Jim DiGriz

I started playing before gradual parachute deployment. I still can't ever let chutes deploy at physics warp...

I suspect that once you're horizontal and you've cleared the atmosphere enough that you can hit orbital velocity without burning up, that you should just max throttle and lift the apoapsis. If you let it bleed out slowly you'll ultimately be increasing the altitude that you carry that fuel to before burning it, and that will be slightly less efficient (Oberth basically). So I think sensitivity 0 should be less efficient...

Something I just discovered is that 1.25m launches take more fuel to get to orbit than 2.5m launches. I was struggling to get a 1.25m design to orbit (high TWR, playing with all kinds of angles) and could barely hit 3,600 delta-V. I just threw together a 2.5m rocket and tossed it into orbit, not even very well tuned yet, and got 3123 dV (3175 vac dV) to 80x80. I believe its mostly drag losses increasing for the 1.25m rocket, and drag losses are higher for the same reason that scaled down things have lower terminal velocity. Also one reason why you can't just scale down a Falcon-9 and create a nano-rocket that will get to orbit. Then the increased drag losses probably make the gravity drag at bit worse as well since you're fighting the atmosphere that much harder. I also discovered that putting an octo probe core right behind a 1.25m nose cone is thermally bad. Not enough heat flow out of the nose cone and too much heat flow for the little octo core to handle, I think. Putting a SAS module next in the stack after the nose cone helped a lot with heat transfer. People with explode-ey rockets might look at their design and why its exploding.

@Over-Engineered I'm studying your code and I can't seem to find where you allow the time-to-apoapsis to climb above 40s after you've roughly circularized at 40km-ish? I'm pretty certain we're always in this bit of code controlling the throttle until our apoapsis hits our destination, so our throttle is always governed by APThrottle: https://github.com/johnfink8/GravityTurn/blob/1.2.3/GravityTurn/GravityTurn/GravityTurner.cs#L510-L511 The if our apoapsis ever climbs above 40s we should be throttling back: https://github.com/johnfink8/GravityTurn/blob/1.2.3/GravityTurn/GravityTurn/GravityTurner.cs#L437-L443 But what I see is that after a time it starts allowing the time-to-apoapsis to start climbing and the apoapsis rises to the destination height and that clamp seems to not be applied, but I can't find that bit of code anywhere... EDIT: and of course now that I posted this I see where you clamp the throttle to the sensitivity value on the lower bound... nevermind...

Thrust plates would be nice, and not add very many parts.

TIL: you can extract science from an experiment with a scientist while on EVA. Also looks like you can ferry science between command modules... Wow, I've been doing it completely wrong...

In my universe they kinda fight like siblings

Just started playing KSP again and stumbled across this. I would also vote that this is currently a step in the wrong direction, @Arsonide The way that I like to play is semi-self-directed. I do not want the Leadership Initiative Strategy, but I do want to pick the contracts that I want to do now. Previously I would decline a lot of contracts until I got the ones that I wanted to do, which was annoying enough. The gameplay that I would *like* is to have a lot of the contracts be permanently and always available once they are unlocked. So all of the RemoteTech contracts, all of the ScanSat contracts, all of the Base Contracts, etc. Ideally these would be under their own tabs or trees or buttons of some sort, since otherwise the list of available contracts will get long and messy. Would also be good to be able to select to filter on body (like @ObsessedWithKSP wanted and similar to filtering the science results by body). There could still be support for entirely random events showing up -- like needing to evacuate the KSS, or special rare events if you like. But I'd really like to be able to say "today I'm going to launch some RemoteTech satellites, lets grab some contracts" and be able to play that way. And really the random number generator for contracts has no idea how I'd like to play today--some times I sit down and I want to send kerbals somewhere, sometimes I want to build communication arrays, sometimes I want to map, sometimes I want to mine, sometimes I want to send probes and landers, sometimes I feel like trying to accomplish science, etc. The gameplay behind contracts has always been irritating, and this is a step in the direction of making it even more irritating. I repetitively hit decline and get new contracts so that I can 'find' the ones that I want to do right now. Now you are punishing me for doing that, which is exactly the opposite of what I want, which is an easier way to get to the contracts I want without waiting for the random number generator to give them to me. If the 'slot machine' problem is people declining contracts until the random numbers they get back for science/funding/reputation on a certain contract is high enough, then just solve that by having fixed contract values--I've never see much utility in the random numbers that get given out here.

