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Lowell Etroublant, 1949 After the second world war, the Eastern European division of Lowell Cars, the Lowell Automobilwerk GmbH, came under communist rule and was nationalized. Soon (August 1945) the government ordered the design of a cheap family car to help the struggling economy and to satisfy the disgruntled, often defiant, population. The Lowell team started designing and had a prototype ready in February 1946. They invited government officials for a test drive. It was a disaster. The government rejected the proposal based on the used technology like standard suspension and wheels, gearboxes and the piston engine running on regular fuel (Normalbenzin). The argument was they needed the parts for building up military vehicles. Back to the drawing board. After many months of searching the team found parts they could use. From a terminated company (because the Soviets felt the fighter jets competed with their own designs, which made Stalin angry) they acquired jet engines and landing gear. At first the engineers wanted to use the landing gear as the main wheels but this idea went into the trashcan after they discovered the tires couldn’t handle the roads, which were in terrible shape. They had already made the landing gear units a part of the bodywork design and a redesign presented a problem because of the delay, they wouldn’t make it before the deadline. They eventually found, just in time, the final solution: elephant skateboard wheels. There was a huge surplus because a famine in early 1948 made the government order all elephants to be slaughtered for food. It looked funny but did work: they were compact to install, provided reasonable grip and a smooth ride. Plus the brakes were excellent because -as we all know- elephants are heavy. But because of the fact there was no gearbox and thus no way of driving the wheels, there also was no reverse. Drivers had to push their car if they had to back up. For the time, aerodynamics were excellent. The jet engine could propel the car to an amazing 90m/s at 100% power. It was decided to reduce the power to 18.5% though, partly because the weak suspension damping made the car dangerous at speeds above 35m/s but mostly because all government officials displayed a different colour of the rainbow during a demonstration. They couldn’t handle the idea that a cheap car for the plebs would be faster than their own state limousines. The population soon discovered how to remove the engine limiter but if the state police would catch you speeding, you’d spend the rest of your life in a gulag for instilling anti-socialist thoughts to the public, an act of high treason. After production started in 1949, the population soon discovered funny little levers labeled Einziehfahrwerk hidded away behind panels, which would lower the original wheels. They also discovered these wheels didn’t have bad tires like the design team claimed, in fact they were a lot better. After a short trial the design team admitted the lie because they wanted the car to look ridiculous and make a fool out of the communist government. They were hanged the next day. The name of the car was allegedly the name of the wife of one of the team members. It sounded French but no government official spoke the language of the former enemy. There was another way the team made the car ridiculous but this wasn’t spotted by the government nor the public. It was discovered in the memoirs of a widow of one of the team members, when she published those decades later. Tip for fun: Set the Juno to 100% thrust and disable crash damage, it’s fast and good for drifting. Download link

Hi all. I've released the UpgradesGUI plugin, whose function is to complete the part/module upgrades feature introduced in KSP 1.2. Currently it has two main features : Provide a better integration of upgrade in the VAB/SPH part tooltips by showing upgraded part/module stats, something that is really lacking in stock, and very confusing to players. Provide a GUI interface to allow the player to select which upgrades should be activated. I've done this by hacking the tooltips to make widgets clickable. This allow for a nice stock-integrated GUI. Of course I encourage mod authors to use upgrades in their parts and to recommend or even bundle my plugin. But maybe we could go further and overcome the current upgrade implementation limitations : Upgrades can't reliably & easily be used to enable/disable modules : Being able to set the enabled / isEnabled properties in modules instances would allow upgrades to effectively add/remove modules. This has been requested a few times (by @MysterySloth, @sebi.zzr, @Skalou). Combined with the upgrade selection feature in my plugin, this would provide in practice a "module switching" feature to KSP, something that no common switcher plugin (IFS, B9, Firespitter...) currently allow. I know that Kerbalism by @ShotgunNinja does it, maybe also SSTU by @Shadowmage. Therefore I propose a "ModuleEnabler" partmodule that would allow this in a simple way : MODULE { name = ModuleEnabler targetType = ModuleResourceConverter // module to control targetEnable = false // is this module enabled initialy showWidget = false // in the tooltip modules list, is the widget visible showInfoInUpgrade = true // in the tooltip upgrades list, do the upgrade widget show the whole module info (or just the name) // Optional fields used to be sure the right module is targeted if multiple modules of the same type exist in the part : targetIdField = ConverterName // targeted module field name targetIdValue = Lf+Ox // targeted module field value UPGRADES { UPGRADE { name__ = ISRU_Upgrade description__ = Add an ISRU targetEnable = true // enable the ISRU module showWidget = true // show the ISRU module in the part tooltip module list showInfoInUpgrade = false // only show "ModuleResourceConverter" in the part tooltip upgrade list (to unclutter it) } } } Upgrades can't be used to change/switch RESOURCE{} nodes This could be done in a special "ModuleUpgradeableResources" partmodule. Note that the stock behaviour with nested ConfigNodes is to delete all the nodes of the type used in the UPGRADE (here "RESOURCE" nodes) in the module, and replace them with those defined in the UPGRADE node. Combined with the selection GUI, this allow for resource switching. MODULE { name = ModuleUpgradeableResources // Resource added by the module when no upgrade is applied RESOURCE { name = ElectricCharge amount = 1000 maxAmount = 1000 } UPGRADES { UPGRADE { name__ = Monoprop_tank ExclusiveWith__ = resource // mandatory so only one resource set is enabled at a time description__ = Add a monopropellant fuel tank // replace the resources added to the part by the module with these ones RESOURCE { name = ElectricCharge amount = 1000 maxAmount = 1000 } RESOURCE { name = MonoPropellant amount = 40 maxAmount = 40 } } UPGRADE { name__ = Xenon_tank ExclusiveWith__ = resource // mandatory so only one resource set is enabled at a time description__ = Convert the whole part to a xenon tank // replace the resources added to the part by the module with these ones RESOURCE { name = xenonGaz amount = 40 maxAmount = 40 } } } } Also note that I'm planning to give a way for players to open the upgrades selection GUI (the whole part tooltip) for already placed parts in the editor. Still not 100 % sure I can manage this, so no promise. What do you guys think of all this ? Would those modules be useful for anybody ?

