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Hmm.. That talk about the CIWS, I wonder if it might be really overpowered or underpowered. Does it just point at the COM and shoot or does it lead the target? And how much damage does the spray of bullets do, plus you made a video of it a long time ago testing lazor missiles against the CIWS, and the CIWS almost instantly destroy them. Just wondering!

45 Days to Launch, Outside KSC: Bill Bob, Lomy, Ludorf and Patbro sit outside the Vehicle Assembly Building with a few reporters asking questions. Reporter: “Why don’t you introduce yourselves?†Bob: “I’m Bob, and I’ll be the Mission Commander, in charge of ensuring everything goes smoothly.†Bill: “I’m Bill, Ships Pilot, I’ll be ensuring we arrive to and back from Duna.†Lomy: “I’m Lomy, Mission Specialist. I’m responsible for keeping everyone alive. We have enough food on board for 838 days, more than enough. There are also Air and Water purifiers, as well as an emergency 70 day emergency supply.†Patbro: “Patbro, Lead Mission Scientist, myself and Ludorf will be processing and transmitting all our science data.†Ludorf: “That’s correct, and I am also the Ships Medic. I will be assisting Patbro in the science analysis.†Reporter: “Why send a manned mission to Duna? Why not send a probe first?†Patbro: “A manned mission was chosen because of the impracticality of sending a probe. Since the launch windows only open up about once every 234 days the next if we sent a probe we would have to wait until the next window before we could send a manned mission.†Reporter: “Let’s talk about the ship ‘Duna Explorer I’. Tell us what it’s going to be like.†Bill: “The ‘Duna Explorer I’ was designed specifically for this mission. *He presses a button to bring up an image of the ship, seen below* Let’s start aft. We have the main drive section that was designed to get the entire craft to Duna and it has a high enough Thrust to Weight ratio to ensure we leave Kerbins’ Sphere of Influence as quickly as possible, this section will be deposited in solar orbit. The next visible section is the Return and Secondary drive section. It also has Retro engines in the event we enter Dunas’ thin atmosphere too fast and will be sued to get us safely home. Between those is the Lander section, with enough fuel to get to the surface of Duna and back again, and if we have enough fuel it might even go to Ike. Continuing forward we have the Science and Habitation section. It contains all of our life support equipment, as well as living quarters and the science processing lab where Patbro and Ludorf will be spending most of their time. Forward of that Is the Command Section, with an inflatable heat shield.†Reporter: “What will you do until it’s time for launch?†Bill: “Training mostly, System familiarization. Really we do what we can to help pass the time. The ship is being assembled in orbit and there’s not a whole lot we can do until that is complete.†Bob: “We will also be reviewing mission parameters and objectives, as well as running various simulations and preparing for about 400 days in space. That’s all the time we have for now, thank you for your time.†From Left to Right: Patbro, Bob, Bill, Lomy, Ludorf

Love the idea, and that's not a big deal. While technically the units we use would look horrible, we just define the base unit of length, say the Plength, as whatever multiple of the Planck Length is close to a Meter (or a foot. Meter's always felt a bit too big to me) and the base unit of time, say the Tanck as the multiple closest to the second or minute (or even hour). Then we can talk about kiloplenths, or milltancks. Bonus: Millitancks is a cool name.

