Ravenchant

As a late companion to yesterdays' rover pic, here's a Duna ascent vehicle losing half its fairings during...well... Duna descent. Its transfer stage can be seen in the background.

My 2 cents: The new parts seem overpowered compared to the other parts in the game. They make getting to places easier. And it doesn't bother me one bit. Why? They are in the last tier of the tech tree. Meaning that realistically, the player already has unlocked most of it, maybe even all of it. Which means that the only thing he/she is playing for is FUN, not unlocking stuff for "completion". And at that stage, he/she has probably launched dozens of rockets and done an interplanetary transfer or two- repetitive things, you might notice. So if the new parts make those easier- great! That leaves more time to work on the actual mission. And imposing your own restrictions is half the fun anyway. This is coming from a guy who never used a Mainsail or a LV-N

The idea of having multiple launch pads at KSC sounds interesting, depending on how it is implemented. There could be size/ tonnage restrictions on the pads (let's say, the main pad can launch anything, then you have one or two medium pads and finally a couple of small ones which can only launch unmanned craft massing up to 50 or 75 tons). Then, limitations can be made for career, as suggested by Crush. For example: - each pad having a minimum time between launches... for the smallest ones it could be unlimited, or as low as a couple of hours; manned launches a few days apart etc.? - as said, maximum launch mass in accordance with pad size? - uprating existing pads to support manned launches as a cheaper alternative to building bigger ones? - extending this to SPH... starting with a shorter, narrow runway? - maybe a missile silo only supporting rockets up to a certain diameter, Dnepr-style? - having to greenlight the launch in advance because it takes time to set up? (then you could dedicate one pad to have a rescue mission ready and waiting at all times)

I think Aria wouldn't mind them

Since most serious contenders have been already dealt with, I'm going to go with whoever the first Indian fellow to use the concept of zero in a mathematical sense was. Or perhaps, more traditionally, Aristarch.

I tried to forgo fuel crossfeed on the new launchers. It won't last- this just about suffices to send 50 tons up. Oh, and also anything more powerful than a Skipper wasn't used.

Great, well thought out challenge! I will try to do it in forseeable future One question regarding the rules, though. As they are, level 2 seems much harder to do than level 3, seeing one has to lug more mass on the landers- is that intentional?

That's actually the rear side BTW, love how you managed to make the landing vehicle that compact. Constellation-inspired?

Finally put something designed way back in 0.22 to good use. As far as skycranes go, this was one of my less explodey ideas (and also a nightmare to balance, thanks to the lack of thrust limiters)...the whole contraption massed 27 tons at touchdown, including rover.

Semi-deploy them as fast as possible. Typically this would mean 8 km or thereabouts; as for full deployment altitude (which is what the slider affects), it's a tradeoff, I guess. If you come in on a shallow angle and reduce your speed early on, you can probably get away with early deployment.

While I do like the look of planets & moons... once you see one vista of a place, you've seen them all, except for Kerbin. The geography and texture work could use some variety. Still, with visual enhancement mods the universe looks mouth-watering

I finally bit the bullet and installed ARM. So the first thing to do is, naturally, designing a new lifter family. This is the smallest one. Things learned: a) the big adapter is beautifully suited for concealing probe cores, batteries etc., and LV-T30 clusters are still useful

Project Vesper, part 2 The journey to Eve was uneventful aside from searching for the perfect gravity assist trajectory. It turned out the ship would have to make a powered assist, spending several hundred m/s of delta-v to get a Kerbin intercept. But first, the lander was released. "I name thee... Gillae!" (bad puns for everyone! ) Nothing could stop the crew from catching a whiff of fresh vacuum outside and get a glance at the purple planet. The encounter with Gilly, however, didn't go as planned. Good thing the probe was overengineered ...aand separated! *bounce* "Okay, this time it will stay at rest. *bounce* Fast forward to the guys coming home. Admittedly... I screwed the aerobraking up a bit. But just a bit, ya hear me?! Still, everyone got away unscathed and could return to Kerbin on the same day. Home sweet home!

Meet Agni, a newly operational, monoprop powered Duna comm sat In unrelated news, the airspace is getting...crowded.

Well, this was soon Looks beautiful, and exactly what we needed- definitely using it!

Already saw one, read the other, really liked both Still, thanks! I guess I'll have to draw inspiration from elsewhere...

