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Garik Israelian can explain it better than me: TED Talk Garik Israelian: How spectroscopy could reveal alien life

Today I give you the Mun Arch Kethane Refinery and Fuel Depot. While I have always liked my Minmus Kethane base, I also feel that it had a number of flaws and could be greatly improved upon. Not wanting to simply recreate a different version of that base, I decided to locate my new base on the Mun and I figured that near one of the anomalies was a good place to put it. You don’t get those perfectly flat lakes as you do on Minmus, and it’s a bit tougher to land on the Mun, but it worked out ok in the end. The mods used here are primarily Kosmos for the structural base components (those Balka crew tunnels are one of my favorite mod parts), the solar panel, and the cylindrical fuel tanks. udk_lethal_d0se’s large structural components for the habitation modules and spherical fuel tanks. And the Kethane parts, obviously. There are also a number of mods used for other parts. KW is used for some structural parts and the boosters. Alexustas’ stack inline lights are used in a number of places. The SCANsat parts are used on a number of crafts for mapping. Engineer was used for all of my craft/flight info needs. Infernal Robotics was extremely helpful for making a system to dock the components together on the ground. And a few more for parts and plugins here and there. Here’s a few more shots of the base in action and a breakdown of the components. I have some pictures from the base planning and construction as well. Here are some of the surveyor probes used to determine the best landing spot. The first is my ultra-low altitude scanner, circling the Mun at about 7.5km in an 85o orbit. I used a lander to scout out a few of the anomalies but was ultimately stymied by the rough terrain around one of the Mun arches. For the last arch I used a small rover to get a closer look at the surrounding area and find a suitable base site. The area just west of this arch is pretty flat and has enough space for a base before dropping off steeply into the nearby crater. And now we have the launch for all of the base components. There were eight launches in all, ranging from the totally-reasonable, about 30 tons to LKO for the science and comms stations, to the, “are you sure these boosters don’t need any struts?†launch of the habitation, kethane drills, and kethane depot modules at about 100 tons to LKO, and finally to the “oh god, just get it into space†launch of the core module at about 230 tons to LKO and the “I don’t care how heavy it is, just keep strapping on boosters†launch of the two identical fuel depots. Here are a few shots of the base construction. The core module was the first to launch, as it lacked any movement system on the ground. The kethane drill segment came next, using my top-mounted landing and extendable wheels system for putting it into place and docking. The landing system was then separated and blasted off to crash into the surface some distance away. After a few more segments the base starts to look interesting. If you look really closely you can see that the decouplers are still attached to the top of the kethane drills on the left. Because I was stupid and did very little testing I managed to put those on upside down. Not wanting to be left with the blight of unnecessary parts I undertook the painful process of deleting those parts from the persistence file. This requires renumbering every part that comes after the decouplers and ensuring that every part has the correct connection references. It was not fun, test things first people. The final two components are put into place. I got really good at precision landing with bulky, low TWR crafts doing all of this. I’m not very efficient about it, but at least I can do it now. With the base complete I sent out the crew transport vehicle with a rover strapped onto the bottom. Once they arrive, Jeb, Bill, Bob and some other guy set off to study the Mun arch. In answer to everyone’s question, yes the Mun arch does have kethane in it. Jeb takes the opportunity to jet up to the top of the arch and claim it as his own. Unfortunately a tragic accident took the life of the four Kerbals. They got a little carried away and flipped their rover, smashing all four of them and sending the rover on an improbable, ballistic trajectory into a nearby crater. They will be mourned. Here are a few detail shots of the completed base. But wait, dear readers, we aren’t done yet. Don’t think I would frontload this post with all of the good stuff. For what use is a base full of fuel if it’s stuck on the ground? We need something to get all that stuff back into orbit. For that I present the Nostromo (ok, I know the Nostromo was just the tug, and this thing doesn’t really look like that or the big refinery ship it was pulling, but that’s somehow what I had in mind when I came up with this). Coming in on the launchpad at just over 2900 tons it was powered by five of the largest, Griffon KW engines (there is a fifth booster hidden behind all of the flames in the center), sixteen of the low thrust, long duration Globe X5 SRBs and four of the high thrust, low duration Globe X5s for a total of around 900 parts. This was a take-a-break, find-something-else-to-do kind of launch, running at around 3 or 4 FPS. After some tricky separations maneuvers (those internal SRBs are a little scary when they come off and bump into each other) the four remaining engines push the tanker most of the way into orbit and drain it down to about 12000L of fuel. The main orbital engines push it the rest of the way, eventually getting into a stable, 300km orbit around Kerbin. Here are some detail shots, showing some of the six NERVAs used as orbital engines, and one of the four main landing engines. A network of forty RCS blocks provide control authority during flight, and help correct for any mass imbalance. Here the command tower is visible in the center. The six large spherical tanks are flanked by seventy-six of the cylindrical tanks of various sizes and twenty RCS tanks. The tanker holds a total of 77328L of fuel and 11020L of mono-propellant. Two of the docking and guidance towers are also visible here, cutoff on the bottom left and in the distance near the center. Here we can see the orbital pilot station and another of the guidance towers at the front of the tanker. The front-mounted fuel tanks are used to offset the mass of the NERVAs in the back. These use standard tri-couplers which don’t allow fuel crossfeed from the bottom, while all of the other tri-couplers have been modified to allow fuel flow. I tried to make the struts come out decent and symmetrical (I couldn’t use actual symmetry placement most of the time) to avoid that strut-spammed look. And most of the utilities parts are hidden away in the middle; there are around thirty or so reaction wheels, several batteries and RTGs, and some foldable landing legs made out of the standard, mid-sized truss pieces and Infernal Robotics hinges. After a three-burn transfer from Kerbin to the Mun the Nostromo begins its descent to the surface. By carefully coordinating the orbital engines, the main vertical thrust engines, and the RCS thrusters the tanker homes in on the Kethane refinery. Raycott Kerman gets a close view of the Mun arch from his perch at the rear guidance tower. The Nostromo comes in for a very gentle landing, fine tuning its position with RCS thrust, and running out of fuel less than one meter above the surface; talk about a close call. The landing blocks performed admirably though, absorbing the impact of the now 190 ton tanker at a little under 1m/s. With the tanker connected to the base through KAS pipes the refinery cranks up and begins producing fuel. The base is, unfortunately, not stable with a full load of fuel and kethane. It tends to develop a case of the death rattle and shakes itself apart after a minute or so. That’s no matter though, I can just start up everything and finish the fuel production and transfer during time-warp. TAC Fuel Balancer is supremely useful here, considering that I have seventy-six tanks to fill up. Now that the tanker is fully fueled the crew begins preparations for liftoff. After Seebin Kerman detaches the fuel pipe he watches as the lumbering tanker, now over 1000 tons, begins to slowly rise. Using a combination of the lift and orbital engines the tanker blasts off into a 50km orbit around the Mun. Around 25000L of fuel and 2000L of mono-propellant were used during liftoff, but there is still another 50000L of fuel remaining in the tanks, and around 9000L of mono. With the Nostromo in orbit I’ll end with one final shot of the Mun Arch Kethane Refinery, taken just as the sun is setting on the horizon.