First and foremost: Ill leave this one up to the mods if this counts as "Better/More interesting planetary surfaces" I just thought I would throw my two cents in as to how they could be better, because I think Laythe in particular needs huge improvements, and I'm not trying troll the forums moaning about how things just need to be "better" Now, formalities aside, lets talk about how I think Laythe could be improved! 1: Coral reefs along the shorelines: Laythe is an ocean world, so lets use that to our advantage and include lovely coral reefs. who knows? you might find a curious fish among the colorful coral! The coral could be of various different types and colors, and perhaps be different types on different islands. Perhaps samples of rarer coral could yield a higher scientific value? (P.S, About the fish, I know "aliens" aren't happening in this game, but this ain't exactly E.T. we're talking about here) 2: cliffs and crags: I saw this trailer for a game called "space engine" I don't know if anyone here has heard of it, but at the 5 minute mark it showed a world surprisingly similar to Laythe. This shows exactly the problem with current terrain in ksp. its too smooth! I have not really seen any truly epic mountains or cliffs or ridges. I mean, current terrain gets the job done, but its not quite as pretty as this. Perhaps if Laythe happened to suffer a few eruptions, the lava could make a few interesting formations... 3: Good god, Laythe is dull. I hate to break it to you, but your moon looks dead. Even the oceans manage to be dead and grey, and this is a problem for such a pretty moon. why not brighten things up a bit? I don't know quite how to explain it, and it certainly doesn't need a completely different color scheme, but something is missing. it looks bare bones at the moment. Tying in with number 4, continents with volcanoes could be rocky and solid. A welcome retreat from the dull grey sand. The oceans need brightening up as well. Perhaps the addition of waves and tides could help with this a little? Should a storm come, coastal bases had better watch out! 4: Volcanoes and hot lava! Given the nature of this planet, and how it obviously has volcanic activity within it (or a result perhaps caused by tidal forces from Jool?), I think it could use a few volcanoes on its surface, to help heat up the moon so far from the sun. alongside a couple minor ones... somewhere on the surface, lies a continent dominated by an extremely powerful and gigantic volcano of epic proportions!!! Kerbals trying to land had best beware, as the huge clouds of smoke and ash can damage solar panels and scientific equipment, and the pit of lava in its center is extremely dangerous, and instantly fatal. Despite its dangerous nature, the volcano is quite a site to see from a safe distance, as its massive plumes of smoke can be seen for miles, and reach all the way up to the edge of the atmosphere! Perhaps when weather and clouds are added, huge storms could come from this plume and travel for miles? 5: Glowing green....er. Radiation! Many people have wondered about the implementation of radiation, given Laythes proximity to Jool. I don't know quite how this would work. Kerbals with cancer? no thanks. If anyone has any ideas for how our little moon could turn fallout-style, ill be sure to add them up here That's about it for now, I hope folks reading this like my ideas, and even have a few of their own. Laythe has a lot of potential for exploration and science, and I look forward to all the devs have planned for it.

About my post above, when I was saying launch, I was referring to a direct ascent. I have to admit, you can't really talk about the Oberth effect in that case. The second example with the powered flyby was fine. The first example should have been about making a transfer burn to other planet from an orbit around a planet. You want to do all the acceleration required for the transfer near the Pe (and you want Pe to be as low as possible), to carry a part of your speed around the planet out of it's SOI.

@Peppe Don't forget to account for one other thing when you're talking about Max Antenna Range. It's not talking to the ground I'm wheeling for, but talking with other satellites. If, for example, I put a satellite with the 5 Mm antenna up at say, 4,000 km, then there's no way it can talk with any satellite outside a little more than a third of the circumference around. I like my low sats to be low enough so that they can interlink. As I said, part of my strategy for my constellation is redundancy through connection numbers. It's based on my gameplay philosophy. Set it and forget it. My philosophy is based on one simple thing. In real life, space infrastructure is maintained by hundreds, if not thousands of people watching things around the clock. Any deviations in the infrastructure are corrected almost immediately as needed almost non-stop. As a player, I take all those jobs and roll them into one person, me. And whatever assisting supporting programs I may have. I simply do not have the ability to split my attention to handle the kind of micromanaging that is required to keep everything well-oiled like that. Nor do I have the time to fix things. I'll probably go grab VOID if it provides me with even more accurate orbits, but the fact remains that as a Player, I don't have the ability mass-manage anything that is not 'set it and forget it'. One of the reasons why I prefer redundancy over raw accuracy. The accuracy WILL collapse, I can't escape that. I can slow it down, but that's just a stopgap measure. But I can orchestrate a mess that effectively has no holes in it save for freak events on par with The Stars Being Right. That's my philosophy/strategy.

