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As an actual plant biologist I think I can help out. I sent you a PM and we can talk details. In general would would be great is to somehow tie in the biological processes with the biological mass. So, for example, more units of biomass present would result in more O2 production per unit time. Also, a way to deselect ships, reselect them some time later and have resources calculated would be great. Gug. Someday I will learn not to end drafting a message too early. Right now, Roboto and I are assuming that BioMass is glucose, so we do track sugar, but call it Biomass. Transpiration and Respiration are different processes. You can effectively ignore transpiration in my opinion. Respiration always takes place: 1BioMass(C6H12O6)+6(O2)-->6(CO2)+6(H2O) Photosynthesis is 3 to 4x greater than respiration: 1Biomass+6(CO2)+6(H2O)+light-->2Biomass(C6H12O6)+6(O2) The holidays have gotten in the way of me revising things, but the respiration is going to be in line with the calculations you did for TAC-LS. So, 1 unit (kg) of biomass would, for example Respire:0.1795units of biomass+0.04097units of O2 --> 0.1717units of water + 0.0488units of CO2 per 1 human day Photosynthesis would be the opposite reaction and 3.7x greater: 0.6353units of water + 0.1806units of CO2 --> 0.6642units of biomass+0.1516units of O2 Right now I have photosynthesis 3.7x greater than respiration, but in the presence of wasteWater, the rate increases to 4x Dead biomass is what is called Biocake in the science+ version. It's used to make food or fuel in what's on github.

Hey guys! A little while back before the holidays I had a little sit down with InfiniteDice the creator of Boat parts and the ICE mods. In this interview we talk about his plans for the mods, current features, and how things work in a little more detail. One thing I know people will say about the video, the audio never loops but the video footage does. I spent two hours trying to think of a way to not do this and didnt come up with anything... But anyway here it is!

when you consider that your cpu has to wait hundreds of cycles to get data out of ram, then it starts making sense. big thing to get memory latency down. this reduces the number of cycles needed to talk to the ram so the cpu spends less time waiting on data. there are several clever tricks cpu architecture designers and compilers and programmers can do to speed things up. things like using vectors extensively (its faster to load a block than a single value), predicting what the data will be (by running the op on ever possible value so its result is ready when you get the actual value), optimizing machine code to load data long before operating on it. i actually had a good source for this, but its 404. meh. warning very technical and aimed at programmers but covers complexities of memory access.that said its a slight improvement. when i build a new computer i will spend a day or two just tweaking memory settings to get every scrap of performance out of my ram as possible. but if you do this on an older machine, dont expect a lot.

You don't need to be a banker to tell if the banks are doing well. Until they aren't and go bust or need bale outs. except well you sort of do.The Falkirk wheel doesn't look like it should work or is real but it is. But the I-35W Mississippi River bridge looked fine before it suddenly collapsed. If they were then they would have much less time to be critics. Though I admit there are some.You don't need to be programmer to not like the play style of a game, but you do to talk about the production times. Its fine to complain about the taste of the food, but not about the cake taking more than 5 minutes to cook from scratch. If you are not a cook how can you know it takes longer? You just know you are not happy that it isn't on your plate.

It bothers me how this game was in alpha for three years and it doesn't look even remotely finished,the development is slow. And seriously,don't even talk about that "it's hard to make games,try to make one yourself and then you can complain" stuff. THEY have choosen to be game developers,if they'll don't do their jobs well then we CAN complain. And KSP looks like it's going downhill for few months now. My opinion on this is that most of the stuff for the game are added by users in form of modifications,seriously. New planets,new sound effects,new game mechanics and hundreds of new parts. It's just my opinion. *Bracing for hate in 3,2,1...*

