totm apr 2024 Threads of the month: April 2024

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The KSP forum moderator's team presents the

Threads of the Month

April 2024 Edition

Wow, the first half of this month slipped by pretty fast! It seemed that just a week ago, many of us in North America were watching the awesome eclipse. This month has been extremely busy for me as I have been engaged in some public speaking events related to the role of eclipses in human history - a field I have been interested in since the latter half of my undergraduate days - archeoastronomy. This is the study of how ancient cultures studied, understood, and used astronomy. So, since last Monday, I have had the honor and pleasure of giving three different presentations on the close relationship between astronomy and human civilization. It's an hour-long presentation and really glosses over the highlights - starting with Stonehenge, the Great Pyramids, the Chinese, Persians, and Norse use of the nighttime sky for navigation, and continuing with the summarization ending with the modern era. Now that the eclipse is in the recent past, life is beginning to return to its usual slower pace.

So, without further distractions, here's this month's threads of the month.

Instructions on using the TOTM images: If your thread has been selected as a TOTM, you can copy the image's link above, go to the area of the forum where you want to place it, and then paste the link. Press the <CONTROL> button when the image appears and right-click on your mouse. A menu will drop down and allow you to edit the picture. You can resize it - the first number can be changed as large or small as you want. Eventually, I will add these images to the thread I've created as a repository.

For those out there who like the nerdy parts of the TOTM:

To continue what I started in May 2021, I have kept some forum statistics to respond to those claiming the forum was dying or interest in the Kerbal Space Program was declining. There were  301 new forum accounts created in March (a decrease of 25 or down 7.66% from February). Out of the new forum members who joined last month, 18 transitioned from new accounts to being active and participating in the forum. This conversion means that 5.98% of the new users who registered their accounts last month are now contributing members of our community! (This is a decrease from February; 6.13% of the new members became active and contributing members). If you're interested in meeting the new members of our forum, click here!

Now, without further delay, I present to you the threads of the month for April:

Cinematic-based Fan-fiction, Mission Reports, and Kerbal Space Program-inspired Creative Works:

This category features a video or other cinematic form of a Kerbal mission report using in-game video-recorded gameplay. Note: This has changed. Instead of awarding this to a thread, this is a *post of the month* since most new cinematic works are posted in a single thread. We have a lot of great content creators, but because they've been posting their mission reports as videos in a single thread, most of their work goes unnoticed by the general forum audience. Hopefully, this change in the category to a Post of the Month (POTM) will highlight the great work done by these deserving content creators. Other threads containing cinematic posts will also be featured in this category.

Many great content creators deserve this recognition since we were aware of the thread by @Halban: Post Your Cinematics Here! (Cinematic Enthusiasts) that serves as a repository for cinematic threads. The thread received the TOTM previously, but it was felt that it wasn't enough for those who shared your fabulous creations featuring our favorite Kerbalnauts. Instead of being a TOTM, I've changed it into a CPOTM - a Cinematic Post of the Month.

In @R8 ksp's cinematic presentation, "Far Future: Mission to Proxima Centauri (Kerbal Space Program/RSS/RO), we hope there are future installments to follow! This month's cinematic post was not shared in that thread but in a separate thread by @R8 ksp. You can find the thread here:

 

Sometimes, the forum software will get glitchy, and an exact post may be hard to find. In case this happens, here's @R8 ksp's cinematic presentation, "Far Future: Mission to Proxima Centauri (Kerbal Space Program/RSS/RO)

If you encounter other cinematics you feel are worthy of being recognized as this category's post of the month, please nominate them! You can use the exact instructions to nominate a post containing a video as you would use to nominate a thread.

Fan-fiction, Mission Reports, and Kerbal Space Program-inspired Creative Works:

This category features threads (or threads) that, while not directly related to the Kerbal Space Program, may be creative, fan fiction, or other presentations related to the game.

I enjoy the nominations from those of you who want to share the mission reports you've enjoyed reading. In this mission report, @CollectingSP combines the talents of reconstructing history, creating what-if scenarios, and other things into a believable set of mission reports highlighting their unique vision for the Kerbal Space Program.

@CollectingSP begins the mission report with this introduction in the OP:

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Hello all! In my program, there are many alternate historical timelines and fantasy components. It's been semi-active since August of 2020. The major agencies and corporations represented in my program are many of the world's real-life agencies and corporations,  such as NASA, Roscosmos, ULA and SpaceX, NGIS, and more. Most notably, I'm a fan of the United Launch Alliance (ULA) And their Delta IV program.  Payloads Launched by the contractors in my program include payloads for the Air Force/Space Force, NASA, and Commercial Customers. 

Here's where you'll find this thread:

So, if you're interested in reading a mission report and seeing how others imagine their Kerbal-verse, then why not visit this thread?

