Search the Community

Why you think that the size of the LV-N must to be fixed? In the reality they can came of many sizes. But never mind, I dont have any trouble to not have procedural engines or pods. But is quite illogical not to have them in the other parts. But is not like that! You think that when I talk about procedural parts I am saying "keep the old tanks and lets have another part that is procedural?" NO! You remove all the previous tanks and you remplace them with 3 tanks parts that are procedural like I explain in the first post (please read). And you can have extra tree advances that it will let you to choose other kind of materials or parameters like (made for cryogenic fuel) when you are setting your tank, and the cost will calculate depending the size, materials, fuel that you choose.But if is better to some had 100 tanks parts just to build the same thing with extra loading time, and all other cons, I cant see the logic. Again, if you have procedural parts then you dont have regular tanks, is a way to improve the game experience. We are talking of tank sizes! it does nothing to do with technology tree or parts unlocks. Damm my english must be very bad to read always the same misinterpretations. I dont like stretchy tanks, I already explain why in the first post, the idea of get any size with one part is good, but it needs keep relation with the standard sizes and scales. And the game will still be modular even with procedural parts, even with procedural wings you need use many procedural wings to achieve the shape that you want. But you reduce the count parts and is more real at the same time. There is the LEGO mod for those who loves the toy aspect. You think that because you still can not figure out the correct way to incorporate other parts, becoz you see only a good example of procedural parts. That is a good point. But it can be solve it of different ways. What you mean? --------------------------------------------------- Another benefic of procedural tanks it will be noticed with the next fix to the aerodynamics drag system. Rockets with 10 orange tanks at side each other will not work very good. The solution is bigger tanks diameters like the ones used in novapunch mod (3.5 and 5) Also that will brings more similarity with the real rockets. About how the engine deals with bigger parts like the 5d tanks, I dont find any problem that can not be fixed with 2 or 3 struts, if you need to put the same amount of fuel with oranges tanks you will need more struts than that.

False the user below me thinks that the user above me likes all the talk of bronies

There are numerous "errors" in the movie, but some of them, like the large jetpack delta v, can be explained as "better jetpack" or they're too unimportant to complain about. As a guy that is really strict with these things, stuff like exaggerated jetpack delta v didn't bother me at all. You really have to struggle to see all that. It's not obvious at all. I'm home now, after driving across the country so I can now write a short review for people here. I still won't spoil anything and I recmmend others they don't do it at least a week in advance. After that, use "spoilers alert" in bold red to warn others. This is truly a movie that can be heavily spoiled, unlike stupid blockbusters that have obvious scenario. This doesn't have, and it really surprised me with the plot. But let's talk about the special effects. The "Hollywood science" remark does not hold water because this is one of the most scientifically accurate movies ever made in the entire history of movies. The motion of the characters and the objects is almost flawless and only in rare occasions you can see it's artificial if you pay close attention and understand some things about CGI. People responsible for this movie respected the Newton's laws and a significant portion of the movie is based on the characters' struggle to move around. It's not boring at all and it really lets you care for them because it's often brutal. People are getting hurt and by all means, PG-13 is a justified mark. Don't bring kids to the cinema. There are gore elements. 3D is, as I've said, of extreme quality. Nothing is forced as in that hyped Avatar. There is no ghosting, and sometimes you think the debris is going to hit you in the face. That, plus few instances of tools floating around, are the most intense 3D moments and that's the way it should be. 3D is a tool, not a purpose. I could compare the suspense with the graph of global warming. It goes up and down, up and down, but overall, it's going up. The characters are constantly in a struggle for survival with certain pauses, but it only gets worse. Most people would cry in despair if they can't get home. The acting is really amazing and I think Bullock should get an Oscar for this. She managed to take a character from the script and turn it into a real, simple woman who is just loosing it as she gradually goes to a kind of psychosis because of the huge stress involved. Clooney was too Hollywood, but maybe it's because his persona is stuck with such image IRL. I'm not sure if this was his intention, but I'd say he really could've done this with less "cool". The situation the characters are in is grave danger. It's death coming through the door, and he's all super rational and shows no fear even after his "jetpack" is empty. That is not what would happen with real people, but ok, it's not a big deal. Sometimes his behaviour is like a slight comic relief which adds a new hill in the whole rollercoaster. One thing that was really impossible are all the stars in the sky. Even when the Sun is in view (and it's a bit yellow, which is not the actual case because it's white), you can see lots of stars. I think Cuarón wanted to leave the stars in order to give the audience a sense of motion. We can't experience tumbling, so if we see only black sky, it's not a big deal. With stars, it can give you a sense of disorientation, just like dr. Stone experiences. The sounds are almost entirely physically accurate. No bull**** from the trailers. Honestly, you don't hear anything but them talking, and occasional dull thump, which is sound transmitted through the suit when they impact the station. This alone lifts Gravity towards the peak where Odyssey 2001 is at. Oh, and the music. You hear the soundtrack which purpose is to freak you out. So there is lots of silence, but also lots of loud and powerful sound to kick your ears in the nuts. The enormous hate towards Bullock in youtube comments is completely unjustified. The whole movie is not "her screaming and gasping". Her character is not well developed as in usual Hollywood movies only because there are not much opportunities for that to happen, but when they occur, we see that she is a very sad person. Indeed, the movie is a metaphor for her transformation. It's simply a masterpiece. I must say that the script is highly exaggerated in the terms of the actual danger in orbit. Kessler syndrome is blow out of every proportion because it happens in a very short time, and its efficiency is absolutely fantastic. In reality, it would take a considerable amount of time before one orbit is ruined. If by any means you have access to IMAX 3D and enough money, go. This movie will enter history and try to make yourself a part of it. I've spent quite a bit of money to to this, and I don't regret it at all. In fact, I'm going to see it again in a regular 3D cinema because it's just so awesome. After me and my buddy went home, I got to play KSP on his awesome computer. All details on high, and there was no visible loss of framerate. I've never seen Kerbin looking so lovely before. So I had a great time yesterday. I will write a review using this post, probably at imdb.com.

