BagelRabbit

This ought to count for something. Unfortunately, even after extensive testing, this Shuttle could not lift the 40-ton payload. However, if it squeezed in a little, it could play hide-and-go-seek within the 40-ton payload's fuel tanks. Nevertheless, this Shuttle does what is asked of it: it flies up, it flies down, and it can carry massive payloads of over a tenth of a ton in the process. Completely stock, too, so that's nice. Bagel

Known because I've seen some of your "nitpicks" and they're actually surprisingly fair.

Good Lord, this thread brings back memories. I feel old and hobbly now. I've never met some of the people getting to the 1k-point mark now, because I haven't been active on the Forum for a little while. But that's a good thing! It means that there's young blood coming in and making some awesome new stuff. Welcome to all the new members. As for lack-of-updates, I'll PM Endersmens and see when he's next able to run the algorithm (I can definitely type up some friendly descriptions, and I'm sure others would be happy to join too). 'Twould be nice.

Hey Badie? I know there's an unofficial weekly challenge on Reddit every week whose winner gets a firm handshake and a spot o' gold. Perhaps it would be worth connecting this series of challenges to the Reddit series somehow? I agree that more rules may be needed in the future. However, all of the statements you've made have been accusatory in nature (and directly in opposition to the Challenge Submission Guide). It seems like you really dislike the concept of weekly challenges and you're trying to figure out a way to justify it. This doesn't seem like a good approach to things. Again drawing off of Reddit: they generally give a brief but complete set of rules. This would probably be a good thing to do in the future, although the current challenge is still easily understandable and I don't think anyone has really "cheated" yet. Finally, from what I read, this is a very informal challenge which has no single winner and no prize given. The real objective of the challenge seems to be building community and showcasing good work. And if this is the objective of the challenge, you're already failing. Bagel

As a KSPTV streamer and someone who sorta jumped on the livestream event at the last minute: Things may take awhile to arrive, and they may turn up after KriSPmas -- er, Christmas -- is over. Nevertheless, if one of KSP's official accounts has received your address, it should only be a matter of time before you have a plushy of your very own. I... think the packages may not have been sent until the KriSPmas event concluded, which potentially pushed things back a few days? That's my best guess as to why it isn't coming as soon as you'd think. That being said, if the Kerbal plush hasn't come by New Years' Day, PM me personally or reach out to SQUAD again. We'll get something worked out. Bagel

KSP isn't a game about explosions, but if it didn't have explosions, many beginning players would see no reason to continue. That's the long and short of it IMO. Congrats to the KSP team for the award nomination!

Hi! I'm in a KSP Weekly, which is pretty cool. I'm really looking forward to the improved collider mechanics, and I'm glad SQUAD's taking the time to address them! Also, congrats to the Hallogreen winners, y'all definitely deserved it -Bagel

Hello, This name change has been needed for a long, long time. I've always decided against it for some reason... but now that I've stepped up a rung on the KSP ladder, I feel this is necessary. I wish for my name to be changed to "BagelRabbit." Thanks! -Bagel

Hello everyone! I'm UpsilonAerospace, and I'm back on the Forums. At last. It's been months since I put out a substantive post. Perhaps, in the back of your minds, some of you were wondering where I went. A tl;dr version reads as follows: Went to other college; was pressed for time; didn't have the opportunity to post often; gradually drifted away. Many old friends are still here, and there are a some great new people I'd love to get acquainted with. I may not be the most active poster but I'll try to show off some crafts, artworks, and the like. It's good to be here! Upsilon

I'm live and am annoying all of the people in stream, who want to see me streaming instead of typing. Hopefully they won't revolt.

Hello, all! I’m Upsilon, but I go by BagelRabbit on YouTube and Twitch. And I’m in a bit of a quandary. I started streaming several months ago to show off the creation of some of my more ridiculous builds. Creating things like VTOL chickens, dragons with falcons strapped to the back, or flying goats? It’s all in a day’s work. I’ve had a lot of fun on Twitch, and some people even like my streams! People like TheReadPanda, DasValdez, and MatoroIgnika seem to think I’m pretty cool… which is nice, I guess? Recently, I scored a discount on a ticket to TwitchCon. However, I’ll still need to pay some money for the convention pass. And for plane tickets. And hotel rooms. And food. And… well, you get the point. I’m a poor college student who cannot currently earn the funds required. That’s where you come in! PRESENTING: ~~~ To raise funds, I’m going on a 12-plus-hour streaming extravaganza. There will be music and dance(?), jokes about bread, craft that look exquisite but barely function, and all manners of frivolities! Some other streamers may make cameo appearances. Best of all, there will be giveaways. Are you ready for this? Of course you are. The Goal: $270 The Time: 2am-2pm EDT TOMORROW, 9/3/2016 If you want to come and donate, I will send you thank-you cards made of paper for each donation! If you want to come and enjoy yourself, it’s going to be a fun ride. If you want to blankly stare at a wall for twelve hours and miss out on the stream, I won’t complain. I will feel bad for you though. Join me by clicking the link below! ==> twitch.tv/bagelrabbit <== Let’s do this.

