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Firstly, I just want to say that I am outraged OUTRAGED that this thread, with its realism and practicality and really cool and well thought out implementation of an atomic rocket, plus its thoughtful consideration in permitting the community to participate in such a great project, has completely missed out on an opportunity of epic proportions! An opportunity to utilize - in a practical manner - what can only be considered to be the ultimate MacGuffin in the history of science fiction! A MacGuffin so awesome that it has formed the core of the greatest science fiction stories ever told, ever! Allow me to elaborate: Your atomic rockets use "canisters" and "nukes" of select sizes. Sure, this is realistic, but what if instead of canisters of nukes, a fuel tank was filled with raw Blutonium? And the size of the explosion was metered using a slider like this: Now, I know what you're thinking: Scoundrel, how do you manage to be so devilishly handsome and manly, and yet be so incredibly ingenious and brilliantly funny… how can I become just like you/have your babies? It's not easy, but stop trying to derail the thread, and let's get back to the subject of atomic rockets. So your next thought is: Okay, but there's no technology that exists that would allow pure Blutonium to be turned into an atomic pellet and detonated. How could such an impossible feat ever be accomplished? Ah-Ha! Excellent question! It is, in fact, the subject of this post! Scroll down to gaze upon this wondrously amazing piece of space technology that allows such impossible feats of science to become reality: Yes! That's right! You are staring at the Blutonium K-36 Explosive Space Modulator! This technology allows raw Blutonium to go in and atomic pellets come out! Of course, there is the slightest infinitesimal chance that by introducing the Blutonium K-36 Explosive Space Modulator into the game that there might maybe potentially be the tiniest of possibilities that Kerbals sent to Duna might use it to destroy Kerbin (because it blocks their view of Eve), but I feel quite confident that, after extensive analysis and risk assessments, the likelihood of such a scenario occurring to be no higher than 99.9998%. But enough talk about that! Now I shall further demonstrate its amazing utility by presenting the most technically detailed blueprint for an atomic rocket ever in the history of kerbal atomic rockets! Naturally, in the great naming tradition of naming things pretentiously like Death Phoenix or DeathRavenClaw or ShadowBladeEagleDeathEagleBladeShadowDragonPhoenixFangClawShadow, I too have given it a completely awesome and pretentious name. Ladies and gentlemen, I present the Variable Impulse Metered Pulsed Atomic Rocket Experiment, or V.I.M.P.A.R.E.! Hm. That wasn't quite the acronym I was going for… I guess that explains why I'm not in the naming department. But I digress. Now, I know exactly what you're thinking: Scoundrel, you've used the atomic rocket concept as an excuse to design a giant flying gumball machine! Wrong! I've used the atomic rocket concept as an excuse to design a giant flying nuclear gumball machine! To prove that it can actually be done, I present these amazing North Korean movie quality 3d renderings to showcase the V.I.M.P.A.R.E. in action! And, because no atomic rocket project is complete without its own flag/patches, I present a couple of flag designs - plus some recolours - for consideration for the program: And that concludes my presentation. Thank you.

Unlikely of what most delta V maps say, Moho is by far the WORST planet or moon in the entire game. It starts off normally, with a small 1200m/s burn for the transfer. But then you often need a huge 1000m/s of orbital adjustments because theres really no way to have a perfect Hohmann transfer with it's inclination and eccentricity. Then, the capture burn turns between 2000m/s and 4500m/s, depending on if you're lucky enough to catch it at it's apoapsis. This is due to two reasons: one, Moho is insanely close to the Sun, it's twice as close as Mercury actually is if I remember correctly. This means that to approach it, you need to go very deep in the sun's gravity well, and you pick up an INCREDIBLE amount of speed going down. Second, Moho's gravitational force is pretty low for a planet, meaning it's escape velocity is also very low. There's no aerobrake possibility, meaning you have to burn up a huge amount of relative speed to get a catch around Moho. There's the same problem with probes trying to reach Mercury. If you look up on Wikipedia, it's the only planet that they talk about the insane amount of delta V required to reach it. Mercury is actually the planet with the smallest orbital inclination, but the largest eccentricity: it's nearly 1.5 times further away from the sun at it's apoapsis than it's periapsis. The delta V required to reach Mercury is even higher than the one require to escape the sun :l So yeah, basically Moho is hard.

I can check the configs real quick to see if something might be messed up. InDev3 should be out sometime in the next few days. All I have to do is a part check to prevent GUI glitching and then add in the window method. Update on the raycasting (as much as I can provide it)– for some reason KSP doesn't seem to like the raycasting, since it works fine in regular Unity... I may talk to Mu to see what's going on if I still can't get it figured out by the time the rest of the plugin is finished. -One solution I am considering is a periodic check every 5 seconds or so which sets a boolean value that either enables or disables the temperature change induced by illumination and distance from the sun... -Another could be to set the collider during OnStart or OnLoad, making it stay the same as opposed to getting the collider(s) every frame; but I think that the problem is the raycasting, not the collider detection... I also figured out why PTanimateUniversal wasn't working– as with the raycasting, I needed to access the Animation component on the child of the object that had PartTools on it when the part model was exported from Unity so that I would get the expected result; it wasn't a problem with Unity.