I'm still quite puzzled by this, because he made the request and I agreed both publicly and privately to abide by his request. I still maintain I will respect his request, and have not deviated from this statement. I also statde that with certain licenses, the community (and not just myself) can clearly see what they have a right to do. If you don't like people doing things with your stuff, put on a more restrictive license. The flipside of the coin you presented above is that a game developer can do what EA did when Sims 2/3 modders were throwing lawyer letters at each other. If you want to research their new EULA wording, feel free. These licenses are useless in granting rights if these rights are unable to be exercised. "But I have freedom of speech!" -> "Except if you want to talk." If anyone cares to start a thread on the appropriate forum, I'll respond better there.

false ? (does mechjeb count?) the user below likes all the talk of bronies

False, i see what you did there the user below me is annoyed by all this talk of bronies.

There is no reason to really push for the Steam Controller to be specifically supported. At least past getting controllers in general to be supported. Once things like joysticks work, odds are the steam thing will also work. Also, the current steam controller's image is suggesting of massive fail. It has rather few buttons, and they also are pushed inwards towards the center. Two of them require taking your "primary stick finger" off its stick to hit them (most controllers concentrate these buttons on one side so you can keep one thumb on a stick for the majority of time). It looks like it might work well for simple platformers. Which you do see a decent number of on Steam. But anything requiring more then 2-3 different button's worth of action while simultaneously moving will be problematic. Its pretty much doomed to be "not as good as grabbing a USB-enabled Xbox pad" unless they make some changes to the button layout. And I probably wouldn't want to do KSP on an Xbox pad either, to be honest. There are too many things to worry about with the enabling and disabling of so many things. I would probably prefer a traditional joystick as far as inputs go, because I can use the other hand to STILL USE THE KEYBOARD. Which honestly is quite important for a simulator type game. Edit: You want evidence of the limitations the current steam design has? Look at the proposed bindings for Portal they have shown. The push-to-talk button requires you to STOP MOVING. Which is ok since its a first person puzzle game, but if this were a first person shooter like that game engine is usually used on, I would not want to have to stop moving just to talk. If there is something that needs talking about, odds are I would need to MOVE MOVE MOVE! Or get shot to pieces. The best thing about the controller is the basic shape (I'm interested in the up-curving handle, to be honest), and the fact that it finally brings an underside button to the table again for the first time I can think of since the Nintendo 64's oddly shaped starship of a controller. Why no one else has tried putting a proper "squeeze" mechanic into a controller for the fingers furthest from the thumb is beyond me.

One of the things that I feel SQUAD should be focusing more on is development and refinement of gameplay. I know that Harv came out a few updates ago to talk about "development asymptotes", using them as reason to put gameplay development on the backburner while Career mode is worked on. But while Career mode is supposedly being worked on, KSP's gameplay has become very stale for me. I have come to think that Squad moved from gameplay development before it was really finished. This is illustrated by the modding situation that has developed around KSP for me. Every time the game is updated, I have to spend time updating and reinstalling mods that I use to make the game playable for me. They're not parts packs, they're plugins that fix some aspects of KSP that I believe are broken/could be improved. Some mods, like the Docking HUD and Navball Enhancer, should be stock. There is absolutely no reason why these mods couldn't be integrated into the base game, and they help improve some of the more bare-bones aspects of KSP. Another mod that I believe should be made stock, or at least certain parts of it, is Ferram Aerospace. It addresses some of the basic problems with stock drag, like how leaving the ends of your rocket flat, without nosecones, is more efficient than rounding them off aerodynamically; like how a cylindrical stack of six fuel tanks has the drag of six fuel tanks rather than the drag of just one, i.e. parts at the front of your craft don't block the drag of parts directly behind them; like how spacecraft come screaming in on re-entry at thousands of m/s, only to suddenly stop at 7,000 meters because the atmosphere suddenly turns to maple syrup. There are additional problems with the physics system, like how little stiffness there is between connections. While it may be funny to have your rocket jiggle back and forth like a pe-piece of spaghetti it becomes much more frustrating when your aircraft keeps rolling to the left because of a bizarre bug involving connection strength and the order you laid your parts down! While there are many, many more problems I could whine about, I suspect most people skipped the wall of text above. So my basic gripe is this: SQUAD moved on from Gameplay development to work on Career mode, which I think is a bad move because; 1, There are many more basic bugs to fix involving basic gameplay elements, as well as multiple small gameplay improvements (*cough* DOCKING HUD *cough*), that could drastically improve the quality of the game; and 2, because Career mode elements appear to be wasting massive amounts of Squad's time and money while the gameplay withers in Career Mode's shadow. P.S: What happened to IVA? I was really excited when it came out in .15, but right now it's one of the most under utilized features of the game. Not only do a few cockpits still lack IVA, but it has no other purpose but to provide a cool first-person view. It needs more functionality, e.g. more instruments, more things to click that do cool stuff, cameras that you can place on your craft that can provide a live view of the cool stuff happening, etc, etc. Also, what happened to ClairaLyrae? She was apparently hired a few updates back, but has never appeared in any KSP Weekly's, dev blog updates, random posts, etc. and is always listed as "developer on leave"? I was excited at seeing some of her parts pack make it in but all we've gotten are the cylindrical tanks and a few adapters...

