't know are possible yet. Putting it alongside chemical rockets and radiosotope thermal generators just doesn't fit, in my opinion. If a civilisation could build an Alcubierre drive, they would be running everything on minituarised nuclear fusion and antimatter, not bipropellant and jet fuel. I know it's a game, but for me, it's a game in which way-out-there-probably-never-going-to-happen technologies don't belong.

Some of this probably goes against the Devs' wish to cut out random events. I think I'd be pretty annoyed if I got back from a huge mission to Jool, with a bajillion SCIENCEs on board my capsule, only to have it eaten by a Krakenshark when I splashed down! On the other hand, I LOVE the idea of landing in a Kerbal town or village, and having everyone stare at my charred capsule as I step out like it was no big deal!

The Albubierre Drive is science fiction. Mathematically, it might be possible, according to our current, incomplete knowledge of general and special relativity, for a "bubble" of spacetime to travel through the rest of spacetime faster than the speed of light. It might lead to something practical in the very distant future, it might prove impractical for moving anything above the subatomic scale, or it might prove to be something akin to the "plum pudding" model of the atom, and be rendered obsolete by a better understanding of the universe. In any case, it is not close to being something that will be practically implemented in any of our lifetimes, and so I don't think it belongs in KSP.

Been Roving around the Mun's East Crater collecting SCIENCE!! Turns out there's a section of Polar Lowlands and Poles near the western edge of the crater, so with the crater itself, the highlands, the highland craters and those two, I've getting a lot of interesting data from my little tumbly rover!