You mean calculating thrust and Isp given the bell geometry? Nope, I'm definitely not doing that I was just doing what I proposed barely a month ago in this post, although at a slow pace since my job is taking almost my full time for the last couple weeks. But my methodology has been the same, so yeah, there is a duplicate effort here. But I'm not in a hurry or in a race, I like to do things slow and surely. So if you arrive at something that can be released, talk to Nathan and go ahead.

First, welcome to KSP and the forums Second, don't let yourself get too discouraged; Mun landings are considered a major mile-stone event and are really (at first anyway) difficult. LANDER DESIGN Two things to consider with your lander. #1, a wide landing base is a must. One trick you can use in the VAB to get just a little more footprint out of your legs is to hold the <SHIFT> key and hit <W> (or is it <S>? I can't remember) a few times to angle the legs out a bit. Most of the designs people have suggested with radially-mounted fuel tanks or girder sections are good things to look at. The other (slightly less important) is mass. Generally speaking, it takes about 10 tons of rocket to lift 1 ton of lander into orbit so I'd recommend against RCS and RTG spam for this reason. Also related to mass is your Thrust-to-weight ratio. Of course you need a minimum amount of power to be able to land (and take off again) but too much makes throttle control really difficult when you get close to setting it down. I'm sure you noticed that just as you're trying to set it down you'd lower your throttle a tidge and the thing drops like a stone; tapping the throttle up a scosh and lander tries to fly back into orbit. This is a sign that the lander may be overpowered. I'd recommend trying Markus Reese's design, only swap the LV909s out for the 48-77 engines (that should drop your Munar TWR down to about 3:1). I'm willing to bet it'll handle easier for you. A downward facing spotlight can be a real life-saver when it comes to judging how close you're getting to the terrain; and can help you gauge if it's level enough or not. LAUNCH and ORBIT Not going to talk about design too much outside of suggesting you not use SRBs after stage one. They're really not that efficient and are mostly there to get a quick boost of speed early on. Efficiently launching can make a huge difference in how much rocket you need to get to orbit. First, watch your speed. I could tell you about terminal velocity, air resistance, and map out maximum efficient velocity every 1000 meters... but that would be stupid and overwhelming. The rule of thumb is 100m/s off the pad, keep your G-meter at about 1G, and you want to hit about 200-240m/s when you reach 10,000m. Second is turning the rocket over. The easy way is to turn it over to about 45-degrees at 10km of altitude, then turn it over to the horizon at about 30km. It's not the best turn, but its a good place to start from and you can work out better ways as you gain experience. Third, you want your orbital altitude as low as possible. I used to go all the way out to 100km but these days I put my parking orbit down around 75-80km. Less energy spent getting into orbit and (unintuitively) less energy spent with your Munar injection burn. GETTING TO THE MUN This is easier than you think. Plunk down a maneuver node. Grab the prograde green karat and pull on it until you have a ~860m/s maneuver plotted, then grab the blue circle on the node and wave it around your orbit until you get an encounter with the Mun. You can fine-tune it from there. I think that covers some of the basics. I'll upload some designs later when I get home and have access to my own computer (this laptop sucks too hard to play much with ) Hope some of it helps you out. Good luck.