My biggest concern is connection reliability and redundancy. I don't much like working on a long range probe if at the critical time in flight, the connection drops out because there's a hole in the network. And the biggest cause of holes is the rounding error from things going on the rails. Without time warp, a well placed constellation takes a long time to drift out of phase. Once Time Warp kicks in, the entire thing becomes a mess in the time it takes to send a ship to minmus. So I try to set up a network that maximizes uptime while mitigating any down time ASAP. Uptime tends to result from a combination of coverage and link redundancy. The more links I have between sats that have wide coverage area, the better the uptime. In this case, my primary goal is to keep the primary link to KSC up to about 99.99% (Mathematically, there WILL be a gap at some point in the game, meaning it is impossible to achieve perfect 100%) In order to ensure I have coverage and connections, I consider that my satellites have a very wide field of view of kerbin, while also being close enough that I can get them to cross-communicate with each other unless they're ocluded by kerbin itself. This way, even if they bunch-up in their orbits due to time warp, they still have LoS and range to talk to other satellites in the constellation. Like this group: I forget what sat set that was, but even though the two up on the top side of the picture are bunched up, it's clear by the cat's cradle of connections that even if they get wonky, down time remains very low. And in the image, the sats that are in lower standby orbits have higher frequencies, which allows them to swing around and clear gaps in coverage that could pop up due to drift. That's not intentional however, just a side-effect of popping a bunch into LKO first, then seeing how many I need to place. Going for simplest is a good goal, but in my opinion, it's too easy to 'break'.

I haven't looked into it yet, but I was planning on allowing modules that land in the near vicinity of another module (5m?) to be connected on site with an inflatable corridor (like the pipes in KAS). I'm planning on having some kind of resource system, it will probably be integrated with Kethane, and pipe connecter ports on the base of the fuel tanks would be excellent, so KAS is defiantly planned too, but I'd have to talk with the respective authors first. Even if I don't get around to it though, I don't foresee anything that would make them incompatible.

What players have that setup? Maybe they are not using the current version or it is a video/screenshot from an old version? I think remotetech 1 allowed 2 way communication based on the average or longest range of the two antennas/dishes. Remotetech 2 the comm range is the range of the shortest device. Not sure how your relay showed connected when it was active. Do your lower KEO satellites have dishes pointing to active ship? If so you can lock them onto your deep space relay. At your distances you want a dish in LKO to talk to your relay out past the moons. The relay to to have 2 dishes one to point back to kerbin and one to point at the active ship. So the signal path would be KSC -> Antenna on KEO sat -> KEO Dish -> Deep space Dish 1 -> Deep space Dish 2 -> active craft dish 1 If your KEO comm relay is just antenna's you could launch two dish satellites in polar orbits. They should have antennas to communicate with your local comm relay to KSC. Align them perpendicular and one should always have line of site in kerbin SOI.

CHAPTER 3: INVESTIGATIONS Meanwhile, in Kerbin orbit… KSC: “…Unfortunately, everything you do from now on will be listed as deniable in the event of your, umm… capture.†Buzz: “That’s reassuring.†KSC: “Well, with something as delicate as this, I’m afraid we don’t make the rules. We’re just passing on Admiral Kierson’s message.†Buzz: “Admiral Kierson, eh?†KSC: “You know him?†Buzz: “I spoke to him after we ousted Krumer. Friendly guy, and he certainly knows what he’s doing with regards to the fleet.†KSC: “Sounds about right. Anyway, he wants you to head to the former orbit of the MSW Dresden and pick through the debris there. I know it’s not much of a first assignment, but it needs to be done.†Buzz: “Copy that, control.†Several hours later… Buzz: “Alright, what do we have here… a parachute. Well, that’s interesting.†Buzz manoeuvres the Arrow for a closer look at the drifting debris. Buzz: “Laser burns… hmm. Control, Buzz here, I need some info on the armaments of the Dresden.†KSC: “One moment… ok, the Dresden had 3 medium torpedoes and 4 laser turrets. Why are you asking?†Buzz: “Well, one thing is certain; they aren’t around anymore, but I found one of their emergency parachutes and it’s got laser burns on it. Are you sure Firespitter don’t have any armed vessels?†KSC: “They don’t have laser weapons, and as far as we can tell, they’ve only sent unarmed ships into orbit. What are you getting at, Buzz?†Buzz: “Just a theory, really, but what if that Firespitter signal cause the ship to fire at itself? Like I said, it’s just a thought, so I’ll try to find the black box of the ship to see what really happened. It should be floating around here somewhere.†KSC: “Hmm… well, whatever happened, the Dresden is gone, like you say. Damn… thanks for clarifying, anyway. You may want to head back to the spacedock.†Buzz: “Once I’m finished here, I’ll head off.†Buzz: “Stupid parachute was just cluttering the place up, anyway…†Several more hours later… Buzz: “Kerbin Spacedock, this is Buzz Kerman, requesting docking permission.†Kirfrid: “Copy that, d-docking permission granted. Will you need refuelling?†Buzz: “Affirmative. And is that you, Kirfrid?†Kirfrid: “Yeah, that’s me, Buzz. Interesting posting, this station. Anyway, we can expect f-fuel to be launched up to us in the next few days.†Buzz: “Roger that. By the way, your stammer has improved.†Kirfrid: “I had a couple of s-speech therapy sessions after we got back from Dres. It’s quite nice to be able to talk almost unimpaired.†Buzz: “I’ll bet it is. You’re not alone on that station, are you?†Kirfrid: “I think someone was due to come up at s-some point, but I’m not sure when that was supposed to be.†Buzz: “Well, we can chat then.†Kirfrid: “Indeed.â€Â

