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sorry i have been a bit busy and haven't finished this yet and i should probably vent about this in the talk about negative things thread. I'll get to it!

Could this provide us a better clue for the release timeline of Colonies / 0.3? We have confirmation of at least a 0.2.2 release. Let's be optimistic and say that update comes in about 2 weeks (May 2nd, 2024). Using Scarecrow's average of 49 days between releases, we could anticipate the next update around June 20th. If that next update was 0.3 (again, being optimistic), then the timeline of milestones would look like this: 0.1 to 0.2 - 9 months, 26 days 0.2 to 0.3 (speculated) - 6 months, 2 days This timeline would match the hopes shared by Nate that the Colonies update would come quicker than For Science! and leaves quite a bit of breathing room. Even if there was a 0.2.3 update that dropped in June instead of 0.3 these timelines would still allow for an August release to follow (which still would meet the proposed timeline goals). Of course, this talk feels quite arbitrary given that each update and milestone is unique, but it helps put things in perspective. Do I want to wait until the end of summer for colonies? Not at all. However, the rate of development seems to show that we are indeed in the thick of it for now and the upcoming months.

@ColdJ i frankly do not care if you cant accept or wont accept King Richard the Lionheart. Its a historically accurate title. And you want to talk glass houses? Ill toss that stone. You started it. Remember this from 22 March: “Rovers rove.“ All of your “examples” are wild accusations and false save 1. Plumbers Plumb. A DIRECT response to your action on Rovers rove. The rest are legitimate sentences. Circling back to King Richard the Lionheart allow me to quote: Per rule 5: Names and proper nouns are added in one post. For example, if you wish to add the name "Robin Hood" you add "Robin Hood" in one post.“ As you see King Richard the Lionheart fits per the rule. Now that we have derailed this far enough I relay the currently active sentence so this game may return to being played. ——RESTORATION TO ACTIVE SENTENCE—— King Richard the Lionheart reigned ———RESTORATION COMPLETE——— 124504172024 new page 124604172024 130804172024 131304172024

I feel a number of people do not fully take advantage of the current upvoting system for the Bug Reports. Maybe they lack the technical expertise, comfort level required to post detailed reports, trouble finding archived report.. etc. I appreciate it when others post a bug I have had issues with but may have (temporarily) forgotten. Sometimes I intent to upvote a series of bugs but get distracted by work & the intention moves some where into the Aether. If there are bugs you want upvoted.. link them. Post a Reason why you thinknit deserves significant attention. But please.. let's avoid cross talk or debates. (If this is Stupid or Present Elsewhere Please Remove)

Sorry but glass houses. I have put up with premature cut offs on more than just these, and constant manipulations to get the sentence to something you want to talk about. It is one WORD at a time. Even if @Kimera Industries allowed "Maid Marian", "King Richard the Lionheart" is pushing it too far. I would have accepted "King Richard" but 4 words is a no from me. I kept away for awhile to let someone else play it out with you, but nobody did. So I tried to start fresh and you as with other word games we have played decided that you can overrule whenever you want. If you are willing to play fairly and randomly then I will play, but I am not up for being railroaded again.

Accurate, but not polished? Clarification please? Also, it would be helpful to know what they can and cannot talk about.

Lately fourms are getting clumped and messy I am meaning There is a Variety of them and they need to be Organized together into Sub-categories of sub-categories So lets start at this standpoint Add-On-Development > Mods But it should be like : Add-On-Development > [Type of Mods, e.g Terrain shader, part mods] And it should be extended for all sub categories of the fourms like Mega-Threads category Mini thread category Types of missions/Challenges category Self promo/ Group promo category etc. Share your thoughts below and give ideas If the Mods see this thread (hopefully this becomes a mega thread full of ideas that they can implement) Signing off Weak Player 5th May 2021

I suspect it isn't that simple. However, that could be one of the topics for "increased communication". Talk about development on a current pain point, without spoiling the colonies, or other new stuff in general... Instead of we can't wait to share what we've been working on

Hope to hear from CMs in the morning, maybe y'all can talk a little about the improvements to communication that y'all have come up with to deal with keeping the community up to date @Nerdy_Mike @Dakota

The MIT article is interesting - they talk about how... difficult... it is to get funding/be taken seriously when trying to explore that theory, then point out that it's not so loopy after all. The concrete, if true, would be poured with a jello like consistency that for *reasons* cures in a way that avoids shrinkage common to other concretes. It's an interesting theory. Back to moving logs with mechanical advantage - this one is interesting. The use of the bipod is totally different. With the rope at the top of the bipod and the fulcrum forward of the log, they just pull it up and over. Side note - I got the funding to try this with my students. So later next week I'll report back on how it went. Using 2x4x10s, making some beams from 2x6x12s and a few other things. Should be fun!