THSS I love but I havn't been using it's parts lately so thought I might leave it out to save RAM, same goes for IR just so rarely use it, LLL doesn't fit the look I'm aiming for. But anyways this turned into a hijack I apologize, lets talk about KASPAR

Ekranoplans aren't boats, they're flying machines. They rely on 2 aerodynamic effects not present I KSP (ground effect and upper surface-blowing) to enable their stub wings to lift their large bodies up into the air. So, I'd think Ferram (maker of FAR) would be the guy to talk to about Ekranoplans . In the meantime, however, you can make something that you can pretend is an Ekranoplan. It's really a boat because it's always on the water, never flying, but it LOOKS somewhat like an Ekranoplan. Make a seaplane using the Firespitter pontoons but give it wings too small to actually fly. Such a thing can scoot across the water and be controllable at up to about 125m/s, but any faster and the pontoons fail. Like this:

Honor the history of the Soviet space, but by the way we talk about the space race, but not to this day: the space race of the USSR - USA 1-0, Lunar race of the USSR - USA 1:1 P.S. People will still be landing on other celestial bodies, but the first voice heard by the universe, Russian.

No, actual politics talk is still not acceptable. I'm honestly not sure why the system got to be this way. Somehow I don't think the founding fathers intended for it to be distorted in the manner it has, and we had plenty of warning not to trust a party system in politics- despite immeadiately forming them after George Washington.

Is it ok to talk politics now? I've got a rant all lined up and ready to go. As far as the money is concerned, I heard a little known but very bright talk show host named Rolleye James explain it in terms that I could understand. Many of the "baby boomer" generation are now retired. She said our financial problems come down to demographics. There are more people drawing out of the system than there are paying in. It's broken and there are no easy solutions. That's why the politicians keep putting it off with budget extensions instead of actual budgets, leading to the problems we are seeing now.

Wait. You have a dual core 1.6Ghz that can talk to people and answer your phone? Wow!

Well I'm back(holds for applause, realizes no one remembers him) and better than ever... well not really "better", but I am finally converting some of my old models from the grand old days of .12 and my Junk Parts Pack to the newest version, along with a few other surprises. Progress From the Original Pack: Brass Cannon-Done Monolith TMA1-Done, but I might shrink it down a bit, the conversion makes me have to rescale everything manually in Unity but that's a simple task. Warp Nacelles; SAS Cap, Tank and Engine-Haven't started the conversion process yet. Might rework the textures, also yay no more need for 4 different rotations of them. Big Effin Engine-Still undecided if it's even needed after the intro of the mainsail but if anyone remembers it and wants that horrible looking thing I might add it in, although I might rework it completely if my skills improve at all from this exercise in 3d. New Models: Tardis Exterior: 90% finished, thinking of adding modeled on doorhandles and making some small texture tweaks, especially the window textures. Interior: completely unfinished in every possible way besides having a mockup of it ingame. Help with it would be nice, get you an invisible cookie and many thanks in the readme. Moskit Cruise Missile - I have a model sitting around but I don't think I could do the thing justice texture wise. Still going to give it a shot though. I made it after seeing a thread long ago. REPCONN SERIES: As per an old request thread from 2012? Yes I take requests if I like them enough to put in the extra time and if I think it's something my limited modeling and texturing skills am capable of pulling off in a half decent manner. V29"the red one" Tank: Done but texture might get an upgrade, also might tweak the mesh a bit after playing New Vegas again. Main Engine: Same deal as tank. Fin: I'm redoing the model from my old YouTube videos to more closely match the in game one. R77"the blu one" Nosecone: Mockedup Tank: Finished Engine: Finished Fin: Mockedup Z43"the green one" Still in the early modeling stages, not really sure how I'm getting this puppy working in game due to it's weird design. Pictures to come when I get a bit of time to make the thing a bit cleaner. Uv and texture will come when I decide how to split it up. The One Those Crazy Ghouls Flew-no seriously I have no clue the designation number for it Still in extremely early modeling stages I just have a simple mockup until I get better pics and a bit more of the backstory, so I need to run a char through the beginning of NV again since I've blasted them off in every other savefile I have. Unless of course there's a nice fallout-wiki page on it somewhere since the REPCONN HQ doesn't talk a lot about it in the displays. So thats it so far, I'm not planning any releases until I at least get the REPCONN stuff in a semi-working and stable state. Don't expect a speedy update process I get frustrated at unity sometimes and get distracted by shiny objects easily. I'm also working on a series of YouTube video updates, be warned though the first 2 videos were made during a break from the internet but I decided to just upload them anyways instead of making new ones because I am the ultimate lazy modder/youtuber, thus the series and thread name. Hopefully my weird nature plus me making videos at 2am and having gigglefits at times from the sheer weirdness my parts cause in KSP will make people interested in it. Finally wondering if anyone has experience with off balance srbs/if I need to re-center certain models, some of them are as stable as ever and others like to buck like a wild bull. VaccerTech, we will rise again. Well I will rise again, no longer as junk parts but makers of stuff I want and maybe you do too. Questions welcome, answers uncommon. If anyone's wondering VaccerTime is comparable to ValveTime.