Seemingly every time I crash land there are two outcomes; either it blows up and good, or I bust a light. It is the strangest thing because I can almost tell what is going to happen if it is going bad. Oh, and lets not talk about time acceleration..... bad things happen at 1000x speed and phone calls. Lost Bobcat Kerman to the Mun doing that

(This is long, so brace yourselves) I consider myself to be a fairly decent KSP player. I've visited all planets within the Kerbol system, and I've built robust rockets that have served me well. However, when it comes to planes, I fail terribly. It used to be that I crashed every single plane (even non-spaceplanes) that I built immediately, and that's if I managed to get it off the runway. So I stuck with rockets, and I still had a blast with KSP. However, with all this talk of Career Mode and 'economics', I've started to waste fewer spent ships and build at least semi-reusable spacecraft, such as interplanetary ships that can make multiple trips. I've even made a replica of NASA's future Orion MPCV and SLS for short deep space missions. While I feel perfectly fine with launching a space station module or interplanetary starship aboard one of my heavy lift rockets, I feel a bit of guilt when using a massive rocket to simply transfer 3 kerbals or so to my orbital stations. Even downsizing the rocket to the bare minimum delta-v required to rendezvous with an orbital station, I still feel bad about returning only the crew capsule to Kerbin, dumping the orbital maneuvering system and the lifter rocket along the way. Now, I'm not the type to start reusing every spent stage or devoting all my time into SSTO designs, but I felt that something more economical might be in order. I wasn't quite sure what to do, until I saw the recent news footage of DreamChaser's testing. I said to myself: "Say, that looks like something cool I could build in KSP!" So I looked it up, and learned that it was a Commercial Crew Transport vehicle, which launches vertically and lands horizontally on a runway, sort of like the Shuttle but much smaller and focused on crew, rather than cargo. So I went to the Space Plane Hanger, and built myself this beauty: I thought it looked at least something like the real DreamChaser, and so I tested it out. Result: it flew like a brick, smashing into the ground whenever I tried to land. The reason behind this, even though I wouldn't figure it out until much later, was that after burning all the fuel in its tanks like it would during normal orbital operations, the centre of mass shifted too far in front of the centre of lift. While a good plane does in fact have the CoM in front of the CoL, if it's too far ahead the plane wants to pitch down a lot and makes aerial maneuvering quite difficult. So I tried another design. And another. I even loaded up my few successful spaceplanes to see if I could learn any tips from their designs. Nothing. I was very close to giving up on this venture, and just continuing to use expendable launchers for my crew vehicles. However, something inside me made me keep going at it and eventually it occurred to me to look up the mass of the MK3 cockpit I was using, which is actually quite huge. So, diverging from the DreamChaser design I was emulating, I built something like to this: For a change, my design actually flew! Not only did it fly, but it handled like a dream! Its small wings were a boon for putting it on top of a rocket (I had built a 'lifting body' by clipping a pair of wings inside the cockpit), and it danced around KSC like a small bird in the sky. And so, the moment had come. I didn't want to have to tailor the delta-v requirements of a lifter to this craft, so I simply slapped it on my 'Moho II' launcher and took off to a station that badly needed crew. Rendezvousing is old hat for me now, and even though the docking port is placed on the rear of the ship, I handled the maneuver without much trouble at all. And when the crew had been transferred over, it was time to complete the most crucial part of the mission--return. You see, I had only tested the integrity of the plane in subsonic flight around KSC. I had absolutely no idea how it would perform coming back in through the atmosphere at several times the speed of sound. (Fortunately, KSP doesn't model supersonic flight much different than subsonic flight; good thing I don't have FAR installed) Regardless, upon the deorbit burn, I was a little nervous; as all my time and energy put into designing this thing would be useless if it didn't deliver on its promise of reusability. Fortunately, I was able to keep it pointing prograde during reentry, and nothing broke off (always a plus!) I had carefully set up my burn so that I could hopefully land on the runway at KSC, so that the techs could just refuel the ship and place it back on top of another rocket. Another reason behind my nervousness was that I had never successfully landed a plane on the KSC runway before, let alone brought one in from orbit. I kept my cool though, and gently nudged the ship onto a landing trajectory. Unbelievably, I actually managed to set down in the centre of the runway! After landing successfully, I felt like someone in NASA's Mission Control after a big mission like Curiosity has landed--I let out a big whoop and was so happy. To me, it is these moments where one accomplishes something huge like this that make KSP the game it is. You build and fly your dreams, which can take on any form, and often are things that you could have never imagined yourself doing when you first started playing. Thank you SQUAD for making such an amazing game.

So, I have been playing around with this mod, and keep hearing people talk about 'lifting reentries'. How do I go about actually doing this, because it seems like its a good thing. And FlowerChild, I am going to go out on a limb and say you are the FlowerChild of BTW fame, correct?

I'd tend to agree with Steven Mading. The question, as stated, seems to be trying to find a physically reasonable answer to a situation that is not only physically impossible, but so poorly defined as to be meaningless. If some magical super-force were to slow the Earth rapidly to a (rotational) halt… why isn't that magical super force also acting on the crust, atmosphere, oceans, and poodles? first, you'd need to define in what way the Earth was "stopping", before you could even begin to talk (scientifically) about how other things (like poodles) would respond to "non-stopping". Heck, Earth is slowing down now - it will never be tidally locked to the Sun (timescales much longer than 10 billion years required for that), although we might* end up locked one-faced to the Moon eventually (the "day" would equal the "month" at about 50 current days long… now that would make for a long work day). Even then, we'd still spin… and tidal forces are about the only thing I can think of that slows down the rotation of large bodies in space. *I say "might" because when you figure in solar tides, the Moon starts having its orbit shrunk sometime after mutual tidal lock occurs, and the Moon is dropped into a lower orbit until it enter's Earth Roche limit… except the Sun would go all red giantish first, and anyway by the time the mutual tidal lock occurs the Moon is out nearly to the point of instability due to solar perturbations, so we might loose it after all.