Umlux:: Judging from the setup, you have no active link between KerbNet4 and KerbNet3. Check your sats. Are they all programmed to link to active? If so, that would work fine while KerbNet4 is the active, but the moment you fly your probe, they all retargeted it. Since it's pointing at Kerbnet4, it doesn't notice the other three trying to talk to it. This is why I really want an auto-receiver. ==== Anyway, I'm doing some Plug-N-chug over here. I've determined with kerbin that the maximum surface distance to the horizon for any given sat is 942 km with lots of decimal values falling in behind it as you stack zeroes behind the altitude value. So no matter how insanely high you push your sats, the maximum surface area coverage is reached when you get up into the 900s range. The 900 km crossover point occurs at an altitude of 7883 km. At my old selected altitude of 742 km, the coverage radius is out to 664 km, or a little over 2/3 of the hemisphere. Plugging around, I discovered that as far as the distance curve goes, the gain for surface area falls off steeply after about 1000 km altitude. All things considered, since perfect hemispherical coverage is a mathematical impossibility, I want to know what you guys think is a 'threshold' percentage of coverage to use as the standard when furthering calculations. 2/3? 3/4? 5/8? I'll see if I can find an official 'standard' myself.

Hardly a bad day, you got to talk about KSP. I'd expect your teacher to be impressed - not many play around with orbital mechanics for fun.

Coming now is the whole preparation for the parts transfer to Jool and Laythe, in Kerbin orbit. 6 ships, including 4 nuclear tugs and 2 "space shuttles" (cannot land, they are space bound only). I will talk about the fuel cargo and SSTO in separate posts. Shuttle cargo takeoff (it's technically a SSTO but once in space it stays there): Jool base core in orbit: and there, attached to its tug: Moving off to Jool: Other parts (fuel tanks, control modules): This is the articulated boom with the small dock port, for space planes mostly: Docking the hab module for the Jool base:

