BagelRabbit

With only two hours to go before this initial lifstrem, tensions and hype are building! There are nearly four people who are waiting with bated breath for the moment the lifstrem begins... hang on a minute, one of them is wandering away. Weak jokes aside, I'd love to see all y'all at the strem. So if you want to show up, please do! -Upsilon

Do you like livestreams? (Maybe.) Do you want to watch my livestreams? (Presumably.) Well, then, you've come to the right place! Introducing: Bagel's deliberately misspelled Lifstrem-a-Palooza! (insert generic polka music here) ~~~ Hello! I'm UpsilonAerospace. Some people know me as Bagel Rabbit, 'cause I have a YouTube channel too. Basically, I have the next week mostly off: it's spring break! As a result, I'll be able to livestream - er, lifstrem - to my heart's content. I'll be playing pretty much exclusively KSP. And if you want, you can watch my successes and failures (and failures... and failures... and failures) from the convenience of your very own home computer! There will be guests! (I have some weird friends, both on- and offline, who are willing to join me.) There will be music! (I'll have a guitar and violin with me, and I'll sing some songs.) There will be hitherto-unseen craft! (Most of them don't work very well.) There will be challenges, which I will fail miserably! It's good clean fun for all. If you want to watch, here's roughly the times I can strem. They're short, but there's still plenty of time for fun. Still, you should definitely convert time zones accordingly so you won't miss 'em! Friday: 8-10pm EDT / 5-7pm PDT Sunday: 8-10pm EDT / 5-7pm PDT Monday: 8-10pm EDT / 5-6pm PDT Wednesday: 8-10:00pm EDT / 5-6pm PDT Optional Thursday Strem at some point maybe. ...and you should definitely stay tuned, 'cause these things may change around a bit. I may even manage to do a stream on Tuesday or Thursday! I'm not sure. I'm sure you want to know where to watch the fun, so I'll put a link up right here! https://www.twitch.tv/bagelrabbit I'll probably be putting strem highlights up over the course of the week, if you want to see those. Get hyped, stop by, and have fun! -Upsilon

Cool! But... I love Das's family-friendly content. I like his positive attitude. I like his goal of helping out new players. But Das is also seemingly on a crusade to critique some aspects of KSP. It's a little weird that one of the saltiest people towards the game will also be the one trying to show off how good it is. I'm not saying this stream will be anything less than distilled awesomeness (now with 30% less cholesterol). I just think it's a little strange, and I'm wondering about the circumstances that led to it... -Upsilon

There are several factors that are making me have doubts that we would be able to do a community Kerbal-Kon, or at the very least, that I would be at the head of it. First off, organizing such a con requires many volunteer hours. You have to realize that the setup and takedown would probably take a week or so, and it's difficult to get a team of volunteers to travel anywhere for a week. You would probably have to place this con in a very highly populated region of the world for it to be any sort of success, and the team would likely be mostly comprised of adults. Speaking of adults, many of the people playing KSP aren't. Trust me when I say this: cons dominated by teenagers are mostly local and very small-scale because the people often have to be within driving distance to attend. If you want a tiny Kerbal-Kon, that would be fine - although it's likely most Famous People won't show up and it will be more like a meetup. I assume you don't want that. Ideally, the people making the big decisions should be people who have organized other conventions. This is simply a matter of "they know things about this that we don't." As of yet, no one has been recruited. This would be an ideal thing to do in the future. There is currently no monetary strategy to make this Kerbal-Kon happen. Assuming you want a big one, I will repeat that it has to be in a heavily-populated area. These convention centers are not cheap. Gathering booths and multimedia for the guests is not cheap. Getting merchandise for the event is not cheap. Paying for celebrities to come (and don't assume they will otherwise) is not cheap. I could see this convention costing less than $20,000 (maybe), but it won't turn a profit. You would have to aggressively raise money for this. Oh, and did I mention most convention centers in major cities are largely booked out for the entire year? Perhaps this would be a good thing - there's more time to raise money - but it won't mean immediate rewards. Is it possible? Yes. Is it probable? Maybe, but not in the near future. tl;dr: I dunno, man. -Upsilon

[Edit: Pardon my posting in the wrong thread. I suppose I should put something in this space, though, so: Yay, experimentals! Go forth, all ye testers, and squash all the bugs you can find! -Upsilon]

FireFaced is absolutely correct here. I feel as if I should elaborate a little: Last year, I really didn't have the time to coordinate something massive like this, but I did it anyway. This year, there will probably be more entries and less free time for me to judge them. Instead of driving myself insane with this or having the results delayed by a long, long time, I decided to hand off the proverbial baton instead. So, it would be nice if someone else kept this going. I would love @KasperVld to be the "manager" of the Oscar-B's: it would lend a real air of professionalism and it would increase the likelihood of being seen by others. I can completely understand if Kasper's unwilling or unable to do it, though; I also think @HatBat or @Felbourn would do a top-notch job. ~~~ So, thoughts? -Upsilon

If there were three words I could use to describe the current port, they would be as follows: Not. Ready. Yet. Let's go over a smattering of problems, shall we? > Lag. Majorjim already covered this one, so I won't go into it with too much zeal. Still, the game seems to run really slowly. There are lag spikes for explosions, which I don't like. > A really poor UI. In the VAB/SPH and during flight, it seems as if the most important things are really tiny while the unimportant things are huge. In the VAB, for example, the "funds" counter is enormous, whereas the things you actually need to click to get a good rocket (CoM, CoL, CoT indicators) are a fraction of the size. Indeed, many buttons are small enough that clicking them with the "mouse" will be difficult to do the first time. Similarly, in flight, the pitch/roll/yaw meters and Kerbal views are almost absurdly oversized while the things you need to click (lights, brakes, prograde/retrograde/other markers) are tiny. This is even more worrisome because in flight, you need to be able to click things quickly, the first time around. I'd hate to try to hit the "prograde" button and accidentally hit "retrograde" instead. > Bugs? Given, this video is only nine minutes long and mostly showcases prebuilt rockets, but there seems to be a bug in it anyway. At about the eight-minute mark, the guy tries to launch the craft without any Kerbals on it. Naturally, it says that there's no manned command modules or guidance units, so the thing is uncontrollable. He then puts three Kerbals in the rocket, including one in a Mk1 cockpit. He then tries to launch... and once again, "There's no manned control modules or guidance units!" He decides to launch anyway, but it cuts off before you can see whether or not the craft goes. That's a weird bug, and it strikes me as a bit of a sloppy mistake to make. I have no idea about the quantity of other bugs, but I'm worried. ~~~ I am no console user, but I wouldn't buy this game - especially not for $40. It's a game not designed for consoles and, at the current time, it looks as if the port isn't great. There's time for improvement, but I'm not sure if the people behind this are willing to put in yet more effort for a huge set of tweaks. Finally, I would like it if there was a closed beta-test (which has helped vastly with many an update), but I'm not sure if such a test is planned. tl;dr: I don't like the looks of this, pardner. -Upsilon

You'd be in, but I wouldn't update the Group for, like, three months. I'd be sure to write something nice, though. (I'm really glad that @Endersmens took over the updates. Thanks, sir!) I know people give out Reputation more readily on these new Forums, but I'm almost positive (just speaking from personal experience) that this doesn't completely counteract the decrease in "potency" of +Rep. Let's assume that the average Reputation power pre-forum-upgrade was 3.5. This is probably low, though I don't know for sure. Furthermore, let's assume that for a Pretty Good Post, an average of two people gave Reputation to the poster. Again, this is probably low. This means that the person picks up an average of seven units of Reputation per Pretty Good Post. Maybe my posts aren't as good as they used to be, but not too many posts of mine have gotten seven points of +Rep... much less the 35-40 points I used to get for a Really Good Post. (A lot of random comments I've made have ended up being liked a number of times though, and this probably balances the system somewhat.) I'm beginning to sound old. "Ah, them's was the days!" At the end of the day, though, I'm happy that the Reputation system still exists! It's always nice to get a "like," regardless of how many imaginary points it's worth. -Upsilon

Look! I made an art. I made this recently, and in my opinion, it's pretty good! If I make more KSP-themed artwork, this will probably be where I put it. There's nothing else to be said, so I won't say anything else. Hope you enjoyed. -Upsilon

No using the stock craft! Thanks for finding the loophole. I'll add it to the OP in a bit. ...if you read the discussion above, you'll probably find it rather amusing. I originally had the challenge include mods such as Texture Replacer, but there was a lot of grumbling about "this should be a stock challenge!" I originally addressed these issues by saying, ...After some more people asking to make the thing stock-only, though, I agreed. Of course, now the other side's on my tail. Let me say this: even though it's not technically allowed, I certainly won't disqualify you if you use Texture Replacer. Yes. I'll add that rule to the books. Of course, quicksaves take more time to do, so I'm hoping that someone will eventually be able to do it in one go. In the meantime, though, I can see how that would be helpful. I think quicksave rules may have to operate in the same way that the rules-of-getting-to-the-launchpad work, namely that time stops when you press F9 and starts up again when physics loads again. I hope this is okay with everyone. Congratulations! I won't add your time to the leaderboard, but I'll be eagerly waiting for a video from you. There's probably some "sweet spot" where you can burn from 100km and land on KSC grounds every time. As you said, it's probably possible to burn from the Mun and land at the KSC too, especially if you have the delta-V for a large-ish midcourse correction. I'm looking forward to the ways people discover to land at KSC; I have a feeling someone will discover something to help with this. -Upsilon

Sure, go for it! Just be sure to start and stop the video within a second or two. (It would be especially nice if you did this during portions of the run like coasting in orbit, coasting towards the Mun, etc. where it would be pretty obvious if you cut out a large chunk. I'm sure you won't cheat, but it's nice to have proof. )

This isn't true. I've made this challenge with the assumption that people are able to play KSP at 30fps at minimal resolution with all of the settings lowered. Most ships that will be built for this challenge will probably have fewer than 20 parts. It's entirely possible to do about 80-90% of the mission in mapview mode (the only times you need to be viewing the vessel are during the Mun landing and the Kerbin landing), which makes computers run even faster. Finally, after some careful consideration, I've decided to make the challenge stock (will update in a minute), which means yet less lag. I have a feeling the majority of people will be able to run KSP relatively smoothly given these parameters. If they can't... well, I'm not willing to change the parameters of this challenge for it, as it would completely change the intent of the challenge (as seen below). The only thing I'd be willing to do is stop the clock when you click "launch" and start it again when physics is loaded on the pad/when you lift off. 1. See above. You're basically saying that the run should be dependent on how long the craft took to do its job in-game. The problem is, this favors carefully planning maneuver nodes, time-warping down to 1x whenever you have the chance, and making a rocket that can reach the Mun faster. This would also almost completely eliminate the need to build fast in the VAB unless further rules were added (and there are enough rules as-is!): if a ship takes 20 minutes to build but can get you to the Mun 30 minutes faster, that's a net gain. It shouldn't be. 2. You are referencing a rule that generally applies to very difficult challenges that may not be possible/practical/able to be completed in any amount of time. I know for a fact that it's possible to land on the Mun and return to the KSC: I've seen several people do it. Sure, they took their time, but there's nothing preventing anyone from doing it faster. 3. Doing this challenge in career mode would be a lot of fun! It would also make the challenge quite different. Maybe that should be something to try in another challenge, but not this one. I should also note that this challenge is closely based on another one that was made a while back. Aphobius (who created the challenge, I think) ended up taking the WR at 2:08. The video is pretty amazing, even if he doesn't have the best taste on music: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r-aVqXpv6TA 4.After careful consideration of your comment and others' comments, I think this challenge should be done with a stock install. You're probably right. (Of course, now there'll be a whole other camp of people complaining, but I'm okay with that, honestly.) See above, above. Yep, that's going to be the kicker. It's entirely possible to do the speedrun in such a way that a single burn from the Mun will land you at the KSC. More realistically, though, it might be easier to burn into LKO and then wait for the right time to deorbit. This will add an increased layer of complexity to the challenge, but that's just part of the fun! Updating OP now. -Upsilon

Cool! I do rockets too (see profile pic), but I've never tried building anything liquid-fueled. A quick mind-sim tells me that a rocket mostly fueled with heavy liquids in heavy tanks is going to weigh a lot. Keep in mind that to prevent weathercocking (turning into the wind) and the resulting loss of altitude/potential problems with the parachute, the rocket should have a thrust-to-weight ratio of 3:1 at an absolute minimum. This means your tanks, pipes, nozzle, airframe, electronics, and all of the other fun stuff you're putting on the rocket should not exceed 33 lbs at launch. I would also love to see any simulation files you have of this thing. I'm sure you've played around with OpenRocket, Rocksim, or some other design software that tells you how your rocket will fly. What will the rocket look like, and what's its flight profile? Finally, I wish y'all the best of luck. Please keep me posted! -Upsilon

The idea of my mod rules is essentially that you may not use mods that give you a leg up over people playing stock KSP. In my opinion, all three of the mods you mentioned could lead to faster runs, meaning that they should not be used... ...but at the same time, there are some perfectly fine mods for this challenge. Mods that add a different 'look' to the game (Kerbal-texturing, part-texturing, atmospheric, planet-retexturing, and the like) would be okay. So would mods that have no bearing on the speedrun challenge (contract-replacement runs, for example), mods that fix parts of the game (Claw's stock bugfixes and such), and "cute" mods like the squeaky-toy Kerbal one. I'm even allowing part mods on the install, although you can't use 'em on your speedrun craft and it may make it a little harder to find the requisite stock parts. In short, there are so many different types of mods that I'm in a bit of a catch-22. If I forbid all mods, people will say, "I only have EVE installed (or something); can I still participate?" If I allow some mods, people will say, "it would be better if this was a stock challenge." I'm doing my best to compromise. Still waiting eagerly to see some speedruns! Give it a shot if you have the chance. Even if your run is three hours, it'll still be a world record if no one else participates... -Upsilon

Okay, enough of ideas that are interesting but not really "bad." It is time, ladies and gents, for a genuinely awful idea. The other day, I was trying to make a helicopter that was powered by jet engines on the wingtips. Even though the idea worked, it lacked in the awe-inspiring amount of raw power that I wanted. So... well... this. Yeah. The thing got up to about 150m in altitude before spinning down for a landing. Believe it or not, there was actually very little damage to the craft through its flight! (It did break the launchpad on one or two occasions though.) Craft like these, ladies and gents, make me smile. Nay, they make me grin. Maniacally. -Upsilon

I apologize for the bump, but I'd love to see someone try this...! Takers?

Hello everyone! My name is Upsilon. There have been several attempts to "speedrun" the game of Kerbal Space Program, but most of them took place in previous versions (IIRC). So I suppose it's time to start a new speedrun challenge! Speedrunning KSP! (not for the faint of heart) ~~~ Okay, so here's the deal. Your challenge, should you choose to accept it, is to build a rocket and fly to the Mun and back, landing on KSC ground, over the least amount of real time (not in-game!) you possibly can. ~~~ Run Rules Here's what a run should look like. Rules italicized and bolded 'cause they're important. Please read carefully! Enter the game. Crack your knuckles or drink an energy drink if you want to. Start recording: you're gonna need a video of this to qualify. Create a new save in sandbox mode. For the record, all runs must start on a fresh save at 0h 0m of game time. This ensures that the Mun is in the same place every time. You can use the same save for multiple runs, as long as the in-game time is still 0h 0m after reverting and you delete your ship in the VAB between runs. As soon as you click start, start the timer (more on that later). The run begins when the KSC pops up. Click on the VAB (or SPH, if you really want to.) Build a Mun-capable ship as fast as you possibly can. Your ship must have a minimum of one Kerbal, by the way. When you're ready, click "Launch." Run time stops the moment you click "launch" and resumes when the craft's physics have loaded on the pad. Fly your ship up. Time-warp is encouraged. Go to the Mun and land! Once you have landed, you must plant a flag. You don't have to write anything of note on the placard though. Then get your Kerbal back into the rocket. Your rocket must be on the surface of the Mun over the time of the Kerbal's departure to the time of his arrival back inside the craft. Take off from the Mun and head home. Hopefully you don't go screaming through the atmosphere too fast! You must land on the little light-colored spit of land that makes up the KSC grounds. It's okay if you land on a building or something, but it won't net you extra points. "Landing" is defined as waiting 'til your craft is at 0.0 m/s. You can lose all the parts you want upon landing, but the Kerbal must remain in his capsule and survive. Once you have landed, stop the timer. Nice job! You did a run. If you aren't too close to the KSC proper, you should probably right-click on your capsule and get a report after you've stopped the timer. If the report says you're on KSC grounds, then woohoo! You did it. Okay, so now that we've gotten that part out of the way, it's time for - you guessed it! - more rules. Sorry. ~~~ General Game Rules If I could summarize this section in a sentence, it would be: "You can have mods installed on your system, but for the most part, you can't use 'em." No Mods! This includes every single mod out there, unfortunately. No using the debug menu, for goodness' sake! There shouldn't be anything in there that you need. No setting up a custom category with all the parts you need. Keep in mind, this should be a fresh install. ~~~ Video and Timing As mentioned before, you'll need to make a video of your adventures. You'll also need to time them. But never fear! These things aren't hard to do. You can even get the time after the run! In fact, it might be easier that way. If you have a video-taking program already, use it! If not, Open Broadcast Software is a free recording platform that's plenty good enough for a silly little video like this. (You could also get the trial versions of Bandicam or Fraps or something.) Here are some ways of getting the time, from hardest to easiest: Hardest - Actually download some software program that allows you to time your runs automatically. You can put one of these on your video. Quite frankly, you don't need to. A bit easier - Record your entire screen. Put a non-full-screen KSP monitor on one side and a stopwatch on the other (you can Google "stopwatch" and it'll give you the time to within a hundredth of a second). Just remember to start and stop the time when appropriate. The Easiest - Wait until the video's done, then look at the length of it. Almost any editing program allows you to cut the video at the beginning or end and gives the duration of clips. (You just won't immediately know whether you've beat your PB or even broken a record.) If you're doing it this way, please insert a text box at the end of the video that says the amount of time the run took. Please don't try to "shave off" a couple of seconds here; I'll probably notice and disqualify that particular run. I should note that you only need to report your time to the nearest second. Higher amounts of precision are fine, but they'll be rounded up or down to the nearest second in the final tally. (A score of 12:20.53 would tie with a score of 12:21.29.) You only need to post a video and write your best time to submit a score for this challenge. Videos should preferably be uploaded via YouTube. (If you want to regale us with some stories, feel free to do that as well!) ~~~ A Final Note On some previous speedrun challenges, many people noted that speedruns were unfair to those with slow computers. The faster loading times of KSP 1.0.5 have helped a little with this, but it still may be a problem. To reduce lag and waiting times, feel free to turn down the graphics quality, game resolution, or anything else that could potentially result in the game lagging. If you really care about getting a good speedrun, it may also be best to do this challenge without any mods. Remember that this is merely a friendly competition, though, and that even if you don't get the world record due to lag, you still may impress the pants off of some people. Oh, and let me know if the rules need any clarification or expanding, please! I am a mere mortal and am prone to getting things wrong. (Also, if you could make some sort of graphic for this challenge, that would be great.) ~~~ Leaderboard: Current World Record (your name here!) - (your time here!) #2 - (your name here!) - (your time here!) #3 - (your name here!) - (your time here!) #4 - (your name here!) - (your time here!) #5 - (your name here!) - (your time here!) Honorable Mentions: (None yet!) ~~~ Have fun, don't die, and good luck! -Upsilon