Hello, Molybdene and Frizzank Thank you, I can't wait for this mod to be completed! It is the first time, I found myself actually waiting for the 1st release, thats a bit strange. Stargate sure is the obvious idea, when you talk about space travel game. But the only "warp" mod I found is the KSP Interstellar So here are my ideas: I'd like to see the warp relay as the "gate", which you have to enter to be teleported, more stylish this way. I have nothing against the mass relay from Mass Effect also, but that one was more "railgun" looking. The gate have to be constructable, to make it more time and effort consuming, the space exploration must not be too easy. What I found: This is the Jumpgate by nhnifong and dt890 (pic by kent700i). As for the mechanics - I agree the space travel must be energy consuming thing, but not the amount should be considerable, but the time it takes for the relay to be charged before the jump is made. The countdown timer would make the whole proccess more (how should I put it?) intriguing. The game itself has the nice docking "magnet" helper, maybe you would like to use something like that to adjust the teleported ship position near the relay, to make sure whe ship won't ruin it during the jump.

They're relatively recent and I'm thinking of overhauling the wiki page on XYZ coordinate system to talk about them. One exceedingly annoying "feature" about them is that the origin of the coordinate system for a body's POSITION and the origin of the coordinate system for a body's VELOCITY are not the same. Since velocity and position are directly connected to each other, having them reported in different coordinate systems so you constantly have to shift the origin when using them together is really messy. A body's VELOCITY is given in a coordinate system relative to your parent body you are currently orbiting. BUT, a body's POSITION is given in a coordinate system relative to your craft's position as origin, NOT the body your craft is orbiting. So for example if you are orbiting Kerbin, then Mun:POSITION is the position vector from YOU to the Mun. while Mun:VELOCITY is the velocity vector of the Mun relative to Kerbin, not relative to YOU. To prove this get into an orbit around Kerbin and keep printing both Mun:POSITION:MAG and Mun:VELOCITY:MAG. as you orbit. As you change position and velocity going around Kerbin, Mun:POSITION is smaller when you're on the side of Kerbin closest to it, and it gets bigger when you're on the side of Kerbin facing away from it. BUT, Mun:Velocity is only changing by a tiny amount as it slowly orbits Kerbin, while if it was based on being relative to you like the position was, it should be giving drastically different numbers when you're flying toward, away from, or perpendicular to it as you orbit around Kerbin. I'm not sure if this is KOS doing this or if this is just KOS exposing a weirdness about the underlying KSP C# API. It's workable as it is, as long as you know this fact, as you can always adjust between the two frames of reference because you can get your position relative to the body you orbit, but it's really odd that you have to make the adjustment because the system is being inconsistent with itself.

NOTHING can instantaneously stop, period. It requires an acceleration of infinity to do so. All scenarios in which you claim the earth stops must include how many seconds you're picturing it taking to do so. The answer cannot be zero seconds (to stop "instantaneously") Even an object moving at only 0.000001 meters per second STILL requires infinite acceleration to stop in an instant. Without that context of how many seconds you're talking about it taking for the Earth to stop, you're talking about a scenario that breaks all calculations using Newtonian physics anyway. You'd be introducing everything on the planet to a Space Kraken bug. But if we temporarily accept the absurd scenario, people need to remember that when you say "the earth" stops rotating you need to define what bits of mass are part of "the earth" and are thus included in that magical stopping. The talk about oceans sloshing, and tectonic plates shifting are rather predicated on treating these things like they're not part of the earth and are therefore not included in the statement "the earth stops rotating". Speaking of the earthquakes and magma effects from the shifting plates is basically a case of pretending the word "earth" is defined to only include the core and the mantle and not the crust.

erbmur: Cool! So: the values are: Shockwave: How hot the air molecules are after they hit the part (i.e. the ambient temperature) Temp: how hot the part is. Acceleration: current accel for the part, in Gs. Cumulative G: a value that tracks how much "damage" your crew in the part (if any) have sustained from high Gs. From the readme (it's the "tracker" I talk about): Kerbals have human-like G-force tolerance, which means they can survive 5Gs for about 16 minutes, 10 Gs for 1 minute, 20Gs for 3.75 seconds, and 30+ Gs for less than three quarters of a second. The tracker is reset when G load < 5. All these are tweakable in the cfg or in the ingame debug menu. It's done by tracking cumulative Gs. The formula is for each timestep, tracker = tracker + G^crewGPower * timestep (where ^ = power). G is clamped to range [0, crewGClamp]. When tracker > crewGWarn, a warning is displayed. When tracker > crewGLimit, then each frame, per part, generate a random number 0-1, and if > crewGKillChance, a kerbal dies in that part. If G < crewGMin, EDIT: try without DRE, see if you still get the spin.

Took me about 4 hours to get into a decent orbit every time I go for a spin in the ol' rocket of fun, I'm yet to actually get into an orbit around Mun, talk about landing on that damn thing!

A little bit of bravado there. While you have a decent enough looking aircraft, I would be more impressed if you had achieved that in FAR, and didn't talk trash about your competitors creations.