There's small implications in-game about lore and myth. I have ideas, ladies and gentlemen. I want to hear yours as well. I will include a snippet of my headcanon lore if anyone's interested though DM. It leans towards the explicit side(Greco-Roman religion+ a little bit of monotheistic flavour) so I wouldn't feel comfortable posting it directly to a thread. Let's just say it explains why females weren't introduced until the official version came out and provides insight into why things are the way they are. Dres? Who's that? Neidon, Sarnus? You're crazy.

each day i live, i grow more and more concerned about the future of our species, i firmly believe were not thinking hard enough as a species about where we want to be in 100 years, weve made it so far, weve modernised to a point that its possible no other species in the universe has yet reached our level of advancement, we were fortunate enough to evolve higher than average intelligence in the mess that is the evolution of life, and yet we choose to destroy our planet without thinking about where were going to go next when the planet can no longer support us, were well aware of the effects we have on it, and that were relying on outdated and non renewable methods of obtaining energy, so we cant be a stay at home civilisation as it stands, and were not certain such a civilisation is even possible, we fight each other, hunt species to extinction, and have extremely closed minded thinking when it comes to our view of the world. im going to get to the point now, if we are to continue surviving as a species, we need to leave the planet, this is extremely clear at this point and yet people only think of themselves and what the taxes they pay to the government can do for them personally, at this point theres probably a few people who think im a hypocrite for saying these things but let me make it very clear, i want the taxes they pay to go to turning us into a spacefaring species, not into weapons to wage war, not into a health care system ill only take advantage of later in my life, and not into construction projects to create jobs, none of these things matter while the clock counts down to the time when we run out of non renewable resources and no longer have a way to leave the planet weve now destroyed. if we invest in our space programs, things will be rough for a long time im not going to deny this truth. people in first world countries who dont have jobs will still not have jobs, the national debt in the case of the united states will still be there, people in first world countries will still starve and have no access to clean water, but with the population growth running as rampant as it is, we do not have the means to solve those problems directly no matter how much time and resources we put into it, but if we had access to the solar system weve been ignoring for next to no reason other than the general public isnt interested in "that waste of money, build more weapons to keep us safe, and my brother johnny still has no job", we would have the resources to solve all those problems and more, and the economy would enter a boom for the next couple of thousand years. my personal feelings are that we need to stop giving government run space programs pocket change that they can barely do anything besides send a small probe to some place with, and start giving them large amounts of money they can actually make some progress with, commercial spaceflight shouldnt just be about touring low earth orbit, it should be about settling humans on other worlds, we have access to so many asteroids we could gather valuable resources from, and use as space colonies using the rock of the asteroid to shield us from radiation extremely close to us on a cosmic scale, were missing out on a very powerful kickstart to completely solving the problems we have here on earth just because we feel we should focus on them right now, but the direct approach is not always the best as weve proven countless times throughout history and appear to be proving yet again anyway that was my real talk, feel free to add your thoughts

Now, I don't want to start another parts revamp thread. We already have a few of these. What I want to talk about is the simplicity of the parts. Let's take take the HH as an example. Does this thing really have to look like this? The handle bars around the top and bottom dark rings are not usable anyway. And the gold foil needs to be covered to not look as if it was the only thing between the interior and the vacuum of space. Just keep in mind I'm not trying to make a rant of some sort. What I want to say is all the parts, including rocket, MK2 and MK3, should have as simplistic style as possible just so they can be put together and always look good. Right now it's not really possible. If you want to make a plane with hitchhikers as crew modules they will look out of place. To sum up: simplicity would be a nice way of solving the issue with all the parts not looking nice when put together. Simple cylinders with the white+grey+black (+orange accents from time to time) pattern would work best and the textures could be reused in many cases, thus making any part revamp easier to deal with.

