AeroEngy

I do. I have 4 relays spaced 90 degrees at 300km. But I have still seen large drop off in power when pitching over at launch With a single receiving dish on the top. However, I just tested a single transmitter and a single receiver in orbit and am getting the same "cone" of about 30 degrees as xfrankie where the power doesn't drop off but Then falls quickly when approaching 90. So I am not sure what's going on or how it works exactly.

I am 99% sure mine do not work that way. You are getting almost full power no matter where you point ... When I get home from work I am going to setup a single power transmitting craft and a separate receiving craft and do some similar pointing experiments. In most of your pics you have more than 1 relay connect so maybe that is why you are getting such good reception at all angles.

No need to be sorry about anything However, I don't think the bolded part is true but I could be wrong also. I think it varies directly with the cosine of the pointing error. So if you are pointing 30 degrees off from a relay you will get ~87% of the power. Similarly if you pointed 60 degrees off then you only receive 50% power (Blue line below). IF your dish could articulate up to 20 degrees (green line) then you could have 77% (cos(60-20)). See below for how I think it works vs. what I am proposing. Again though I am perfectly happy with whatever is in Fractal's mod and not a good enough coder to attempt anything of the sort.

I don't necessarily disagree with your points. However, you can already do all of those examples yourself. Myself and other have built large ground based reactors for power then put relays in orbit, setup tritium/He-3/antimatter breeding farms, etc. and use a fuel truck/rover to fill everything up before launch. Having to do those things myself is what makes it more realistic & fun (at least for me). I suppose I could use Infernal robotics to point a receiver myself... however from what I know of that mod (which isn't much) I don't think you can programatically point an articulated arm at something. You would have to manually keep adjusting the angle as the relay flew overhead and your orientation changed which sounds tedious. For now though I suppose I will just keep a ridiculous looking cluster of receivers pointing in various directions:rolleyes:

And demanding something from a mod maker isn't all that polite.I don't think Rizendell original comment was all that demanding and it does make sense. I find it annoying that I have to stick multiple receivers on my craft at various angles to ensure I don't have an unexpected loss of power during a gravity turn for example. From the game world perspective the Kerbals have mastered rocket science, long range microwave power, and nuclear fusions but couldn't figure out it would be more efficient to articulate a receiving dish ... If creating an articulating receiver part model is time consuming and difficult what about just adding some sort of dead band angle where the received power remains the same thus simulating an articulating dish. So the received power doesn't start falling off until the angle is greater than 20 or 30 degrees. However, I am thankful for this mod and will graciously use whatever Fractal_UK creates because it is way beyond my skill to do so.

I work for a US commercial launch company and we uses solid upper stages all the time for precises orbital insertions. We have very accurate models of the thrust profiles/energy content of the motors. We measure loads of parameters that affect the burn rate / thrust profile that all feed into the control system. Weather balloons, etc. are used to measure upper atmosphere conditions, wind profiles, etc. to ensure we have sufficient delta-v to meet the mission profile. At all times knowing the remain dV based on the models, the current orbital position (via inertial guidance & GPS) and desired orbit allows the system to either start scrubbing additional energy or continue to burn in an optimal direction. So besides lots of math it isn't really that difficult in the real world.

Since you were mentioned debris. This is my favorite piece or should I say was. I was working on a project related to space debris back in 2007 and using the following as an example of the potential hazards ... then it exploded pretty much proving my point. http://www.abc.net.au/science/news/stories/2007/1854804.htm?space

The problem with trying to scale down the orbit elements is that they would then not even remotely track "real-world satellites" as the stated in the OP. You can't have the period, altitude, etc. match on a body with different physical characteristics so you would have to use the Real Solar System mod. Note: I have never used that mod and only assume it sets the correct body parameters.

You could read in updated NORAD TLEs from here to periodically correct for drift and the oblique spheroid problem. To get close-ish anyway. http://celestrak.com/NORAD/elements/ However, since Kerbin is not even close to the same size as Earth it wouldn't work. You have to use something like the real solar system mod to correct the grav constants, radius, etc.

FYI, the mission is back on for 1:07PM ET today.

Like I said before xenon ion systems are already in use. Boeing's 702HP spacecraft can deliver up to 18kW. It has 4x 25cm XIPS engines for both initial orbital insertion and station keeping.

Solar proton flux is falling but still remains pretty high. I suspect they will launch tomorrow if possible but it could be pushed back even farther just to be safe. From the NOAA space weather center:

The Antares launch to the ISS had to be delayed due to the flare. It is to risky to launch during the storm.

Here is good video explaining Lagrange points and some of their uses.

Boeing's new-ish line of satellites the 702 series uses a XIPS (Xenone Ion Propulsion System) ISP of 3400/3500s with thrust of 79/165 mN for low & high power modes respectively. This is basically the same propulsion system on Deep Space One. They actually use it for final orbital insertion and station keeping. This saves a good bit of weight over typical chemical systems (hyrdazine arcjet, etc.). Lighter is always better as the weight saving can either be used for cheaper launches or more payload space which is quite valuable. One of the drawbacks is due to the low thrust it can take a long time (1 month or longer) from rocket sep to final orbit insertion.