I'm sure he will be back eventually, probably has some real life stuff he needs to deal with instead of YouTube. Also, this is not the place to discuss his personal matters, so probably best for people not to talk about it before people start speculating.

there are some advantages to not being locked into a stick manufacturer. for games though, the ch software is more than sufficient. it can merge axes, it can split axes, it can make fake axes with any number of buttons, its totally scriptable. its probibly the top stock software for any joystick product. only thing that might compete is what comes with a high end thrustmaster (as for saitek, their software is just a keymapper). i do use virtual sticks other than the ch ones. for example i own a trackir and 9 times out of 10 the game i want to use it on doesn't support it, and i used to go through a virtual driver to make it work. i also do a lot of electronics projects where i need to get data from an arduino into the pc (such as logging imu data), and the joystick virtual interface is perfect for that. up till now i was using ppjoy. but its dated and loaded with bugs (and ive only been able to talk to it from a c application, which made it difficult to slap together an interface). now the vJoy driver that this application is built on can be accessed through a dll. i pretty much just (this very night) wrote a lua interface (through alien) for the driver, so i can now slap together a script to act as a feeder application. talking to arduino can be easily accomplished through ethernet, or serial interfaces. i also accomplished joystick in and freetrack in through lua, so i can script my way to control perfection at this point. it is in my interest that vJoy gets signed though.

Alright - so you're in career; from the sound of it, you've unlocked Survivability and General Rocketry on Tier 2, but not necessarily Stability. I'm assuming you've gotten no farther than that. First off - forget asparagus. You need fuel lines for that, and those won't become available until Fuel Systems on Tier 4. It's serial or nothing. Let's talk design first: CSM/LANDER Mk1 Command Pod x1 Mk2-R Radial Parachute x2 (set these port and starboard on the command pod) Mystery Goo Containment Unit x2 (around the bast of the command pod) TR-18A Stack Decoupler x1 FL-T400 Fuel Tank x1 LV-909 Liquid Fuel Engine x1 Modular Girder Segment x4 (set these radially as close to the bottom of your craft as you can get them) LT-1 Landing Struts x4 (set these on the ends of the girders - we're trying to widen the base of the ship when you go to land). This is what I crudely call a "Phallus 7" design; it's about as basic of a direct ascent lander as you can get. 5.1 tonnes, 1904.68 m/s of delta-V - which is just enough to get down, up and back to Kerbin. A transfer stage to go from Kerbin to the Mün needs 1070 m/s give or take. So that piece looks like this: TR-18A x1 FL-T400 Fuel Tank x1 LV-909 x1 That'll actually give you 1116.82 m/s of delta-V. It just remains then to get that into orbit. Try this: TR-18A x1 9 stacks of: =FL-T400x6 =FL-T200x1 (Set one centerline, eight radially - use Modular Girder Segments to attach). LV-T45 x1 (center stack) LV-T30 x8 (outboard stacks) That'll get you 4577.49 m/s of delta-V and a 1.32 launch TWR. You might have to turn on parts clipping (ALT-F12) to get it to work. This single stage rocket is the least efficient means of getting your payload up, but at least it will be relatively simple to build. Okay. So launch - straight up to 10k, then 090 at 45 degrees elevation until you're at T-35 seconds to apoapsis. Then follow your prograde vector. If you fall below T-30 to apoapsis at any time, return to 45 degrees elevation. Above T-60 to apoapsis, begin burning along the horizon. Burn until your apoapsis is up around 110,000 meters or so. All the while, watch your gee meter - you want to throttle back occasionally such that the needle stays right at the top of the green section of the gauge (not above it). Once you're out of atmosphere, set up your maneuver node and burn for orbit when you're ready. You'll probably want to do that at about 1/3 thrust. Dump the booster once you're in orbit. Next, align your map view so that you're looking at it top down, and target the Mün. Set it up so that if the top of the screen is 12:00, the Mün is somewhere around 3:30 or so (about 100 degrees from the top going clockwise). Set up a node at the 6:00 position and pull prograde until you get an encounter. Use the data from the maneuver node to time it - you want roughly half your burn to occur both before and after the node. You might want to light your transfer stage engine and fire it up for a few seconds before you get there; it won't throw things off too far and it'll give you a better time estimate. Burn when the time comes and adjust as necessary. When you get to the Mün's SOI, burn retrograde at periapsis to establish orbit. You want to get it relatively close - 14k is good. Pick a landing site, burn to deorbit, and dump the transfer stage. Here's the tricky bit - quicksave (F5) before you begin (and F9 to quickload after a foul-up). Go IVA and find your radar altimeter - the gauge that looks like this: Keep an eye on it until the needle starts twitching. Then burn retrograde. Make sure your speedometer is set to "Surface" mode (click on the word portion of the speedometer if it isn't. Lower your lander legs if you haven't already. You want to burn off most of your velocity at this point. When it gets to 50 m/s, back off the throttle to 2/3, then 1/3 at 20 m/s. The retrograde marker should approach the center of the blue portion of the nav ball. Kill your burn at that point and go back to your radar altimeter. Watch it until you're 500 meters over the deck, then burn hard again - use the radar altimeter to get an estimate on where the ground is. Get your speed below 10 m/s and keep it there once you're within 100 meters. Throttle down when you hit the surface. Watch your fuel during this process - if you go below 80 liquid fuel units at any time, abort the landing and head back to Kerbin; you should have just enough fuel to make it back. Hopefully one of these suggestions covers your needs; let us know how it turns out.

Yep, forgot to talk about that.