You'd have to have the whole grid cloudy, and also not have it windy, and have rivers stop running so there's no hydropower near enough, etc. It isn't a requirement of the power grid that every power plant needs to be online at the same time in order for it to deliver power to all its customers. The problem with nuclear is that it has a negative learning curve and continues to become more and more expensive per kWh, and that is happening independently of regulatory controls. Replacing the water in it with molten salt or liquid flouride (I haven't looked into the latter but that has to be corrosive as hell) are only going to make nuclear power's cost problems worse. The solar plants I linked to also use molten salt, but you're taking that technology and bolting it onto a relatively uncomplicated solar plant that is getting cheaper to build over time--not the same as bolting it onto an already overly complicated nuclear reactor which at its core is getting more expensive over time. Anyone who freaks out over solar subsidies should not be a nuclear supporter, there's no way to build those plants without massive government investment/loans and tax and regulatory breaks. So, I'm skeptical nuclear will ever work as a replacement for coal/oil/gas just based on the cost. There's also TerraPower's travelling wave reactors that burn depleted uranium and are being backed by Gates. Those would be interesting, since they essentially burn nuclear waste and look like they have the same protection against meltdowns as liquid-sodium thorium reactors. OTOH, nuclear plants are themselves their own nuclear waste so if you build tens of thousands of these you have tens of thousands of plants whose walls become irradiated by neutrons over time, which is still a big problem and a hidden cost in reactor design. I'd love to see Helium-3/Deuterium nuclear fusion work since it emits an alpha particle and a proton which can be electromagnetically contained, but that is still in the realm of science fiction and not a practical solution over the next 20 years. - - - Updated - - - To add to what I just said. None of the power plants that currently power Arizona have a 24/7/365 duty cycle and they're all "money sink holes" for part of the time. And when its cloudy over AZ then you are probably not at peak demand because A/C demand will likely be lower. Also when its cloudy its very likely that somewhere nearby enough will be windy (probably very windy), so there will not be any shortage of power in the grid. And what you then have is an opportunity to take the plant offline and any kind of smart plant management will have ordered parts ahead of time so that when it gets cloudy, that is the time they'll shut the plant down and replace a turbine or whatever.

That is an already solve problem with thermal storage in molten salt in several power plants around the world already: http://spectrum.ieee.org/green-tech/solar/a-tower-of-molten-salt-will-deliver-solar-power-after-sunset

If the 2.7K cosmic microwave background radiation was not there it would have falsified the Big Bang. The fact that its at 2.7K and has the shape of a thermal blackbody that has been redshifted due to the expansion of the Universe is completely necessary to the model of the Big Bang. If we didn't see that, then there would have been no point in the distant past where matter and energy were decoupled and the universe was a hot ball of plasma. That would have instantly falsified the Big Bang theory. Similarly, if we didn't observe hubble's law in the redshift of galaxies that would have falsified the Big Bang. You can also see the effects of the redshift in the Lyman-Alpha forest from hydrogen absorption lines of neutral matter in front of distant objects like Quasars. And its not just qualitative, but quantitative. If the CMBR had the wrong shape or wasn't at 2.7K that would have invalidated the Big Bang theory (and opened up 'tired light' theories and other alternatives that *have* been eliminated through observation). So that's how you invalidate the Big Bang model. For Global Warming we put up satellites that measure the outgoing thermal radiation spectra of the Earth starting with the NASA IRIS satellite in 1970, the Japanese IMG satellite in 1996, the NASA AIRS satellite launched in 2003, and the AURA satellite launched in 2004. What those all found was increasing and broadening absorption bands due to CO2 and methane. If for, example, the CO2 IR spectrum was saturated with H2O absorption bands through the air column (and not just at sea level) then Global Warming would be wrong, and we would have expected to see no change the IR spectroscopy of the Earth as measured from space. Instead of falsifying Global Warming, however, those experiments all found confirming evidence that the Earths CO2 and CH4 spectra was changing consistent with Global Warming. See the references linked off of https://agwobserver.wordpress.com/2009/08/02/papers-on-changes-in-olr-due-to-ghgs/ (And those are just some ways that experiments could have invalidated either theory, those are not the only ways by far) - - - Updated - - - Actually it wouldn't even take that. Just travel back in time before Penzias and Wilson and (in a sci-fi style parallel universe) completely fail to find any CMBR remnant. It doesn't take an alternative theory or any deep and analytical means of testing it. The Big Bang Theory itself /requires/ the presence of the CMBR, and if it didn't exist, that would blow a massive hole through it. It'd just be Dead on Arrival and while we'd need to look for other theories, it wouldn't be necessary to come up with any other theory to have falsified the Big Bang Theory. Similarly, if Satellite spectrometry of Earth's OLR had found no increase in CO2 or CH4 absorption lines, then Global Warming would have a huge problem. Wouldn't be necessary to have any alternative theory to blow a hole through Global Warming.