FROM KERBIN TO THE MUN Part X: The Trouble With Kerbals/Beyond the Green Event Horizon Thingamabob Sort of a Space Odyssey There was a tap at the door. Gene Kerman guiltily tucked his 1/16th complete Kubik’s Rube ™ behind his desk. “Enter,†he said. It had been quiet around the space center of late. Suspiciously quiet. Things had never been better at the Kerbal Space Center. Jeb was certifiably dead; and Bill and Bob were stuck on a highly elliptical interplanetary orbit. Productivity was up, explosions were down, funding was nominal. Gene should have been happy. Instead, though he hated to admit it… he was bored. The knocking at his door continued. “Come in already!†he yelled. Wernher Von Kerman poked his head around the door. “I’m sorry,†he said. “I thought I heard you say ‘Enter’…†“Von Kerman, what a pleasure! I was just thinking of you,†Gene Kerman said. “I’ve been meaning to speak to you about some of the line items on your latest project budget.†“Exactly!†Von Kerman beamed. “Which is vy I want to show you my latest creation. Shall ve take a stroll?†Outside the space center administration building, the Taco Supreme leaned heavily against it’s Clamp-O-Tron ™ moorings, silver duct tape glistening in the morning sun. In front of the launch pad was parked a brand-new shiny red convertible. “This is exactly the budget item I wanted to speak to you about,†said Gene Kerman. “Ah yes,†said Von Kerman happily. “The critical component of my latest project. Simply take one late-model, high performance sports car, a Kamborghini ™ , say…†“And you strap a bunch of boosters to it? Turn it into a time machine?†“No…†said Wernher Von Kerman, getting into the convertible next to a busty, blonde-haired, green-skinned kerbal. “Well, I’m glad ve had this little discussion. See you on ze flip side, ja?†He started the car and peeled out with a roar, leaving Gene Kerman coughing and sputtering in a cloud of high-test unleaded exhaust. “Excuse me, sir?†Gene Kerman wheeled around. There, healthy as lemmings, were the three stooges: Jeb, Bill, and Bob Kerman. Bill Kerman pointed at the Taco Grande, sagging dangerously against its moorings. “I’m concerned about the thrust-to-weight ratio on that thing.†Bob Kerman said “And I’d like to talk about the return-stage delta vees.†Jebediah Kerman said “Green crayons taste the same as red ones.†Oh boy, just like old times. “Where the heck did you guys come from?†Gene was going to have to plug in his wah-wah pedal again. “Well,†said Jeb. “You see,†added Bob. “It’s a long story…†concluded Bill. “Can it,†snapped Gene. “Alright you pimento-stuffed olives, into that command module this instant! I want all three of you strapped in and ready to go. Blast-off is in two minutes. Don’t be late!†“But sir,†said Bill, “Where are we going?†“What’s our destination?†asked Bob. “Can I have another green crayon?†asked Jeb. Gene Kerman regarded the three kerbonauts with loathing. It seemed he’d chosen the wrong week to stop drinking. “Anywhere,†he growled, “but here.†“I hear Eeloo is very nice this time of year,†said Bill, thumbing the SAS to the ‘on’ position. “What’s an eeloo?†asked Jeb, eyeing the big friendly red ‘launch’ button with lust in his heart. “Here we go again,†said Bob with a sigh, clipping the buckle on his harness and adjusting the straps. END. For real. All ashore whats going ashore.

A long time ago, in a galaxy far far away, there was talk about some ' new landing gear'... Did anything ever happen along those lines / ideas ????

So given my frustration with dealing with maneuver nodes, I've been wondering why all the guides for going to Duna or anywhere talk about building your node directly from Kerbin orbit. It seems to me, that it ought to be the same delta-V planning the route directly from Kerbin, as it would doing an escape from Kerbin, then doing the transfer after the escape. My thought process is, no matter what, you have to escape Kerbin. In fact, it doesn't even matter which direction you escape it in. You burn just prograde until you just barely get an escape. If you only burn exactly that far you resulting orbit should be almost identical to Kerbin's orbit around the Sun. From there you plan your transfer, and do another burn using the more convenient solar-level maneuver nodes. My brain tells me this SHOULD be equivalent. There will be some Delta-V negligible losses if I overshoot my Kerbin escape maybe, or escape via Kerbin's retrograde when I need a planetary prograde burn, but the first step of going anywhere is to escape Kerbin, so why not just do that first? One could argue time perhaps. If you work out the phase and such ahead of time, you wouldn't even have to sit around in space waiting for it, but most guides have you sitting in Kerbin orbit anyway. Why does it matter if my Kerbals are sitting in a convenient Solar orbit nearly identical to Kerbin orbit, or sitting in a Kerbin orbit when I start time warping to get the phase? Then again, I figure I must be wrong, and would be awesome to have someone explain why I am, because I'm not hotting the Delta-V targets on this map at all: http://wiki.kerbalspaceprogram.com/w/images/7/73/KerbinDeltaVMap.png My Kerbin escape is around 1000 Delta-V, which is close to the map, but my Duna intercept is another 1000 Delta-V, and the map says that's 100. This is hard for me to test, as I get way too frustrated trying to intercept a planet directly from Kerbin to actually see if there's a difference. Anyway, thanks ahead of time!