I do recall, that I did have a KSP dream-no, it was a nightmare. So, basically, I was the Administrator of the KSP Space Agency. I have this office in the Mission Control Center and have his really neat and accurate model of my Munshot rocket sitting on my desk. So, I'm at this presentation by some Kerbal who I suppose is in charge of the budgets, and he shows that my agencies next annual budget is on a downward track (And have you ever heard Kerbal groan? It sounds so human), and we won't have enough funds to do our Vall driller probe thingy. Oh, and we'll be having to cut our next proposed Duna orbiter mission. And our next proposed space telescope. But hey, we still have manned spaceflight capability to our spacestation, right? Wrong. Apparently, we'll have to abandon our plans for a Munar base and an extra module to our station. Some Kerbal in the back is apparently enraged by this, and storms out of the room. I follow. I then leave the room, and this Kerbal walks up to me and offers me a contract. I'm wondering "Huh?", and he says he wants to send a Kerbal on a Duna flyby mission soon. I say yes, and then talk with Wehner (My deputy) and some other people. They say (rather sadly) that I won't have money. And then I suddenly realize the budget cut had destroyed our efforts for beyond Kerbin orbit exploration and will likely delay our Mars ship lander mission. I wake up, and look at NASA news. Inspiration Mars just got its funding denied by NASA. Freaky.

Dug up this post from yesterday, when the Terra Nova, the first Kerbal starship, returned from her 3-year expedition in interstellar space. Do you know why interstellar travel is a subject that Squad refuses to talk about? I think I've just figured out. And yes, Kerbin, Eve, and Duna orbited in a straight line.

I usually put 8-10 because you're going to be launching more stuff. (sats, ships, probes,) and you're going to want them ALL to talk to each other. So the more, the better.

Antarctica gain ice then moist air reach the antarctic highland. Note that most of Antarctica is dry as Sahara, just millimeters with snow each year. Antarctica loose ice as its pushed into the sea. Increasing the temperature around Antarctica should increase the ice thickness as you get more humidity, lots of sea ice around it and the snow will fall on it. How much ice fall into the sea depend on the ice thickness as thicker ice will move faster. Yes you also have ice going directly into vapor this increases with higher temperature, dryer air and more sunlight, however its an decent chance that this will fall down on the highlands again. In short, its very plausible that Antarctica will gain more ice if it become warmer, this ice will go back to the sea 50-1000 years from now. Where is the sea rising? Note I talk about sea rising, not land getting lower as you pump out the ground water, Note that IPCC talked about an 20 cm sea level increase in 2100. An raising sea level will show up pretty equal all over.

