Kerbin Geographic And Science Society

[qwertyx2y]

not the mountains just the valley

[Mr_Brain]

Greetings, members of the Kerbin Geographic and Science Society!

Hereby I apply for membership in said society. As the local space program\'s spacecrafts will most likely reach the Mün without triggering a combustion reaction of the craft\'s fuel by damaging said object\'s hull by colliding with munar rock and causing the mixing of flammable liquids and the air required for the kerbonauts very soon we hope we will be able to support the KGSS in its mission.

I hope my request will be accepted.

Sincerly yours, Mr_Brain.

[togfox]

Hi Mr_Brain.

Welcome to the club. You can get your imaginary pin/badge at the door and your free charts in CSV format in the original post. Please read the first two editions of the KGSS journal (in this forum somewhere) and on the OP. Love to hear what you think about them.

[Anonymous]

I have a quick question about mapping. The dual-part article published in the first and second edition mentions nothing about the effects on orbital altitude, so if someone would be so kind and explain that I would be grateful. I\'m also wondering about the range of the plugin part used in the article, does it require multiple orbits, and if so, does it have to cover different places, or is one polar orbit enough?

[togfox]

The plugin mentioned records orbital altitude (altitude above ground level) in one column and altitude above sea level in another column. It doesn\'t actuall record the terrain height but it can be easily calculated.

Terrain height =(altitude above sea level - altitude above ground level)

See article 1 where this is explained. Your orbital altitude can change and the formula will still work. Best to get a near circular orbit though. Range wise, from memory, I think it has a range of 6000m but don\'t quote me. If your output file has no numbers then you know it\'s not working!

A single polar orbit (left for a few hours) will see your surveying satellite travel over all of the planet/moon sooner or later. As you orbit from pole to pole, the rotation of the moon under you means you\'ll capture the entire surface eventually.

[Anonymous]

The plugin mentioned records orbital altitude (altitude above ground level) in one column and altitude above sea level in another column. It doesn\'t actuall record the terrain height but it can be easily calculated.

Terrain height =(altitude above sea level - altitude above ground level)

The newer version does however, maybe the old one too, but I\'m not sure. Just find the line in the part.cfg that says dataFields and change it to:

dataFields = Lat, Lon, Elev

giving you the latitude, longitude, and the elevation in that order. That way it does actually record terrain height.

A single polar orbit (left for a few hours) will see your surveying satellite travel over all of the planet/moon sooner or later. As you orbit from pole to pole, the rotation of the moon under you means you\'ll capture the entire surface eventually.

Thank you, that was what I wanted to know, however you didn\'t mention anything about orbital height. Does it work as well (or even better?) at higher altitudes or lower?

[togfox]

It works at all heights equally well by capturing x datapoints per second (also in the cfg file). There is an upper limit/range so it might be useful to determine that first. In terms of quality of data, I\'m sure there will be a theoretical benefit at orbiting higher but in practice, it won\'t matter all that much.

Thanks for that clarification on elevation. That makes my formula redundant.

[Corax]

A few corrections and annotations from the plugin\'s author

The plugin mentioned records orbital altitude (altitude above ground level) in one column and altitude above sea level in another column. It doesn\'t actuall record the terrain height but it can be easily calculated.

Actually it can record elevation too, and I think it already did back when the article was published.

Best to get a near circular orbit though. Range wise, from memory, I think it has a range of 6000m but don\'t quote me. If your output file has no numbers then you know it\'s not working!

Again, the plugin has been able to measure elevation data from much higher altitudes for quite some time now. You can safely orbit Kerbin way above the extents of its atmospheric layers and still get good data

A single polar orbit (left for a few hours) will see your surveying satellite travel over all of the planet/moon sooner or later. As you orbit from pole to pole, the rotation of the moon under you means you\'ll capture the entire surface eventually.