Space-based telescopes have several flaws: their smaller size; their difficulty to fix; their inability to have various astronomical instruments added or subtracted as they become available, broken, or outdated; and their greater cost relative to Earth-based observatories. In visible wavelengths, adaptive optics have progressed well enough that many large observatories have better clarity than the HST. The Keck, pretty much all of the observatories at Cerro Paranal, and many other large telescopes are currently seeing better, and doing far more research, than Hubble. The analogy PB666 made breaks down when you consider that adaptive optics were envisioned before the Hubble was launched, surpassed the Hubble within a few years, and are now used widely for scientific research. The Hubble has been relegated to taking pretty pictures and working with frequencies not easily visible on Earth. The JWST will do the same. Telescopes that take in light our atmosphere blocks (UV, X-ray, gamma-ray, IR, microwave) definitely have their place in space. Telescopes that take in visible or radio wavelengths, however, are far better suited to Earth. This is why another large visible-light space telescope will almost certainly never happen. As for SLS/Orion: I really, honestly don't care how long it takes. As long as it isn't cancelled, I'll be pleased. Depending on what happens in politics/allocation of resources within NASA though, I'm not sure that's going to happen. (I won't go into politics except to say that it occasionally prevents some decent ideas from happening.) -Upsilon

I will first note that being angry towards groups of people will inherently make them less likely to consider your ideas, no matter how valid your ideas actually are. That being said, I very much doubt the validity of most of your points. Point #1: Suppose you were a kid (which you're not) at one of those really garish arcades. Your mother needs to convert some money into tokens for you and your brother to use on the games. She goes up to one of the token converter machines and drops in a dollar (or whatever currency you use). Your brother scoops up the tokens and runs off. She puts in another dollar... and this one sticks. Your mother tries for several minutes to get the bill unstuck, and you finally get the tokens you wanted. You can either wait patiently for your tokens, or you can throw a temper tantrum. You are choosing the latter. Even if the machine (Sony) is known to occasionally be sticky, it's not really your mother's (SQUAD/Flying Tiger's) fault if something gets clogged up. And trying to ask for a discount is silly. Points #2 and #3: I am almost positive, based on your post, that you know more than I do about porting things to game consoles. I am absolutely positive that Flying Tiger knows more than you do about these sorts of ports. This is not because you aren't good at this sort of thing (though you may not be; I have zero knowledge of your experience or lack thereof). Rather, it is because Flying Tiger has made a job out of porting things since the days of the Game Boy and the original PlayStation. Should camera inversion be a thing? Definitely! But pretty much everything else you say is questionable at best, due to a nice ol' application of Occam's Razor. Frankly, I don't find it believable that Flying Tiger had the opportunity to easily add a number of features, and then didn't because "they didn't want to." You seem inclined to believe that the company circumvented some easy systems by replacing them with difficult ones. I find it much more believable that something prevented them from taking the easy way out. (I don't know what that something would be, but I've found that simple solutions occasionally cause things to break in complex ways.) Keep in mind, too, that the console versions are still a work in progress. I have no doubt that some features will be improved upon. I was amused by the end of your post. You first stated that you don't really want to play the game if it's this buggy (if so, then why are you making such a big fuss about release dates and getting it now? These things may well be worked out later.) Then you insultingly accuse Flying Tiger and SQUAD of ineptitude and then promptly say that they don't listen to their fanbase. IMO, SQUAD is doing a pretty good job of listening to their fanbase because the majority of it is more polite and courteous than you. Thus ends my small rant. I apologize in advance for any irritation I was showing. -Upsilon

I believe this fits most of the challenge submission guidelines...? I can definitely fly a mission where all of the bits survive intact; it may just take a few attempts. -Upsilon

I didn't do this today, but I built and flew a bunch of craft from Star Wars! That was pretty fun: -Upsilon

As someone who has built and flown plenty of rockets IRL, you'll need to consider some things before proceeding: Making a rocket with a plastic airframe is a good way to have it warp during or after flight. There is no way that rocket would be stable on the way up without additional fins on the bottom. Lighting eight motors at the same time is harder than one might imagine, and if one or more motors don't light, your rocket will veer off, flip, and/or crash spectacularly. No sane range safety officer would allow a rocket to land like this, due to fire risk. Trying to ignite things at a precise height above the ground is hard with a small rocket probably traveling at 30 to 50 mph. Too much igniter delay, which is a factor you cannot control, WILL result in the rocket crashing and then lighting itself on fire. If the rocket lands while still firing its engine, it WILL tip and then thrash about on the ground under power. Is this idea possible? Yes! But it would best be executed by rocketeers with many years of experience. See if you can scout out a local rocketry club and ask them to help. They'll probably be willing to help you refine, build, and test this idea.