Long-term Laythe - Part 15 Vall Venture - Part 2 I decided to clear out all of the ships I have transferring in Kerbol orbit...just so I can get on with things. Yes, I know that my kerbals on Laythe and elsewhere should really be doing all sorts of things in the meanwhile...but let's assume they've all discovered a cool new game called Human Space Program that they've be spending all their time playing. Or something. So, after sending off the gigantic lag ships (the BirdDogs and the Vall Expedition on their Triple Tugs), the next thing that came up in Kerbal Alam Clock was Laythe Base 2 heading into the Jool system. I pulled it up and found... that it was stillperfectly targeted to a Jool aerocapture from the midcourse maneuver I had done many weeks ago (my time). So I just had to carefully sneak it across the Sphere of Influence boundary at 1x speed, and let it fall in toward Jool. Below we see it passing near Laythe on its way in. Below we see the aerocapture at Jool, burning through the atmosphere at about 114 kilometers altitude. The Base does have a heatshield to protect it...and apparently the tugs are still made of some amazingly heat resistent material at this point in time, since the ship came through just fine. I quickly got an encounter with Laythe (after a relatively small targeting maneuver) and below we see the aerocapture of the ship over the night side of Laythe. I used the Tug to raise the periapsis a couple times, allowing for two aerobraking passes to lower the ship's orbit from the initial eccentric orbit. Once in its final Laythe orbit of 80 to 90 kilometers, the Tug's main tank was over 63% full. Later, I'll take that fuel and drop most of it off at Laythe Space Station. I separated the Tug and targeted Base 2 into the Fido Bay area of Dansen Island, a few kilometers north of the current Laythe base site. Deorbiting was done by four 24-77 engines fed by two FL-T200 tanks mounted on top of the heat shield. Base 2 comes burning in towards Fido Bay... The heat shield is dropped, and then it was just a matter of waiting for the right moment to pop the chutes. First came the two drogue chutes. The landing gear were also deployed at this time. The landing gear are needed because otherwise the heavy weight of the base would blow the tires upon landing (I suppose that would not really matter here because I have kerbals on site to fix the wheels). After the drogue chutes fully open, the eight main chutes are popped out in reefed condition. After the mains open fully at 500 meters AGL, the Base descends at about 7 m/s and touches down safely. Kurt and Nelemy hop in the Fido over at Laythe Base 1 and drive over to check out the new Base. As you can see, the Base has three 4-kerbal Hitchhiker pods, one to serve as bunkhouse, one in the center to serve as the dayroom work area, and the other with more laboratory and improved life-support equipment. On top is a 2-kerbal control pod as the operations center. The modules are connected with "tunnels" that I envision allowing the kerbals to access the different modules without having to suit up. You'll notice that there are eight roundified RCS tanks on the base, but no RCS quads... those represent tanks for various consumables. The base has eight RTGs for power, but also has some solar panels that can be delpoyed if they are running experiments or recycling equipment that requires more power during the daytime. Currently, a lot of the empty space in the modules is filled with boxes of supplies, of course. Nelemy: "Dude! They have kinds of snacks I've never seen before!" Kurt: "Is that always the first thing you check? But it's nice to know that the big brains back on Kerbin continue to advance snack technology. Just don't eat any right now...we have to move the base." Nelemy: "Mmmpfh?" A couple kilometers off the the east, much of the heat shield has crashed down intact. I'll let the boys build something out of those parts later...I'll assuming they have some cutting/welding torches. (Well...*I'll* see what I can build out of those parts in the VAB and teleport it over to them.) Kurt got into the control cabin and retracted the landing gear, and started driving Base 2 around (no doubt with helpful guidance information from Nelemy following in the Fido). I didn't really mean for Base 2 to be a fully-mobile exploration base... I only included the wheels so it could lumber along and be moved slowly to new positions if needed. But it turned out that it could easily travel along at up to 20 m/s on the relatively smooth terrain of the Laythe Base area. Thompbles originally wanted the new base to be located north of the current base, but there was a low ridge separating that location from the current base, so he had Kurt drive the base southeast to see how it looked over there. They wanted the new base to be located at least 2.3 km from the current base to prevent lag...er, I mean, to be sure it was located on higher ground in case of any future tsunamis. But the land to the east seemed a bit steep, so Thompbles had Kurt drive it over to the south to see if it looked good there. But the elevations there were not great, so Thompbles had Kurt move it back to the east. Kurt: "Will you make up your mind?! You're like a little old lady having me drag her couch all around the room looking for the perfect spot." Thompbles: "It's almost perfect now. Just a bit further east and there's a small shelf in the hillside so it can sit more level. Does the tilt of the base look good to you, Nelemy?" Nelemy: "Mmmpfh?" Thompbles: "I'll see if I can drag Aldner away from playing HSP, and we'll both come over in the wobbly rover to help you unload supplies." Below is the final location for the Laythe Base 2 module, overlooking the current base site closer to the bay, and located over 150 meters above sea level. The base was oriented so that the operations center window has a nice view of Jool on the eastern horizon, and the landing legs were extended for extra stability. After this, Alarm Clock reminded me that I