See post #42 Page 5 P.S. Just realized it was actually #42! Talk about the ultimate answer : D

All I could see was red. All I could hear was my own heart pumping hot blood. That's why we've been here, this whole time... How many times has he... I looked up into Habitat A where Ferdan was floating with his arms folded... Thinking. Thinking of ways to experiment with us. Thinking of ways to torture us! I grabbed the opening of the docking port and flew through. "Hey Ferdan!" The second he looked at me, I punched him. I punched him again after that. Then again. Then again. Then again. "YOU! SON! OF A *****!" He grunted but said nothing. His eyes closed momentarily, but when they reopened it was the same stare I'd come to expect. The same toying, manipulative, venomous glare... "So, you figured it out." I punched him again. "Go ahead and hit me! It doesn't make any difference. Our work here is bigger than this - the two of us fighting here." I punched him again. He spat out blood. "You think you took me by surprise, didn't you? Now the real test begins!" I didn't punch him. Why didn't I punch him? "Oh, you're confused? I thought you figured out everything! Clearly not..." What... "Let me spell it out for you. Hit yourself." I punched myself in the jaw as hard as I possibly could. "Get it now? Hit yourself again." I wanted to disobey, but my body just went with it. Now I was spitting up blood. "I can see it in your eyes. I own you, and you know I own you... But I don't own your thoughts. Tell me what you're thinking, now." You're insane! "You're insane!" My mouth spoke the words I didn't want to. "Interesting. The conditioning seems to work on bodily functions. I can make you do anything I want you to. I could make you get in the airlock with no space suit. I could make you strangle yourself unconscious. I could make you stop eating and die of starvation. A kerbal with no sense of will, no self preservation, who blindly follows every order he's given. Would this not be the holy grail of any business, or military, or space program? Think of the leaps and bounds we'd make in science if our subjects didn't object! But clearly the conditioning only goes skin deep. More testing is necessary on you, 1-4-1..." "What are you tal-" "-quiet! You thought we selected you for this program because of your experience flying jets for four months? We've used trained monkeys with more qualifications than that! It was all so convenient how you got here, wasn't it? A daddy who beat you because he never could forget his own failures, which drove you into the military to get away... To seek the power you never had. And that brought you right to us... You never had to work hard a day in your life, and you just ended up on the first mission in 15 years? Let me tell you something... We never stopped. We just tested, and built, and continued. We have colonies on every world in this solar system and you never knew about a single one of them because we never wanted you to. Our work here at Halcyon Point has been invaluable in creating willing subjects to fly our rockets. To go on our suicide missions. To go land on other worlds and never come back! You never question. You never wonder. You never fight. And each time you die your memories and experiences are uploaded into the subconscious of the next clone that we make of you, so you're that much better at what you do. THAT is the legacy of Halcyon Point!" You used us... "Bill..." He hit me. "Shut up! Did I say you could talk? Clearly the conditioning isn't perfect! Yes, Bill died up there, 15 years ago. So did Jebediah. I made sure that their bodies went to a useful purpose... They were the first and second subjects, and Bob knew too much... So he became the third. They never came back from the Mun, but their legacies are so much greater now! We could never have expanded to other worlds if we never utilized them to their fullest potential." You... You "kept" us ignorant... "Blind..." "What was that?" He may have been able to control my body, but he could never control the rage I felt in that moment... "You... kept us... blind... You used us..." My hands twitched. "YOU USED US!" I grabbed the wall and hurled myself at him, fists flying in a blind rage. "We're experiments to you! We're Kerbals! We think!" Punch him. "We feel!" Hurt him. "We breath!" Kill him. "You slaughtered us for science... You ****ing monster! This experiment ends today!" "This experiment ends WHEN I SAY IT ENDS!" He shoved off of the bulkhead and piled into me. My head hit the hatchway into the common area. He tumbled past me, pulling me through the doorway with him, hitting me in the chest and stomach. I kicked out for him, but struck a nearby supply bag. DVDs and snacks went flying everywhere. "What do you think is going to happen here!? You're just going to beat me until I die? Until you win? I can kill you with a word!" "Then why don't you!?" "MechJeb!" "Awaiting orders." "Terminate-" "-Halcyon Point!" I shouted. "What!? No. Countermand that order!" "Terminate Halcyon Point!" I shouted again. "Initiating..." "MechJeb! Do not listen to that order. Countermand!" We locked stares. "You gave me access to MechJeb's orders. I remember because you used me to kill Dandun... Now I'm going to use it to end this whole messed up enterprise. You have hubris old man, and in your hubris you have failed." "Anything you say, I will countermand... And anything I say, you will countermand... It looks like we're at a stalemate." "Not exactly..." MechJeb crackled on over the intercom "Self destruct sequence activated. Locking voice command protocols. Initiating self destruct in 60. 59. 58. 57-" "****... What have you done!? How!?" "Look behind you..." He did... Ferdred met his gaze. Eyes locked, he smiled a knowing smile then closed his eyes. "Your 'cognative playback' killed him, but it never defeated him..." "40. 39. 38. 37-"