I don't talk all that much about space itself, but I can go on and on for hours on end about the engineering that goes into getting there and back again.

Hello folks, so i'm the new one *lol* :-) Finally i mastered to reach the Mun with my "Megalopowermus"-Rocket. My little Kerb just did a great job, took some rounds around Kerbin, made plenty of swing-by's and all of the sudden, he had an Mun-Encounter - well, "all of the sudden" is rather meant to be, like 25 attempts or so.... But it was a great joy to see him laugh at all, and not to scream in insanity about crashing into the surface of Kerbin or getting lost in the deep void ;-) So, after around 28h ingame (with a lot of try and error) i'm happy it worked at all. So this is why i joined this forum now..perhaps i can find some new ideas or simply find nice people to talk about (even so small) progresses. With the landing on Mun i feel like i'm ready to participate in this forum ;-) And to mention it, i'm really happy, that after severeal years of boringnes i found a game, that's so much fun. I was just to give up hope... So long, Kooba

As its my job, I tend to talk a lot about it with my gf when I get home. Mostly, she is not impressed

There is no synchronization between detectors. (It's a requested feature.) However, multiple detectors on the same vessel can (but don't always) increase your scan resolution. The key here is that detectors don't talk to each other, so they won't take turns; they'll just all work individually, and if two detectors happen to scan the same space, oh well. So, if you want to increase scan resolution, you should stagger your detectors rather than starting them all with an action group. Alternatively, you could run both detector types; since they have different scan rates, most of the time they'll miss each other. In the next minor revision, I'll add some small variance to the detector timer. This should automatically push detectors out of phase, on average. It's also worth mentioning that battery capacity is important for scanning at time warp. The small detector uses 0.9 energy per second, or 0.03 per frame (assuming 30 physics FPS). As long as you have 0.03 energy available to draw, the detector will run at full speed. However, if you run at 1000x time warp, the detector now requires 30 energy per frame, and a small probe may not have that capacity. If you use RTGs, it's even worse, because they erroneously use the Update routine (graphics frame) instead of FixedUpdate, so its electrical generation isn't synchronized with consumption. (This is why RTG generation seems bursty.) So, if you have 45 capacity and there are six physics frames between each graphics frame, the small detector will run at full speed for one frame, half speed for the next, and then not at all for the next four frames. This is true no matter how many RTGs you stick on the ship. Regarding the scan colors: I made an error in that change, and I forgot to test it to boot. I've revised the coloring on my end and I'll include that with the next release.

Hmm, the talk about background scanning got me thinking... I wonder if it would be possible to make an out of game process, schedule it to run periodically an monitor the autosave. Since the autosave has orbit numbers for the craft it could cache all the appropriate mapping sattelite's orbits and position, then when the autosave changes it 1: Verifies the satellite is still there and in the same orbit. 2: If it is, update the map data and artifacts.dat file appropriate for the amount of time that has passed and the terrain passed over. Then just make sure the plugin checks for changes in those files instead of trusting only a memory loaded version. It would be a lot of maths but since it is out of process from KSP it shouldn't impact KSP's performance as much as how it is being done now.,.. maybe? *shrug* just some random thoughts on my end.

Photoshop from start to finish. I talk a little bit about technique a few posts above, though like most people who draw, I cannot certify that my methods would be effective.

It folded up pretty nice. Don't worry, I too see the SEV, while functional in design and purpose on location, to be completely ridiculous to be sent as anything but a separate, costly, inefficient cargo launch for what it does. Now if it somehow contained an ascent stage, we could talk.

Get the Chatterer mod, quite entertaining to hear Kerbals talk to each other over the radio.

I've never been a celebrity-worshiper. I can count on two hands the number of people I don't know personally who's death would upset me, and unfortunately this is one of them. Sad, sad times. Both the real-world and sci-fi works are brilliant and the thought of never getting another culture novel is actually quite devastating. Interesting coincidence his last two novels are about someone dieing from cancer (his not yet published Iain Banks novel) and Sublimation (the now 'last' culture novel). I'm from his part of the world and once spotted him in a small local pub and had the great pleasure of buying him a pint of ale (though I made no reference to knowing who he was and left him alone after a minutes talk about good walking trails near by). Absolute gentleman.

No. Or yes. I don't remember who they are and don't want to look it up. The user below me Knows what I talk about at least half the time.