Hi am new to this game

I'm having problem with communication, I have a HG-5 antenna on all of my satelite with only KSC as a ground station enabled. However my one satelite which is blocked by Kerbin and cannot talk to KSC is unable to talk to other satelites, why does this happen? http://imgur.com/j05BjlZ(screenshot)

So I'm not sure if there's a thread about it, because I haven't seen one, but if there is feel free to merge/lock this one after posting a link to an existing thread. So I was lately thinking about replacing my old(ish) SONY Xperia L with something newer. What would be best is a phone with Android 5.0 and higher but with the same size of the screen. The problem is that doesn't leave me with much options, so I also thought about buying something like this. The phone cameras are kind of meh/10, but I don't think I'll be using it much anyway. I'm also considering buying a solar power bank. Because free energy! (not really though). So what do you think? Is it a good idea to buy a phone from a not-so-well-known company, or rather spend more money on something that is more "reliable". Are solar panels on a power bank worth it? Share your thoughts. And please, keep in mind I'm not an expert. Also don't turn this thread into iOS vs Android war thing. We're all mature enough not to do that, right?

Arr!

Talk like Up-Goer Five: Express complex ideas using only very simple, common words. For anyone who has somehow managed to miss it, a while back xkcd had an absolutely brilliant strip: a schematic of the Saturn V, carefully labeled.... but with all terms restricted to only the thousand most common English words. This is where the KSP community gets the term "you will not go to space today." https://xkcd.com/1133/ This game is to talk like Up-Goer Five. That is, you have to express complex ideas using only the most common English words. Here are the rules: The person before you ends their post with a brief paragraph of something reasonably complex to explain. You need to take their post and re-word it using this tool (it lets you type what you want, and draws a red line under any "forbidden" words): http://splasho.com/upgoer5/ You can paraphrase if need be (you'll probably need to). The one really hard rule is, your "translation" has to fit in that tool's edit box with no red "forbidden words" underlines at all. Post your translation inside a spoiler box, so that people reading your post have a chance to guess an answer first, if they want to. Then provide a technical paragraph of your own for the next person to take a shot at. You're not allowed to answer your own post; someone else has to. But you're welcome to come back again after some other folks have had their turns. Guidelines for the "technical paragraph": Don't make it too long, please. Just a sentence or two is plenty. (Otherwise nobody will want to take the burden of "translating" it.) Don't make it so hard that nobody understands it. It should be something that a typical KSP forum user can understand without having to go look stuff up. Ideally the post should be about KSP-relevant topics, e.g. spaceflight, astronomy, engineering, KSP game advice, etc., but that's not a strict requirement, just a suggested guideline. (Props to @Deddly for pointing out the upgoer5 tool to me, which is what gave me the idea for this game.) Just as an example, here's a sample technical paragraph: SRBs are useful as boosters on the launchpad, because they're inexpensive and provide a lot of thrust. However, they're less efficient as upper stages, due to having a low Isp. Here's my stab at translation, using the above-linked tool to validate it: Fair 'nuff? Okay, to get the ball rolling, here's a technical paragraph for someone to start with: Building a SSTO spaceplane is challenging, because not only do you need to balance air-breathing engines with those that work in a vacuum, but also the ship needs to be aerodynamically stable at high velocity.

Bill, newly annointed Master of Space Engineering, is eager to get to work excavating exotic ores from faraway places. Imagine his excitement when he receives his first mission to the Mun. "Am I going to learn to drill?" he asks. "No. It doesn't work that way. You're going to plant a flag on the Mun." "Why?" "For experience." "Oh, then I'll get to drill?" "No. It doesn't work that way. Next, we'll send you to Duna." "Oh, there's a drilling academy there where I'll learn about drilling?" "No. You'll plant another flag." "Why?" "For more experience." "But I'll already have flag planting experience. I need drilling experience." "Well planting that flag will give you drilling experience." "Oh. OK, then I'll just take a drill with me so I can use my experience after I plant the flag." "Well, no." "Why not?" "Because we need to bring you back to officially log the experience in your record." "Can't I just radio it in?" "No." "So, I'm going to spend a year planting flags so I can get experience in drilling. Without ever touching a drill. For a year." "Or longer. That's right." "Um, that's not what I signed up for." May I humbly suggest that the XP mechanic for engineers be tied to engineering tasks such as actually drilling, repairing and repacking and science experience be tied to things like conducting experiments, manning a lab and surveying planets? Pilots can get XP planting flags because they're kind of stupid anyway and we need to give them something to pin on their chest.