Yup. It seems like from going through the colony mega thread it won’t approach in a meaningful way a culmination of career and science until the exploration update, after colonies and after interstellar. I like science points. And I like the expansion and better quality of the hand crafted missions in KSP2 over test x part in y situation of KSP1. But it’s not career mode at all until there is a gameplay reason to build efficient rockets. They say rockets won’t be “free” but only really talk about resources in regards to fuel and late tech tree parts. If there’s never a reason to use a SRB over a liquid fuel stack with an engine this game may not be for me. So until they communicate clearly about what resources will be needed for, and how the player will be credited them (ie please have some incentive to not timewarp for maximum resources) the best I can do is *hope* that “rockets won’t be free” includes some player incentives to build cheap and efficient. Thats three major updates down the road. For Science! was a big step forward but didn’t nudge me at all to play more after trying it for a few hours, or to update my negative review to a positive one. The CMs hyped that they have some good communication in the pipeline, so here I check the forums at lunch for a week or so to see if it’s worth me staying around. No news or bad news and I’ll be away from the forums and Reddit for months again.

Of course. If we only "overreacted" when a hungry lion is in the immediate vicinity, I don't think we would come a long way as a society. A car is just a car, after all. So is money. Music. Computers. Biology.. Whatever tickles you... But it tickles, and that's a good thing. I'm fully aware that I have a first world problem. But if there was no such thing at this point, that would mean that all of us here would be in a nuclear wasteland, fighting over remaining canned food. So I'm happy to battle over opinions @Dakota Maybe this exists, and has slipped my attention... Is there a chance to at least get an overview of how news/updates are done? If you have a feature X, when do you post it as a sneakpeek? How decisions are made to share it at all? What's allowed and not allowed to talk about? I'm having troubles to form a proper question here.

I mean really love this team and I think things are coming along nicely but I believe even they see it as getting on base after a tough at bat. Unfortunately we're living in a really toxic gaming culture and its got to be hard for passionate developers and designers to gauge real reactions and actionable feedback in a clear and honest way. The atmosphere from a vocal player standpoint is to take all of these things really personally, or pretend to take them really personally, and then engage in an over-the-top Kabuki dance of feigned rage demanding groveling supplication from the corporate entities they've been wronged by because they think thats the only way games improve. But it's kind of like Cable news outlets constantly running BREAKING NEWS banners. If you're always turning everything up to 11 then people who might listen might as well just tune you out. If players believe rage-bombing every title that doesn't meet their expectations is the only way to convince developers to improve their products then eventually developers are just going to take those flame-campaigns less seriously. I would guess they already are. They'll look to more balanced and genuinely informative heuristics to identify the worst problems and work their way up from there. As test case lets talk about Cyberpunk--widely dragged and laughed at when it first released and probably deservedly so. It probably should have incubated for a couple more years. And now all of the initial hard work of good writing and good VA and story can be capitalized on because they fixed most of the bugs and redesigned the core mechanics into something incredible. Which is great! I genuinely hope as colonies and interstellar and resources are phased in the folks at Intercept remain open to making big internal changes to game mechanics depending on how things play out. What matters in the end is how the 1.0 product actually plays. Is it fun? Is it deep? Are the actual mechanics well tuned? is QOL up to snuff? Thats what matters. In my experience most people in this world are doing their best to be good at what they do. They're already incentivized to do that. Heaping shame and vitriol on them usually makes things worse, not better. The changes Cyberpunk made weren't just because players dragged CDPR through the mud. In fact the more substantive changes outside of bug-fixes--police system, fixing drops and the tech tree, etc. only come from very specific and clear feedback on whats not working and then having the time and creative process to create new and better systems. I personally would argue if you as a gamer are dissatisfied you produce more specific and actionable feedback on whats wrong--and passionately so!--rather than focus on grievances.

SpaceX/Starship is the go-to option to talk about I think, but I don't think they'll make a proposal, at least on their own (though, that is probably what a lot of people thought before HLS, so what do I know). Relativity/Impulse have a Mars landing mission on the horizon, and could form the backbone to a project to pursue a return mission, as Tom Mueller is leading Impulse, and has a lot of experience with methalox (that he's applying to Helios), while also having looked into ISRU for Starship. They might even pull in SpaceX for this reason - giving them real data on making methalox on the Martain surface. Just based on having a slated Mars mission Blue Origin/RocketLab are another potential team, set to launch this summer (EscaPADE), but it's a pair of satellites, not a lander. So probably not. NASA needs a firmer deadline for sample return, NET 2040 is too far, and runs the risk of eventual cancellation. When NASA makes their selections, they need a closer date, preferably in the early/mid 2030s, about a decade from now.

