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Shuttles people talk about aren't the ones you built. That's a plane strapped to a rocket capable of lifting large space station modules!

While Monty's pushing ahead exploring ion craft that don't require solar panels , my head is still spinning with 'optimal solar panel layout'. I'm putting out this post to help collect my ideas (which I hope to shape a bit more; constructive input is welcome). # Goals The goal of optimal solar panel arrangement is to provide maximum power to ion engines, ideally with the least amount of solar panels (either in part-count, or in mass). The best case scenario is where ion engines can run at maximum throttle all the time. # Terminology (helping us think and talk in common terms) http://wiki.kerbalspaceprogram.com/wiki/Terminology#Ship_Orientation FIXME: add pic w/ terms # Extreme Ion solar panel designs tri arrangement (Monty's Hades 1 , Mike's Xenon Impulse) 2x T arrangement (bi arrangement?), with some perpendicular (K08ia, jumpyed's Snail Ion) snow-flake arrangement (Jasonden_craft FIXME: get name) star arrangement (Lump_craft FIXME: get name) mono perpendicular plane MPP (metaphor_craft FIXME: get name) box ( jumpyed's Box craft ) # Variables and constraints There are two main variables/constraints we have to work with. 1) Foremost is the thrust-vector, which is fixed by the intended craft direction. The related variable is the craft ability to rotate about the thrust-vector (ex: using the Q and E keys). I found with my long craft and 2x T design (with a gap), that I could significantly improve electricity generation by rotating to certain positions. 2) We have the additional variable of solar panel arrays rotating around their mounts (except for the OX-STAT panels). # Observations Most Extreme Ion craft have a plane of solar panels perpendicular to the thrust-vector. This arrangement works best when the sun is front or aft of the craft. The worst scenario for these craft is when the sun is perpendicular to the thrust-vector (port, starboard, nadir, or zenith). Simplifying possible sun arrangements, the third scenario is when the sun is positioned somewhere in-between the two extremes. metaphor's Ike lander ion craft flip-flops these extremes, as its solar panel plane is inline with the thrust vector. Jasonden's solar panel layout can switch between a close approximation to a snow-flake, and a plane (or pair of planes). The tri arrangement, especially as configured by Mike, appears to be capable of the densest solar panel coverage. # Example Craft Below is an ordered listing of craft types in various sun arrangements. # tri, sun front/aft http://i.imgur.com/J3sawcW.jpg http://i.imgur.com/tggwOns.jpg # tri, sun perpendicular to thrust http://i.imgur.com/35ocfRF.jpg # tri, sun in-between http://i.imgur.com/0wSClC8.png http://i.imgur.com/p9PQGOS.png http://i.imgur.com/uVjGP2l.jpg http://i.imgur.com/gddy4AM.png # note shadow on 1/3 of plane # 2x T (bi), sun front/aft http://i.imgur.com/7BIKn4v.png http://i.imgur.com/9fRjBcl.png http://i.imgur.com/Uiwo4Fk.png # 2x T (bi), sun perpendicular to thrust http://i.imgur.com/8ZKt03q.png http://i.imgur.com/PscVcnM.png # 2x T (bi), sun in-between http://i.imgur.com/KUqToe4.png http://i.imgur.com/5fnJAJc.png # snow-flake, sun front/aft http://i.imgur.com/MKRN9Fs.png http://i.imgur.com/uVL1b6d.png # snow-flake, sun perpendicular to thrust http://i.imgur.com/pGkocsH.png http://i.imgur.com/hGSKiH8.png http://i.imgur.com/pw6QRYR.png # snow-flake, sun in-between http://i.imgur.com/1ajn7tJ.png # note power generation vs http://i.imgur.com/uVL1b6d.png http://i.imgur.com/UkJY1DJ.png # star, sun front/aft http://i.imgur.com/p2ECTLm.png # MPP, sun perpendicular to thrust http://i.imgur.com/kOPFbBM.png # MPP, sun in-between http://i.imgur.com/KqXvHT5.png # Questions - perpendicular solar panels? - 'wavy plane' instead of flat plane? - best way to mitigate shadows cast by craft? kdonfede -- "Adding K to every word..."