All this talk of structural stability makes me think Harvestr ought to discuss consider making Ferram's Kerbal Joint Reinforcement part of the stock game. "Moar struts!" is fine a punchline to a joke but the stock attachment physics is seriously wonkly. KJR makes things MUCH better, and by eliminating needless struts it helps keeps part-counts down from many craft.

Uh guys... Couldn't you just code the game to run a check to see if the ship is capable of transmitting (which is already does on command), and then code the end screen to award a 'recovery of data from a ship crashed on X' the same way it handles determination whether you recover or scrap a vessel? To prevent it happening for landers, it only works on a 'catastrophic failure!' screen. I mean, the game is already doing everything it needs for this to work. The different aspects just need to talk to one another. As for seismometers and stuff. Yeah, that's one thing that they do. Though I think it's much more common to send the impactor, and then watch the resulting plume/crater with spectrometers and telescopes and such. Since we don't HAVE those... I think it's a fair abstraction to assume the kerbals have their big lenses trained on your kaboom.

Ok, I've created and tested some rebalance files for ECLSS: First up, assumptions and usage rates: O2 requirements per 24 hours: 550 liters (real world value for an average Human) CO2 production per 24 hours: 495 liters (real world value for an average Human) O2 and CO2 storage attributes (based on real world values) http://sdrv.ms/1a1Sn2p Conversion of CO2 to O2 using the reprocessor: I have used the chemical equation 2CO2 --> 2C0 + O2 This is a real world reaction so it seems a good base. It does mean that the reprocessor is only 50% efficient and you end up with waste Carbon Monoxide. I'll talk about how to change this value below. Adjusting the parts: This mod halves the scale of the ECLSS parts, so that the large tanks and reprocessor are now 1.25m parts and the single tanks are smaller. These new size parts have a storage capacity more in line with real world values. Then I have added O2 and CO2 storage to all manned command pods, each has enough for either 1 day or 3 days supply (assuming fully crewed pods. You can select how many days by using the appropriate file (see below) Using the Mod First up install ECLSS Next download the rebalance files here http://tinyurl.com/kaxdetu Unzip the file! In your KSP folder open GameData, LifeSupport and delete the two .cfg files Then copy in the LifeSupport.cfg from the downloaded zip file Finally select one of the other .cfg files from the downloaded zip file and copy this to the GameData,LifeSupport folder. The 2 files allow you to select how much O2 is present on command pods, either a 1 day supply or a 3 day supply. Note that these modulemanager files will add ECLSS functionality to any manned command pods (stock and mods) based on crew capacity. More information and installation video avalalble at http://www.kingtiger.co.uk/kingtiger/wordpress/2014/01/02/mod-eclss-rebalancer/ Finally, Licence information: This mod is released under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported licence. http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/ Feel free to share and modify the files, but please give credit to the author of this mod and to the authors of any mods referenced in this one.

I created a forum a while back entitled "The Shuttle Discussion forum" or something close to that. I intended for it to be a place where people could go to post their craft, talk about shuttles, and get help. Is this the type of forum the OP intended to create? My post was locked . My shuttles are not stock though, so I won't post (unless you change the title designation).

There's a collider issue with the non-vac SRB nozzle. I need to talk to Tiberion about it, but for now, use clamps to make sure none of the sea-level nozzles start in contact with the ground. Or put a decoupler under them, that works too.

"How is this possible?" Demanded Dandun of the disembodied voices streaming through the intercom. He wouldn't get any answers there. "It's no use Dan. That intercom only goes one way... Ferdan. Why don't you tell us what's going on?" "What makes you think I know anything about-" "-Cut the crap, Ferd. It's written on your face, the way you talk down to us, the way you smirk when we squirm. You knew this wasn't just a test flight. You were the fourth man, weren't you?" "Yes. You don't get any points for that one Chadmore. The information surrounding my induction into the program was declassified years ago. I just prefer to keep it under wraps." "Keep what under wraps? Who is this guy, Chad?" "Go ahead and tell him." "15 years ago - The last Mun mission before the suspension of all operations. Bill, Bob, and Jebediah - our pilots today - were sent out on a mission that ran into some problems. Some say it was sabotage, others say it was simple oversight. One way or another, the ascent stage of the lander failed to ignite its engine. It turns out the fuel lines connecting the tanks to the engine were severed, i.e. intentionally." Dandun looked confused. "How do you know about this? You must've been five when this was happening!" "It wasn't classified. Everybody in the world knew about this at the time, but the information was surpressed over the years that followed. Accounts of what happened became next to impossible to find in any of the textbooks and schools never taught about it in any of their history courses. Eventually it was like the mission never happened." "Okay... But how do you know? We're of an age, you and I. I should know this too." There were some bad memories left untapped. I suppose there wasn't really much use in hiding it, but then again Dan didn't need to know everything, did he? "My father was involved in the design of that spacecraft. He never forgot what happened, and never let it go. His responsibility was the lander, and when something goes wrong with your baby you never forget it... Not ever... No matter what the textbooks say." Ferdan smiled. "Tell them what happened next." "Accounts vary. The most popular version of the story is that Bob, who was in the command module at the time returned from Kerbin with a ship containing a state of the art autopilot system. "Mechanical Jebediah" they called it. From the Command Module, Bob was able to remotely oversee the landing and take over if anything went wrong. Nothing did. The lander touched down, Bill and Jebediah came back home, and were celebrated as heroes one final time. Then, the space program ended and we haven't been beyond LKO in the last ten years, yadda yadda yadda." "Okay, so what does Ferdan have to do with any of this?" "There was a... contingency... In case either Jebediah or Bill failed to return from the mission. Some extra room was carved out in the command module for a fourth passenger. One that nobody knew about... He..." "I was a stand in. In case one of them didn't come back. But they did come back, so Munstak Industries just wrote up an article explaining my role as the "mission contingency planner" to shut up the conspiracy theorists, and released it. Declassifying the whole story. What I want to know is how you figured me out." Ferdan and I locked stares. We each knew what the other was thinking, but how much could I say? In space, nobody could protect me from him. "It was obvious that you've been on missions before. Honestly could've been anyone. Any pilot from any of the missions KSC had ever run... But it takes a certain kind of kerbal to know the unknowable. Nobody could completely mask your utter lack of surprise upon seeing a completed space station - one that Munstak must have been keeping secret for years... I knew beyond the shadow of a doubt after that... You knew about this station. You were added to the crew to oversee this mission, to some greater purpose. But what is that purpose? Why don't you tell us?" Nobody said a word for what felt like hours. You could cut the tension in the room with a knife, and I knew from the amused look in Ferdan's eye that I had just stepped into a web of lies. Where did these threads all lead? Did they end with him? Why were we here, at a station nobody knew about, on a routine mission that appeared to all the world to be a simple flight test of a new spacecraft? I knew I would get no answers from asking questions, so I decided then and there that it would be for the best if I just let events unfold. "This is Jebediah Kerman speaking. We have capture and hard dock. Stand by for seal pressurization, and opening of the hatch!"

Well for one thing, somebody else quoted Steven Hawking's book on it, and I don't think he's one to talk out of his arse. Secondly, I'm sure "black hole" is an English euphemism if you try hard enough, as (for example) I've heard tales of what happens if you Google "black body curve" without SafeSearch on.