KSP Weekly: The 9th Planet

Welcome to KSP Weekly everyone. A lot of people were sad to hear that the Solar System was officially composed of eight planets instead of nine after Pluto was recategorized as a dwarf planet due to the discoveries of several objects with similar volume throughout the Kuiper belt, such as Eris. But research in 2016 suggested that a Neptune-sized, yet to be discovered planet was orbiting beyond Pluto. Astronomers inferred its existence by putting a mathematical model together, which was able to detect the gravitational signature of a giant planet by tracking the motion of observed objects in the Kuiper belt. And now, researchers have used a new technique to study some of the most distant objects in the Solar System. These bodies, named Extreme Trans-Neptunian Objects (ETNOs), are at least 150 times further from the Sun than the Earth and they don’t cross Neptune’s orbit. The team performed the best measurement to date of the nodes of the ETNOs. The nodes are the two points where the orbit of a celestial body crosses the plane of the Solar System. Their position mainly depends on the size and shape of the orbit, which makes them quite free from observation bias. The team studied the nodes for 28 ETNOs and 24 smaller objects. It is a well-known fact that the presence of a massive perturber interacting with a population of minor bodies following very eccentric orbits can strongly affect the distribution of their nodal distances.They showed evidence for a possible bimodal distribution of the nodal distances of the ETNOs in the form of a previously unnoticed correlation between nodal distance and orbital inclination. By assuming that the ETNOs are dynamically similar to the comets that interact with Jupiter, the researchers interpreted these results as signs of the presence of a planet that is actively interacting with them in a range of distances from 300 to 400 AU (Astronomical Units = distance from Earth to Sun). The mysterious “Planet Nine” is yet to be directly observed, but with all the presented evidence we are close to proving its existence and return to have a nine planet model of the Solar System. While astronomers keep on gathering data and evidence, we at the KSP HQ continue to write code and modeling parts, so let’s get into the details…

This week, the QA team continued certifying bugfixes for 1.3.1. Meanwhile, the devs squashed some bugs for the patch release, including some more localization issues with tutorials and scenarios that QA found, along with other localization texts. Like with all patches, the team is trying to fix all aspects that needed some extra polishing after a big update, sometimes these get unnoticed a while after a release, but we’re always on the lookout.

On console news, our QA team is attempting to overload the console build’s save files. They have been failing at achieving this so far, which is a good thing. It just seems to keep on trucking. Both console versions are now fully playable, but as we’ve reiterated, we are currently on a very scrupulous testing phase to ensure a true KSP game experience for console players.

The Making History Expansion has also received a great deal of attention this week. While new elements of the design continue to be tweaked and worked on, the devs have been mostly focused on getting the UI elements functioning for a Mission Start Node specifying the vessels list that the mission contains and hooking the UI up to the underlying data elements contained in the mission. Allowing the Mission Creator to specify vessels that are player created or creating and specifying their own vessels. The UI also contains a lot of parameter information for each vessel, such as its starting location, position, crew, and so on, with a lot of flexibility provided to the Mission Creator. In addition, the team has also been improving the vessel placement tool, so that it is able to rotate the target vessel properly. Some of the devs spent time iterating over the Mission Builder Canvas display and the mission nodes, adding improvements to their UI display and interactions. For example, better, smoother connector lines with correct layering for visual representation. Similarly, the team is working on general usability improvements in various parts of the editor.

The art team was very busy, too. They started working on modeling the Voskhod 1-inspired IVA and simultaneously on the first of a series of new Service Module parts. These are more than just models - they also will be incorporating some new functionality that we are still defining. Currently, if you need a bunch of small parts stowed inside of a housing, you can either use interstage fairings or service bays. Both of these have their limitations, and we found that we were going to need something a bit different to achieve our goals for these parts.

Our first Service Module is a conical 1.25m to 0.625m adapter for our Apollo analogue. This was originally going to be a dedicated stack-chute model, but we felt implementing more flexible service modules made more sense and would provide players better options. The shell can be jettisoned to allow chute deployment (jettisoning anything you happened to attach to the shell as well). Here’s a pic, along with our new Apollo-inspired capsule and a Clamp-o-tron Jr. for comparison. This service module includes a lot of horizontal and vertical surfaces for attaching parts and we expect players will find a lot of creative uses for this and the other service modules we will be including in the expansion.

Finally, we encourage you to participate in our latest KSP Challenge - The Mun Arch Speed Challenge! This time around, the challenge consists of flying as fast as you can through one of the Mun Arches. There are four categories: Racing with EVA packs, uncrewed spacecrafts, crewed spacecrafts and asteroids! We’ll be giving special badges to participants and you’ll have two weeks to submit your entries. Are you up to the challenge? Check it out and share your creations!

That’s it for this week. Be sure to join us on our official forums, and don’t forget to follow us on Twitter and Facebook. Stay tuned for more exciting and upcoming news and development updates!

Happy launchings!