The altimeter covers only the ground directly below it – think of it as a laser beam with no noticeable beam divergence. So a single orbit, as in one revolution around the body, is by far not sufficient to map the entire body. Many orbital revolutions are required for this, depending on the desired resolution. A polar orbital trajectory is desirable as it covers the entire body, but it gives a much higher amount of data points over the poles, so you may want to gradually change the orbital plane closer to the lower latitudes once you have sufficient polar data.

If all you want to do is mapping, then Innsewerant\'s ISA Mapper might be more what you want. The telemetry plugin can be used to gather mapping data, but that is only one of many sensors, it\'s not specialized for this task.

EDIT:

That, and what togfox said just seconds ago

[togfox]

Thanks Corax. I\'ll have to mention this in journal #3.

I\'ve never actually mapped Kerbin as those datapoints were provided by others in the KGSS community (mostly Dani) and I think she used Innsewerants ISA mapper. For those curious enough to know, despite crxTelemetry being designed to track craft movement through ascent and orbit I immediately recognised it as a means to map terrain and gently prodded Corax into building a few niceties into the cfg file, which he did - lucky for me. The ISA Mapper came soon after and the mapping community exploded with members submitting complete and partial data points. The csv files in the OP are a joint effort from many different people, thanks to Corax and Innswerants who developed their respective tools.

And THAT was the birth place of the KGSS.

[Anonymous]

So in response to Corax, would a higher orbit, thereby allowing for higher warp speed, make data collection quicker, or is it locked according to real-time seconds?

[Corax]

So in response to Corax, would a higher orbit, thereby allowing for higher warp speed, make data collection quicker, or is it locked according to real-time seconds?

Data can be collected during time warp, but to determine the accuracy of that data, more science would be needed. I\'d say it works reasonably well, but I haven\'t actually put any serious research into that.

Generally, a higher orbit makes for higher spatial resolution at the cost of longer orbital periods. Time warp might reduce that higher resolution to the point of a lower net resolution, and I can\'t vouch for the correctness of the individual data points collected during (high) time warp. 5x or even 10x appears to be fine though.

[togfox]

Sounds like Anonymous is in a place to let us know how well a high orbit high warp survey mission compares to a \'skim the ground\' orbit.

[Anonymous]

Sounds like Anonymous is in a place to let us know how well a high orbit high warp survey mission compares to a \'skim the ground\' orbit.

I could do that. It would take some time to actually do the different mappings. If you want I could do something like the following:

Map Kerbin four times:

• 
  [li]1 hour real time in high-warp[/li]
  [li]1 hour real time in 1x speed[/li]
  [li]1 hour KSP time in high-warp[/li]
  [li]1 hour KSP time in 1x speed[/li]
  

Or some derivative of that process. The few, low-quality maps I have done so far using the high-warp tecnhique have all come out a little bit stretched, and the size of items are distorted.

[togfox]

I can think of three scenario\'s:

a) low orbit x1 speed

high orbit x1 speed

c) high orbit x5 speed

Methods a) and would interest me the most but the difference won\'t be noticable unless you map the same portion of the Mun/Minmus. You might want to do a quicksave at your \'start\' point and map a portion then do a \'quick load\' to return to that point, quickly change orbit and then map the same portion of the moon. Just an idea.

[Mr_Brain]

Hi Mr_Brain.

Welcome to the club. You can get your imaginary pin/badge at the door and your free charts in CSV format in the original post. Please read the first two editions of the KGSS journal (in this forum somewhere) and on the OP. Love to hear what you think about them.

I read the journal and I really like it! However, I think I noticed a mistake in the second edition, in the Glossary about configuration file syntax: At least with my copy of KSP, crew state 0 means available, 1 means on a mission and 3 means dead.

By the way, should I post a scientific challenge (which is not nearly as challenging as the current KGSS challenges) in the challenge section or here in the thread? And if I should post in the challenge section, would I be allowed to add [KGSS] to the title?

[togfox]

I\'ll send your correction to the article authors for their investigation.