We don't talk anymore, and we don't talk about how we're not talking and I'm freaking out a little because he said he wants to just be friends right now, but I still have serious feelings for him...

So I have been playing for a while now, built stations, Laythe Bases, huge multi-docked interplanetary vehicles and what not, but what I really want is SCIENCE! I have looked around for any news concerning new science parts, as I was a little disappointed that none were added in the last update. Has there been any talk about the future of that aspect of the parts? And are there any mods that are science heavy? I have always played pure stock, I mean no Sub-assembly or nothing (not that I think that there is anything wrong with it) but I would be willing to install a science mod. Anything out there? Thanks, Brax Singularity Aerospace Innovations

This project is being working on by MDBenson, WCOLE360, and Yogui87, sponsored 100% by LH Aerospace This is a project to make a realistic replica of the Mars Transfer Vehicle and eventually it's landers, and maybe after that it's rovers, but here's what we have so far, yogui and I will post development pictures as we get them. Here is the current design image, referenced from a Constellation Program Animation: NOTICE: THE PROPULSION STAGE IS CUT OUT, REFERENCE IT IN THE IMAGE BELOW Here are the pieces of the project we will complete: What we currently have has been redone 100% in favor for a better modeling. Some features of the project will be list: Built in RCS Specialized Inflatable Habitat, eventually if I can talk to my contact in NASA, possibly an interior! Front Docking Port Made for Orion Bottom Utility Docking Port for a second orion, or eventually the Mars Ascent Vehicle. Special Modular Docking Port SADDLE TRUSSES Drop Tank for spent fuel stage Deployable Solar Panels Deployable Antennas If the first part of this project goes well, we will do the Cargo Lander and Crewed Lander that go with it. This will all be launched on Bobcat Ind.s Ares 5 Launcher. Modelling and Texturing: Yogui87 CFGs and Primary Testing: WCOLE360 Testing/Bug Grinding: MDBenson More information to come soon! Due to reasons I've been told not to mention this project is temporarily delayed.

I once made a nearly SSTO with about 21 orange tanks; obviously wasn't full when it reached orbit (and certainly could have used a refueler that big lol), but it had about .25 times the weight of the fuel in engines too with well over 1000 parts, so it would have been damn near impossible to make a lifter to put it into orbit full lol. I've been hearing talk about people trying to put a kiloton into orbit, I'd be amazed if anybody can do that for sure =3

I launched my pol mission, started my NEW space station (we don't talk about the LAST one ) returned my eve mission and Jeb E.V.Aed down to the surface of gilly and returned to the ship with only 12% of his fuel left.

My dad tolerates hearing me talk about semi major axes, orbital inclination, exoplanets, I can't talk about space with other 15 year olds, seeing as they seem to dislike it, and I just end talking about space with my two Hard SF fan science teachers

