Osprey

I wouldn't say it's that recent, I've been playing the game for a few months short of 5 years now, and I've had it on Steam the whole time. I have children younger than this but I doubt you'd catch either myself or my wife suggesting the youngest was born 'recently' . That said, I appreciate the candour. I'll hold out for a reply here as well as on the discussion boards, but no answers seems to be rushing their way to the forefront yet. Is there anywhere to ask the devs directly? Given this is a built in feature I'm hoping they might know how it works within their own software.It's not really a bug report or a suggestion for future development, so not sure where it belongs otherwise.

I've downloaded and installed KerbalX, I rather like the Craft Manager, it's more forgiving on the scroll-wheel of my mouse than the vanilla menu. I'll likely start sharing my files through this as well. I'm here because it's an issue with uploading craft files from KSP to Steam. As it's a feature, I figured other KSP players who have been sharing craft files might have worked out how to do it right. There's a thread started by someone else in Steam discussions too and I've commented there, but no-one has an answer for that yet it seems.

That's not quite the reply I had in mind. I share on Steam because it's easy, workshop subscribed files auto-update, and Steam is my preferred platform. I might share on KerbalX if it included a button in the game to share instantly, otherwise I don't really have the enthusiasm to go digging through my folders for craft files. Does anyone have an answer to the question?

I've been uploading some of my aircraft and rocket designs to Steam, and this one in particular has 120+ downloads/subscribers. How can I tweak the design in the editor and upload it without it creating a whole new workshop file? I have tweaked at least one design in the past (adjusting aileron settings, same as I want to do to this other file) and it uploaded as the same file with a change log in the workshop, keeping the subscriptions and presumably auto-updating the workshop file for all subscribers. No idea how I did this as every time I try to do it now it just creates a new workshop file. Anyone have an insight as to how this works?

So, here's my contribution to this challenge. I've not taken part in challenges before now, not because of a lack of interest or desire, but because I've got 2 kids, a disabled wife and a PhD to manage. My time is limited, but this seemed doable. I've built a number of aircraft before, some I'm very proud of and some I'm frankly appalled by, but they did the job for the contract that needed them. For this I decided to try and build the most basic aircraft I could, so I give you... The No-frills Jet My plan was to use the jet engine just like a Mun lander's rocket engine, but as a jet VTOL without any gimbal control, with all attitude purely through the capsule reaction wheels. Oh, and no landing gear. My plan is to land upright on the island airfield using the engine as the landing base. If I'd realised at this point how horrible it would be to fly I'd have just made a biplane instead. As you may have realised from the design, there are a number of issues with this approach. if I start descending, I lose a significant amount of air-intake and my thrust dips. My ability to control heigh and attitude is through one engine, which delays in altering its thrust output. Finally, my 'aircraft' has no lift surfaces or fins, which means above a certain speed, it flips round due to the low centre-of-mass, which means I start decelerating and simultaneously lose thrust from reduced air intake. Fun stuff. Lift-off occurs relatively straight forwardly, I point myself the right way and try to find a thrust equilibrium so i don't climb too high... ...which apparently I fail to achieve, and end up putting myself into a flip-over situation. I recover, but it's a case of held breath for a short time. As I approach the target I attempt to slow down and follow my deceleration marker so that I come in vertically to land. The challenge however comes in that I need to slow to <10m/s, with a slow-response throttle, on a vessel that is constantly losing mass through fuel consumption. Finding the sweet spot to descend and yet not accelerate uncontrolably to the ground is a tricky game. At about 3m I cut the power and hoped for the best... And amazingly it comes off fine. Not the flattest landing spot, and sadly after switching SAS off it topples gently over. Still, Jeb's fairly happy, so who am I to complain.

I've never yet been to Eve as my career save always gets restarted for a significantly new version, and I have a family to sink my time into instead right now. I always planned that any Kerbal mission to Eve would be a one-way ticket as an established ground base (as of 1.2, serving simultaneously as ore facility, ground operations control and DSN link-up. Eventually I'll hopefully learn enough about Eve's gravity well and atmosphere to develop a surface to orbit rocket that lands by parachute and returns using refined fuel, but as yet I've not gotten as far as that first Kerbal base on the surface.

I probably took it too seriously, but I made an Excel sheet with name categories for probes, capsules etc, with drop down boxes so after I'd used one for a particular series of missions, I could see what I'd used it for and avoid doubling up. I subdivided categories into... Launchers - Categorised by max component diameter at attachment, and total payload mass into LKO. These were sub-assemblies and named after types of fortification (e.g. Palisade Mk.IV, Barricade Mk.II, Redoubt Mk.IV, etc). Probes - Non-crewed. All named after some kind of intrepid leader or individual of some kind (e.g. Observer, Explorer, Harbinger, Exemplar, etc.). Capsules - Crewed, even if a probe core led part of the control process. All virtues or aspirational things (e.g. Dauntless, Audacity, Adventure, Valiant, etc.). Aircraft - All named after types of sword, non-crewed aircraft were specifically daggers (e.g. Scimitar, Cutlass, Falchion, Dirk, etc.). Stations - All some kind of benevolent individual, planned only a hand full of permanent stations, all crewed with a probe-core control (if non-crewed, these would have been probes category) (e.g. Benefactor, Emissary, Guardian, Sentinel, etc.) Bases - Planned a number of crewed bases and non-crewed remote outpost on planets to serve as Research bases, refuelling depots, mining installations or landing strips (even designed a set of modular runway markers and such with lights to indicate safe and non-safe areas to land). These all followed constellation names from Western astronomy (e.g. Aquarius, Draco, Corvus, Virgo, Serpens, etc.) The only exception to this category was a remote base planned for Kerbin (but never actually built in any save, called Gaia. The excel was designed that you could select a planet, or planet & moon, from a drop-down list, as well as the diameter type (Mk.2 Aero, 2.5m, etc) so that it became quite easy to allocate the names. I still have the spreadsheet if anyone would like a copy for functionality.

