thorfinn

There is only one problem with 'explicitely bipropellant' engines: without tweakables, going only by units of tanks and half-tanks, hitting the right mixture ratio would be a chore...

Well, there is something I can tell you: if you think that popular IDEs and programming environments of today are very complicated to use, it\'s not all in your head. They really are. I wrote serious programs (i.e. I got grades/scientific results out of them) in C, Fortran90 and VHDL in the past few years, but still can\'t really wrap my mind around modern IDEs. I believe that this happens because there is essentially no market anymore for 'hobby' programming environments: 'normal people' don\'t learn to program anymore, and most of those who do gravitate around the professional sector (they are there, or plan to be, or wish to be) so almost all tools emphasize the manteinance of large projects instead of easy 'quick and dirty' coding. The initial barrier to entry is higher (although making progress afterwards is probably easier) Things like the Borland Turbo Pascal / Turbo C suites, or even M$ QBASIC (yes, I said that), that allowed most of us twentysomethings to easily take baby steps into programming, seem to have vanished. At least, I can\'t find them. Scripting languages like Ruby and Python are probably the modern substitute: I dabbled a bit in Ruby, really love the syntax, but never had the time to really learn it; so I still don\'t know how to manage libraries, which is the No.1 problem usually with these things. Compiling C++ from the command line with a makefile is clunky but conceptually easier, if somebody explains it decenty to you. Unfortunately, the last time I used a C++ compiler was three years ago, and I have totally forgot how to write makefiles... but if you find a good tutorial or manage to speak to somebody who can explain it well, it will be pretty straightforward for easy tasks.

But it must also be able to bring you back if the docking fails for any reason (excess delta-V, contingency life support.) On a short trip like the one to the Moon, is there much difference? To Mars, well, now we\'re talking.

You probably want to see this paper: http://cbboff.org/UCBoulderCourse/documents/LunarCyclerPaper.pdf I don\'t understand the rationale for this in real life, though. Unless maybe as a way to stream material from Moon to Earth (not the opposite).

Right: locking down the general-purpose I/O, and giving a KSP-mediated interface to some kind of data store (be it files in a single folder, or some database). The same for network I/O: Harv says he wants to add OSC connectivity to KSP, mod parts could use OSC through the main program and so communicate with the external world without the risks of allowing direct net access. (Also, if Harv wirtes the net code once and for all, it\'s less work for the modmakers )

Is there a safe way to identify (and simply forbid) any file I/O or network operation in the CIL bytecode? With these out of the way, you\'d need something like a buffer overflow to damage the user\'s machine: doing privilege escalation attacks from within an interpreter should be hard... (but hey, maybe I\'m all wrong, that\'s why I\'m asking.)

Con me, cinque

You\'ve been on 4chan too much And definitions have grey areas, as usual: if you fly a trajectory where the initial G peak is, say, five, and then bounce up to 0.25 before going down again, some could say that it isn\'t a 'skip' and some could say it is

I do: but that isn\'t a 'skip' reentry. What you\'re describing is what Apollo did every time. They had the capability to extend their trajectory substantially with a coasting, ballistic phase, with negligible aero effects, but they never used it. That is 'skipping'. By offsetting the center of gravity, so that the capsule 'leans' on a side instead of entering exactly blunt-side-first. This way, the air stream is deflected somewhat and a lift force is generated. Lift coefficient is very low, as expected, something like 0.2 or 0.3, but it was/is enough (Soyuz does that too).

Uh? That\'s pretty much the definition... when 'out of the atmosphere' means 'ballistic, beyond the zone of noticeable aerodynamic drag and lift'. A 'skip reentry' usually implies the ability of controlling the trajectory with capsule lift, though, and this is still unimplemented in KSP. (Plus Kerbin reentry accelerations are so mild right now that you wouldn\'t NEED it anyway, but...)