During ice ages we should also see advancing continental shield glaciers. While this the current glaciation would have been expected to be mild based on orbital parameters, the fact at we don't see those kinds of continental glaciers is likely due to moderate global warming caused by the past 8,000 or so years of agriculture. And the fact that we're now seeing a dramatically warming climate while we are smack in the middle of what should be a mild ice age is alarming.

A Quantum Theory of Gravity is going to behave very similar to EM in the same way that photons of light are both particles and waves, gravitons are also both particles and waves. All the same principles will apply, there's nothing conceptually different there -- its the same problem of quantum wavicles that you can get with a two slit experiment using photons or electrons. Where it gets different is that gravity is tensor field and graviton would be a spin-2 particle (and would be an extremely light particle due to gravity being very weak), and also due to gravity self-interacting and being nonlinear.

The orbital decay of double neutron star binary systems has been observed and is evidence of gravitational waves. The weak-field linearized Einstein field equations also describe gravitational waves and are sufficient to explain the observed orbital decay. A quantum theory of such a linear gravity would describe a spin-2 massless graviton which would be the quantum particle mediator of gravity, which has not been observed at all. A weak-field linear theory of gravity is going to look very similar to E+M only that it will be a tensor (spin-2) force mediated by a graviton with only "positive" charge (mass). It will still obey the inverse square law and the force will drop off with distance. Individual gravitons would be similar to individual photons and would not lose force over time, but the graviton flux per unit area as you back away from an object would drop off giving rise to the inverse square law. Of course real gravity is non-linear and that is where quantizing it explodes in messes of infinities. I also suppose it is possible that gravity is not mediated by a particle at all, but that waves on spacetime are somehow fundamental (dodging the question for now about space-time itself being quantized, but lets say its not) in which case you'd still get an inverse square law as the strength of the wave dissipated -- just like how ripples from tossing a rock into a pond dissipate as the energy-per-unit-area of the wave decreases as the size of the ripple increases -- or how earthquake energy dissipates with distance from the epicenter, etc, etc, etc. There's really no mystery here and as you back off of a point source of energy the area increases so the energy per unit area decreases. Affects E+M, affects earthquakes, affects ripples on a pond...

Yeah. If you look at the Mk3 short LFO tank its 14.29t wet with 1125 LF and 1375 O2 If you look at the Mk3 short LF tank its 14.29 wet with 2500 LF and 2500 = 1125 + 1375, its not 2*1125 = 2250 Sticking with stock mechanics you'd add them up rather than doubling the LF. It looks like the cost also goes up by a factor of 1.72 as well - - - Updated - - - lol! confirmed.

Is there any documentation out there on the basics of the new aero model? Things like drag as a function of velocity and atmospheric density, and atm density as a function of altitude?

You shouldn't really be hitting terminal velocity. Build rockets with lower TWR and/or clip the max acceleration to 18-22 m/s or so. You'll actually get to orbit with more fuel because you were fighting less drag. At 25,000-35,000m or so you can remove the acceleration limit and let the mainsails roar, but at the surface you're just wasting fuel fighting drag. Terminal velocity is now too fast. If you get mach effects or heating effects that's also too fast. The aero model changed.

FWIW, you might want to consider linking to this post from post #1 (and in some sort of eye-grabbing garish font color)... ..and genuinely thanks for all the work.