We now return you to the Kerb Kerman Kermas Special, with its guest star: Kanta! Kerb: Thank you, Bob. I like the hat. Mom made it for me. Kerb: It really brings out the green in your skin. Right, well, on with the show! Kanta, we were just talking about delivering a little holiday cheer to Fredler Kerman on the Mun. Kanta: HO HO KO! Yes I was! You know, after landing the tree on the Mun, the ELBS started thinking... Kerb: Excuse me? The ELBS? Kanta: Oh, yes! The Extra-Light Building Squad. They are a crack team of jetpack-equipped Kerbals who help us assemble tough projects. They're my little helpers HO HO KO! Kerb: Right, of course! The short little guys... Kanta: They don't like it when people talk about that. Just because they took a few too many G's and compressed their endosekeleton... Kerb: Sorry, ELBS, I didn't mean it. You guys do great work. Now, What were you and your ELBS thinking after landing the second tree? Kanta: Well, Kerb. Have you ever seen a Kermas Tree with no presents? It's a pitiful sight. With that in mind, the ELBS and I made this up for ol' Fredler. Kerb: Now that is a present. Wow. Kanta: HO HO KO! Kerb: I assume it was stuffed full of candy and mini-goo pods? Kanta: Of course! My little helpers and I loaded it up with the REINDEARS and set it off to the Mun for Kermas! Kerb: And what happened? Kanta: Oh, it crashed. Kerb: What. Kanta: Don't Worry! HO HO KO! You are far too tense, Kerb. Its Kermas! Laugh a little! Kerb: Heh. Heh. Kanta: That is pathetic. Here, from the gut. HO HO KO! Laugh with me! Kerb: HORGH HORGH KLORGH! Kanta: On second thought, no more laughing. That... no. You just do your thing over there. Kerb: Ahhghk. Ugh, wow. So, I take it you had a backup present? Kanta: Of course! The backup landed right on time. Kanta: I'm sure he enjoyed that new engine that we got him for Kermas. HO HO KO! Kerb: But...wait... wasn't he out of fuel? Why did you bring him an engine when he needed fuel? Kanta: HO HO.. ah, the fuel... well, it was in the first present. Kerb: Of course... Kanta: Now.. I'm feeling depressed. You made Kanta SAD! You... you... Kerb: Bob, I think we need one of those commercial breaks, again. On it boss. Kanta: But.. I brought Kermas! He should be happy... We'll be right back after this slideshow of Kermas at my moms house!!

Now for a special, Merry Kermas episode of the Kerb Kerman Show! Kerb: Happy Holidays, Everyone! Today we have a very special guest with us, a Mr. Kanta Kerman. Kanta: HO HO KO! Merrrrry Kermas, everyone! Kerb: Kanta is in charge of a very special program at the XAC. His work keeps him busy all year long but he never disappoints when it comes time to shine, isn't that right? Kanta: Indeed it is, Kerb! I'm so happy to be here today, so that I can talk to the wonderful little Kerblings who are forced, by Xackylvania law, to watch this show. HO HO KO! Kerb: Now, you are in charge of the Really Expensive, Individualized Nighttime Delivery, Ejection and Retrieval System. Kanta: Ah, yes. The REINDEARS. Ho ho ko. Took yeaaars of development and research, you know. We mostly use it for deliveries of a special nature, but every once in a while we need it to take a defective product or two back to the shop. You know, like if a light won't light on one side or something. Kerb: Of course. We couldn't have any un-lit products arriving on Kermas, now could we? Kanta: Exactly right, Kerb! Ho Ho Ko! Kerb: Now, I am curious. We hear a lot of history here on the Kerb Kerman show, but you've been up to quite a bit the last few days. What kind of things do your modern REINDEARS deliver? Kanta: Let me see, I'm sure I have some pictures in this giant sack somewhere. Kerb: That is, well... that is certainly a well-fueled Kermas Tree. Kanta: Well, you know what they say. Kerb: And what is that? Kanta: Kanta's REINDEARS can deliver to ANYWHERE! HO HO KO! Kerb: Yes, of course. Now that you mention it, I think I have heard that before. Now, can I ask where this specific Kermas Tree was headed? Kanta: Well, you remember last month when the XAC, totally on purpose and not-at-all because they didn't bring enough fuel, left poor Fredler Kerman on the Mun? Kerb: Why, yes. Yes, I do. Kanta: Well, poor Fredler wrote Kanta a letter. He wanted a tree for Kermas. He said we could bill the XAC for expenses. Kerb: How generous of him. Kanta: HO HO KO! Now, me and my REINDEARS have never delivered a Kermas Tree to the Mun before. Gotta tell you, it was pretty exciting for all of us. Watching to a 12-ton tree gliding in orbit... well, take a look. Kerb: That is impressive. Kanta: HO HO KO! That it was. Too bad she crashed. Kerb: Wait, what? Kanta: Yep, poor thing smashed right into a Mun crater, not two kermometers from poor Fredler. Kerb: But, wa... Can he do that? I thought we are supposed to lie about... ok. Right, right. Wow, I feel bad for Fredler. Kanta: Don't be! Kanta never does anything without a backup plan! We launched a second one and plopped her down right in time for Kermas Eve. HO HO KO! Kerb: Ah, of course. Well, folks, I believe we need to take a quick break for the imperially mandated singing of 'All Hail Xacktar, He's Really Cool." We'll be back right after this! ---

Is there any point in all that CAS complexity over EAS? KSP crafts already can display altitude and velocity in complete vacuum, so they obviously use some kind of computer in there, and thus can compute EAS. FAR has an option to make the navball display EAS too. P.S. I've just prepared a patch yesterday to make the gauge talk to FAR if it's installed to get the right density and mach numbers from it, but now I'll have to update and test it again first before sending - plus add terminal velocity too.

Hello all, I've been seeing some (older) talk about conics modes in settings.cfg, and a Google search didn't turn up anything newer than about June, so I figured I'd ask. Is there any benefit to changing CONIC_PATCH_DRAW_MODE or CONIC_PATCH_LIMIT? I read the explanations on the older threads, but I was just wondering if these are still applicable. Thanks!

Hi guys! I'm so excited right now and since you are my only friends who are also interested in space, I wanted to share it with you right away! I'm an chemical engineering student and I'm highly interested in space since my childhood, and one of my projects is to send a mini satellite to LEO which will be totally designed by other students of my university. So let me tell the main part: I got my first binoculars for stargazing! I'm not a rich man and I can't afford a telescope yet but I saw a discount on a Chinese made binoculars and I bought it right away. It has 10x power and 50mm diameter. I was a little bit concerned if it was going to be a cheap-sheet but after I got it it's really worth of it's price. I've seen many other binoculars with same or even lower magnifying power and same diameter had prices like 3 or 4 times more than the one I got. Only handicap is its cover is plastic instead of metal. And about my first lens-supported stargaze tonight, I was looking around the sky to get recognized with stars and their relative places I saw a very very bright star and wondered what it is. After having a bad neckache and good focusing, I saw that "bright star" is actually yellowish brown and it is round like a planet! So I ran to my pc to find a stargazing program to find out that "bright star" was Jupiter! I'm really excited and happy for finally looking up closer and I hope I will save enough money to make myself a basic reflector telescope. So what about your first experiences? Did you start right away with a telescope? Or you started with binoculars like I did? And how did feel? Let's talk!

If they manage cross feeding with 3 cores, they could strap on 2 more non-cross fed cores to make a 5 core rocket with 3 stage separations events. One for the cross-fed cores, another for the non-cross fed cores and one for the actual second stage. I would guess they might be able to get 80 tons to LEO on that, just a guess though. But lets not get ahead of our selves: they need to launch a Falcon 9 heavy first, and have cross-fed in operation, all this talk on a super heavy is just day dreaming until then.

The Spaceport and github versions of BioMass are becoming increasingly divergent. I think we might want to talk about how to unify things so we have a single mod. We need to find a way to make BioMass useful, fun and yet not too much of a cheat. In general, my approach since joining Roboto has been to make things biologically realistic, but not too boring. At the same time, I (personally) want to force the player to make decisions in how they use the biomass mod: do they want it for O2/CO2 control and water purification, food production, or fuel production. Allowing all three, or even two at a time, would make biomass too much of a cheat imho. So, do you want to breath, eat, or go places? If you want all three, be prepared to make a big station/ship. Here's what is on Github part and purpose wise. Any biologic/chemical process (respiration, photosynthesis, biofuel production) is done in a realistic, mass balanced way (masses of reactants going in equals the masses of products coming out). Underlined items are the resources. Might seem complex, but it's actually a lot simpler than rocket science O2 compressor/regulator: Compresses O2 gas into oxidizer for use with liquid fuel/releases oxidizer pressure to make breathable O2 H2 compressor/regulator: Compresses H2 gas into monopropellant/releases monopropellant into H2 gas for use in biofuel reactions (if needed) CO2 compressor/regulator: Compresses CO2 gas into compressed CO2/releases compressed CO2 into gas plants can use O2/H2/CO2/Compressed CO2/water tanks: tanks to hold those things Cryogenic Atmospheric Separator: Purifies O2, CO2, N2, H2, Xenon and Kethane from Kerbin's atmosphere. Seed bank: Store Seeds Snack container: Stores food Plant Greenhouse: In presence of light, seeds are converted to biomass. In the light: Biomass takes water and CO2 and converts it to O2 and more biomass. Always: Biomass consumes O2 and biomass to produce water and CO2 (yes, plants respire. Just about 4x slower than they photosynthesize). In the dark: converts biomass into Seeds. Using wasteWater makes the biomass grow faster. Activate a harvester on the greenhouse and you get biocake. The growth rate of the biomass should be nearly the same as the rate of the harvester. The greenhouse has lights that can replace the sun if you go behind a planet. This is important since the biomass respires (will consume O2 and "eat" itself in the dark). Algae Greenhouse: Works exactly the same as the Plant Greenhouse, but using wasteWater results in faster growth AND clean water BioReactor: Biocake is converted into liquidFuel along with some gasses. This used to be much more complicated, involving a Fermenter and Reactor, but now the fermentation and transesterification steps are invisible to the player and it all "happens" in this one part. Koylent Maker: Biocake and seeds are combined to make food. Composter: Takes all sorts of things (biomass, biocake, seeds, solidWaste, even liquidFuel) and breaks it down into gasses or Kethane. Adding water results in wasteWater for use in the greenhouses Bio Containment Study: Provides science points Biological Systems Study: Provides science points Station Hubs: Their role is sort of evolving Plans: A bit more balancing on rates of biomass growth and conversion to food or fuel. I'd also like to see a whole series of science parts that act as tutorials, telling a player how things work. For example, a mini greenhouse experiment(s) where the player learns that seeds-->biomass, biomass respires, biomass photosynthesizes, etc. Yeah. The generator modules that Squad uses really suck. If you have two input resources and one output resource, and run out of one of the inputs, the other input will continue to be consumed. Pretty much makes doing balanced chemical reactions impossible. Kethane come with better generator modules, thus the reliance on the kethane dll. I'm not necessarily wedded to using the Kethane dll. If the TACLS dll can mimic the biology, it makes _more_ sense to use it vs kethane since kethane is about mining resources.

I'm able to scan at maximum time warp with no gaps... I have heard people talk about being conservative about using time warp with ScanSat, but I've been able to deploy my satellites, go to max warp, scan till I'm either done, or till I see a pattern that isn't clearing so I reposition my birds and warp some more... Now I see temporary gaps in the display, because the display scans the page slowly, so your satellite paints an empty trail until the next page update refreshes and fills the trail in... but that isn't a scan gap, that is just the way the map refreshes. Are you sure you are seeing gaps? the author stated that you can use warp with no problems... at least that is what I remember reading about three times.

I'm planning on making an overpowered decoupler mod by editing the stock cfg files (on copied files). However, I've seen people talk a bout mod licensing. Can some one please tell me what mod licensing is and how it works?

Best to run in 64bit mode and start a new game. Then take a quicksave and move it over. This fixed my issue kinda like yours. You would have to talk to Unity about this one. Having jsut started coding in unity for 2 weeks take what ever I say about unity as incorect or novice! But it may point you in the right direction. x32 mode is a linux thing I believe. Unity has a focus on Win and mac. Right now its just a nice fact that it makes apps for linux. I've noticed in making my app that I have to compile it in 32bit or 64bit. Unity is a game making engine. Kerbal uses it. I'm using it. We are subject to their current development standards.

It shouldn't. It can, but it shouldn't. Almost any cell you can draw too much current from, causing it to fail the way any other semiconductor device would from overheating. However, if you regulate the output current or disconnect the cell all together, this won't happen. So we can talk about failure modes of a disconnected cell. Even if the cell isn't connected, as long as there is light flux, there will be internal currents. If you look at an equivalent diagram, you'll see that it contains a resistor and a diode connecting the two sides of a photovoltaic cell. In principle, if current through these "elements" gets too high, the cell can also burn out without being connected to anything. However, a typical cell will saturate before this happens. So if this is a concern, you can design a cell not to fail in such a way. Of course, that's a conventional PN junction photovoltaic cell. I don't know what they have in mind for a gamma cell. If it's just a scintillator with a conventional cell, all the same logic applies. If it's something more sophisticated, I don't know.

Guys, we're not supposed to talk about conspiracies.

Sorry to be the one to give the "Santa" talk here - you know, the one about Santa actually being a shill for Coca Cola - but I hadn't heard anything about a gift on Christmas day and if it's not there now, I wouldn't hold out hope at this point. Considering the work that was put into 0.23 and KerbalKon all at once during this close timeframe, though, it shouldn't come as big of a surprise. On the bright side, what are some cool holiday-related things you might like to see in the future if there's ever a chance to implement them?

Yes, it does, and what Harv said: "That's not quite right. Firstly, there's a difference between saying 'resources' and 'resource mining'. Resources already exist as Fuel, Oxy, Mono and such, but mining, more specifically in the way it was proposed in that old chart, is what got shelved. We might still come up with something better, more streamlined, to cover the 'bases' (pun not intended, just happy accident) that the resources plan was meant to take on, but it's still too early to talk about anything concrete, and that's also a good thing, considering there's a lot still to come, and all our plans are constantly being updated as the game grows." Contradicts your statement: They're open to something better, they haven't permanently ditched the concept.

Has there been another announcement on this in the last week? This is absolutely not how this post by Harv reads. It says they have ideas for mining/resources, but don't want to talk about them right now and focus elsewhere. Posts like this cause some serious confusion in the community: Some mods state that the mods don't have inside info about the game, but then mods will make these concrete statements that don't seem to have any support based on what's been published in official SQUAD posts.

There was talk about building a Space Elevator, but that is not possible both due to limited rendering distance and part count rendering.

Omni's can't even talk to Kerbin with Comm16's. Not at geostationary. With 3 satellites set equal distance they can't even cover each other. Those omni's aren't doing much. There's gaping holes in coverage. Rule 1: Handshakes. Everyone that needs to shake hands needs to have a hand to shake with. If you need to shakes hands with 5 people at the same time, you'd better have 5 hands and your arms can't be shorter than anyone else. Rule 2: There is no rule 2. You're doing it all wrong if you're still here looking for rule 2.

Granted. No one summons you anymore, or talk to you, or look at you. Then you die, alone in a barn, with a dvd player shoved down your throat. I wish I saw Santa.

it is, it has tech nodes assigned though, unlike the original. I can't do anything to the plugin, so talk with EndlessWaves on that. try turning off collision?

First off: you would be better using stock ion engines. Propulsion generated by solar sails is tiny. Secondly: if it would be reasonably easy to program, someone would make a mod like this already. There was some talk about solar sails, and even some models were shown. But as you can see, distinct lack of solar sail mods indicates it wasn't an overwhelming success.