Heart Under the Mountain

After making my post, a number of ships in transit, and in orbit around Eve and Duna spontaneously exploded (Some of those ships I haven't accelerated or even touched in days to weeks so it must be some strange glitch on the atomic engines I can't explain. I have no idea why they just randomly exploded since they were just floating in orbits or drifting for hundreds of days, to over a year, towards their SOI targets while I worked on new ships at home). Fortunately I had reserve funds, and time before mission deadlines, so that the losses weren't completely devastating. But I did lose almost all of my higher level Krebs in those ships/stations and a fortune in parts and fuel that were intended to return after mission completion. I've just decided to completely eliminate the LV-N from my space program for now. Learning to use other engines with higher consumptions isn't impossible, and I've managed a few good designs that require fuel hauler meetings in orbit to refuel, as well as fuel hauler launches to intersect the same planets for prolonged missions, but they can make it to targets and back without a great deal of difficulty, although at a much greater cost than my LV-N fleet had allowed. It would be nice to see some heat sinks, radiators, refrigerants, or liquid cooling systems added though, if heat is now to be a more critical consideration. I tried builds attaching more parts to the engines, they didn't seem to help with the heat much except for using KAS parts that have higher heat tolerance. But right click options should also show level of heat in parts. Without it I can't really tell if my builds are in fact helping to redistribute heat, or by how much. And having the above cooling options, as well as the temperatures of parts displayed, would be a reasonable next step if they're making heat such a limiting factor now. Thank you for your reply and links though, I will check them out and see if they'll help my still unexploded ships, stations, and bases to survive. Right now I have a bunch of Kerbs I evacuated, after the chain of losses, floating around in EVA orbits or standing around on planets and moons so they don't spontaneously combust lol.

Conquering space got a whole lot harder. My entire fleet beyond Kerbin atmosphere (probes, orbital and land based stations, fuel bulkers, return ships, etc) is equipped with atomic engines. Since update the engines keep blowing up the parts connected to them. The engines then float off into space leaving my ships crippled. This radiating heat destroys connected parts even if the Atomic engine isn't at it's critical heat point. I've tried using the new heat shields on a couple ship builds, and this does seem to buy a little more time with their higher heat tolerance, but eventually their coolant runs out and they stop working. Need more cooling options and some higher heat tolerant parts added to remedy this issue.

Me too. - As far as having trouble at 20km that was same place I ran into issues with heavy ship. Turned off all Limits except for Terminal Velocity. My target orbital altitude is 100km. Under Edit Ascent Path: Set ship to not start the curve until 23km (seemed to be having issues from 20-22km) End curve at 70km Turn Shape 80% It's a pretty gradual climb, so seems to handle my 915 ton fuel bulker okay with only four rcs port up top, and not costing too much fuel on the climb. Still having trouble with attached parts exploding right after MJ kicks in to cool stuff down though :/

Had to alter the ascent guidance to not start till above 20km, or my always obese ships like to do cartwheels now lol. But that's no big issue, kinda funny to watch how things are working differently now, new learning curve. Only thing I can't seem to remedy is the overheats. Since update game now radiates heat to connected parts, blowing them up just after MechJeb starts to cut thrust. This saves the engines (sometimes), but with the connected parts blown up, the engines just float off into space away from my craft leaving them critically crippled. Any way to fix this apart from keeping a close view and cutting thrust when heat climbs manually? Can I get MechJeb to begin cutting thrust sooner?