needed to take care of the plane shift maneuvers for the BirdDogs and, one day later, the Vall Expedition. These burns required 135 m/s and 142 m/s of delta-V. I was able to target the BirdDogs in toward a 114 km periapsis at Jool, but the targeting of the Vall ship was encountering Tylo, so I had to settle for an apoapsis further out for now (I'll fix that closer in). After these maneuvers, the Triple Tugs of the BirdDogs had 7% of the fuel left in their rear tanks (the tanks of the triple tug adapter were dry...and I had to move fuel back into the central tanks of the GasStations where it had been sucked out -- I really wish ships would remember when you've set parts of them to NOT crossfeed fuel). The Triple Tugs of the Vall Expedition had only 2% of the fuel left in their rear tanks. This was fine -- these tanks are often used up in the boost out of Kerbin orbit... but the ships did start out with the additional fuel in the tanks of the triple tug adapters. The next thing to take care of was the Secondary Base + Fido payload that was also heading in toward the Jool system. This payload consists of another Laythe base that is like the original, along with a slightly more compact version of the Fido rover. The intention is to drop this somewhere on Laythe as an alternate base that kerbals can explore from. The Secondary Base's trajectory to Jool was such that the descending node of the trajectory relative to Jool's orbit occured immediately before entering into Jool's SOI. Back when I launched this, this arrangement seemed like a good thing because it meant that the plane shift burn could be done as far from the sun as possible. But, it turned out not to be as good as I'd hoped, since this also delayed my fine targeting burn until the ship was quite close to Jool, so that took much more fuel than normal. Ah, well, the Tug had plenty of fuel. Below, we see me targeting the incoming ship using Conic Draw Mode 0 (which is easily set on the fly using the Improved Maneuver Nodes mod that I love). This lets me tweak the maneuver node (off in the distance there) while I'm focused in close on the Jool system to see exactly what the trajectory looks like close to Jool. The only problem I have with the process is that shifting the focus to Jool is not easy when you have the Jool system full of dozens of ships and probes -- trying to double-click on Jool to focus on it often leads to selecting a spacecraft instead. It would be nice if the little pop-up menu that appears when you click on Jool ALSO had the choice "Focus on Jool". And, while we are mentioning dirt-simple fixes to the KSP interface, how about adding a "Go to Tracking Station" button to the menu that comes up when you press ESC? It's annoying to have to "Go toSpace Center" and wait a long time for that view to load just so I can click on the Tracking Station. AND, while we are at it, it would be nice if they changed the direction the planets rotate around in the "wait" icon in the bottom-right... it looks like it hould go the other way. What? Quit complaining and get on with it? OK, OK. As I was targeting the aerocapture at Jool, Laythe kept getting in the way. OK, have it your own way... I'll send the ship in for a direct aerocapture at Laythe. Normally I avoid doing a direct-to-Laythe aerocapture because it seems more unrealistic to try to burn off all that interplanetary speed screeching to a halt in a short span of Laythe's atmosphere. I expect that when reentry heat and damge are added, even doing the Jool/Laythe two-step my be too hot to handle. We'll probably have to do some engine breaking, then skim high up through Jool's atmosphere, slowing down just enough to get captured in a huge orbit...then perform a couple more aerobrakings through Jool's atmosphere to lower our orbit. What a pain. Is that how you Dangerous Reentry guys have to get to Jool? Below: Plotting the small burn needed to ensure a prograde near-equatorial orbit for the secondary base...with wonderful conic draw mode 0, of course. Below, the ship plunges headlong toward Laythe. The planets almost look like a Mastercard logo. "Don't carry cash to the Jool system... take Mastercard! Much more mass-efficient." I forgot to note the entry speed, but here we are part-way through the aerocapture flames. The ship is tearing through the atmosphere 20 clicks directly over Laythe Base. There must have been a hell of a sonic boom and light show for the boys to watch. Safe in an elliptical Laythe orbit! Also on board this ship are two more comsats, nestled under the front and rear of the rover. Below, we see the first of the comsats being popped out. Then the other comsat was popped out, and the antennas and solar panels were deployed. The secondary base will remain in the high elliptical orbit for now until I decide where to drop it (so that any plane-shift needed will be cheaper). The comsats were manueuvered up into approximately 10000 km cicular orbits. Hopefully now it's less likely that all of them won't all be bunched up on the same side of the planet when we need them. Yes, yes, I could try to tweak them all into perfect orbits that will keep them nicely spaced...but that's not my particular idea of fun. So I'll just throw more satellites at the problem. Next up, Kerbal Alarm Clock started nagging me about Laythe Tug 6 that was returning to Kerbin. My burn sending this tug out of the Jool system had been sub-optimal, but a relatively small midcourse burn set it up nicely for a Kerbin intercept, and I did some final targeting to do an aerocapture pass at 29.5 km. Below, the white-hot goodness of compressed palsma provides a light show over Kerbin. The aerocapture resulted in an elliptical orbit with an apoapsis of 552 km. I then rasied the periapsis a bit, did an aerobraking pass, and raised the periapsis again, and made a final aerobraking pass, then raised the periapsis out of the atmosphere with the Tug in moderatly low orbit, ready for refueling and re-use. But the design became obsolete in the time it took the Tug to