Wow! I'm incredibly surprised to see myself here Big shoutout to Nanoux, who was on this stream! Thanks, Nano, and sorry I gave you a hard time.

There's not much to say except: Thank you all for the kind words and imaginary Internet points! Also, I'm glad some of y'all liked this more text-heavy explanation of How It Was Made, rather than simply releasing the finished product. That's personally something I would love to see from some of my favorite builders. I think it would not only make their efforts seem even more impressive (for me at least), but also give others the chance to go behind the scenes and try a similar project themselves! Just my $0.02 USD -Upsilon

Putting a Dragon on a Falcon in KSP! This probably wasn't what you expected... instead, it's far better. ~~~ Designing a falcon-shaped craft and a dragon-shaped craft that worked like the "real thing" was incredibly difficult. I've had this idea for a long time, but only recently attempted to make it a reality. It sucked up hours of my time, and even now, I don't consider it complete. It's come a long way, though, and I really love it. I'll treat this thread as a "build thread" to demonstrate all of the decisions and pain that went into this silly design. ~~~ Initial Objectives: I wanted to build a Falcon and Dragon that looked enough like the real thing that people would easily be able to identify them. It was important that the craft would be capable of going to orbit, maneuvering around, and returning to Kerbin while carrying Kerbals. Finally, I wanted to make the craft 100% reusable. Otherwise, Elon Musk would be ashamed of me. ~~~ Building the Falcon: I started by building the falcon. I needed to make sure that this bird could carry the Dragon up to a high altitude - a minimum of 25 km at 500 m/s, I decided. I also wanted the Falcon to be able to glide down to a safe landing. I was going to give it big bird wings, after all. Building the body of the Falcon went relatively smoothly. The only thing I was really unhappy about (and still am) is its beak, which is very unfalcon-like. Trying to get the Falcon to fly stably was another matter. The bird flew fine until you tried to turn it, whereupon it would lose all semblance of normal flight and pirouette around like a deranged ballerina. I added SAS and vertical wing parts clipped into its body. I also increased the dihedral of its wings. The resulting flights were not totally mishap-free, but the Falcon behaved much better. Choosing the proper engine(s) was even more difficult. I tried two ramjets. I tried four of 'em. I tried two of 'em with two Thuds. I tried four Vector engines. I tried two Vectors. I tried aerospikes. In the end, I settled on a weird combination: two Vectors and two RAPIERs, all ignited at the beginning of the flight. This combination met my needs, though I acknowledged that the whole changing-modes-on-the-RAPIER matter would be a little difficult to do in flight. I considered the Falcon "done" and set out to build the Dragon. ~~~ Building the Dragon: I started with the head and immediately was pleased: within minutes I had a very derpy but very dragon-like face on the craft. The majority of the build was smooth sailing: I wanted to keep the Dragon small, simple, and light. There were two big problems with the build: uncontrollable flipping and the choice of what engine to use. For the former, I made the craft slightly overstable, ensured the center of thrust was in line with the center of mass, and compensated for the remainder of the problem with SAS. After trying several runs with a nuclear engine, I opted for an Aerospike. The Dragon had a surprising amount of Delta-V, which came in useful later. ~~~ Putting the Two Together: I naively thought that the two craft would work harmoniously from the very beginning. I was wrong. Putting the Dragon up top raised the CoM, which required me to move the Falcon's engines higher up on the airframe. The center of lift for the combined craft was also in a weird place, and I had to tweak both the Dragon and the Falcon before it settled into a place I was content with. As the Falcon's tanks drained, the CoM of the combined craft shifted upwards towards the Falcon. The craft would struggle to pitch downwards, even with all the SAS I added. As a result, I needed to light the Dragon's engines earlier than expected to raise the CoT. As expected, the RAPIER engine mode change was a little awkward, but I could actually use it to my advantage to squeeze every last drop of fuel out of the Falcon. Worryingly, the Dragon/Falcon combo was topping out just shy of orbit. Rather than further modifying the design, I took the easy way out and added two SRBs under the Falcon's wings. This actually worked surprisingly well, and I made it to orbit for the first time! In celebration, I took a few pictures of the craft on ascent: I had forgotten completely about adding on the Kerbal seats, so I just tacked two of them to the top of the Dragon. This, too, actually worked! (If you're wondering: yes, the Falcon has Claw talons; yes, I did put Kerbals in them; no, I did not get to orbit on that run.) Finally, I added RCS ports to the Dragon, tweaked the fuel lines, and added disposable Lander-Cans to make it easier for Kerbals to get on the craft. ~~~ Figures and Specs: Part Count: 239 Wet Mass: 108 Tons Crew Capacity: 2 (4?) Hours Spent on the Craft: 8 100% Reusable (in theory) 200-250 m/s Delta-V in orbit, on a good flight ~~~ Video: ~~~ .Craft File? Not yet. There are still some scenarios I need to test (docking; high-speed Dragon landings) and there's still a little bit of cleaning-up to do on the craft. Expect the .craft file soon-ish...? I'll post the link when I'm content with the design. Thanks for reading through this! I hope you enjoyed this peek into my crazy imagination. Please let me know if you have any comments / improvements / glowing praise for this design. Have a great day! Best, Upsilon