First off.... FANTASTIC! 1) I'm going to be another malcontent and express my mild disappointment that it is not quite big enough to haul up station sized parts..... HOWEVER..... this gives somebody the opportunity to develop a string of smaller station parts that are sized appropriately. This isn't a big deal, it's more along the lines of "awww shucks." 2) The LRB's... why, oh why don't they auto sequence? I know, I know.... no expressed MechJeb compatibility but aside from not jettisoning the LRB's, MechJeb works just fine with the craft. External tank jets when it is spent. I managed a launch, station rendezvous, docking, de orbiting and.... well, lets not talk about my landing.... but that all worked well enough. Again, great mod. I have had a lot of fun with this one (at the expense of many brave Kerbals).

Love steam. I hated it at first (i must have been 12 or 13 years old at that point) But with internet being so readily available I dont see a problem with having to be online to play my games. My routers current session time is 102 days and should i take my laptop out and about i can just either log into a wifi hotspot or (more commonly) teather my phone to it. See Note at bottom. The biggest plus now is, other than x3 and the stalker series, all my games are in one place and i dont have to worry about lsing the discs or anything like that. If i want to delete a game I can but its still easy to find should i want to play it. Plus being able to just download a game with just one click...Im sorry but I'm a sucker for any system that reduces an entire process into one click. There will always be those who are worried about valve going bust and not getting their games back. I personally dont see it as a concern and (please dont take offense to this) feel those people are a little bit stuck in the past and afraid of change. Cloud computing and DRM are the way forward. Hell we even use a form of cloud computing at work...If our IT department screws up then the whole building is screwed. You just have to have faith! I love this new fangled DRM. Also, with the advent of steam...I havent pirated a game or even needed to pirate a game since i was a usefull teen (ha, i joke, i wouldnt and never have pirated anything). Steam just makes me lazy. Another thumbs up I want to give valve. Every time i open up steam I'm not bombarded by "we think you may also like these games" they just have the featured games page and im free to throw my cash at them as I please. Speaking of throwing cash at valve... summer sales will be on us before we know it NOTE: this was one of the big media uproars about the xbox always needing an internet connection. The majority of people who will be buying an xbox one will probably have a reliable internet connection. However the uk has pretty good internet coverage so i cant talk about remote villages in the various u.s states and other foreign countries.

This is not what I'm talk about. Only somehow change of rules since it become popular was electricity for sas but it's not matter much and do not change anything drastically. How terrain looks and how sas good don't change anything -you do the same things in the same way. Make things looks better and control easer it's just another part of making it more accessible for general public. And this is not about harder. FAR is not harder then stock just more resonable and DR is not any hard - but this is not as it used to be,- this is the main concern

Please see my post on the previous page and lets talk about putting our head together on a design. I am stuck at the 4.5tn cargo lift. want to hit 12-18tns, and I think we might be able to do this!

https://docs.google.com/file/d/0BzOU_F85Qj0YRFJBblV5Tmg1dlk/edit There's the Craft file. Also, the biggest difference is the Range. The Dipole (little black box with two wires coming out) is good to 500km. The communotron 16 is good to 2.5Mm, both are Omnidirectional antenna meaning that they will connect with everything within range. Dishes have to be pointed. Generally I use the DTS-M1 to talk to other satellites in the same orbit and the other dish to cover everything else. I would put 2 of the large dishes on, one pointing at Kerbin and the other at the Mun. The DTS-M1 one should point at the next satellite in the series, and one should point at the previous satellite. (i.e if you have 3 satellites in a triangle you should have one DTS-M1 pointed at each other satellite) You really don't need the Communotron-16 at all if you do it right. With my launch profile I circularized at 80km (Still within the range of the Dipole) and then turned one of the dishes to Kerbin and activated it. Once I got out of range of the Dipole ( >500km) it automatically switched over to using the dish, at that point I didn't need anything else. Oh poop, I need to remove a couple of things...Namely the Parachutes from Realchute and the Radiators from KSP Interstellar Totally forgot about those! Fixed! Everything there is either Stock or KW. Also, Action group 1 toggles all solar panels, and action group 2 jettisons the fairing.