There are a few problems with your logic, unfortunately. First of all, there are things that put out fields and that can both attract and repel one another. They're called "magnets." Even though magnets aren't that similar to gravity in some ways, they're still probably the closest tangible real-life example to what you're thinking of. You seem to be implying that magnets are also a source of infinite energy; if you could prove that, please send your proof to me. I'll give you $20 after I take over the world. (The point I'm trying to make here is that any system that has even a trace of friction or other forces acting on it can't be a perpetual-motion machine, regardless of what fields and particles and such you're using. Sorry.) Could an object with "negative mass" be an easy way of getting into space? Sure! Would it respond to other forces, too? I would think so. Generally, most things in the universe do. I don't know for sure, because I haven't seen one of these negative-mass particles, but it's a general rule that if you put a force on a thing, it will respond to the force. This is the case even with some "massless" particles, such as photons. You seem to be relying on F=ma, but that breaks down when you get to exotic particles at very small sizes, which is the field we're discussing here. Speaking of which! So let's say we're merrily smashing particles in the LHC tomorrow and somehow find a negative-mass particle. After all of the hoopla and rejoicing, what would we actually do with it? Even if such a particle is stable (and it may not be), you would either have to find a place in the universe where they exist, or you'd have to manufacture about 10^23 of them to lift anything of a particularly impressive size. Maybe more, maybe less: atoms are somewhat heavy, and there's no reason to assume that your negative mass would be particularly insistent at getting away from gravitational fields. There's no reason to assume that the particles could make a solid: there's a significant chance they really don't like one another and it's impossible to get them close enough together to do anything useful. Maybe they bond incredibly readily and a pinpoint-sized amount of negative gravity would be impossible to be contained, drilling a hole up through any container you try to keep it in. Maybe the stuff is a bit like neutrinos, passing through ordinary matter without any problems whatsoever. There's actually an incredibly limited amount of particles that are useful in our universe, so it's more than reasonable to assume negative mass wouldn't be one of them. Finally, just because something could exist doesn't mean it does. You're making conjectures about things that, for all intents and purposes, are purely imaginary. (A unicorn that can fly is surprisingly consistent with the rules of biology and evolution, and yet, no flying unicorns.) tl;dr: Neat idea. I think both of your poll answers probably aren't true. Give this whole matter some thought. -Upsilon

Hi everyone! So recently, I made this video in which I did my best to act out what the four Kerbals sounded like. It was pretty fun to make, actually! ~~~ ...but I'm sure my views on what they sound like are a little different from yours. This makes me curious! Here's a thread about What You Think Your Kerbals Sound Like. Are they loud or quiet? Whiny, excited, constantly screaming, or worried? Are their voices high-pitched or just regular? You decide! Oh, and if you have any examples of Kerbal voice-acting (in actual, recognizable English), please feel free to share 'em! If they're particularly good, they may well end up on this post (I'm almost intending this thread to be a sort of compilation of voice-acting for Kerbals). I know Roninpawn does a great job voice-acting, for example. ~~~ Anyway, thanks for stopping by! Have a nice day. -Upsilon

Thanks, Val! I'm positive this little guy isn't the smallest SSTO made in KSP so far, because more than half the design choices I made favored aesthetics over functionality. There's plenty of room at the bottom! ...and yes, @Evanitis, the voice you hear on the video is mine. You may now resume believing that Val's voice is whatever you want it to be. -Upsilon

1/10 I first saw you about fifteen seconds ago. I'm sure you've made a number of posts recently, but unfortunately they weren't on threads that I've visited.

Wait, what? Where am I? @SpaceplaneAddict, you still here?

That is glorious. I may make a Jewish Launch Vehicle (JLV) in the future, though I'm afraid I currently don't have much time for KSP. Well, I suppose I'll present the newest Bad Idea: a vehicle that was designed primarily to look cool. ~~~ This little "VTOLmobile," as I call it, is not without its problems. isn't a very good rover (it's flip-happy at speeds of over 15 m/s and doesn't like bumps). It isn't a good VTOL (it has less than a minute's worth of fuel). It's not good at shooting missiles (I lined up the shot in this video and still missed at point-blank range). But it looks neat, it's a fun craft to use, and its uniqueness makes up for at least some of its flaws. Also, the moral of this story is: if people are late sleepers, it's totally okay and not-at-all bad to shoot them at point-blank range with missiles. Now you know! -Upsilon

...here's another Bad Idea, right on cue! (I really need to post here more consistently.) Y'know how Mary Poppins flies around with an umbrella? Well, doing the same thing in KSP is actually really hard! Even with twenty-four airbrakes, the thing was still falling at about 20 m/s. I eventually had to add some fuel, an engine, and landing gear to the "bird head" at the end of the umbrella, which did the trick... mostly. Landings are still a little dicey. I will say with absolute certainty that unlike some of the other designs I've made, this is definitely a bad idea. You can play with it if you want, but don't put any important Kerbals onto your prototypes unless you're okay with reverting flights a dozen times or so. ~~~ Video! ...thanks for stopping by! Have a nice day. -Upsilon

Presenting the newest in Bad Ideas: a plane made out of an air intake! It's cute, it's small, and it flies pretty decently (though it's not spectacular). ...as always, more coming soon. Sorry for the delay. Bad ideas are burbling up in my mind as I type... I must go and try them now! -Upsilon