travel to Jool and back. All those probe cores were there to provide extra torque...but now the old SAS unit provides plenty of torque, and all those probe cores are just a huge drain on electricity. Maybe I'll just deorbit some of these old tugs (ones that have parachutes on the nukes, anyway), and use the parts for upgraded tugs. And now for the main event: The Vall Expedition and replacement BirdDogs are heading into the Jool system. Even though the BirdDogs were boosted away from Kerbin first, the Vall Expedition is the first to arrive at Jool's sphere of influence, four days ahead of the BirdDogs. The small high gain antennas on the ships are designed to communicate with the huge high-transmission-power, high-reception-sensitivity antennas at KSC, but once the ships get close enough together, they can start communicating with each other. Hellou: "*static*...calling Laythe Base. Vall Expedition calling Laythe Base." Kurt: "This is Laythe Base. I read you Vall Expedition. This is Kurt Kerman speaking." Hellou: "Vall ex... Oh! Hello, Kurt! You're coming in fine, too. We have crossed into the Jool system." Kurt: "Oh, wow. It's great to talk to somebody without a couple minutes of light-speed delay. Welcome to Jool, the best little outpost this side of Duna." Hellou: "Thank you. Hold on, and I'll get Emilynn.. *crackle* Emi...I've got Kurt Kerman on the line." Emilynn: "Hey there, Jaymak! How are all you pudknockers on Laythe doing?" Kurt: "Now, Hawk, I told you before that it's impolite to call your fellow pilots 'pudknockers'." Emilynn: "Hey, I know pudknockers when I see pudknockers. Is your Grand Poobah available?" Kurt: "Hang on, Hawk. I'll get him." Emilynn: "Thankie, Jaymak." Thombles: "Commander Emilynn, this is Thompbles. Welcome to the Jool system. Is there anything we can do for you?" Emilynn: "No, sir....just checking in as required. All is well here. I had to jink a bit wide of Tylo on the way in, so I need to do a burn now to fine tune my periapsis at Jool." Thompbles: "OK, commander, I'll leave you to it. If you want to send your parameters to Kurt, we can do some orbital sims here to double check the trajectories." Emilynn: "Thankie. Always good to have backup. Put him back on the line." In the plot below, we see Laythe in the lower right, Vall in the center, and Tylo on the left. The things orbiting between Laythe and Vall are Tugs L7 and L8 in parking orbits around Jool waiting to be sent back to Kerbin. Below, the Vall Expedition ship falls in toward Jool. Laggy as ever. Below, the aerodynamic heating affects begin to appear. I mentioned that the flimsy connections between the triple tugs were sufficient because the forces were the same on all three parts under thrust. But, during aerocapture, the different forces acting on the separate parts made them wiggle around a fair amount...and wobble around a LOT if I tried to use physical time warp. So, the laggy ride through Jool's atmosphere had to be done at 1x and took a loooooong time. Hellou: "Em-Emi? Is the ship-p sup-posed to sh-ake so much?" Emilynn: "Not a problem, Chickadee! It's only a problem if it suddenly quits shaking, because that would be when it breaks apart!" Hellou: "Oh, gr-reat. I fell much bet-ter now." The Vall Ex. ship camee through at a periapsis of 116.9 km, and that left its apoapsis right on Vall's orbit. A tiny bit higher periapsis might have been better, giving a apoapsis a little ways out beyond Vall so the ship could loiter around for an encounter longer out there. Aldner: "Laythe Base calling Vall Expedition. Aldner Kerman calling Vall Expedition." Emilynn: "Hey! Buzz! How they hangin'?" Aldner: "At point 8 gee, not so low. Welcome to our neck of the woods, Hawk. I have the trajectory data following your apo-burn. We confirm that you will have no moon encounters until after the BirdDogs do their aero capture, unless you want to burn fuel." Emilynn: "Thankie, Buzz. No, I'll hang tight and let you guys handle your incoming load first. I appreciate the co-piloting from afar. Hey, let me put Hellou on for you." Hellou: "Hi, Aldner. Long time, no see. You never told me your call sign was 'Buzz'." Aldner: "That's right, 'Chickadee.' Hellou: "Hey, don't blame that one on me...Emi gave me the name. So why 'Buzz'...are you some kind of insect?" Aldner: "No. Back in the early days I had a habit of buzzing the control center. I grew out of it, but the nickname stuck with the other pilots." Hellou: "Oh, you'd love the new control tower they built at KSC." Emilynn: "Hey, Buzz. We still got some stuff to clean up from the shaking we got, and then we're going to get some shut eye. I'll let you keep my girl up late talking some other night." Aldner: "Roger, Hawk. Talk to you later. Night, Hellou." Next in came the BirdDogs with their multiple GasStations...laggy, but not as laggy as the Vall Ex. ship. Again, I had to sit through the looong laggy aerocapture at 1x to minimize the shaking of the ship. The aerocapture altitude was 114.5 km, which placed the apoapsis a little way out beyond Laythe's orbit. Below are the orbits after the aerocaptures and apoapsis kicks of the two ships. Then I took a break. I did ponder what would be the most efficient way to get to Vall... My default method (based on what I did in my early Visiting Vall mission), was just to wait in the post-aerocapture orbit for a handy encounter with Vall. If Jool does have a powerful radiation belt, it would probably be important not to hang around in this zone any longer than necessary, even if burning extra fuel was required. And, while I hang around like this for a Laythe capture, so that Laythe's atmosphere can provide all the delta-V for speeding the ship up to Laythe's orbital velocity...in the case of going to Vall, my ships's engines are going to provide the delta-V to speed up to Vall's orbital velocity. So maybe it's all the same if I burn out at apoapsis right away to speed up to Vall's orbital speed, and then arrange a capture out there at a slower relative velocity. Or would that be