Bill and Jeb's Awesome Trip (The Kerbalizer includes bowler hats, which gave me what is probably a terrible idea.... And this preface is something I've had planned since I first put the rover on the Dunan-X mission. With apologies to Samuel Beckett.) Dosby, sitting on a low dune, is trying to take off his boot. He pulls at it with both hands, panting. He gives up, exhausted, rests, tries again. As before. Dosby: "Nothing to be done." Luton: "I'm starting to agree with you. All my life I've been chasing something, and yet here we land, surrounded by nothing." Luton removes his helmet, looks about the inside of it quizzically, then returns it to his head. "What are you doing?" Dosby: "Taking off my boot. Did that never happen to you?" Luton: "To me? Absurd. Boots must always be taken off, just never when there's so much dust about." Luton takes off his helmet again, turns it upside down and shakes. "Funny." He taps on the crown of it as though to dislodge something, looks at the inside of it, feels around for a bit, then gives up and puts it back on. "How's your foot?" Dosby: "Swelling visibly." Luton: "Well that's bound to happen with the thin air." Dosby: "Let's go." Luton: "We can't." Dosby: "Why not?" Luton: "We're waiting for Bob." Dosby: "Oh." (Pause) "You sure it was here?" Luton: "He said by the rock." They both look at the rock. "Do you see any other?" Dosby: "Well, yes. Everywhere I look. All I see are rocks!" (Pause) "Wait, what did we ask him for?" Luton: "Who?" Dosby: "Bob." Luton: "Oh.... Nothing very definite." Luton paces about, glancing at the rock in a hostile fashion, pauses, and then points down the hill. "Wait, what's that?" Dosby: "Is it him?" Luton: "Are we saved?" (Enter Jeb and Lucky. Jeb drives Lucky from his seat on the front left of the rover. He stops short, causing a great deal of clatter and noise from the soft ground and loose bits of kit on the rover.) Jeb: "Hey, you two want to go for a ride?" Dosby: (To Luton) "Is that him?" Luton: "Who?" Dosby: "Bob?" Jeb: "No, I'm Jeb." (Silence) "Jebediah?" (More silence.) "Does that name mean nothing to you?" Dosby and Luton look at each other questioningly. Dosby: "We are not from these parts, sir." Jeb: "You are Kerbals, none the less. Look, me and Bill were going to take Lucky here down to that big impact crater, and wanted to know if you'd like to ride along. On Lucky's back, perhaps?" Dosby walks up to Lucky and kicks a tire with his bare foot, bruising it badly. "Ouch!" Luton: "Well what did you expect, you old fool? Get up." Luton looks at Dosby. Looks to Jeb. Looks back to Dosby and shakes his head disapprovingly. He looks around at the landscape. "Will night never come?" All three look up at the sky. Dosby, having got back up after hurting his foot: "Nothing happens, nobody comes, nobody goes, it's awful!" Jeb: "Look, I don't know what the two of you are up to, but I need to be off. If you need anything, let Shepson know. Ok?" (Exit Jeb and Lucky. While leaving, a spare helmet falls off Lucky and is deposited in the nearby dirt.) Dosby: "What do we do now?" Luton: "I don't know." Dosby: "Let's go." Luton: "We can't. We're waiting for Bob." Dosby: "Oh." -- "I'm just not sure, Shepson. Those two are crazier than me!" Jebediah hadn't bothered to climb down from the rover, and just watched as Bill loaded up snacks for their trip. "Make any progress on the engine repairs?" "Yes and no. No throttle control yet, but we've got on/off working. It would probably be enough to get us to the transfer tug in orbit, assuming Melke and Mattlock are still there. Or alive." "Ok, good. The next return window opens in a few Munths. Hopefully we can get the comms working by then." Jeb helped Bill up into the seat (quite a climb for a small Kerbal) then released the rover's brakes. "Shepson, just keep an eye on those two. We'll be back in a few days." Bill was barely buckled in when Jeb pulled away. "I packed a bunch of extra flags, just in case we want to mark our path. Breadcrumbs and such." "Nifty! Let's rock!" This was the first long trip they'd taken since Jeb and Shepson repaired the rover. Whatever had knocked out the computers aboard the Dunan-X also damaged most of the automated systems aboard Lucky. They had to salvage parts from the self-righting "legs" from the back to repair the Dunan-X, and wired the motors directly to the controls in Jeb's seat. Most of the secondary systems and remote operator controls were gone for good, but they wouldn't need those with Jeb at the helm! Their destination was the large Hellas-like impact crater, about 80km south of the Dunan-X landing site. The terrain between them and the edge of the basin was relatively flat, but then the elevation drops to about 300m in the basin, and rises back to 4km to the twin peaks in the center. The first stop was the small hill to the southwest of the lander, the furthest anyone had driven to date. “Little Red Hill†they'd been calling it. Bill let Jeb plant this flag. He looked back to the distant Dunan-X for a few moments while Jeb ran around playing in the red sands. "We've been here what, now? Five Kerbin years? Six since we left home, and this is the first time we'll be out if sight of that ship." "Exciting! Isn't it?" "Not especially. Not with you driving. Horrifying, perhaps." "Bah! C'mon, let's get rolling. We need to reach the edge of the basin by nightfall." Jeb's driving was as reckless as ever, and he would often catch air after cresting a dune. Bill was already wearing out the armrests on his chair, holding on for dear life, though occasionally he couldn't help but smile. They made it to the rim of the impact basin in no time. "We should name this place something cool!" "It's already got a name, Jeb. Red Impact something." "Something like Hellas Hole. Or maybe Twin Peaks." "Let's just stick to the books. The ancient Kerbal astronomers named most of these places centuries ago." Bill rummaged around in his bags until he found the large Rand-McKerman atlas. He opened to the pages for Duna and pointed to their location. "See, Red Impact Basin." "You're no fun at all sometimes!" -- They camped at the rim's edge, preparing themselves for the slowest and most dangerous part of the trip. With the self-righting mechanism broken they couldn't risk flipping the rover. And with the loose sands they couldn't keep traction driving downhill. So they had to zig and zag down the edge of the basin, descending 3.5km over the 20km distance. That didn't stop Jeb from occasionally being Jeb. They made one more stop a bit further down, where the slope leveled out a bit before getting much steeper. From here they could see the entire basin below them, and most of the climb up the peaks at the middle. They planted flag and named it "Red Basin View." A long, even slower descent was ahead of them. The air at the basin bottom was thick enough to breathe, but neither felt like taking off their helmets. The soil itself was still mostly sand, but felt thicker and heavier. "There's a good chance there's some water ice trapped in this sand, Jeb. Pretty thick stuff." Bill was digging a hole with his boot, kicking the lighter sand aside to reveal a darker, thicker soil beneath. “Might even be able to plant something here. There's probably enough CO2 in the air.