Here is how I use AM on the ground. I had a farm like yours at first but it became to much trouble. I use an orbiting farm w/ 108 collectors, a shuttle to ferry it from high to low orbit, a low orbit refeuling station, and a rover that can take loads from my low orbit station back to KSC. The hardest part was getting the AM Farm into orbit in 1 piece. IT would have been easier to assemble in sections but I was stubborn and it took dozens of attempts. FYI to post embedded IMGUR albums take just the last bit of the link imgur.com/a/syAv4 and wrap it in "

I don't disagree with any of your points and see where you are coming from. However, I just thought if someone was to fork this project and take over, getting rid of some of the odd syntax and bad features like all globals would be a good place to do it. Carrying forward bad code/habits just for the sake of backwards compatible isn't always the best idea and a fork seems like the correct place to make the break. But like I said before I am not a programmer by trade, couldn't help with the mod if I wanted to (besides general suggestions ) and I will be grateful for whatever effort someone puts into this mod.

@Steven Mading that is a nice list. 1) I would just suggest all vars be local to a program unless specifically declared as global. 3) Returning values would be very nice. I would like to see returning multiple values at once though. Although if we had arrays (or the ability to create custom structures) this could be worked around. ... 4) Arrays, Yes please and multidimensional. One other minor gripe. I would love to replace the period statement terminator with a semicolon.

I agree for what it is worth. I would offer any help but I am by no means a software engineer.

Yes. I don't know enough about kOS to get the appropriate angle and KSP is broken for me now I can't test anything. However it would be UP rotated +/- 90 in the crafts orbital plane. I think this should also be the same as the + or - surface velocity vector which is probably easier to get ... but I can't test anything now . The fact that you should always thrust 90 degrees from R makes a lot of sense when you consider an elliptical orbit instead of a hyperbolic one. In an elliptical orbit at apo/periapsis +/-90 from R in the orbital plane is the same as prograde/retrograde which is more easily understood as the optimal direction. Having KSP broken since the update is killing me. I work on the Anatares rocket and the cooling loop issue on the ISS has our launch delayed. I find myself with some extra free time. I can't get my real rocket fix and I need a virtual one.

I think you were just showing how to use dummy nodes to set directions in the future which is very useful. However, this problem got me thinking ... which is dangerous. Anyway I was wondering what the correct thrust direction should be on a hyperbolic flyby like in John FX's example to either raise or lower your periapsis. I generally just use radial in and out but didn't think that it was 100% correct. I knew from doing it in game that it must be pretty close ... so I started deriving equations and putting stuff in Matlab. This is the result. Turns out the optimal direction is perpendicular to your current position vector. Which when really far out is pretty close to the radial in/out directins. When looking at the equations for orbital energy and Rp this makes sense since burning perpendicular to R will have the greatest impact on your angular momentum ... Anyway thought some of you might find it interesting. Sketch of the test setup I used. Essentially vary the dv thrust angle (beta) and see what causes the largest effect. Matlab output: Setting R to [5 -50]*KerbinRadius, V to [0 1500], dV magnitude to 100 and varied beta from 0 to 360. Note the max and min are at 90 & 270 degrees wrt the position vector R. Edit: Sorry John FX I know this is exactly the opposite no math approach that you originally mentioned ... but I couldn't stop myself.

@John FX I don't have an answer for you problem on how to get in game time. However, I thought I would share that I am having some odd time problems since the updated. This may or may not be related to the changes you are seeing in game. It seems for me game time is running at about 1/3 the speed using the same stock rocket (~3 seconds real time for every 1 on the mission clock). The frame rate still seems good and I can pan around the rocket and change views fairly smoothly. The simulation is just running extremely slow for some reason. I delete and reinstalled KSP without mods and it didn't help. This morning I read some threads in the Support forum about similar problems. There were some suggestions about changing the Max Physics Delta Time setting back to 0.1 that I am going to try when I get home. Apparently pre-update the default was 0.1 and now it is 0.04s ... for what it is worth. The game is completely unplayable for me until there is an update or I can find the right setting to tweak.

Sounds like you want to figure out the radial in / radial out vectors. Like as you are trying to lower your Pe on approach for an aero-capture or something ... correct? You should be able to do a rotation of your prograde vector something like lock steering to prograde + R(0,90,0). // radial out lock steering to prograde + R(0,-90,0). // radial in

Feynman is awesome. There a handful of videos on YouTube called The Feynman Series that are really good. He was a very unique and funny person. If you want a fun read about a Nobel prize winner who plays the bongos, cracked safes while helping build the atomic bomb, and worked our quantum mechanics while hanging out in strip clubs then you need to read "Surely You're Joking Mr. Feynman"