So here's one that just hit me. MJ version: 2.5.1 built from 70c3bc2921a3896ce890f9c7d4ea6499d841db4c Kerbal Version: 1.0.2 Very dirty install with HotRockets, RemoteTech, TacLS, RealChutes and more Steps to reproduce: 1) Lander on Minmus with no RCS 2) Select a close by target on Landing guidance (attempting to hop from biome to biome) 3) Lift off and gain 2,000-ish altitude 4) Press 'Land at target' - MJ executes a correct burn to get the profile right and the landing position correct ("show landing predictions" is checked). - MJ time accelerates to the 500m burn - 500m burn is successful - MJ begins to 'spin' the rocket around with zero velocity making no progress 5) Abort the landing guidance and wait a second for the rocket to fall a bit 6) Press 'Land at Target' - MJ time accelerates and fails to pull out with a resultant lithobrake. Noted Results: * When there's no RCS (and 'use RCS for fine tuning' was not checked) the fine tuning seems to be too fine for the high TWR rockets on the lander (4xLV-909s on Minmus with probably 50+ local TWR) so it spins at the 500m stop. * When 'Land at Target' is pressed at an altitude of less than 500m and falling the time accell should not be engaged as aggressively (feels like there's a state bug where it thinks its high over the target and its accellerating down to 500m when its been initialized below 500m) KSP.log: https://gist.github.com/b1fdb22b1cf35497c732 EDIT: This commented out code might be close to where the problem is: https://github.com/MuMech/MechJeb2/blob/master/MechJeb2/LandingAutopilot/CoastToDeceleration.cs#L80-L87 (I'll see if I can replicate later tonight when I've got hyperedit, quicksave allowed, and some debugging output added to MJ...) EDIT2: Pull Request: https://github.com/MuMech/MechJeb2/pull/592

I had this problem yesterday and then after fighting with it for a bit I noticed that 'auto-warp' wasn't ticked.

The initial wiggle seems to have nothing to do with MJ. Try uninstalling it and seeing if you get the wiggle blasting off straight with just SAS turned on or even without SAS turned on. I haven't tried it without the dll loaded, but other than that it seems to be there no matter what I do. Once you've significantly deviated then AoA limiting will cause the initial angle on liftoff to remain fairly large and then once speed builds up you're sunk. Fins on your rocket are also AoA limiters which is what causes the problem once you get moving fast -- you want that in order to avoid flipping, but as a result you have to watch how aggressive your gravity turns start. Also if your initial turn starts at zero and is simply too sharp then the same problem occurs. You want to start the gravity turn soon, but not too aggressively. I've been using a start altitude of 0, end altitude of 55, final angle of 10 and turn shape of 66 fairly successfully (although I just about flipped on my last launch a few minutes ago when I forgot fins, so that profile can probably be better and then likely fins can be smaller). Anyway, TL;DR i think there's a bug in the unmodded game causing the initial wiggle, and the rest of the issues are all due to the new aero model not MJ.

I've seen this, but infrequently (and actually not recently, so it might be fixed in dev builds). There's some wobble at liftoff with large rockets that seems to be in the base game. If it wobbles enough and you have AoA limiting turned on then you can get stuck pointing way east and the AoA limit means MJ won't correct it enough. Then with the rocket pointing east once you've built up enough speed and if your rocket has fins and is aerodynamic enough then you're stuck in a really aggressive gravity turn. Solution seems to be to fly without the AoA limit checked and just make sure your curve doesn't cause AoA to get exaggerated too much and put fins on your rockets so that they don't flip when your gravity turn starts in the lower atmosphere. I use the delta wings as fins on the center stage of big rockets and sometimes one fin on the outside of the boosters. Of course with that much stability then if you do wind up in one of those shallow turns inside the atmosphere then there's really no way out of it. At least that's what I've been telling myself and the process I've followed seems to avoid the problem.

I had an issue with a braking burn to land on the mun (career mode before unlocking mechjeb's landing guidance). Created the node and did <something> and the maneuver node wound up with 0 dv instead of 500-ish (in the bar next to the navball) and the lander went straight through the node. Bit annoying because it was a rescue mission and Jeb was gonna die if the sun went down on him and he ran out of electricity, but managed to get it on the next pass and all was well. I don't recall what the exact sequence was between setting up the maneuver node and having it get corrupted somehow. I thought it smelled more like a bug in the base maneuver node system and not in mechjeb though.

We used to be able to train them to behave before AOL and before the Internet was commercialized. Back then if you crossed the line or got too stupid your system admin would ban you rather than having to deal with losing their upstream connections so there was some enforced civility. Then came the September That Never Ended and Al Gore handed the Internet over from NSFNet to the private sector. With nothing to stop them, all the trolls have now gotten organized and metastasized. Now we see that play out over the course of a few months on forums. This forum did used to be better and now you've got all the clever assholes that the moment someone posts a new mod there's an immediate "no pics no downloads!" post tacked onto it. <stuff> like that is corrosive. Like the author didn't spend enough time doing the coding in their free time... But, yeah, its gotta be a lot of work to fix this mod up for 1.0.x, appreciate all the work...

If you work as a programmer for any length of time you get used to the fact that a good chunk of the users on the internet are just demanding assholes. A stiff set of earplugs is just about mandatory.