losing me so gravity-assist that I get from coming at Vall from further in? BUT...I think maybe the most efficient way might be to get an aerocapture by Laythe (or an almost-aerocapture) and then proceed on to Vall from there. Has anybody done the calculations comparing these options? I was originally planning on using a save game to repeat the mission trying different methods...but this laggy beast is such a pain to work with, that ain't happening. The first ship to get an encounter was the BirdDogs. I planned a small burn to adjust the encounter and got the plot below, which may look funny until you recall that I'm using conic draw mode zero, so the encounter path is down near Laythe, and the seemingly disconnected ellipse is where the ship would end up if it shot past the Laythe encounter. I did the maneuver to encounter Laythe and tweaked the aerocapture altitude at Laythe to 24.36 km. This emptied the fuel in the rear drop tanks of the three Tugs, so I separated those as the ship headed in toward Laythe. These empty tanks should then do aerocapture and then multiple aerobrakings until they enter Laythe's atmosphere...but that wouldn't happen unless I actually focus on the tanks and follow them around. I'll probably just terminate their flights later. Some reentry heating...a little plane shift with Jool as a backdrop after Laythe aerocapture...some further aerobraking and orbital maneuvers... and the BirdDogs and GasStations are safe in Laythe equatorial orbit, ready to be brought down under remote control on another day. The main fuel tanks of the three Tugs are almost 90% full... plenty of fuel to bring to Laythe Space Station....... except... hmmm... ...there's no way to dock those Tugs at Laythe Station because they all have Senior docking ports, and the Station has no Senior docking ports...having been built back before Senior docking ports were developed. Bugger. I guess I should have kept one of those rear drop tanks attached, since they had standard ports on their bottoms. I COULD blow the Senior port off of the center Tug to uncover the standard port underneath...but then that Tug becomes useless for re-use pushing Senior-port payloads from Kerbin. Bugger. Ah... there is a standard port on the top of the Double GasStation in the center...so once I dump off the BirdDogs and the two side GasStations, I could use that to dock to the station...maybe it would be toooo laggy. Ah! The Tug that brought in the Secondary Base + Fido is one of the upgraded old Tugs that has a standard from port, but also has a Senior port on its butt for docking on the drop tank. So I can dock THAT to the station, then bring these other tugs in individually to dock there and offload fuel in a less laggy manner. Yeah...I like that. Maybe it would have been better to plan ahead properly...but getting the job done with the tools at hand is satisfying in its own way. Almost immediately after the the BirdDogs got settled down in Laythe orbit, an encounter came up for the Vall Ex. ship.....at Laythe. Should I? But while fiddling with a maneuver to either dodge Laythe (the ship had earlier dodged past Laythe, getting a little pump-up to a slightly higher orbit) or maybe try for a Laythe/Vall two-step... I saw that I could get a direct Vall encounter. So I just went with the original plan and took that. Below is the maneuver setting up the close pass by Vall (about 163 km). I dropped the three rear tanks, now empty, partway through the burn for this maneuver, to fly happily around Jool forever...or until an eventual Laythe or Vall encounter scatters them hither and yon. Actually, I terminated their flights...but now I wish I had left them there to see where they would have ended up. And here's the orbital insertion burn to put the Vall Ex. ship into a 163 x 1500 elliptical orbit around Vall. This is what I used. Below: The Vall Expedition ship safely in orbit around Vall. While it was still in the high eccentric equatorial orbit, the four comsats were popped off of the lander and deployed. I'll give them kicks at apoapsis to put them into circular 1500 km orbits... later. The Vall Ex. lagfest ship was maneuvered into a 163 x 165 orbit. Good enough. Man, I can't wait to start breaking this ship apart and getting the lag down. In this final orbit, the three Tugs had 47% fuel left in their main tanks. One of those Tugs will be used for returning the Vall crew to Kerbin later. Emilynn: "Vall Station calling Laythe. Are you boys awake?" Nelemy: "Yo, this is Nelemy speaking." Emilynn: "Hey Nelemy. This is Emilynn. Nice to meet ya'! Looks like we're going to be neighbors for a while. Please tell the others that we are safely in our operational orbit around Vall, and thanks for the trajectory help. I surely appreciated it." Nelemy: "Sure thing, Emilynn." Emilynn: "All right. We'll be off the air for a while. You sleep tight tonight too, Nelemy." And so ends this installment, as the boys on Laythe have a fine supper in their new bigger Base. Nelemy: "Wow, dudes. Just think of it: Female kerbals, just 16,000 km away." Kurt: "What? Listen to what you just said." Nelemy: "Well...OK...16,000 kilometers..." Thompbles: "...More like 40,000 at the moment..." Nelemy: "...OK, sure. But in the same moon system, dudes! And that Emilynn seemed pretty nice." Kurt: "Cool your jets, kid. Emilynn doesn't...how shall we say...fancy boy kerbals." Nelemy: "Whoah, dude! You mean she's..." Kurt: "Yup." Nelemy: "Oh. ...Not that there's anything wrong with that." Kurt: "Not at all." Thompbles: "Hey...the KSC has an official "Don't ask, don't tell" policy. How would you even know that?" Kurt: "Oh, Hawk's not shy about it. And let's just say that she 'shot down' our flyboy here in more way than one." Aldner: "How about let's just say we don't discuss it at all?" Thompbles: "OK, guys, it's time we got some sleep. We have a lot of work ahead of us, getting BirdDogs and GasStations and alternate bases landed, and Tugs docked to the station and fuel transfered. They'll be plenty to occupy your minds."