*sigh* Um, let's see. @yorshee, are you here?

As (Shameless Plug Alert! Man your battle stations!) a streamer who's actually had pretty good luck with gaining viewers and followers since starting on a regular schedule roughly two weeks ago, I have this to say: To be a featured livestreamer, you need the following: > A schedule that you're willing to stick with. Preferably, you should be streaming several times per week for several hours per stream. > A lot of people who are interested in/following your Twitch channel. I think the last time there was a call for KSP streamers, one had to have over 100(?) followers and 10(??) regular viewers per stream. While the numbers may be incorrect, the truth is that the more traffic you get and the higher your numbers are, the better. (Note: View counts generally improve with good commentary, reading the chat, having music playing in the background, using a camera to capture your face, and streaming for longer periods of time.) > (Often) appropriate content. The majority of the featured streams are family-friendly, meaning that they can show off their ideas to everyone! > Professional conduct. By being a featured streamer, you become a representative of SQUAD. They want you to behave in a way that is positive for KSP's image and for the company. > 18+. The age limit is set for legal reasons, mostly. So, to summarize: If you want to join the Media Group, treat the livestreaming thing like a low-key job. Work at it with regular hours, give it plenty of time, and have fun. And even if you don't get into the media group at the end of the day, as long as you enjoyed yourself, it doesn't really matter. -Upsilon

Let's put it this way. This is probably one of the first times all of those Kerbals are flying. Which would be scary enough: there are plenty of rational, sane people whose first flights in planes scare the bejeesus out of them. Their inaugural flight is in a plane that probably hasn't been tested more than five times (and maybe crashed one or more of those times). Unlike commercial aviation, this plane has not been put through a battery of tests before carrying crew. Which, of course, would kill KSP gameplay... but you could see how your Kerbals would be worried anyway. Perhaps more importantly: the Kerbals aren't actually controlling the craft, but rather, their plane (and every movement!) is controlled by some otherworldly entity that has been known to kill and injure their comrades. This entity can alter time and pluck the Kerbals seemingly out of thin air, only to destroy them later. In short, you are a god in KSP: a malevolent one. The only thing Kerbals can do to express themselves in the face of this god is scream with terror and desperation. And oh, how they scream. (Some Kerbals, such as Jeb and Val, know that they will be favored by the divine if they grin instead. Have you ever noticed how many people prefer these two?) -Upsilon

Every single time a thread like this comes up, I think I'll be included in the Cool Kids' Club of Good YouTubers. Maybe I should lower my expectations a little. (Shameless plug: I make small, weird things in KSP that are horrendously impractical and aesthetically decent! I also say words. My videos are here.) Other people who may or may not be on the list here: > @Xacktar. There are many ways to explode things. Xacktar has found most of them, I think. My personal favorite video of his is right here. KSP is, indeed, just awesome. > @Felsmak. Felsmak's sense of humor is as warped as the space-time surrounding a black hole, but considerably funnier. I can recite the Great Naked Space Man from memory, by the way. > @katateochi. Beautiful videos with great editing. What more is there to say? I think I'll showcase Katateochi's Constellation Mission video here, 'cause I was just blown away the last time I saw it. > @pandoras kitten. Pandora's "Bacon Space Program" is glorious. Here's to hoping more KSP stuff will appear on the channel once 1.1 comes out. I like driving in my car. ~~~ There are loads of others who I've probably forgotten. I may edit this post later. Both the quantity and quality of KSP videos out there is simply amazing! -Upsilon

Okay, so: Sorry for not putting up more stuff earlier. Have three recap videos! ...and yes, that fourth one is more appropriate than you probably think it is. I promise. Lifstremming tonight! Synchronize your watches, don your SCUBA gear, and strap yourself in for more absurd lifstrems... -Upsilon

...I'm not sure what else needs to be said, except that this is 100% stock and can fly quite nicely sans-debug menu. -Upsilon