You can post any challenge you like - free world of course - but if you\'d like to use the KGSS tag then send me your idea via private message. If it promotes the KGSS charter then we can post it in the forum or make it an exclusive for the journal. I\'d love to hear your idea.

[khyron42]

Location naming has dropped off lately, but I have another location to name.

An intrepid explorer, Malbert Kerman, decided to go visit the mountain which several almost-orbital launch failures had noted directly along their flight path. He designed and financed the construction of the Kerbin explorer - an aircraft made to drop a one-man rover in the unpopulated lands across the ocean, with the intention of driving the rover up the mountain.

As with many explorers, he underestimated the harshness of the land he would be exploring. The rover tipped over about a third of the way up the mountain and could not be tipped back onto its wheels. Undeterred, Malbert set out on foot to scale at least the minor peak he had been approaching. Some 30 minutes later, he stood atop the westernmost of the mountain's peaks. Because it's been part of failed launches as a Trans-Oceanic Lauch Abort Sightseeing location, he chose to name the mountain Mount Tolas. The westernmost peak was named Malbert's Peak.

Standing atop Malbert's Peak, looking back at the rover and plane:

The view from the plane looking towards Mount Tolas:

Overhead view of Mount Tolas:

Orbital view for lat/long:

Name:Malbert's Peak (small feature) on Mount Tolas (may require poll)

Latitude: 00 deg. 31' 36" N

Longitude: 33 deg. 29' 12" W

Altitude: 1809 m

Celestial body: Kerbin

Edited August 5, 2012 by khyron42

[Romfarer]

My plugin got a Kerbin Positioning System which allows you to mark locations on the map. All the locations are also stored in a file so you can share them. I.e all locations are represented as a line in the file so you can just paste locations in there and it will show up on your map.

Plugin Development and Projects -> Romfarer_LazorSystem

[togfox]

Thanks Khy and Rom. Maybe someone who has that plug in wishes to maintain a list of names/co-ordinates for the society. Any volunteers?

[Plaatinum Aerospace]

@togfox: I sent you a application work for joining the KGSS.

Edit: I sent you two, the Curiosity one is a disgrace to my pride in writing cause it is so bad.

I sent you another one that is much better (its a challenge!) No more spoilers!

Thanks!

Plaatinum Aerospace

[Deaghaidh]

This organization seems like a noble enterprise.

I wonder, are there consensus names for the major geographical features of Kerbin (oceans, continents, and such)? Or for nations to populate the world? As I recall, at some point they are going to implement cities (or at least lights and other landmarks associated with them). It seems like we could save the developers some work and have some fun coming up with these things ourselves.

[Plaatinum Aerospace]

The challenge I made with input from togfox is up!

togfox let me post it as long as it had "Posted with permission from the KGSS" on it, so here you go!

Link: http://kerbalspaceprogram.com/forum/showthread.php/16502-KGSS-Satellite-Challenge

Thanks!

Plaatinum Aerospace

[togfox]

This organization seems like a noble enterprise.

I wonder, are there consensus names for the major geographical features of Kerbin (oceans, continents, and such)? Or for nations to populate the world? As I recall, at some point they are going to implement cities (or at least lights and other landmarks associated with them). It seems like we could save the developers some work and have some fun coming up with these things ourselves.

There is another thread where the KGSS invited the community to define and name continents. Squad could ignore those names of course but it turns out not many people are interested in naming the terra.

The KGSS ethos is that anything we do should be decided by the community and by concensus. The community didn't get involved so there is no role for the KGSS at this point in time. I'd be happy if that changed.

[Romfarer]

Have you tried marking any locations with the KPS subsystem in LazorSystem? I can add a lot of extra stuff to that system if you are interested. It might even be possible to mark areas on the map, such as outlines for countries.

[togfox]

Thanks Rom. If someone with your plugin maintains names and co-ordinates and posts into this thread, can it be 'imported' quickly? Is it a file that sits in 'plugin data' folder in txt format?