Hi Folks, So I've been a Kerbal player for over 2 years now, really enjoy all the new stuff and extremely excited about the new patch (limited signal ranges, wheel traction updates, etc). My problem with playing Kerbal is, now that I have a family to look after, I can't dedicate hours of playing time needed (at least that I needed) to tinker rocket designs, or fly them to best efficiency once designed. Having also missed a couple of patches, I no longer know instinctively which engines with what fuel amounts will launch a particular sized payload to orbit, etc. Combine all this with my total lack of engineering expertise regarding aerodynamics, and basically none of my old tried and tested rocket designs work any more. I had used Mechjeb long ago in the past to help me get a better understanding of ascent profiles and intercept planning (back before 1.0), and have recently re-installed it with the hope it will help me with my lack of fine-flying skill on Kerbin-ascent to achieve the best out of my rockets (and also let me hit the go switch and go tend to the offspring while my payload & crew achieve orbit under auto-guidance. Problem is, I can't seem to work out how to unlock the requisite parts or technologies to do this at my current point in my career game. So, two questions... 1. How do I get to a career tech and parts level where I can set rockets on auto-launch guidance? 2. Is there a way to tinker with the part.ini files to allow this tech from level 0, or is it hard-wired somewhere in the mod? I don't want to give up on career mode as I enjoy the drive and limitations of contracts etc, I just don't like the limitations of my raw skill and undermined design knowledge. All help welcome, cheers.

The trick is to find synergy between the two. My science Mun-lander had to incorporate a materials bay, goo tank and such, but also have enough fuel to decelerate from orbit, land neatly, and return the crew pod to Kerbin + collected science, and as many light-weight science instruments as I could afford to add in weight to the capsule from the lander for recovered monetary cost on return (rather than leaving expensive gear on the Mun). The end result was a materials bay main body, with rotated tanks on the sides for weight balance and to look a bit more integral and a little less wide/wobbly. It proved both efficient as the fuel was just enough for each task/stage, with little excess, and I'd kept it looking contained and I think rather nice (Will share photos when I am able to access my screenshots from home). Incidentally though, my plan for any with excess fuel remaining is to build an automated rover with a KLAW, and go and collect any excess fuel dribbles left in these to fill up storage tanks on a Mun-base once I eventually set up a permanent station on the surface. Waste not, want not!

Can I get a reserve on the file after GregroxMun? Assuming the station has yet to see crew-transfer or escape modules attached, I'll crack on with that, otherwise I might look at attaching power arrays to the station.

Goes to show just how far behind the US had to come from to catch up by the end of the 60s, though I'd put that down to the death of Korolev rather than US engineering superiority. It's a testament to his brilliance that ROSCOS still launch cosmonauts using a rocket developed from his designs (Soyuz). Patrick Moore is dearly missed for Sky at Night. I'd prefer if it were just Chris Lintodt, and possible also Jim Al-Khalili.

For those reading from the UK, BBC iPlayer has an archive copy of an episode of The Sky at Night available to view from 1960. To programme's feature is on new Lunar photos of the dark side of the Moon taken by Russian satellites, and discussion of theories relating to the Lunar surface. To put this programme into perspective, this TV show episode was made in an era of space exploration that was still pre-Gagarin. While the sticky tape idea mentioned is a bit far-fetched, it's great to be reminded just how clever scientists and astronomers were back then, particularly as Patrick Moore got his prediction regarding the surface texture of the light areas spot on, despite the available data at the time. The Sky at Night - 1960

I suspect docking clamps don't work when the target vessel is the same as the one on which the docking port is located. If you can get two sides to clamp at once, my only guess is you need to do it so both ports connect simultaneously rather than sequentially, as you'd then encounter the above issue re: same target. Other than that no idea, but cool design btw.

So name your rover 'Zoolander' and have done with it...

I see a few spare docking ports on the station, and as yet no crew-transfer/escape vehicles, so when I get chance I'll throw a couple of those on to the Science-Hab Module close to where the crew actually operate. If part limits allow, I'll see about adding a universal docking hub to the station to allow other craft to connect and transfer supplies or re-fuel. Not sure when this will be though, busy tomorrow, then away for 4 days for funeral and birthday (different people), so will grab the file whenever I can.