†"Ok. Go ahead and grab a sample. We'll have to drive through the basin again when we head back to the ship, but I expect that'll be further east and higher up." "We aren't camping here tonight?" "Nope! I wanna make summit by sunrise. Driving uphill is easy!" Night was on them before Bill could plant the flag. Twilight wasn't as short as at higher elevations, but the thin atmosphere did nothing to refract light down to them. Jeb pushed on through the dark, the sands in front of them illuminated by the rover's headlights and their helmet lights. The driving along the basin bottom and up into the hills wasn't bad at all. At first. "Look, Bill, I said I'm sorry! What more do you want?" "Just get this thing upright again so I can get out of this seat! How did you manage to plant it straight up and down like this anyway?" "Talent! Just hold on while I smack into it with my jetpack." The rover crashed over after one hit, landing with a dull crash. They recomposed themselves, repacked all the junk that was scattered about, and took a few minutes to rest. For some reason Jeb decided to name the place "Camp 27." It was only their second campsite. They set out in plenty of time to make summit by sunrise. They stopped at the highest peak first, West Peak at 4km, and made it to the East Peak just in time to catch a unique sunrise / eclipse combination. (Both Bill and Jeb) "Wow." Perfect spot for a long nap, so they made camp at summit. Bill tried to reach Shepson on his suit radio to tease him, but 80km without line of sight was a bit much to ask. Especially with the ship's comms still down and a limited ionosphere to bounce radio signals back down. A few minutes later something crackled back on the radio. Bill was drifintg off to sleep, and wasn't sure if he'd really heard it. "Orbiter calling Dunan-X Lander. We received your earlier transmission. Please respond." "Matlock?!" Bill kicked Jeb to wale him up. "Jeb! Get up! It's Matlock!" "Ghrunh??" Jeb rolled over and went back to sleep. "Read you loud and clear, Billy boy. We've just now got the radios working, and hadn't heard a peep from anyone yet. How'd the two of you get yourselves all the way down to that crater?" "We drove! Had to fix up the rover, but Shepson took care of that." Bill kicked Jeb again, this time eliciting an angry response. "I'm up already!" "Where are you? Still in the same orbit?" Bill motioned to get Jeb's attention, then pointed upwards and mouthed out "Matlock." Jeb just looked back, sleepy, angry and confused. "More or less. We'll be passing over the horizon here in a bit. We're hoping to get at least one of the satellites back online soon, which should allow us to stay in contact more consistently. Concensus is they're probably just safed. No word from Kerbin yet. We'll call you back in a (static)..." Jeb, still sleepy, yawned and sat up. "Which ghost was that?" "You're hopeless, Jeb. Go back to sleep." -- The Orbiter crew called back next orbit, and filled Bill and Jeb in on their status. So far they hadn't been able to get the engines online, and their computers were still down. Life support aboard the orbiter was run directly from an RTG, but nothing else. Including the lights. They had spent the last several years with only intermittent sunlight and their helmet lights to work from. They also mentioned another signal they'd been picking up. A faint beeping noise, coming from somewhere a few kilometers south of Bill and Jeb on the peak. That's where Bill and Jeb found the rover. "It's not the first time I've seen something like this." Jeb poked around under the little robot's solar panels, looking for signs of life. Nothing. Just enough power to keep it faintly beeping. "They asked me not to talk about it." "About what? This rover?" "No. About what I found on the Mun. The other flags. The other probes. The other landers. All left there by another me. Said if I talked, they'd label me as space crazed and lock me up." "Wow." Bill thought it was a stretch to imply Jeb wasn't crazy, but.... "OK, so what do we do about this one?" "Nothing. Plant a flag and go back to the ship. We'll report it if we ever get the comms to Kerbin working again." "Ooh! Look at the skycrane wreckage!" Jeb wasted no time, and ran straight for the pile of crushed and twisted metal. In no time he was jumping up and down on the wreckage. "Sounds like there's still a bit of fuel!" "Didn't seem to make it very far. Wonder why we'd send a rover to a spot halfway up the side of a mountain?" "Who knows. Probably some important rock nearby.†They both glanced over to the large stone they'd parked Lucky next to, then shrugged their shoulders. “Let's get back to the ship and help Shepson with repairs. I wanna go home!" The trip back was completely uneventful. They worked around the East Peak, dropping down to the basin bottom before heading straight up to the rim elevation. Easy driving from there back to the Dunan-X. total distance covered? No idea. But the rover was a bit more than 90km form the ship. Probably drove a total of 250km just to get there, with all the zig-zagging. -- (Back at the rock with Dosby and Luton.) Luton: “How they've changed.†Dosby, still on the ground wrestling with the boot on his other foot. “Who?†Luton: “Those two.†Dosby: “I suppose, but I don't know them.†Luton: “Yes you do know them. We know them. You forget everything.†(Pauses. To himself.) “Unless they're not the same....†Dosby: “Why didn't they recognize us then?†Continues wrestling with his other boot. “Ow! Ow!†He hobbles off towards the rock, but collapses and falls over, still trying to remove his boot. Shepson (offstage): “Dosby?†Dosby halts. Both look to the voice. Luton: “Approach, my child.†(Enter Shepson, boldly. He stops before the two.) Shepson: “I'm not your child, you loon.†Luton: “What is it? You have a message from Mr Bob?†Shepson: “No, why would I? Look, Jeb called on the radio a little while ago and said he and Bill would make it back sometime in the morning. Also, Matlock and Melke got their radios working in orbit, and seem to be ok. They all wanted me to check in on you.†Luton: “Haven't I seen you before?†Shepson: “Of course. We flew here together.†Luton: “It wasn't you that came yesterday?†Shepson: (To himself.) “Hopeless.†Dosby: “Speak up, boy!†Shepson: “Look, Jeb was right about you two. You're both completely nutters. Bob hasn't called, hasn't sent any notes, and as far as I know isn't coming. If you two won't come back to the ship, at least put your boots back on. I'm going back now.†(Exit Shepson.) Dosby: “At last!†Dosby finally removes his other boot. He gets up and goes toward Luton, a boot in each hand. He puts them down at the edge of the rock, and contemplates the stars in the sky. Luton: “What are you doing?†Dosby: “Thinking on the lack of a moon. I thought it would have risen by now.†Luton: “Your boots, what are you doing with your boots?†Dosby, turning to look at his boots. “I'm leaving them there. Another will come, just as me, but with smaller feet, and they'll make him happy.†Luton: “But you can't go barefoot!†Dosby: “Bob did. All my life I've compared myself to him.†Luton: “But where he lived it was warm, it had air!†Dosby: “Yes, and they crucified him quick.†Luton: “Huh?†(Pauses.) “We have nothing more to do here.†Dosby: “Nor anywhere else.†Luton: “Let's go.†They do not move. Night falls, casting the pair and the rock and Dosby's boots in total darkness.

Hi Sumghai, thanks for giving us such a well-designed set of station parts! I'm especially a fan of the IACBM ports and their artistic details. I don't think I'll ever go back to the welded-beer-keg stock stations! Looks like there's some talk about the collision mesh of the IACBM's - I had a slightly different question about them. I understand that eventually the wings on the ports will serve to automatically align them during docking. As currently designed, they can be toggled between two different angles to provide complementary interlocking shapes. Instead of toggling the wings between 0-degree and 45-degree angles, however, would it be easier to fix them at 22.5-degrees? This would still allow for docking ships at 0, 90, 180, and 270-degree orientations, but use a static collision mesh. Cheers again for a great mod!

Since I usually go way overkill on the control wheels, my ASAS doesn't actually talk. Instead, it makes a sound when I engage it. Something like: