BagelRabbit

To answer all of the questions about what I'm planning on doing after this: I'm planning on getting a Bachelor's, Master's, or even a Doctorate degree if it is even remotely possible. I realize that an Associate's degree isn't much, and I know that this is just the first step on a long road, but I'm proud to have taken it. Thanks for all the friendly replies! (Of course I couldn't forget that project, Starwhip. It's gonna be awesome ) -Upsilon

Hello everyone! It's UpsilonAerospace. I tend to drone on and on with my posts, so I'll keep this one short. You're welcome. Yesterday, I took my last batch of finals at the local community college. Because of some financial problems, it's been a bit of a long and inauspicious road. But I'm graduating with an Associate's degree in general science, and I couldn't be happier. (I'll get my diploma on Saturday, so I guess I haven't officially graduated yet... but I am taking a break from the frenzied madness of finals, which is nice.) I'm officially done with schoolwork until next fall, when I'll attend some college that's relatively nearby. For now, though, I just want to take it easy and rest for awhile. Oh, and over the summer, I'll also have the opportunity to make some videos with Starwhip, Felsmak, and Avera9eJoe! Stay tuned. Thanks for being such a great community, guys. You've helped me through a lot, whether you were aware of it or not. Stay awesome! -Upsilon

Hello Broax! As an amateur astronomer who has his own nifty 8" scope (it's really cool!), I can give a few basic tips about telescope usage and stuff to see. First off, some brief terminology on a telescope: Aperture: Not technically part of the telescope, but this is the size of the main lens. The bigger, the better. Eyepiece: The bit you look through. Usually, the eyepieces can be removed and changed for different magnification. Each eyepiece should have a number: 8mm, 3mm, and the like. The larger the number, the less magnification. I know it's weird, but just go with it, okay? When you're looking through another person's telescope, it is considered improper to actually rest your face on the eyepiece, instead, look from a fraction of an inch above if possible. Filters: Little bits of colored glass that only make light of a single color pass through. These can be used to enhance contrast for distant planets and even nebulas. If everything looks a little off-color, you can ask the guys whether they're using a filter. Finder Scope: A little scope tacked onto the side of the bigger one. You don't really need to look through that guy unless you yourself are trying to find an object. Hopefully the pros will do all of that for you. If you do have to find an object, gently guide the telescope and look through the finder scope until the crosshairs are directly centered at the object you want. Then look through the 'real' scope and see whether the object is there! If it's not, look back to the finder scope and make some adjustments, or gently, very slowly move the main scope around while looking through the eyepiece. Focus Knob: The bit that makes stuff not be quite so blurry. It generally works by adjusting the distance between the mirror and your eyepiece. Even if you think the telescope is not focused, it's improper to actually twiddle the thing yourself. Instead, have the owner of the telescope do it. This is a common mistake for beginning telescope users to make, and it will irritate the telescope's owner. If you are given permission to mess with the focus knob, turn it so that objects are quite unfocused and then gradually bring them back into focus. Note that under high magnifications and on a warm night (with plenty of 'waves' of heat coming off the ground), it may be impossible to properly focus your 'scope. Don't worry about it though. Telescope Mount: The bit that the telescope is sitting on. There are all sorts of fun names for this thing, like "Alt-azimuth" and "Equatorial," but at the level you're at, it shouldn't really matter. Don't touch this thing unless given permission. Tl;dr: Be very careful with peoples' telescopes. They are expensive and they break really easily. Ask permission, be interested in what they're saying, and overall, be respectful. There's not much more to it than that. Sorry for not making this longer! I'm severely lacking in time today. Hopefully others can find some nice resources for you... -Upsilon

6/10 I've seen you around! You're doing a good job ascending the ranks of the Forum, so far as I can tell...

Hello atraos! First off, thanks for the heads-up. I really appreciate your level-headedness here. I don't ever try to be antagonizing, but my temper was up a little when I wrote the reply, which must be what you're detecting. I tried to respond to Kerbart's ideas and not to his irritation towards me as a person or as a writer, for the most part. That was why I wrote the first line that you quoted. I can understand why you would view the line as condescending, though. Now I want to change it somehow... Let me also say that the last line here was more addressed towards the personal attacks at the beginning and the end than it was about the actual points Kerbart made. Some of his points were honestly pretty good and were more well-thought-out than my statement at the end suggests. But doing things that are designed to provoke me (the entire "Bro" thing at the beginning especially) seemed to have been more as a result of anger than as a response to the points I made. That's why I urged him to calm down. I hope you can understand my point of view. Thanks for your reply. -Upsilon

The above post sort of rubbed me the wrong way. Instead of getting riled up, though, I feel as if I need to re-iterate my points... so here goes. For goodness' sake, Kerbart, I thought I had said that approaching people with a hostile tone made them less likely to agree with you! Later in this post, you say that my tone is "actually quite condescending," but it's difficult to make these sorts of statements when you yourself start off your post by trying to insult me. It's not even in a subtle way, either. I honestly tried to present my opinions in a nice way, but if it irritated you, I'm sorry. It still doesn't justify personal attacks, though. Let me emphasize that I don't want to praise SQUAD for this release. I don't want to criticize SQUAD for the release, though. I realize that SQUAD could have done a better job on the release, but the entire point I'm trying to make is that this release has happened. It's done. So while there may not be any reasons to praise SQUAD, criticizing it for an event that has already happened simply doesn't do anything. (I do want to direct you to my last reply, where I talk about this matter in more detail. It's halfway down Page 3.) Instead, it's a much better use of energy to try to focus on what can make KSP better, not to slam them for something they can't do (turn back time to release 1.0 at a different opportunity). Oh, and I should mention that comparing SQUAD to a misbehaving dog isn't the most flattering decision. First of all, is KSP really a failure? For the most part, it's received overwhelmingly positive reviews and most newcomers to the Forum are saying that they really like the game. That isn't 'failure' by any means. Second, SQUAD, as I stated, is doing what it thinks is best. Your implication that SQUAD somehow wants KSP to fail and is ignoring all of the warning signs is patently absurd. SQUAD, after all, depends on its game. They've spent four years lovingly developing it to be the best game possible. Your statement that this isn't true is almost unanimously considered to be incorrect. Take a deep breath. Drink some tea. Walk around outside. Find a dandelion and blow it. Look for shapes in the clouds. It'll help. I promise. -Upsilon

Maybe at some point, Majorjim. Right now, my computer is acting up, so I can't actually play KSP... which is why I've been doddering about on the Forums so much. That's excellent! Like, seriously. Wow. Does the hover-y bit still work in 1.0? (I presume that the turret does not, sadly. Wheel collider mechanisms are different now.) -Upsilon

Welcome to the Forum! This trick works based on an improper collider mechanic in the game (I think), and it's been around practically forever. Danny2462 had it happen to him as #8 of the 25 Things to Do With Your Kerbals, back in August 2012. Note how different the game was back then! Some people have wanted to fix it, but I'm personally fine with this little bug. Nice find, though! -Upsilon

Hello! To address a few of the points made on this thread, I'm making this early-morning post. It may not even make as much sense as my previous one, because I'm still very tired... but hopefully it will clarify some things. ~~~ First of all, I changed the title. I didn't intend for the thread to be passive-aggressive. I genuinely wanted to offer my own perspective on this issue in a more-or-less fair way. Sorry if it seemed otherwise. To clarify the matter, I've taken out the word 'Friendly.' The thread now just reads 'A Reminder to the Community,' which sounds a little harsher to me, but hopefully it doesn't stir up as many hard feelings. ~~~ Second of all, some people have critiqued my points. This is a perfectly reasonable thing to do! Of course, I'm not always right. However, I do feel the need to further explain some of my points. I'll use quotes from Cpt. Kipard for this, as he brought up some genuinely good points. There are some things that have already been done, but that can still be changed. There are others that are set in stone. As per always, I'll give the recent 'Save the Round-8!' movement as an example. The Round-8 toroidal tank had already been converted to a xenon tank by the Devs. However, this decision was definitely reversible: SQUAD could add a separate xenon tank before 1.0 was released. They ended up doing so, causing joy amongst the members of the Forum. However, the release of 1.0 was a different story. It seems as if many members believed that 1.0 should have been delayed or be depicted as another beta version. While this is a reasonable thing to say, it simply is impossible at this point: the release of 1.0 is something that happened in the past, and SQUAD cannot undo it. If someone is posting about how more beta versions were needed or the like, it's really too late for that. This is what I'm referring to on the Original Post. As much as you can't believe this, I've seen posts that seem to suggest it, whether in jest or not. (I think that referencing some questionable posts on my OP would have been great, but I didn't want to highlight specific community members as scapegoats. That's not nice.) As for SQUAD being a business and trying to support what they think is best for it itself, I have no trouble believing that. However, I do have trouble believing that SQUAD is doing much else than KSP right now. All of the SQUAD team have been reporting working long hours, working on bugs, and the like. As for the official SQUAD website, it's bare-bones and hasn't been updated in years. In other words, SQUAD and KSP are incredibly closely linked. I wonder, then, what difference there is from SQUAD doing the best with KSP and SQUAD doing the best for itself. There doesn't seem to be much difference there, honestly. Maybe SQUAD wants to make more profit or sell more copies, but it seems to have done a good job of making this process fairly, not releasing half-baked concoctions or the like (until, arguably, now... which is the cause of all of this criticism!). And that's actually exactly what I said on my post. ~~~ As for the overall backlash about this thread being a complaining thread and being useless: I hope that at least one person reads this thread and says something along the lines of, "Hey! I really shouldn't be making nasty posts in SQUAD's direction or in anyone's direction, really." If that happens, this thread has served its purpose. This isn't a complaining thread, or at least it wasn't supposed to be. Instead, it was supposed to be a thread that did its best to reduce some of the complaining that is happening on the Forum right now. If it's anything other than that, I'm honestly sorry. (At least it has nice formatting!) If you don't see it that way, that's fine. But complaining about the "complaint" about the complainers is not only confusing, but it also hardly does any good... -Upsilon

Dear Community, My name is UpsilonAerospace. I have only ever truly loved three or four games in my lifetime. KSP is one of them. I'm proud to be a member of the community here, too. For the most part, it's a great group, and I don't know if I'll ever find a better one. However, after the release of 1.0 and its subsequent patches, the community seems to have become less unified and more angry. While some aspects of this anger may be justified, others are certainly not. So today, I'm just going to give my two cents on the current state of affairs within the community, as well as how it can be improved. Take these opinions with a grain of salt (I'm certainly not perfect), but give them some thought, alright? A Reminder to the Community. ~~~ I want to say that when it comes to being irritated, there are some times when your irritation is absolutely justified. However, your method of expressing this irritation is often rather extreme. Dialing back a notch would often do a better job of conveying your opinions to both SQUAD and the other members of the community. I know that many of you will defend loudly exclaiming, "This part/system should be changed!" After all, it worked for the Round-8, for example. That's not what I'm here to talk about today. Instead, I want to discuss times when loud statements have no chance whatsoever of doing anything other than harming the community. I will try to keep it friendly: after all, I don't want to fall under any of the categories below myself. So, what can our community improve upon? ~~~ 1. Attacking SQUAD for things that have already happened. This has been one of the biggest points of contention for the Forum lately. After the release of 1.0, many Forum-goers have been irate about SQUAD releasing KSP prematurely, which has led to some heated discussion. It's difficult to emphasize this enough: 1.0 has already been released. It's out, whether you like it or not. There is nothing you can do to change this fact, unless you have a time machine. And even then, the paradoxes would be immense! Is it right to be irritated that 1.0 isn't as good a version as you thought it would be? Perhaps. But many people on the Forum are taking it one step further. Their argument is, essentially, that we warned SQUAD of the impeding problems with 1.0 and they didn't listen. Depending on who you ask, they could certainly be considered correct. But bringing up this point again and again is akin to gloating. At the end of the day, what does it accomplish? It doesn't make a better game and it doesn't make for a better community. Indeed, there have been some serious, often impolite arguments flying both ways. The only argument you could make in favor of this gloating is that some are saying, "SQUAD should listen to the community more! If it did, these things wouldn't happen." But if we're just deadlocked in events of the past, criticizing decisions that have already been made, there's no real reason why SQUAD would listen to us. It's time to accept that 1.0 is out, and that it's a much better use of your time to ask that SQUAD fixes things that aren't impossible to fix. Okay? ~~~ 2. Claiming to know exactly how the game should be developed, and getting irritated when it is not so. There was once an expression that went something like, "The greatest experts are the ones in the stands." I can't remember exactly how it goes, but you get the idea. (Anyone who could point me towards the real expression gets free Internet points!) SQUAD, it is important to note, is doing what it thinks is best for KSP. There are a few people who think that it is deliberately trying to make a bad game, and this is simply not the case. If SQUAD really was trying to make a bad game, I hope you can agree that the game would be much worse than it is now. That being said, they sometimes don't listen to their community. And sometimes they are wrong. But they listen to the community quite often, and they are actually right more often than not. I don't think that enough people appreciate this. Is it reasonable to make requests to SQUAD? Absolutely. Is it right to get irritated if these requests are not fulfilled? Not really. While SQUAD's opinions on what make this game great may be different from ours, it has full control over the game and nothing will change this. In addition, the community's interests and SQUAD's interests often align well, though they may disagree when it comes to the minutiae of the game. There's where the "SQUAD isn't listening to us!" argument comes into play. (I know there are exceptions to this, but it seems as if many quibbles are over surprisingly minor aspects of the game.) I would also say that few other developers work with the community at all, including indie game developers. SQUAD is doing us a huge favor as it is. When we're yelling things at SQUAD, we're going a little too far. And when SQUAD doesn't unconditionally try to work on what we want and we get irritated, we're behaving like privileged children who don't know how lucky they are. I'm sorry to say this, but it negatively impacts the community. And I don't think anyone wants that to happen. ~~~ 3. Posting harsh things to other Forum members. This one is a given. As a Forum and a community, we should do our best to get along. There will be disagreements, there's no doubting that. But some people take these disagreements to a whole other level. Maybe yelling at SQUAD will make them 'Bring Back the Round-8,' but yelling at other forum members will not change their mind. As a matter of fact, it will make them even more opposed to your point of view. Being hostile does not encourage rational thought, but instead personal attacks and other such travesties. This behavior will never be acceptable. I'm not going to talk about this one too much, as I'm sure you already know all about it. But it is certainly something to consider before hitting the 'Post' button. ~~~ Well, that's my two cents. If you agree with them, I'm happy we're on the same page. If you disagree, having a rational and well-thought-out discussion would be great. (Anything less productive will not be tolerated. I hope you understand where I'm coming from here.) I look forward to hearing what you have to say on this. Thanks for taking the time to read it! -Upsilon (P.S. I wish I could have posted this earlier. I'm having ongoing computer troubles, and thus I wasn't able to get this guy out when it was most needed. But better late than never, right?)

Hello everyone! A little while back, I made my own tutorial on KSP's new aerodynamic system. It's rather long, but it's probably worth the read. It also covers a lot more information than this little dude (as good as it is). You can find it here. If you want a bit more knowledge on rocket aerodynamics, be sure to check it out! (Sorry for the shameless self promotion: this just seems like a logical extension to the thread posted by EtherDragon. Thanks for understanding.) -Upsilon

Well, for one thing, the landing gear suspend your craft higher in the air than the old rover wheels. They also offer a bit more suspension, which makes the hovering effect seem more realistic. They can 'look' as if they're on the ground and not glitched out, like the previous rover wheels kinda did 'way back when. Finally, they work in 1.0, and I wasn't expecting them to. I suppose there aren't all that many differences, but at any rate, no one has created a showcase for hovering craft in any version (I think). Why not try one out now? -Upsilon

Hello kenbob5588! While I respect your commitment to making games, I think there are some things you should do if you want people to purchase 'Plane Evasion.' First off, I would love to see some pictures or a video. Your only picture seems to be on your website, and even then it's tiny and not all that descriptive. Give us some large screenshots that really show us what is in the game. (Also, you already have a YouTube channel... why don't you take the opportunity to post a video on there? That would also be great.) Second, you need to tell us exactly what's in this game and what it has to offer. There could be some thrilling gameplay: the name "Plane Evasion" sounds like fun. But unless you actually give a sense of what is in the game, we won't know what to expect. Really try to show off your product! What does it do that no other game does? What makes it worth $3? If you do these two things and the game really looks like fun, you'll probably get a lot more downloads. Give it some thought, okay? -Upsilon

Hello everyone! I'm UpsilonAerospace. Recently, I discovered a very nice feature in KSP 1.0 that allows various craft to 'hover' above the ground. I'm dreaming up a lot of ways to abuse this effect. Come and join me! The Grand 'Making Things Hover' Thread! ~~~ In KSP 0.90, various types of rover wheel did strange stuff when they had parts placed between them and the ground. This peculiar setup resulted in an eerie effect where the rover appeared to hover a few inches in the air. I always wanted to exploit this effect, but I feared it wouldn't work when 1.0 dropped. In 1.0, wheel mechanics were changed, but they didn't fix the hover effect! As a matter of fact, 1.0 made craft even better. The small steerable landing gear, in particular, can make any sufficiently light craft "hover" if another part is clipped into it. This hover effect occurs even when it looks as if the wheels should be touching the ground, adding another layer of spookiness to the mix. Craft utilizing this cute little bug feature appear to have an almost magnetic repulsion to the ground. They merrily bob about, up to half a meter in the air. The effect is even better with the help of some small engines on the bottom (to "lighten" the craft, not to actually cause it to lift off). Here's a video of my first hovering craft in action. The fun starts at about 1:15. Note the impressive ground clearance, which actually gets better throughout the video as the craft burns off fuel. When I first flew this thing (intending for it to be a VTOL), I could have sworn that it was flying, and that it merely had a low thrust-to-weight ratio. The reality was a bit more amusing. ~~~ Of course, this effect has the tremendous potential for abuse. I'm imagining Star-Wars-style podracers, "hovercraft," and similar glorious abuses in the near future. I'm sure the possibilities here are limitless. So, are you ready to have some good old-fashioned fun with this interesting effect? Good. Let's get started. ~~~ Please post your craft utilizing this effect here! If you have a craft that utilizes a mod to hover, that's okay to post too as an inspiration. Good luck! Have fun! Let me know what you come up with. This will be great. -Upsilon

First of all, welcome to the Forum! I hope you enjoy your stay My first thought is that your rocket is borderline unstable when the boosters are decoupled, as boosters mounted near the bottom of your rocket increase stability (they have a lot of drag, which lowers the center of drag enough to make your rocket stable). Once your boosters are jettisoned, your ship is just unstable enough to flip once. This flip decreases your speed. As your speed decreases, aerodynamic forces begin to matter less and gimbal and SAS matter more. So your craft can stay in an upright position without too much of a problem after the flip. By the time you reach the speed you were previously at, you're high enough in the atmosphere that aerodynamic forces begin to matter a bit less, so your rocket can stay stable. Hopefully this makes sense. To learn more about aerodynamics, I humbly recommend my Simple Guide to Rocket Aerodynamics. It will help you avoid flipping and teach you how your rocket behaves in the atmosphere. -Upsilon

Oh, c'mon guys. This is a challenge about flying a banana into space. Flying. A Banana. Into Space. Is it supposed to be serious? No. This is one of the least serious challenges I've ever seen. I don't understand, then, why there would be flamewars about this fun little thing, regarding a minor aspect of the scoring system. To be honest, I'll participate in this challenge even though I don't want to bother going interplanetary... because it's a fun idea. Whichever way the points are spilt (hee hee, banana splits), I don't care. I'm content to merely fly my grand ol' banana through the cosmos. I'll probably use monoprop tanks for the banana, because of their nice yellow color... and, of course, in my pictures, I'll edit in a banana for scale. -Upsilon

Throwing my hat in the ring here: this is exactly what I think is happening. ...and this is exactly what should happen. I think that such a talk would do wonders for the morale of the community. It would prove that SQUAD really does care, and it would likely decrease the number of long, bile-filled threads such as this one, when even the moderators get caught up in ad hominem arguments. Oh, that reminds me! Dear sal_vager, Recently, you told Aerindel that That's far from polite, whether or not it's correct. If I was a member of the moderation team, I would likely edit this statement out of your post, as it's not constructive and seems downright mean. Drink a cup of tea or step outside for a moment. It'll help. (Actually, this advice probably applies to many of the posters on this thread too ) -Upsilon

If I may leave this here: A Simple Guide to Rocket Aerodynamics! This really covers just about all you need to know about rocket stability. If you read this guide carefully, you should be able to construct rockets that are aerodynamically stable and very pleasant to fly! -Upsilon

Very true. Here's what I said a week ago to the hour: ...I think I got it pretty dang spot-on. The website/store didn't crash, for me at least, but some others couldn't get it to work. There was a game-breaking bug with parachutes, some problems with fairings and the like, and there's probably a lot more bugs out there. SQUAD's gotten a lot of bile, much of it unfairly directed towards the QA testers. Now, many are claiming that SQUAD "blew its first release" and the like. Whether or not this is true, it's inspiring loads of heated discussion. I do think that public opinion of SQUAD is a bit better than I anticipated, which is nice. But it was considerably higher before the development cycle for 1.0 really kicked into gear. I'm not gloating here. If anything, I'm stating that unfortunately, the KSP forums have become a less pleasant place since the update. This cycle is rather predictable, and I personally want it to stop. I know that I have previously been a part of the negativity, participating in some heated discussions (though trying to be polite) and such. I'll try not to do it in the future, difficult though it may be. I promise. -Upsilon

I tried to make your first point relatively clear, though I do suppose I said "Are there any other ways to make the rocket stable?" instead of "Are there any other ways to make my rocket fly properly?" Thanks for the positive feedback! I'm sure you know more about this than I do... Yep. You can place a spaceplane on top of a rocket, but you need some really big fins on the bottom to lower the center of pressure. Otherwise, that thing will be absurdly unstable. Thanks! I hope this guide is a more-or-less complete look at what makes rockets stable, and what you can do to improve stability. See, the problem with this is, no matter how high the center of gravity is, the center of pressure is always higher than the center of gravity. This is because the nose is generally the main source of a rocket's drag, so it raises the CP almost all the way to the top. Sure, having the CG rise is nice, and it is possible with a reasonably large upper stage. But it still results in an unstable rocket. The best stability test you can do is to take your rocket up to about 5km, turn off the SAS, and then press W,A,S, or D for a second. If the rocket corrects back to near-vertical, it's stable. If it continues tipping, it's either 'neutrally stable' or 'unstable.' I'll bet you my own $0.02USD that you can't create a rocket that passes this stability test without placing something at the base of your rocket that adds drag (or turning on the SAS or otherwise cheating). Oh, and I'll also comment that if the Falcon or Atlas's guidance system failed, they would be unstable. It's engine gimbal that keeps them pointed in the right direction, not aerodynamic stability. Eh, not necessarily true. Fins can actually increase a rocket's efficiency by pointing it in the right direction as it goes to orbit. If you know exactly what you're doing, it's possible to angle the rocket slightly after launch and then just take your hands off the controls as the rocket gradually tips towards horizontal and gains altitude. I have yet to achieve the perfect burn, but I've regularly ended up at about ten degrees from horizontal at 35km, travelling at 1500 or 1600 m/s, with my nose right at the prograde marker the whole way up. No control input, no SAS, just plain ol' aerodynamics. The weight cost for this very nice ascent was only about 0.06 tons. I would strongly recommend giving this sort of thing a try and seeing whether you can do it too! It saves Delta-V on the way to orbit and it's immensely satisfying if you can do it properly. Anyway, thanks for your comments and suggestions! -Upsilon

Hello! My name is UpsilonAerospace. I've had loads of experience with model rocketry, so I have a fairly good general idea of How Aerodynamics Work. However, it seems as if many new players of KSP are a bit weirded out by the aerodynamics that were introduced in 1.0 and subsequent patches. Thus, I'll take this opportunity to give an overview to aerodynamics as a whole. I'm going to start out rather simple and then get more technical as I go, so just start reading wherever something catches your eye that you may not have known before, okay? Good. Let's get started. A Brief and Simple Guide to Rocket Aerodynamics! (I thought I could make this guide shorter. Perhaps I was overly optimistic with my title... oh well.) ~~~ Let's first get some simple terminology out of the way: The center of mass (or center of gravity) is a rocket's horizontal balance point. There is an equal amount of mass above the C.G. (as it's abbreviated in model rocketry) as there is below it. The center of pressure (or C.P., as it's abbreviated in model rocketry) is a little more difficult to find. All bits of your rocket have a certain amount of drag, and if you took the location and amount of drag of every part and averaged it all out, the average point would be the center of pressure. Fortunately, there's an easier way to do this in Kerbal Space Program, as we'll soon see. ~~~ So, where should the CG and the CP be on your rocket? I'll use the example of a badminton birdie (or shuttlecock). Here's a friendly picture: Now, as anyone who has played badminton knows, the birdie flies with the bit on the left pointed in the direction it's traveling. If you tried to throw it while it was pointed backwards, it would correct itself so that it was pointed forwards again. In other words, it's 'stable.' Of course, it would be nice to have your rocket pointed in the direction it's travelling. If it wasn't, it would lead to instability: flipping and possibly crashing. You don't want that to happen. So, where's the center of gravity and the center of pressure on a badminton birdie? The front of a badminton birdie is most definitely heavier than the back: the center of gravity is almost all the way at the front of a birdie. Because the back of a birdie has a lot of drag, its center of pressure is located a bit further back. In other words, the center of gravity is in front of the center of pressure to make the birdie stable. A stable rocket must have its center of gravity in front of its center of pressure. It must have enough drag on the bottom to move its center of pressure behind the center of gravity. Some people think that this is counterintuitive: they think that the rocket should be bottom-heavy, so that the bit with the most weight would be pointed towards the ground. But that's simply not true. NASA agrees with me here, so I think I'm doing something right: ...oh, and by the way, badminton birdies make great model rockets, though they're a bit too draggy to win any competition awards. ~~~ How can you get the CG and the CP to be in the right place? There are several important things to note here: A tube-shaped rocket with a nose cone on top will be unstable. The CG will be at about the middle of the rocket, but the CP will be near the top: even the pointiest nose cone will still be more draggy than any other part of the rocket. The faster you go, the worse the problem gets if your rocket is unstable. Or, to be more precise, the more airflow over the rocket, the worse the problem gets. In the lower atmosphere, rockets have an especially hard time with this. It's much easier to move the CP than it is to move the CG. While you have to completely rearrange your rocket's layout to change the CG, you only have to add some special bits called "fins" onto your rocket to change the CP. (More on this later.) However, the CG moves around quite a bit during flight! As the tanks drain, the rocket's center of gravity gets lower and lower, causing it to be less and less stable. This is worrisome, and you should keep it in mind. Placing very draggy bits at the bottom will actually help! If you put a big ol' set of structural panels or wing bits at the base of your rocket, arranged to be as high-drag as possible, they will make your rocket more stable (by lowering the location of the CP). They will also be as draggy as all get-out, so you probably shouldn't do this if you want your rocket to go to space. There are better ways of doing this, folks! ~~~ What are fins, and what do they do? Fins are protrusions outside the rocket's airframe. Their goal in life is to lower the center of pressure on the rocket. Therefore, the most ideal fins are rather small and as far towards the bottom of the rocket as possible. Fins keep the rocket stable without much drag in a very clever way. When the rocket is travelling straight up, fins have very low drag. However, if the rocket begins to tip slightly to one side, the fins' drag increases, making the rocket briefly more stable. They also exert a force on the base of the rocket ("Lift") that causes the rocket to remain pointed up. Lift plays a far larger role in keeping your rocket pointed in the right direction than drag does, but both are quite capable of helping. Here's another diagram from NASA. (This one is an expanded version of the precious one.) Some configurations of rocket need larger fins than others. For example, rockets with large fairings have a lot of drag up top, and thus they need larger fins to bring the center of pressure down to the right spot. In addition, the sharper the nose cone (and the less drag) up top, the lower the need for large fins. To properly stabilize the rocket, at least three fins are needed. Most rockets use three or four fins; there's really no reason to use any more than six. ~~~ Okay, but how can you tell where the CG and the CP are? There's currently a very good way to find your rocket's CG: click the button at the bottom right of the VAB that says "Center of Mass." Finding your rocket's CP is a bit harder. The indicator that says "Center of Lift" does not give your CP. As a matter of fact, it doesn't give any data at all if you don't use the wing bits found in the 'Aerodynamics' tab! Thus, I would personally recommend using a part from the aerodynamics tab as your fins. Once you have placed your fins, you can pull up the 'Center of Lift' tab and the 'Center of Mass' tab. If your 'Center of Lift' is one caliber or more behind your 'Center of Mass,' you should be good. A 'caliber' is the width of your rocket's fuel tanks: if you have a 1.25m tank, for example, you need to place the fins so that the 'center of lift' is about 1.25m further down the rocket. (You can eyeball this if you want.) If your rocket is too stubby to have the center of lift a full caliber behind the center of mass, that's okay. Your rocket still should fly safely, though it may not have as good of a margin of stability. ~~~ How do fins affect your rocket's flight path? Fins' ability to make your rocket more stable lends to some interesting characteristics. Most notably, rockets with fins consistently point prograde (in the direction the rocket is travelling). If your prograde marker is slightly off-vertical and you turn your SAS off, the rocket will begin to very gradually tip in that direction. Because your thrust vector will no longer be vertical, your prograde marker will move further towards the horizon. Your rocket will, theoretically, tip until it is ninety degrees from vertical and then start descending... if you don't design it properly. In real life, this happens quite frequently if a model rocket launches into the wind or without sufficient thrust. It's called 'weathercocking.' Here's a picture of this effect, originally taken by JCRocket.com: To combat this, you can do several things. One is to place fins that can swivel on your rocket. These fins will do a better job of keeping the rocket pointed at exactly the angle you want it to. Another thing you can do is add some SAS. Finally, you can throttle up all the way or otherwise increase the amount of thrust your rocket produces relative to its weight: its 'thrust-to-weight ratio.' This will ensure that the rocket does not tip as quickly, because the amount of thrust is basically pushing you further upward before you tip too much more. Note, however, that if you can get your rocket tipped very slightly early in the flight so that it is nearly horizontal when you get to the upper atmosphere, you've done a great job creating an 'orbit-friendly' flight profile! Because your rocket was pointing prograde the whole way up, your burn to orbit will be quite efficient and it may not even require the SAS unit! In other words, this rocket behavior can be annoying, but it can also help. ~~~ Do you need fins on your radially-mounted boosters? Likely not, at least with shorter boosters. Radially-mounted boosters are usually mounted near the base of the rocket. This actually moves both the center of gravity and the center of lift towards the base. If your rocket is stable without boosters, it should be okay with boosters. You probably don't need larger-than-normal fins on the main stage or separate fins on the boosters. However, if your rocket wasn't that stable to begin with, you might want to consider adding fins onto the boosters and/or the main core to ensure stability. ~~~ Do you need fins on each stage of your rocket? It depends. If your rocket has multiple stages that fire within the thick of the atmosphere, each one should have its own set of fins. The fins on the lowest stage should almost certainly be the largest and most prominent, with every subsequent stages' fins getting smaller and smaller. Don't forget that you're raising the center of pressure significantly with each set of fins. If you're firing your upper stages at 30km or higher, especially with some SAS on them, you don't need fins. Your rocket will fly fine without them. ~~~ Is there any reason to put fins at the top of the rocket? Not really. The only good reason you would do something like this is either if you had an upper stage or if you wanted to build a scale model of a real rocket. ~~~ Are there other ways to make my rocket fly properly? Sure! Option 1: Engine Gimbal Pros: Probably applies to most rockets you build, meaning you don't have to add extra parts. Somewhat effective, especially at lower velocities. Cons: Less effective (to completely ineffective) at higher velocities. Requires an engine with gimbal capability. The larger the gimbal, the greater the percentage of fuel wasted while burning in a direction other than straight up. Gimbal may overcorrect, resulting in wobbly rockets. I should note that many people have kept their rockets quite stable with a combination of engine gimbal and SAS (seen below). If you're a more advanced player, you shouldn't have much of a problem with a finless rocket. However, doing this requires you to manually point your rocket within five or ten degrees of prograde throughout the ascent. If you're using this, you should always keep your SAS on as well: turning it off will quite likely cause your rocket to flip over. Finally, fins are all-but-required if you have a solid rocket booster (SRB) or an engine without a gimbal for your first stage. Engines without gimbal are unable to correct your rocket's position when it deviates even a tiny amount from prograde, thus making your rocket far more likely to lose stability. You can check your engine's gimbal range by right-clicking on the engine's icon on the left side of the VAB. Option 2: SAS Pros: Allows for complete control at all levels of atmosphere, whether the engines are burning or not. Rather nice and simple. Cons: Rather heavy, reducing amount of payload that can be carried into orbit. Can be twitchy. Option 3: RCS Pros: Allows for acceleration in different directions, both in the atmosphere and in space. Cons: Way too heavy. Depletable. Mostly pointless. Why did I even add this option?! Option 4: Spin Stabilization Pros: Rather simple. An interesting real-life concept. Can make unstable rockets stable without adding much mass. Cons: Impossible to orient oneself. Impossible to do a gravity turn. May waste fuel by spinning. Causes Kerbal nausea. (No one likes Kerbal nausea.) ...yep, I'll go with fins, personally. ~~~ Is there anything else to say? Probably. Let me know if you have any unanswered questions, or if you find inaccuracies within this guide! I'll try to address your concerns as well as I can. I would like to note that this thread is basically an extension of the "Why does my FLIPping rocket Always Flip Over!" thread. I think I covered some ground that EtherDragon didn't. I actually started this tutorial only hours after 1.0 was released, but unfortunately I haven't been able to post it until now, due to computer problems. Sorry. Oh, and I'll likely make a short video that covers much of this information! Thanks for reading this rather long post. I hope it's helped you with building better rockets. If you learned something new, I suppose some Reputation would be nice, though I don't really need it. Best of luck! -Upsilon