It's a while ago, but when I was 15 or so years old I had a terrible French teacher. Now I wasn't a model student in her class, and I wasn't very interested in the subject and because of that I used to get rather bad grades. At one point I decided 'this French stuff can't be that hard, let's go and learn it'. So I actually open my books (I think I had to unwrap them mid-year) and start soldiering through the assignments. At some point there's this or that that I can't figure out so I walk up to the teacher and ask her to explain something to me. Now whatever it was that I'm asking clarification about I'm sure had been covered before, and wasn't too complex and I should have had the opportunity to learn it many a time over already, but still her response was IMO inexcusable. It went like this: 'So, you're asking about this now? I'm not going to answer or help you out, get some good grades first and then we'll talk' Then and there I decided that French was going to be the subject that I was going to fail (we were allowed one). I think I even threw out the book on my way back to the bench but that may be myself enhancing the memory

It's a while ago, but when I was 15 or so years old I had a terrible French teacher. Now I wasn't a model student in her class, and I wasn't very interested in the subject and because of that I used to get rather bad grades. At one point I decided 'this French stuff can't be that hard, let's go and learn it'. So I actually open my books (I think I had to unwrap them mid-year) and start soldiering through the assignments. At some point there's this or that that I can't figure out so I walk up to the teacher and ask her to explain something to me. Now whatever it was that I'm asking clarification about I'm sure had been covered before, and wasn't too complex and I should have had the opportunity to learn it many a time over already, but still her response was IMO inexcusable. It went like this: 'So, you're asking about this now? I'm not going to answer or help you out, get some good grades first and then we'll talk' Then and there I decided that French was going to be the subject that I was going to fail (we were allowed one). I think I even threw out the book on my way back to the bench but that may be myself enhancing the memory

For the sake of the argument, let's disregard all political factors in this discussion. Let's talk only about technical matters of the subject. Whenever I think about nuclear propulsion systems, two designs often came to my mind: Nuclear Thermal Rocket or Nuclear Pulse Propulsion, both having been studied as project NERVA and Orion, respectively. Later, I thought of a different design. This one would work similar to NTR systems, in which nuclear fuel is reacted to heat a different propellant(say, hydrogen). However, instead of a typical nuclear reactor, it had a simpler combustion chamber with no means to retain the fissile material. Instead, products of the nuclear reaction is ejected, being part of the exhaust, hence open-cycle. What are the possible advantages and disadvantages of such propulsion systems? How would it perform in comparison to NERVA and Orion systems? Also, what technical challenges the propulsion system might impose?

You know, I am just making this post to make some non-scientific assumptions, and to blow off some nerdy steam i guess. The first thing I kind of want to discuss, Light speed travel. This idea has been in our minds for a while, and I wanted to propose a few things on this subject. First off, the improbabilities of the theory. Light speed in many concepts seems possible, maybe not right now, but certainly it is possible. One of the main problems of this is that the energy required to produce this much thrust is equal to over 299,792,458 m/s. This is the minimal speed that light travels, and to achieve it would require astronomical amounts of energy, more energy than a red giant can produce in it's lifetime. So let's talk about this. Although no one really knows how much energy a red giant burns, let us imagine that it could propel us to the speed of light, unless we find some other scientific geeky way to do this. So we have the technology to harvest a red giant, and use it's energy to produce light speed. The next problem is this. Currently, even travelling over 50km/s (50000 m/s) is extremely dangerous, even a dust particle could rip microscopic holes in a spaceship doing this speed. Now multiply that by 5000 and you will get a number around 200,000,000 m/s. (Supposing that this speed is enough) At that speed, either you will break basic physics, and be able to go so fast to go through objects, or logically, atoms that are distributed throughout space would rip your spaceship apart into trillions of atoms per millisecond. That would mean that you would be ripped up almost instantly at the time you hit warp speed. So, some people may think that there are better ways to do this and there are obviously are. Such as energetic shielding. If you were to blast through space faster than light with a big energy shield around you, you would be fine right? Well not exactly. First off, the amount of energy needed to counter the particles would also be astronomical, since this is indeed an energy shield using electrified/magnetic particles to protect a vessel. Or second, you would have to have such a dense amount of energy that it would be infeasible to be able to wedge any atoms inbetween the particles and reach the hull of your spaceship. Another theory is to put a big hunk of metal on the front of your vessel as a interstellar heat shield and you might as well discard this idea immediately because it just isn't feasible and should not even be considered. (End of discussion and yes i have breathed in this writing) If you would like to leave some suggestions (or correct my math) please do so in the comments below, and I do also enjoy crazy theories and discussions/debates as these so please leave your rants on this page so that I can read them! P.S I realize that this post is using just basic knowledge that I had at the time, and a few days after writing this i did indeed watch a few videos on quantum mechanics and physics! Please do not hate for misinformation as this was just a thread to see how logical a topic was! Thanks!