My try at this (pictures and calculation of exact score will follow later): 3 gimballing engines lit on ground <- 515 kN 82x190 km orbit 2x RCS tanks ( 1.8 ) + 8x RCS blocks (0.4) + 1 decoupler ( 0.8 ) + 1 capsule (1.0) + 1 chute (0.3) + 1 ASAS ( 0.8 )= 5.1 tons payload I see that the ASAS isn\'t counted: not interested, then... I don\'t think I\'m able to fly ascents manually (and that ASAS got to orbit and could be used there, so why isn\'t it 'payload' anyway? )

You took out Tiberius? I liked the idea of one more inner planet than our system... Btw, I love 'Juniper', because of an old Italian comic book I loved (Could you have a 'Korinna' somewhere also? )

Brother.... This was my definitely inferior attempt, made way back when 0.9 was current (notice the absence of the air pressure gauge, and the palm trees.) It flew decently, more or less following the original\'s profile, but during first stage boost it was in constant danger of shaking itself apart, due to the usual wonky behaviour of mod decouplers (they seem to be very hard to get right). The Conestoga family is VERY interesting, and I mantain that Squad should include an assortment of small SRBs tuned for making designs like that possible; to be used for satellite launch in the very early phase of the campaign. (I would like the campaign to start from Sputnik and Vanguard, and manned spaceflight to be attained after this introductory phase, though it would be brief)

The finaly tally for Nova\'s system would have been similar There\'s 10 objects in the front page post, and he wanted two gas giants with lots of moons and a companion brown dwarf with its own system.... Anyway, whatever Squad does for the system in the end, I hope that they make a big poster like this and sell it in the merch section: Nerdiest thing I could have in my room by far, but hey, THAT would be a system I can VISIT!

45° is the best angle for constant, divergence-less gravity (ie. flat earth), and the trajectory is a parabola. For long distances, the trajectory is an arc of ellipse, and things are not so simple. Will try to solve that problem after I finish working

There are some rumours that somebody reached them before their discovery of space travel: The details of the voyage are unknown, as are those of the breathing filters that he undoubtedly needed.

With exopacks, like on Pandora Oh, and that much CO2 also makes atmospheric entry harder (pages 3-4) than in air, which is good 'story-wise' (since we reenter so slow...)

The game we play is, what are the implications of the numbers that Harv chose? What neat physical ideas can we learn from them? We know that the density of Kerbin is fantastically high, that scaling down the Solar system by 91% doesn\'t work... but learning how and why Kerbin is impossible is very instructive and entertaining. For us at least

Closette, I just wanted to say that I really envy your enthusiasm Back when physics was mostly a game for me, I would probably have been working out data on Kerbin just like you and perfecting Kerbin-Mun trajectories on so many sheets of paper... Now that it\'s my job, I get enough of it in the lab that I\'m not really in the mood of doing much calculations when I come back home and play KSP. But sometimes you manage to find very interesting things; the first-order atmospheric model you just linked was new to me, for example (and it\'s the kind of thing where you go 'oh, but that\'s obvious!' AFTER you\'ve seen it...) And by the way, following your numbers, Mach 1 at sea level on Kerbin is 270 m/s, assuming normal Earth temperatures. Nice. Maybe still a tad high from a gameplay aspect... but it\'s such a nice derivation

This should be called the 'Mass driver bug' You should inform Harv of this, Silisko. The tower of adapters is obviously abusing the system, but the magnitude of the effect is so large that it would be better to find out what the hell is happening anyway.

And what\'s the point? The real advantage of Mac Os is interface and ease of use. If you have to tinker with your machine to run it, that just defeats the purpose...

We need Ai-chan on this ship, too...

Nice: reminds me somewhat of Vostok, without being directly inspired. The gauge of typical rocket for launching it would be... 70cm? (On the 1m parts, it should be a somewhat easy SSTO: after all, that\'s what Mercury-Atlas was... stage-and-a-half, yes, I know.) Is it really a problem?

So, the first Kerbal warp drive malfunctioned and sent our heroes to Bizarro World? My best compliments for Timmon, also!

Very interesting challenge. I managed to land in 4 out of 5 maria with a almost-stock ship (used two NovaPunch couplers and landing legs: engines and tanks stock) with a decidedly non-optimal route: I 'decided' to visit all the maria on the lighted side first, before going to the dark side (quotes around 'decided' because it was actually an error in reading the navball at 2nd launch). It was a good idea after all, because I flipped the vehicle in the fourth landing since I couldn\'t see a thing. And it would have had just enough fuel to launch back to Kerbin, dang it... Will post some pix later. Will not attempt again until we get better instrumentation: landing in the dark is too much of a gamble. Obviously, I could just wait on the ground until my destination is illuminated... but timewarp on the ground doesn\'t work either, so.... This is the vehicle anyway. I have to thank... somebody on this forum for the idea of daisy-chained drop tanks.