Forum Member Created Challenges and Missions:

This category contains missions and challenges created by you, the members of our gaming community. Many excellent missions and challenges threads are created that expand our fun with the game and press our skills, creativity, and sometimes, luck beyond what we get accustomed to. Let's face it: we all have our go-to design basics and our go-to vehicles we like to use. Sometimes, a good challenge can cause us to think of another way to achieve our goals.

There was no submission for this category this month.

Game Support/Game Mod of the Month:

This category features either help with the game (stock or modded) or mods that improve the Kerbal Space Program's quality-of-life gameplay.

One of the things most of us enjoy doing is building our own shuttles. While there are some stock parts in the Kerbal Space Program, if you are as detail-oriented as I am, there are enough to get you something that looks like a shuttle, but it's not enough to take it to the level those who want the details and functionality want it to be. But with this mod by @benjee10, you can recreate a shuttle that's much closer to the real thing! @benjee10 describes the mod as:

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Shuttle Orbiter Construction Kit is a parts mod designed to build a Kerbalized version of the NASA Space Shuttle Orbiter. This has been something of a labour of love for me - I started work on the modelling for this almost four months ago, and it's been an almost all-consuming project ever since. Countless hours have gone into the modelling & (especially) texturing, along with hundreds of test flights tweaking the balance and aerodynamics. Well, it's finally ready to release to the world - I hope you enjoy it! 

You can find the mod here:

We want to thank our family of mod contributors who continue to develop new and exciting mods that support our KSP2 community! So, if you're looking for something that will cause you to take your shuttle fleet to the next level, this is the mod for you!

General community threads of the month:

This category features a thread that adds to the community and doesn't fit the game support/game mod categories.

There was no submission for this category this month.

General space flight and space science threads of the month:

This category features a thread that adds to our forum community's STEM knowledge (science, space flight, and related fields) and doesn't fit the game support/game mod categories.

Earlier this year, @Minmus Taster began this thread when NASA issued a press release stating that the Voyager I space probe had some problems. Since the OP in February, NASA has continued to work on outdated technology issues, conserving decaying power cells and even training a younger generation of programmers to understand the obsolete programming language both Voyager I and Voyager II continue to use. The OP, as written by @Minmus Taster, states:

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Over the past few months the situation on the probe has gotten progressively worse. A glitch in one of the main processors of the craft prevent it from sending coherent telemetry back to earth. It can still recieve commands and execute them, it just can't communicate with us properly. Unfortunately since no good telemetry is coming through its nearly impossible to even diagnose what the problem even is, let alone if theres a work around. Many members of the current team running it don't seem to have much optimism in solving the issue. The current plan is to try and switch the computer to a mode that was used while it was preforming a flyby to try and at least isolate the problem. What do you reckon the odds of success are and could the probe have any use if it's science mission is ended by the issue?

So, if you are interested in reading some of the accompanying links and ideas proposed by the forum members and contributing to the conversation, why not visit the thread?

Honorable Mentions:

Sometimes, choosing which threads will be selected as the Thread of the Month for our five categories is challenging. We get many good nominations each month but limit it to one for each type. Threads nominated but not selected as a thread of the month become honorable mentions. The honorable mentions for this month are:

We were able to use all the nominations for this month. 

The honorable mention for this month may not have made the Thread of The Month, but if you think it might be worth another opportunity, please renominate it!

Congratulations to all the winners of the Thread of the Month! We want to thank our forum members  @AlamoVampire, @Royalswissarmyknife, @woeller, @Zhetaan, the moderation team members, and the staff who nominated this month's contenders. Thank you so much for helping us identify noteworthy threads and bringing their awareness to our forum community. We'd appreciate your continued help in the future.

Odds and ends:

TO NOMINATE  A THREAD FOR CONSIDERATION: If you find a thread you feel should be considered for next month's thread of the month, use the "Report a comment" feature (the three dots on the upper right corner of the comment box) to report the thread. Please put in the text field of the port post "Nomination for the thread of the month," and we will do the rest! You can always nominate more than one thread, too.

IF YOU WANT TO KNOW WHAT GOES INTO THE DECISION WHEN CONSIDERING THE TOTM: Wonder no more! This helpful guide is to help you understand what we use to help determine what makes a thread a really good thread and one that becomes a thread of the month/cinematic post of the month. It's everything you did or didn't want to know and includes helpful tips.

And the last word for this month's post: I'd like to thank a few people who trust me enough to continue supporting and allowing me to contribute to the forum. I want to thank the Lead Moderator, @Vanamonde, for bringing me on as a moderator. It was a decision, and I'm sure he has had moments where he often wonders why he did it. I'd also like to thank  @PD_Dakota, our community manager, and @Nerdy_Mike, the KSP Franchise Community Lead, for tolerating me and allowing me to continue to serve our Kerbal Space Program forum community through the monthly Threads of the Month post.  

If you missed last month's threads, you can click here.

[TechieV]

Congrats to all TOTM winners!