Unfortunately, we're not suppose to talk about our concerns in this forum. And this thread will certainly get locked up.

This is so frustrating every time this topic comes up. Someone always tries to conflate "OP is asking for more solar systems" with "OP is asking for the ability to move between them IN THE SAME CAMPAIGN and therefore is asking for FTL". One does NOT imply the other. Shooting down all talk of second solar systems because of FTL is an invalid non-sequitor because the existence of more than one solar system to choose from does not have to imply that you move a spaceship between them. You could just pick which solar system to start playing in, and then you play that campaign in that solar system. There's plenty of precident for that sort of arrangement in a computer game. You can play Civilization on various different maps - picking which one at startup time and sticking with it for that game. You can play most space empire 4x games the same way - picking different initial setups and then that entire game takes place in that universe. The ability to pick different solar systems for KSP would not have to imply that the different solar systems interact with each other at all.

There is no analytic solution; you'll need to go for numeric approximations. Beyond that, we can talk about rules of thumb for pitching over and speed...

1) Very good idea, coming for phase II. Should have been in Phase I, I simply forgot. 2) Very good idea. Will talk to Nazari about it.

All this... It's amazing nothing went wrong. Apollo 13 was a big scare, but other then that Apollo just.. worked. Now the Russian lunar plan was scary. No docking tunnel... Something tells me that if let's say the N1 made it to orbit and sent a pair of cosmonauts to the moon.. I think something would've went wrong. Not to bad talk the Russians, but that plan was a mess. It is ashame the LOK never flew through. ( well it did.. for about a minute and then came down in the largest non-nuclear explosion the world has ever seen. )

That would be interesting. "Hello, I'm Scott Manley. Today we'll to throw a main-belt asteroid at Eeloo by crashing a Kerbal on EVA into it. Let us first derive a closed-form expression for our trajectory." I don't think asteroids are in 0.24 though, they are in the NASA thing. Interesting conclusions from the poll results: It seems Scott's not here. Could somebody draw his Manley attenion to the remaining open astrophysics question (the one about reference frames for the ER3BP)? Answering it would do too of course. The majority seems to know basic calculus, so I'll use that. I'll post a link to Feynman's Lectures on Physics for the ~40% who don't, there's a quick introduction to calculus which doesn't involve defining the derivative at a point as a linear form on a Banach space. It's really well written (I'm pretty sure that's where I first learned calculus around 2007). There are 6 people who checked neither of the bottom 2 options. Either they can do numerical integration but not elementary physics, or they didn't see that it was a multiple choice poll I think the first post I'll write will be on the integration of general ODEs with RK integrators. In later posts I'll talk about Hamiltonian mechanics, the Kepler problem and the patched conic approximation (it would be nice if people understood why SOIs make sense in their current form, but not as Lagrange point hacks or any such sort of nonsense). I'll then get to SPRK integrators, and eventually to the Saha & Tremaine stuff. I'll try to write the first post over the evenings of the coming week. There will be little modding this week because exams. I'll probably be more productive from Saturday onwards though.

awesome! i remember my first landing.. no i don't but still To talk about something else, am i the only person that play in full screen?

We're not conducting war in space. Within the atmosphere, you get a lot of attenuation of the laser. There are some lasers mounted on Humvees the military has been experimenting with. Some of them to temporarily / permanently blind enemy soldiers on a battlefield. I do recall some talk of using a directed energy weapon on the Airforce version of the F-35 some years ago - as it had a lot of extra horsepower, since it doesn't sport the vertical lift fan required in the Marine version, or the heavy structure of the Naval version (for carrier landings). But I figure the reason we don't field laser weapons is because we don't have to. They're expensive to develop, pretty big and bulky for regular infantry use, and unnecessary for the type of wars America is fighting now (urban, not on the plains of Europe, and definitely not space based).

I built a rocket: What are these 'stock parts' you talk about? It was originally designed as a stylish LKO-lifter, but it can put a 3-man pod on a munar fly-by.

Please, read the first posts The point of much of his talk is that by using better, research grade code, you can be as fast or faster than KSP is today even with all the added n-body complexity. Also, Lagrange points (one capital, the guy came from Italy, not Chicago ) aren't all they're cracked up to be, it wouldn't be worth it to make an exception case just for them and hacky solutions are.... horribly hacky, no other way to put it. By the way: "That's pretty arrogant... I like that in a pilot" (cit.) Do you have an idea of how that would work?

Many Worlds relies on superposition principle, making it impossible to travel between worlds. To put it simply, from perspective of any world, all physics is equivalent to that one and only one world existing. Of course, if the underlying field theory isn't actually linear, and superposition is just an approximation, things could be different, but then, strictly speaking Many Worlds doesn't hold either. We'd need a different many-histories theory to explain all of it. As for allowing for travel, you'd effectively be back to dealing with geometry of space-time, so you might as well cut out the middle man and talk about warp drives and wormholes to begin with.

Hi Guys. For starters, I have already overcome collision issues at high speeds. So I will be tuning the guns relatively close to the real world counterpart... even though it's KSP and there is no humanity for god's sake! Most guns fall between 750 - 900 m/s, I think the fastest firing gun I have right now would be the phalanx which fires somewhere around 1100 m/s - with nearly 100% of rounds colliding. I have a timer on all rounds, realistically I have to keep the overhead down with the rate of fire being high but not as high as in real life. I think the timer on the phalanx as well as all smaller rounds is about 4 seconds. Which after velocity falloff due to drag will give the round an outer range of 3 - 3.5 km. Penetration power is reduced as it slows down of course, so effective range (depending on the target) is likely under 2km. The larger rounds/shells have more duration on the timer. due to their extended range. As I mentioned in another post I was able to lay some smack-down on another battleship about 7.2km away. Really with those shells even when at reduced velocity they put down the hurt. I've added some fire/smoke fx to the ground where Incendiary shells land, and explosive force within a short radius of where HE shells hit the ground. This allows for some inaccurate splash type damage to be dealt. The final step to that will be spawning shrapnel at the explosion site, each particle then deal out damage as a low powered round would, this would be bad for weak targets like aircraft or other small parts that are not armour. Heat is one thing I've put some control on lately. When something burns it will heat to about 90% of that parts max temp... at that time it will randomly be determined if the part should outright explode or just burn-out and be fixable later. Parts containing fuel will check for an explosion around 60% of it's rated max heat. Engines that overheat will be treated the same way. Damage will take each part into consideration, wings lose lift, seize at a given position, or lose range of deflection. Engines shut down, turrets can't turn or fire... and so on. I haven't covered off everything but I'll try to cover the primary part types. Torpedoes are back in! I have them skimming just under the waterline at about 20 - 25 m/s, they have a base range of about 2km, though that can be changed. They don't seek or anything... they track the line you drop them at, they will have an fx trail so they are slightly easier to see from the air. Good discussion, there is a lot to cover in something as broad as this! On a side note: I'm picking some weapons/ordinance that I think would be neat to model and implement. I plan on adding an 88mm flak gun as I needed something in that range. My torpedo is modeled and set up to act like a ww2 Japanese type91, I just made a 30mm DEFA internal cannon. The tank turret has a 127mm smooth-bore gun and is loosely modeled after the turret off the Leopard 2 A6? MBT. The real tank has a 120mm... so this is slightly bigger... I was originally making a 5" naval gun, but decided a tank turret would be better.. so I kept the round parameters and made a tank turret model instead. Release 2 candidates so far are: 88mm Flak artillery, capable of use as regular artillery or AT. Small portable mortar (maybe). Acoustic homing torpedoes (slightly better than nothing!). I'm thinking of heat-seeking air-air missiles like a sidewinder... I'm only pondering it right now, and if so... there will be flares. I'd likely allow the flares to have an automatic discharge setting, or chime a note when the missile is 1 - 2 seconds from your plane to 'remind' you to deploy the flares. Anyhow... too much to talk about and too little time! Later guys

Better than me. I talk to computer generated graphics formed by lines of code and imagine they have personalities. I'm a bit weird.

Right. I will have to talk to MetalMouth and Defcon before saying anything on this, but no doubt they will want to see what you can produce. I will send them a message, and see what they think. Please do keep in mind though, that we are constantly working on this, and our texture artist (MetalMouth) will probably be working on everything a little as time goes on. I think he wouldnt mind the help though. 0.o What would give you the impression that we didnt care? We have even talked about scrapping hyperium at one poin, because of the amount of hate it got in another thread. Everyone only does mods because they feel like it (It's not like we get paid or anything.) but we do care about what people think. If we didn't what would be the point?