Hey everyone! So recently, I've been absolutely swamped. My computer has died, just as I was getting ready for finals. I've had a bunch of other nasty stuff happen. All in all, it hasn't been a very pleasant couple of weeks. So, would you mind extending the deadlines for both judging applications and voting entries out about a week or two? Again, I'm sorry for all of the changes being made. I've just had a rough go of things recently. My tentative new schedule is judging applications being due on May 10 and actual entries being due by the 20th. Hopefully this works with everyone. And be sure to keep all of those entries coming! Trust me, this competition will get done, eventually. Thanks. -Upsilon

As much as I loved the old aerodynamics, this sort of argument just doesn't make sense. Your basic statement is "Making very unrealistic planes was fun! Now, I can't do it anymore. Therefore, SQUAD hates the spaceplane hangar and planes in general." The reason you can't make hypersonic planes and SSTOs anymore is because they are all-but-impossible to make in real life. SQUAD wants to add more realism to the game, so it's trying to make planes and the like behave realistically. Apparently, you don't like this extra realism. Which is fine: I really miss some of my old, crazy designs too. But it doesn't mean that SQUAD hates the aerodynamics system. Why should it? If you don't like realism, you can go back to an older version. But please don't claim that SQUAD hates aircraft because it's trying to make aircraft simulation better. -Upsilon

Personally, I'm not a huge fan of this analogy. What I'm dealing with here isn't making the game more expansive, better-running, or more accurate to physics. But I would prefer that SQUAD takes some time to fix the little things that are wrong with this update before diving headlong into the bigger stuff. SQUAD has a certain internal schedule that it needs to follow, and like all game companies, it must budget its time well. Pretty much all of the things you mentioned would likely take days or even weeks to code. The stuff I'm recommending (while it is less significant) would probably take an hour or two, tops. In other words, SQUAD could fix all of this stuff that I want to fix and add the stuff you wanted, no problem. Or, they could just put it off for another version, for no real reason at all. Oh, and I also agree wholeheartedly with Spacepetscompany's statement: If the game is supposed to have any semblance of completion, all aspects of it need to be polished. SQUAD has done a reasonably good job with some aspects, but it's done a poor job with others. There's really no way to say "But it's not important!" when it's basically the first thing you see upon starting a new game. There's no way to say "We can fix it later!" when it was already supposed to be fixed by now. Again, though, I seem to have a different set of priorities than others. As Azimech says, I guess it's good to have diversity -Upsilon

I personally haven't found any bugs with it yet, but I wouldn't be surprised if there were some. That would be a nice, simple fix. Or maybe you could slightly lengthen the bar itself. Either way, I can't imagine this would take much time or effort. Until we get clouds, I feel as if the game shouldn't show clouds on some bits but not on others... it's not really an unreasonable request. The phrase "can be seen in use at many space programs" is a wordy way of saying "is used in many space programs." The phrase "perhaps possibly" is a little painful to me, for obvious reasons. It uses the phrase "many space programs" twice in a row, which is a no-no. This thing isn't technically a run-on sentence, but it is quite long and thus a bit difficult to read. The last bit of the sentence would read better if it didn't have an adjective before every noun - "small booster," "nice kick," "small payloads," "considerable heights" - although I'm just being pedantic with that last one. Nonetheless, this sentence is one that I would rework extensively if I were SQUAD. I'm sorry for being picky (and yes, I'll readily admit that I am). However, many important things to fix have already been covered many times, and this hasn't yet been covered, even once. This isn't my biggest priority for bugfixes in 1.0, but it's certainly something that I want to see. I'm fine with adding 'fluff' to parts' descriptions, as long as they have some indication of how the parts work. If a part has a bit of backstory followed by an explanation of its usage, that's great! If it doesn't have anything that informs players of how to use it or what it is used for, it's pointless. After all, the descriptions are written mostly for newer users why don't have a good idea of how the parts work. If the parts' descriptions are vague or contain only non-useful information, is there really a point to having a description at all? A screw on the runway is a cutesy Easter-egg. What I'm talking about are some tiny (and not-so-tiny) things that SQUAD didn't pay attention to. There's a big difference there... -Upsilon