The thing about airhogging in KSP is that in KSP the intake is represented as a part, and you can clip parts on top of themselves to "hog" intake air. But of course, in real life an air intake is a *hole*, and it doesn't make any sense to talk about stacking holes on top of each other.

Well, then, don't talk about politics. But the NASA Web site suddenly going down just seems to be a case of somebody being a dick. There's no reason the computer couldn't keep running and serving the site. It runs all the time without constant intervention needed unless the content changes. Do they think the power company is suddenly going to switch off the electricity to their machine? Get real.

I have two questions: I have heard talk of using nuclear power? Say what? Where is this in the game? Is it a mod? Have I already asked more than two questions?!?! My second question relates to the science equipment. Whats the deal with it? Is it for later upgrades to the game or is there a functionality that I have yet to figure out? I can turn them on but thats about it...any explanation would be appreciated!

Political discussions are against forum rules, but perhaps we can talk about the consequences of the fiscal shutdown for NASA and Spaceflight in general.

Ever wondered what those little balls of condensation are floating up in the sky? Sometimes they look similar to remnants of a kontrail.. It has been heard by few in the corners of the VAB, the talk of kemtrails. That 'they are' trying to make kerbals more courageous and stupid.

So since starting my new job, my KSP time has been zilch. Last night, I hopped back in the seat and noticed a lander on the moon. Huh, where'd that come from? Oh cr**, I forgot Dunlan! After putting his ship back in Munar orbit and transferring back to Kerbin, I noticed that his ship was strangely lacking any parachutes. Oops. After some quick calculations (Hmmm, it *should* reach my space station) and a pep talk to a very scared Dunlan, I managed to rendezvous with the KSS and space-walked the little Kerbal that could over to the safety of the station. I then put his sorry little craft into a decaying orbit. Emboldened by the seat-of-the pants mission, Jeb hopped into my latest 1-kerbal lander and flew off to Minmus to poke a flag in its minty green surface. Here he is watching the sun rise:

Yes, another BSC thread! Love the designs so far. Lot of diversity in size - I'm not sure what the most true-to-Ravenspear Mk1 design will look like. To my mind, the Ravenspears are all about learning how to fly at high altitude. They need to be a little scarier than the Aeris 3a, more like the MIG-25. One turbojet won't cut it, and two are flameout hell, so I went with 3 - and the rest followed (with some inspiration from brobel's finalist design last time. The key is the rudder placement, to give strong control authority and let newbies learn to control and recover from flameouts, safe in the knowledge that they don't have to go to space today. Enough talk! The Ravenspjaar Mk1 Fairly beefy, as training for larger / heavier SSTOs. Three turbojets for blistering speed. Slightly inward-angled jets and double-canard rudders give plenty of flameout forgiveness Combination canard / large control surface give plenty of pitch authority, without too much roll 2:1 intake ratio - no spam! 20 minutes flying time - no round-the-world flights! No cubic struts, modest "legal" partclipping. ~50 parts. 3-2-1 turbojet toggle action groups allow newbies to learn how to feather turbojets at high altitude Easy to fly - handsfree takeoff, front brake disabled, automatic ladder-on-parking-brake activation Lights for that midnight glow >> .craft file here <<

The interview with Mu starts at 25 minutes into episode 3 (if you want to skip ahead to it). [Edit] 31:40 if you want to skip straight to the optimization part of the talk.