Here you can discuss it, analyze it, or say how you solved it (or if you did not). I go first. The Frenemy: Let's call him Dave (not his real name) This guy has a reputation for being kind and helpful to those he is friends with on the job already, but also someone who will harass or make fun of anyone he thinks is not pulling their weight on the job. The Past: Intitally I was not as good at my job starting out when I began years ago, and he did not like me much. But he did notice I tried hard and gave me unsolicited advice that actually did turn out helpful when I followed it (which I thanked him for). The Present: We get along for the most part, and he is even friendly on occasion. Which is why the latest incident at first I did not take seriously... until I did. The incident: My work involves being on feet and a lot of walking and lifting. My feet are sore at times and I walk with a limp occasionally (especially after just getting out of my vehicle from break or lunch). I can walk normal, but it's easier to limp if my feet are just "waking up" again as it were, until I am fully active and going full steam ahead again. Whenever I limped in the past he would ask why and I told him. I remember once when I asked him why he cares he said the sound of sliding of my soles on the ground annoys him. This happened on and off for months. So just a few days ago he sees me limping coming back from a break or looking for a guy I was supposed to work with and he says "Is walking like that fun?" Since I was on my way to try to find somebody else I brushed aside his sarcasm with my own. "Try it!" "No, I know how to walk." Dave said with a hint of bitterness. "Still can!" I said with a shrug, but sensed all was not right so after walking away came back and asked him if my limp bothered him. He said he does not like the sound of it. I said if my foot hurts it's going to happen so he's just going to have to get used to it. He replies that as many breaks as I take my feet should feel fine. Now I realize he is serious and I likewise take on a serious demeanor. "That was unnecessary." "No, it was'nt." With that I walked off, since I had work to do and this guy was stalling me. It was not as if I answered to him since he holds the same job title I do, nor should I have to explain my comings and goings to him. It's none of his business if I am looking for someone I need to work with who has paperwork without which I cannot start my assignment (the guy I was looking for I later learned was on break). It's none of Dave's business if I have to use the toilet during my work shift, we don't even work in the same area, he just happens to work near the exit, so he sees anytime anyone uses the bathroom or takes a break. I will admit some days as of late I had to go to the bathroom more often due to a runny nose from the cold weather, or worse case scenario use the toilet, but this is not something I do always. I never take more breaks than assigned but he obviously thought I was goofing off or being lazy. Since I recently learned I had to wait for the guy I was looking for to return from his break, I returned to Dave to deal with him, since I have had to before, and if I did not correct this it would continue and I am not one that will tolerate anyone talking to me rudely on the regular or with acceptance. His back was turned as I approached so I said "Dave?" He turned around and I continued sternly "I don't want to hear you tell me about that again, and if you do, this will become an office matter (meaning I will report him to the boss)." "OK." "That's harassment. I won't tolerate that." And with that I walked off. Strangely... the next day he tells me good morning (he never does this usually since he usually only talks if I talk to him first UNLESS he is either trying to be helpful or is harassing). I told him good morning back, since I try not to hold grudges. He even said good hustle as I worked (I tend to work harder and faster if I am angry even if only a bit, which I was). Of course, my personality type is an omega, and I really don't need anyone's praise or complements or even approval, especially anyone who feels the need to judge me when they should focus on what they are doing rather than others since they are not a manager and just the same as the rest. I said nothing in reply and just kept working, and later when work became slower he engaged me in small talk and I wished him a happy holiday. Analysis: Part of me kinda felt like saying "I accept your apology." Since this was his attempt to make amends I could tell even though he never gave an apology. The reason I did not is because he is a frenemy who has helped me in the past on the job, and I see no need to rub salt in a wound since what good does that do for peaceful relations? None. He already realizes he wronged me, and is obviously trying to make nice, so I saw no need to bring up or force an apology. So ultimately I am glad he has enough maturity and humility to to try to make amends when he has wronged someone, since not everyone does (even some far older than him). Even so, I am marking the date on my calendar, so when and if he screws up by harassing me on the job I will report him the day it happens. Since I will not tolerate that. Nor should anyone. He can try that mess and may even get away with it with some, but not with me. Regardless if others know my worth I have always felt I had it and deserved as much respect as any average person.

It is simple. Say anything you want that abides with the forum rules in Zalgo text, and please don't make it too crazy. https://lingojam.com/ZalgoText B̶̳̦́e̸͉̰͠͝g̴̢̘͐i̶͖͉̓͘ṋ̴̯̊!̸̦̏!̶̙̂̋ (Begin!!) You do not need to add regular text of what the zalgo text reads as long as it is mostly readable.

RocketStar has made discussion on this forum a couple of times, but with some of their older projects. This one's spicier. I just randomly came across an article effectively repeating RocketStar's press release, and I kind of wanted to take this one apart a little bit. To get the tl;dr out of the way, the claim is that they are boosting their 1U pulsed plasma drive with fusion to give it an extra kick "for free". How much of a kick isn't really specified. There is no point of going over an article, so lets just go to the source with RocketStar's Press Release. Note that they are referencing real experiments that have confirmed the reaction and talk about the upcoming flights of their current FireStar drive, but don't say much about the fusion results beyond detection of gamma and alpha radiation. Which is cool in itself, but doesn't say much for the practical side of things. They do specifically clarify in the press release that the "fusion boosted" really means "fusion-triggered-fission-boosted," which is something that needs to be taken apart a bit. Specifically, the claim is that by introducing boron to the water, which is used as main propellant, they are getting boron-proton fusion, which results in an unstable state of carbon, which decays to alpha particles. The release does not specify the isotopes used, but boron does come in 10B and 11B, with the latter being more abundant and more interesting of the two. The process 11B + p -> 12C is of interest here. As we all, know, 12C is stable, however, there is a rather well known Hoyle State of carbon which isn't. The natural way in which Hoyle State comes up is when stars burn helium in their cores. The process involves two 4He nuclei coming together to form a highly unstable 8Be nucleus, which has just enough time to collide with a third 4He nucleus to form the Hoyle State of 12C. The latter is highly unstable, and is almost like the 3 alpha particles bouncing around in a common strong force potential than a real nucleus. Consequently, most of the time it decays back to three alpha particles, and the star has to try again. Occasionally, however, the 12C** state emits a gamma, decays to a lower energy 12C* state and finally to ground state 12C. The Hoyle State has 7.7MeV above carbon's ground state, which is a lot. The full proton-proton cycle is about 24MeV. So we're talking a good fraction of typical nuclear energies. On paper, this works. The total binding energy of 11B is 76.21MeV and ground state 12C is 92.15MeV. That gives 11B + p plenty of energy to form Hoyle State, so long as protons are hot enough to overcome the repulsion barrier. It is much lower for proton-proton or even D-T fusion, since 11B has the charge much more distributed through the larger nucleus, but I don't really have any numbers to attach to it at this time. I'll try to find either something from the cited SBIR experiments or other publications at a later point to try and get a back-of-the-envelope estimate for how much fusion/fission we are actually expecting in a chamber of a plasma drive. What we have that's probably pretty reliable are the specs of the current generation FireStar M 1.4, which does not involve any fusion/fission processes. Just a conventional pulsed plasma propulsion unit, utilizing water, ionizing arc, and an accelerator cavity. Since this is a commercial product, and validation experiments are apparently available under the NDA, I have no reason to suspect them from being far off. Cited directly from RocketStar's website. The ISP cited is consistent with the total impulse with 250g of propellant and implies mean exhaust velocity of about 71km/s. If the protons are accelerated by the field of the same strength, they can be potentially traveling about twice as fast, resulting in effective plasma temperatures of up to low mega-Kelvins on collisions. That feels like ballpark reasonable for what it'd take for 11B + p fusion to take place. But again, I don't have good estimates for that at this time. On the net, interesting. I want to see the numbers attached to the claimed efficiency boost. Also, the fact that they're calling it a fusion rocket when it's really more of a fission rocket feels a little scummy, but maybe they were trying to not scare people with neutron radiation associated with fission? This is, if real, an aneutronic process, so it would be reasonably safe for the applications for which this is meant. Either way, a real nuclear-boosted drive that's commercially available is really exciting, even if the performance benefits are going to be marginal. Finally, even the base model, without fusion/fission is a really nifty example of how far the commercial plasma propulsion has gone. A 1U propulsion unit that can provide a 3U sat with 4.6km/s of delta-V? Yeah, that's not bad. With the right planning, you can take your 3U from LEO all the way to Mars utilizing a boost from Luna. Neat.

I need to talk to the config's owner and ask for permission

Hey! I’m Jon Cioletti, the Senior Technical Artist focused on lighting and VFX here at Intercept Games! In celebration of the upcoming total solar eclipse, today we are looking at some of the lighting tech around eclipses in KSP2 - but first we have to talk about eclipses in REAL life! To help with that, we reached out to one of our friends over at NASA: Senior Visualization Designer AJ Christensen. AJ works at NASA's Scientific Visualization Studio (SVS), where he develops visualization techniques and designs data-driven imagery for scientific analysis and public outreach. AJ was kind enough to take some time out of his busy day to answer a few questions to kick this Dev Diary off right: Can you very basically describe an eclipse and why it is a special event? There are a lot of objects in space that pass between the Earth and the Sun at various times. We usually call it a “transit” when something that appears much smaller than the disk of the Sun passes in front of it, like an asteroid, or the International Space Station, or Venus. Credit: NASA/Joel Kowsky But through a crazy coincidence of physical size and distance from Earth, the apparent size of the disk of the Moon in the sky is almost exactly the same as the apparent size of the disk of the Sun in the sky, and so when the Moon transits in front of the Sun, we call it an eclipse because it blocks out a significant part of the Sun’s light. The Moon actually orbits around Earth approximately every 27 days, so you might think we would see an eclipse every 27 days, but because of the tilt of that orbit, the Moon is usually not lined up with the Earth and Sun. For this reason, a lot of orbits result in no eclipse, or only a partial eclipse. The total eclipse happening on April 8th is a rare event where the Earth, the Moon, and the Sun are all in a straight line, and the United States will be on the “day side” of the planet, meaning we get to experience the Sun being completely blocked out by the Moon for a few minutes in any given location along the path of totality. eclipseElements60fps_4-11-2023a_total_diagram.mp4 Credit: NASA Scientific Visualization Studio What should people expect to see when viewing the eclipse? Anyone within the contiguous United States will be able to see the eclipse in some way on April 8th. If you are outside the path of totality, you will have several hours to witness a partial eclipse in the middle of the day. This means that the Sun will have a bit of a crescent shape, but it will not completely block the Sun. This is a fun time to put on approved solar eclipse viewing protective glasses and look at the shape of the sun, and to make pinhole projectors out of colanders or crisscrossed fingers to see lots of little crescent shadows on the ground. If you are inside the path of totality, which is about 100 miles wide and travels from Texas to Maine, you will see that partial eclipse for several hours, but right in the middle will be 3-4 minutes of totality when the bright disk of the Sun called the “photosphere” is completely blocked. During totality, the temperature will drop, crickets may start chirping, and you will see sunset colors in the sky in 360-degrees all around you. totalGlow_4k_60fps_4-14-2023a_2160p60_2 (1).mp4 Credit: NASA Scientific Visualization Studio If you are able, it is definitely worth trying to get inside the path of totality. One place of many that you can find more information to plan a trip is this visualization my colleagues made: Credit: NASA Scientific Visualization Studio What happens to the Sun’s light during an eclipse? In the words of “Mr. Eclipse” Fred Espenak, a retired NASA astrophysicist, “there are no special eclipse rays.” The Sun continues to be what it always is – an extremely bright object in the sky that hurts to look at. This is why NASA insists that anyone viewing the eclipse should wear approved eclipse-viewing lenses, because even during a partial eclipse, you are still looking directly at the Sun. (Note, cameras can also be damaged if they look directly at the sun without a solar filter.) However, in the last seconds before totality, there are some dazzling effects we can see. The first to occur is called the “Diamond Ring Effect”. This is where some of the sun’s light wraps around the horizon of the moon like a ring, and a sliver of light still at the edge creates a huge amount of glare like a diamond. Credit: NASA/Carla Thomas The next effect we call “Baily’s Beads” which are visible for only a moment – these are a line of bright spots of light that poke through the valleys on the edge of the Moon. Credit: NASA/Aubrey Gemignani And finally, once the Sun is completely covered by the moon, we get to see magic of the Solar corona, long tendrils of illuminated plasma in the Sun’s atmosphere. The corona is always there in the sky, but it is usually completely covered up by glare from the disk of the Sun, which is about 1 million times brighter than the corona. For these 3 or 4 minutes of totality, we recommend taking off your eclipse glasses and soaking in the corona with your bare eyes. Credit: Miloslav Druckmüller, Peter Aniol, Shadia Habbal/NASA Goddard, Joy Ng Once totality ends, Baily’s Beads and the Diamond Ring will appear again and we recommend putting your eclipse glasses back on to enjoy the rest of the partial eclipse. How does that inform your work with the Visualizations team at NASA? My team is called the Scientific Visualization Studio, and we use both observed and computed data to make images and videos that explain science research. We have been working closely with scientists and communicators across NASA to create computer graphics imagery to help explain what the April 8th eclipse will look like on the Earth’s surface and in the sky, the surprising geometry of the Earth-Moon-Sun system, and more. We even recently published a game aimed toward younger audiences on NASA’s SpacePlace website called “Snap It!” that gets into what transits are and how eclipses are a special kind of transit. You can find it at this link: https://go.nasa.gov/SnapIt. And, of course, you can view thousands of visualizations about the eclipse and other science topics at our website: svs.gsfc.nasa.gov. ---- So now that we have a good idea of what happens during eclipses in real life, let's jump into the game! Directional Lighting To try and simulate the lighting we see in our solar system we use a variety of systems, but for the eclipse we’ll be focusing on our direct lighting solution with the star of the solar system: Kerbol. While a star technically emits light in all directions, in our game we only really need to care about the star’s light that reaches our player. To handle this, we use a Directional Light which, by definition, is located infinitely far away and emits in one direction only. This works great for lighting our worlds with an intense light from a single distant source like a star. This directional light is also responsible for the direction that all shadows are cast in game. To make this directional light behave more like an actual star, we attenuate its intensity based on distance and occlusion. Distance is the easier of the two. If the player flies their Kerbals way out towards Eeloo they’ll noticed their vessel gets much dimmer. Looking back at Kerbol they can see it shrinking in the skybox as well. To manage this, in the lighting code we attenuate the light’s intensity based on the Inverse Square Law which states that “the intensity of the radiation is inversely proportional to the square of the distance”. The formula looks a little something like this: 1 /x ² . Things like artist adjustable overrides and camera auto-exposure play into the lighting too, but in general throughout the solar system, the further you get from the star, the dimmer it gets. For smaller objects like terrain, buildings, and parts, we use shadows to show light being occluded. But for something as huge as a celestial body we track how much they block our Kerbals from the star itself to attenuate the light intensity appropriately. As an example, we’ll use a solar eclipse with Kerbol and the Mun. Simulated eclipse Intersection of Circles When you think about it in a flat 2D space, this is just two circles intersecting each other. If that’s the case then we can solve for the area of overlap to determine how occluded Kerbol is. The diagrams and formulas below show more of the math being done behind the scenes: Our lighting system holds a reference to the current SOI celestial body, that body’s star and any neighboring bodies. All of these bodies are projected into a normalized sphere around the player where the system checks if any bodies are going to intersect. We can quickly verify this by checking if the sum of the body’s radii are greater than or equal to the distance between them. Once we pass this check, the intersection code starts and we begin solving for the amount of overlap to determine the percentage a body is blocked. First step is to solve for the distance each circle is from the center of the intersection. To do this we use the equation of a circle and populate it with the values we know. C₁: x ² + y ² = r ₁² C₂: ( x - d )² + y ² = r ₂² Then, isolate y ² in each equation and combine both equations like so: y ²= r ₁² - d ₁² y ²= r ₂² - ( d₁ - d )² r ₁² - d ₁² = r ₂² - ( d ₁ - d )² Finally, we can solve for d ₁ and d ₂ : d ₁ = ( r ₁² - r ₂² + d ²) / 2d d ₂ = d - d ₁ After that we can begin solving for the angle of the sector formed when tracing the radii of our celestial body to the intersection points: With our new θ₁ and θ₂ in radians, we can solve for the area of each body’s overlapping segment A₁ and A₂. The following formula is derived by subtracting the area of the triangle from the area of the sector formed by this angle: Area of a triangle = ( 1 / 2 ) r² sin⁡θ Area of a sector = ( 1 / 2 ) r² θ Area of segment = ( ( 1 / 2 ) r² θ ) - ( ( 1 / 2 ) r² sin⁡θ ) = ( r² / 2 ) * ( θ - sin⁡θ ) A1 = ( ( r₁² ) / 2 ) * ( θ₁ - sin⁡θ₁ ) A2 = ( ( r₂² ) / 2 ) * ( θ₂ - sin⁡θ₂ ) Total Area = A1 + A2 And there you have it, the area of overlap for the celestial body. This can then be used to determine the percentage of visibility the further body has by subtracting the occluded area from the total projected circle area and with that number we can scale the intensity of the light emitted by that source body. In our case for the eclipse that will dim the Kerbol’s intensity as the Mun passes over EclipseAtKSC_Attenuation.mp4 Simulated eclipse over the KSC Lens Flare Occlusion The final piece of the puzzle here is the lens flare of the star changing to show that it has been occluded by the Mun. The same visible percentage value is passed through to the lens flare system where it attenuates the scale of the flare to match the reduction of directional lighting in the environment. Unfortunately, this doesn’t capture the details of a total solar eclipse though. EclipseAtKSC_LensFlareAndAttenuation.mp4 Simulated eclipse over the KSC from the ground We have plans to improve the look of eclipses and celestial body occlusion beyond attenuation and add more noticeable “flair” to a total eclipse like Kerbol’s corona peeking out from behind the Mun! We’ll be keeping a close eye on the next total solar eclipse as reference and inspiration! And, if you're nearby and able to, we hope that you join us on April 8th in safely viewing this awesome event right above our heads. Thanks to AJ and everyone over at NASA for contributing to this Dev Diary - and thanks to you for reading! Cioletti .ipsEmbeddedVideo { width: 700px; }

Not necessarily! The wiki software (MediaWiki) have all the tools the community needs to afford this thing. KSP has a community waiting to massively restart to write the history of the game. It's already happening. For example: Kerbin (like duna Duna, the Kerbol System and other) already has a single main page about the concept of the planet with different sections about the KSP1 and KSP2 differences. The community did a wonderful job with KSP1: let's them to continue. The risk is of dispersing the know-how. KSP1 nad KSP2 specific pages can of course exist for example for Easter eggs or parts lists, the community will (they are still doing) find the right way! EDIT: i mean: we could already have this talk in the talk pages of the wiki!

At first I thought: "I'll just get to the Mun and back. That's it. Then I'll be done." Then it was: "Just plant a flag on Minmus, that's enough." "Just see how mining and refueling works..." "Just rescue my Kerbalnaut stranded in Munar orbit..." "Just plant a flag on Duna..." And for a while, that was enough. I did the rendezvous and docking tutorial. One go at that tedium was more than enough. I was even getting a bit bored babysitting every single burn. Going elsewhere with robots was unexciting, and flags and footprints meant docking. Nope. Crew transfers or rescue missions for me meant either planting both parties on an airless celestial body, or MAYBE a orbital rendezvous. Either way, it involved a LOT of EVA propellant and a long space/moonwalk. Then I heard about MechJeb, and KSP took over my life again. I got misty-eyed as my three, helmets-off, intrepid explores watched Jool phasing overhead like a giant lava lamp / clock (waxing quarter at nightfall, full at midnight, and back to a waning quarter near sunrise) in the Laythian night. So, Hi. Nobody in my life plays KSP and I just can't keep all this wonder to myself any longer! I'm also too impatient to wait for moderator approval. So now I'm going to write a book (feel free to not read): LAYTHE 1 - 2-part launch - Grabbing (not docking) in Kerbin orbit - Flight to Minmus - Grabbing and refueling from a Minmus miner/refinery ship. - Then off to Jool's SOI! Jool Aerocapture My first mission to Laythe blew up 6 times (and ended up sub-orbital once) trying to Aerocapture into Joolian orbit because: - I designed and built it wrong: Fully fueled lander W/asparagus staging being pushed by a single-engine nuclear intrasolar transfer vehicle (that was also pushing a lab module) with insufficient fuel. - I'm too impatient to figure out all the parameters for the online Aerocapture tools, so I just kept trying different periapsis until I found one that was sorta manageable. - I docked the lander to the NERV-powered transfer vehicle using the AGU rather than a proper docking port. My engineer kept having to spacewalk to reconnect broken struts that I installed post-connection. At one point, she had five minutes to get outside, climb down a ladder, repair the broken strut, climb back up and get TF back inside before they hit the atmosphere. - I didn't put enough AIRBRAKES (and RCS thrusters and reaction wheels) on to compensate for the 10M heat shield waaaaaaay up front. The whole stack (more like a train) was pretty unstable and I just barely managed to keep it straight even after pumping as much of the fuel to the forward-positioned lander tanks as they would hold. The tail got pretty cooked and I ended up rolling the entire ship (during my successful-enough Aerobrake altitude) at periapsis to keep everything from going completely sideways. Something exploded, but I guess it wasn't important. (I don't know how to access mission logs to see what broke). But I made it! With a small retro burn right after exiting Jool's atmosphere, and jettisoning a full RCS tank (whoops, ended up needing that later). Laythe Aerocapture I think I only blew the ship up twice during the Laythe Aerocapture. All this time, I was just guesstimating the amount of fuel I needed to get the crew home. - I also don't know how to calculate delta-V for vehicles before I've dumped some of the stages, so I didn't know how much DV I'd need to push my much-diminished stack home. Laythe Landing Turns out that a 10M heat shield is unlikely to make a stable reentry when you undock the 100-meter lab, fuel tank, and NERV engine that kept it sort of stable during aerocaptures. I was doing okay until I ran out of monopropellant. Then my lander went Mary Poppins on me much higher and faster than I had planned. Funny, but terrifying. Good thing engines have a pretty high thermal tolerance. I think it took me 3 tries to actually land in one piece, on land. I wanted coasts, but I ended up on a mountain after mashing the "LAND SOMEWHERE" button in desperation. Laythe Jool is SO PRETTY! I love the noon eclipses and the giant green nightlight! I landed on the rim of the big crater so it was almost directly overhead. All my Kerbalnauts developed neck problems from looking up. Also 90 degrees is not easy to pan to. I wanted them to have a swim, but I didn't have the patience to watch them hike for however many physics-warped hours it would take to get down to the water. I disembarked all 3 crew at the same time. What could go wrong? Ladders. Ladders that don't work the same way after a save on an uncrewed vehicle (or something). I tried everything to get my crew back onboard, including welding a solar panel as a "catch plate" for them to jump to from the top of the ------ ladder. Didn't work. And that's when and why I "discovered" the gravity hack. Laythe Launch The lander had launched just fine during a practice run on Kerbin. Not so on Laythe. Probably because I used up all my monoprop trying to survive reentry, and none of the ascent engines, I chose, gimballed. Yikes. My engineer pulled off every piece of "unnecessary" equipment she could reach, tried to compensate for a nasty yaw defect by rebalancing the amount of propellant in the various tanks and changing the staging order. It worked well enough that the lander limped to an orbit above Laythe's atmosphere with just one somersault along the way. Needless to say, Mechjeb was useless for the ascent on my catawampus ship, so it was all seat-of-the-pants. The intrasolar transfer vehicle was able to dip down and rescue the MK-3 reentry pod. Yay! Homeward bound! Jool Escape My Kerbalnauts didn't have enough remaining DV to escape Laythe, then Jool, then lower Periapsis to Kerbin's orbit. Not even close. Whoops. MechJeb said I needed 6000 m/s if I waited 300 years. I had maybe 4K. Luckily Tylo happened to be wandering by when I was playing with impossibly-expensive return trajectories. - The first time I got too excited, did a mountaintop-clipping swingby, and later realized I had dropped the ship's periapsis into Kerbol's corona. Whoops. - Second time I got it right-ish and made it back to Kerbins SOI for around 1000m/s. WOOT! And that was that. - I had enough fuel to straight-up decelerate into Kerbin orbit with a 60km periapsis. - Jettisoned the MK3 pod - Had the intrasolar transfer vehicle climb back to a 400km orbit. As a bookend to the crazy mission, the pod bounced off the atmosphere for 3 orbits and ended up running out of battery (I had left the solar panels on Laythe), and coming in totally dead stick with the ablator on its heat shield completely burned up. Still, any landing you walk away from.... especially one with 6K worth of science! ... which I promptly sold out to finance LAYTHE 2: This Time We're Staying! Laythe 2 Design: - Minimize aerocapture. There are sooo many Joolian moons, and sticking a 10M heat shield on every lander just sucks. - Permanent Laythe Base - Miner/Refueling Ship (probably aiming for Bop) built similar to my overpowered Minumus miner and refinery - SSTO dropship with no ablators. It's supposed to go down and land fully fueled, exchange crews, then fly back up and meet with the Miner/Refueler. It will make the transfer to Jool empty and need to be fueled prior to the first drop on Laythe. - Each component gets its own Intrasolar Transfer Vehicle (ITV) with 3 NERV engines and 14K deltaV (when not docked to something) - Docking to be done with REAL docking ports (the large one), except when refueling. The miner/refinery has a couple of AGU's and LOTS of RCS. Launch: - No problems with anything but the ITV's. Those launched fully-fueled from KSP space center and were heavy as sin. Mechjeb couldn't handle it, so I manually pushed them into orbit. The first one took a couple of tries until I got the hang of it. Currently I have all 3 ITV's fully fueled and docked to their respective mission components. I started building this mission with $9,000,000. Now I have $745,000 left. I have full science and am selling 95% of any new research for cash. A lot of the cost came from hiring Kerbalnauts. 3X ITV's each with Pilot and Engineer + Laythe Base: 4 Scientists, 1 Engineer, 1 Pilot + SSTO: 1 Engineer, 1 Pilot + Mining Ship: 1 Engineer (4 stars) , 1 Pilot. So that's 16 crew in total, and I think I hired 12 of them just for this mission. Lots of greenhorns. Current Issues: - MechJeb keeps blowing up mid-burn for long-duration burns. I have good alignment with the Mun to launch the Jool fleet with a nice flyby gravity assist, but I noticed the target drifting on my first attempt and I had to scrap and restart to a pre-departure save point. This isn't the first time this has happened. - I don't think it's possible to do simultaneous burns and keep the fleet together. Even if I could get a mod that let me fly all the ships at the same time, they have different masses and probably won't stay within physics distance during the long nuke accelerations. That means I'll have to space the ships' departures out by 30-40 minutes or so. Not a big deal, but kind of a bummer and a hassle to re-rendezvous outside Kerbins SOI, if I want to for some reason (like . - I am out of money! - Not super confident that I can land the base and the SSTO within a reasonable distance of each other. The SSTO has wheels but I'm not great at building rovers and it's pretty tippy. - KSP has taken over my life!

Oh heavens to Betsy, we forgot all about the thread where they joked about putting imperial units in KSP. Quick everyone, we must finish that riveting debate! Seriously though, the thread isn't derailed so much as the topic is now something YOU do not wan't to talk about. No, they are telling you that you think something is fixed because you have not seen the cracks yet. They have been very patient trying to explain it to people in this thread. It is not a difficult concept to grasp. Why do people think the burden of proof is on the poster who went and did reserach on the topic, and not the poster who reads the post and goes "I don't believe you. I haven't looked, but you sound wrong." What about imperial tons? Back to topic and all that. (I know it wasn't you who mentioned getting back to topic, I'm just making a bad joke)

This topic is used to talk about flags created by everyday people and the largest modders in KSP alike! We welcome any flags, as long as they are Safe For Work. I guess that's it, keep sharing your flags! (eventually I will make a picture of a vessel with all the flags on the topic, to participate you must include a link to your flag in the description as well as the pictr) Posting NSFW flags on this topic will be reported to the moderators.

Exactly... currently. When you set out to do something more bigger and ambitious, than KSP 1 in this context, you have to plan ahead. I won't pretend that I know anything about that physics engine. But, I do have a little knowledge about programming, and as stated above, I'm very much curious how they plan to execute many things. Rocket wobble is just one of them. Continuous long burns, heat transfer, battery draining, etc... computations on all vessels during time warp... those are the meat mechanics of the (new) game. Thus far, as @PDCWolf pointed out, there was a talk about a short term and long term solution for rocket wobble. They went with middle term solution, involving autostruts. Why? I'm not dissing devs. If you asked me how to implement these things efficiently, I'd say wait for home quantum computers. The point I'm trying to make is that, we haven't got any indication on how these crucial things will be resolved. After so many years of development apparently,(judging by autostruts, they don't have any indication either. If they do, I'd be very curious to read an update on that. I don't care if I don't get any new parts, or parachute bug resolved within the next few months. I care whether the team is capable of developing the core mechanics needed for this game. Falling back to autostruts doesn't inspire much confidence, and I pray to be proven, oh so very wrong.

Since it was clogging up the spacex discussion, you can talk about starlink here!