Now, I know everyone has built one of these, but I figured it was time for me to throw my hat in the ring. With some inspiration from Sal_Vager's Apollo 15 mission, I was inspired to revisit my Duna-capable Jupiter series. The Jupiters, when built, were the tallest vehicles ever launched from the KSC (in my own game), and when I designed the lifter, I basically expanded on the Mercury VI I've built in the past. Here's the Mercury VI; my first Mun-landing-and-return capable rocket. You can see the general idea; the larger tanks drop off first, and the smaller inner tanks burned alongside the central stage. Once we drop the initial stages, we repeat the process higher up the vehicle. It's fairly stable, because of its size, and it was a good rocket at the end of the day. A variant serves as my low-Kerbin orbiter. To compare, here's the Jupiter I, older sister of (and only slightly different from) the ship that went to Duna. You can see my general design process here. See the similarities between the Jupiter and Mercury vehicle, if you ignore the payload? The Jupiter is essentially the Mercury, but stretched. This, naturally, led to some problems; while the Mercury suffered from some minor stability issues, these were amplified in the Jupiter. Don't get me wrong - the Jupiter's a good ship; you just need to baby it during launch. If anyone's interested, the craft files for these are available. (The Jupiter V is the last iteration of the Jupiter series; it's definitely Duna capable, it just has a few more bells and whistles than the I, which is pictured here, or the III which went to Duna). Mercury VI: http://www./view/1ymbv6g8a1yh164/Mercury_VI.craft Jupiter V: http://www./view/a4cyf69wymf21m5/Jupiter_V.craft The Jupiter series was my Apollo-style launcher - initially. Then, I chose to do a redesign of the launcher and lander so they were more faithful to the original Saturn V. Sal_Vager put together a phenomenal launcher, with proper engine arrangements and all, but I wanted mine to be a bit heavier, beefier. This doesn't use part clipping, mod parts, or anything like that. It's pure vanilla stock, so everyone can use it without worrying about it. It's a good looking launcher, without strut abuse, and I think it's one of the best stock Saturn V replicas available. Enough talk. On to the photos. A quick note here: these photos were taken during 3 separate flights. A demonstration launch was performed, and photographed. Then, my Apollo 11 was photographed starting about at the Mun landing. My Apollo 12 flight, completed today, filled in the rest of the gaps, so I think I have a pretty decent photographic record of how this thing stages, and how it looks in flight. Here's the vehicle and its stats on the pad. Fear not if the details are hard to see; there are plenty of photos further down in the thread of the upper stages. Note the low part count; I did that on purpose so even folks with lower end computers could use it. It runs pretty well on my own Mac, so I would think that almost everyone could use this. Some images of the vehicle in flight. I think this is an aesthetically pleasing launcher - few struts, and nice clean lines. Note the prototypical arrangement; 5 Mainsails standing in for the Saturn V's 5 F1s. The 1st stage boosts the ship to about 1100 m/s at something like 30 km altitude at a 15 degree graduated gravity turn (so 45* at 30 km). This is the second stage, powered by 5 Poodles in place of the Saturn V's 5 J-2s (Thanks, Rune!). This stage is almost capable of orbit; you could probably get it to orbit if you wanted it for an interplanetary flight, or something. We're talking, like, periapsis shows up just as this stage cuts out. It's really close - just like the real thing; I think one of the Apollo flight's second stages managed to make orbit. Firing away the escape tower a few seconds into the S-II burn, like the Saturn V. The escape tower is fully functional, and during early testing, saved the prime crew multiple times (you know how it is, testing a new heavy lifter - the first five launches are disasters until you fix the staging, balance the fuel, make sure the symmetry works, and put more struts on). It's set up to the Abort key in the Action groups - this maneuver, of discarding the escape tower once we clear the atmosphere, however, is normal staging. Discarding the second stage. Notice the Poodle on the third stage as well; the Saturn V used a single J-2 here, so I matched engines once again. The debris from the docking maneuver (which I apparently neglected to take photos of... still, it's easy enough, and all laid out in the staging) can easily be directed into a crash landing into the Mun, to dispose of it safely. (Assuming there isn't anyone under it... a four ton fuel tank at 800 m/s has some momentum behind it). Here's the actual payload for you, along with a continuing mission report. Lander has full landing and docking lights. Crew transfer. Apollo 11, you are go for undocking. The lander in all her glory. It has full science equipment, as well as probe bodies, ASAS, and power generators in case you want to leave the descent stage behind as a permanent fixture on the landscape. The CSM is a leftover from the Jupiter series, and has interplanetary fuel storage capacities. What you see is what you get, here. Three radial parachutes are mounted on the CM. The ascent stage departs the surface. The points in the background are the descent stage and the flag post. This is probably the biggest departure from the Apollo hardware with the radial rockets on the ascent stage, but it came down to fitting an ascent engine in without making the lander ridiculously tall. I think they're a fair compromise. The docking lights make even nightside docking easy. Once all the remaining fuel is transferred to the CSM, and the crew are all settled in, the RCS thrusters can bring the ship down to just under orbital velocity, where the spent ascent stage is undocked... ...and descends back to the Mun. Here, we're travelling at about 575 m/s, less than a hundred meters up. After that, all that's left is a relatively easy burn home. After passing over the KSC and waving to the folks at home, just disconnect the SM, and wait for the reentry heat. On this particular flight, we came in at just about 3200 m/s before slowing to atmospheric drag. Three chutes, just like the real thing. And splashdown. Home at last. It's a real treat to fly, and I think it's one of the best looking stock Saturn V replicas out there. It's a big powerful lifter that's nicely balanced and flies really nicely when the action key 1 is hit to stop gimbaling on the outside engines in both the first and second stages. I've not yet tested whether this is truly interplanetary or not, but that's coming up soon, once the rover variant gets tested properly. Here's a nice image of my custom flag to close the thread. The craft file, for anyone looking for an authentic Saturn V experience in KSP: http://www./view/uv29qprczqmo54j/Earth_V.craft Happy flying, everyone! Let me know what you think, and I'd love to see videos of your own flights with this rocket!

My parents "love" to hear me talk about orbital mechanics and the future of human space exploration and how awesome the Apollo program was, etc...

i talk about space all the time, know what they say? "meow"

When I talk about space, people are like "Yeah?... cool.... uh huh... okay... right... I see... cool..." I don't think they pay much attention.

If the topic comes up but there is so much to talk about that it can get boring in a social sense.

When they let me... I'm afraid my friends and family already know better than to let me talk about it, unless they are ready for a long talk. Rune. Though I think I have managed to grab a lady's attention or two with that kind of speech... at least once. Out of many. But it's something. ^^'