60 tons before ARM... I wanted my lifters to look halfway plausible and docked often, most interplanetary ships were assembled in 2 or 3 launches. As of now... we'll have to see, but 200t should be doable

Okay, I do realize it's in bad form to start a thread because of a single question, so... maybe we could make it one thread: if anyone can't find a specific website anymore but kinda knows what it looks like and what it's about, they can post here and hope to get an answer. What do you think? Anyway...my question. I stumbled upon the site two or three years ago, can't really remember but it didn't look too outdated, so it should be still online. It had to do with space, a homepage for an enthusiast-made video or even movie in the style of the faux-documentary Man conquers space, but more realistic and modern. It was still in development, there were a few short promo videos on the page though, and a lot of artworks (sketches, 3d models etc.). The latter are the reason why I'm asking at all...as far as I remember, the designs were really interesting and would be a fun to recreate in KSP The crafts were centered on Moon and Mars exploration/colonization, but primarily Mars. One ship had the name of an Italian scientist and transferred cargo, possibly crew between Mars and Earth. There were two large habitat pods with heatshields on the sides... I assume those were meant to separate and land a base in one piece. Can't remember the method of propulsion, but the base structure resembled Discovery from 2001, only with bigger fuel tanks. That would be about it. Does anyone know what this could be? I must have exercised my Google-fu for half an hour at least, but nothing showed up

I have one really great advanced mathematics (actually Analysis I) book I don't need anymore and could mail away, the only downside is that it's in Slovenian There surely are some copyright-free scripts and textbooks to be found online, and you can try searching for lecture videos...like this one (it's probably a bit too in-depth for 8th grade, but still)

Yeah...I'd be kinda wary of that. Anyway, some kind of ISRU would be nice to see, if only for the fact that Squad would need to backpedal on the resources statement

Itshappening.gif Awesome! Thank you guys so much! Now prepare to get your servers overloaded

That limit is usually used for defining a derivative, yes. As x approaches zero, you can think of the path of the function being split into shorter and shorter straight lines, which are tangent to the path. Now, the finer the division, the better those lines approximate the function path. X -> 0 simply means that the divisions are becoming infinitely small, and thus the "lines" exactly follow the curve, e.g. there is no approximation anymore. Then you can start talking about the slope of the function in any given point- it can be given as f', or df/dx, or a dot over f. The first derivative is kinda the "rate of change" of the curve, then you can take the derivative from that and get the rate of change of the slope, etc.

To be fair, though, the human body didn't actually change that much in the past couple of 10 000's of years. If you could somehow acquire a Cro-Magnon newborn and bring it to the present, there's no reason it couldn't become a particle physicist or neurosurgeon. Education is an amazing thing.

Very nice! They look perfect for brining along on a lander

Update! I do realise that there was a long pause, but I had stuff to do in real life and didn't feel like posting for some time after. Sorry Nevertheless: here's a short one! After the success of the previous project, which most Kerbals at home watched unfold with awe and joy (except for the top dogs at KSC and the people who approved its funding - they watched with nervous uneasiness, resignation letters at hand), it quickly became clear that for both scientific endeavors and good public relations, more manned missions will be neccessary. Now, a return to Duna right away was out of the question- most of the tech from which it could benefit was still under developement- and mission lengths of several years that would accompany pushes to the outer planets were not considered seriously yet. That leaves one candidate- Eve. And so we come to... Project Vesper Fancy name, but the budget is still limited. Trying to pull off a landing would be suicide, data about the planet was still incomplete. A flyby would have to do it- one compact ship, a docked orbiter for a 3-man crew in case of mishaps near Kerbin and that's it. Stupid economic crisis. T minus a few weeks- the main ship climbs to orbit. Really, it can hardly be called a mothership. Its wet mass is only about 60 tons, and it was launched almost empty anyway. Apparently a place could be found for a robotic Gilly lander. It's not much, but in this case every bit counts. On a side note, I really need to make some more advanced small tugs. Here we can see it practicing the dangerous reverse docking, which is neccessary due to the fact that the payload only has one docking port. The tug pulls straight toward the gap, then GTFOs before it's wedged between the payload and its destination. Luckily, funding did suffice for a new orbiter. This one is much more capable than the old Corvus and a bit easier on the eyes as well. The only thing to do now is wait for the launch window to come up. In the meantime, some other things happened: Trident I and II (small fuel depots) got sent towards Duna Muskrat (yes, it's a rover, now stifle that laugh ) arrived at Eve Also, I began work on a Mun station! Meanwhile, Kassini. Oh, is it time yet? Then let's floor the throttle! Second part presumably coming tomorrow