Is anyone else now able to fly atomic rockets in space without any oxidizer since installing update (only mod I have on right now is MechJeb)? Just launched a refueling mission to my Duna station and realized I'm down to 3k fuel at 140km altitude, and 7k oxidizer left after making orbit. Watched the fuel totals, while at max throttle for about two minutes and not a drop of oxidizer was used in that time, however, the four rockets seem to be burning through the LiquidFuel at least twice as fast as normal. Is it just eating twice as much fuel now and no oxidizer, or is this a bug? - - - Updated - - - lol that's awesome Angezerus ^ ===== Update ===== Just found an answer. Scratched the flight, since it'd be pointless to arrive at Duna with a ship full of just oxidizer. When I got back into the hanger I checked the atomic rocket and it does indeed show no oxidizer is required at all. Looks like I'll have to send my science flights up to stations with an empty tank for oxidizer, should help recover a little of the costs on missions when I return it to home lol

Agreed. There's still plenty to be learned about the moon still. But of course the efforts of ARM are no less important. But the ESA has really been stepping up in huge leaps and bounds over the past decade. So where NASA doesn't go, ESA most surely will take up the slack. Not to mention the privatization of space. More and more corporate interests are pointing to the stars. This is the way it will eventually go anyway, it's just a matter of supply and demand before space becomes primarily a corporate/industrial endeavor, with the gov agencies only serving administrative and regulatory needs... probably not in our lifetimes, but eventually. Weyland Industries lol, except hopefully without the homicidal cybernetics and xenomorphs. The many direct and indirect benefits of ARM: https://www.nasa.gov/content/how-will-nasas-asteroid-redirect-mission-help-humans-reach-mars

Ahh, nothing yet Just found KAS and Mechjeb are down when I tried to fire up game. Two mods I use more than any other... oh well, guess I'll play with squads new features till these become available again. I've never tried Kethane, so the new built-in resource finding and mining should be good to keep me busy for awhile. Looking forward to the updates when makers can get around to them. Cheers.

Before, on my old game that died with my last computer, I used a macro program to autorun my Kerbals around the planet, and the Mun. This was done to get easy science points by calculating the distance and time, setting the macro to run my Kerbal forwards for as long as it took, then do a soil sample and report before recovery for easy science points. Meanwhile I could just sit back and do as I pleased. Haven't bothered loading a macro program on this computer. Although I may just for those crash landings where you end up in a bad spot and have to travel by foot a long distance to reach a rescue ship. Watching a Kerbal run after a few hundred meters quickly loses it's appeal.

Managed to finally reach, and return from, a Duna orbit with just a single nuclear engine and no assistance except for a pork chop calculation prior to departure. Took 2 years for the best window, two weeks floating just outside the reach of Mun waiting for the window. Reached Duna in only four years and was surprised to find that I could make a 9km pass of the planet (I had managed to get a good report and eva report sent off on a previous mission at far orbit, but didn't realize there is atmosphere on Duna and my close eva report at 7km distance ended with my kerbal and ship getting pulled apart from each other and destroyed on the surface), a 1.8km pass of Ike, use the momentum and gravity to give myself a nice return path towards home. Unfortunately, once outside Duna's influence, the best return path took over twenty years, missed it by four years while afk, took another 23 years to finally get back on track and make the return home with my goo canisters and science jrs. Thank you Orgun K. for all your dedicated years of service and making it to Duna and back on a ship with about as much fuel and propulsion as a flying pop can. Took me just under two days in real time, and lots of recalculations and cursing lol. Not interested in landing there yet though, I still have a Kerbal stranded for over a hundred years on Eve that I have to figure a way to recover, but hopefully the new science may help with that.

I'll have to upload some pictures once I've rebuilt it, but I created a long chain of hundreds of these drives stacked fuel can-drive-fuel can-drive directly on top of each other. They don't generate heat, and still provide propulsion even when one of the fuel cans is attached directly to it, so long streamers of drives can work in unison. The ship took some work to get into space. But once the trip was made, and the front facing solar panels fully extended, it looked like a giant flower with a long stem floating in space. I called it the Sun Lotus, since the massive number of drives required that the ship be always be facing towards the sun while under full thrust. But it did move at a decent pace (for ion). I lost that computer and the game with it, but once I get the ship rebuilt I'll put up some pics. The only major drawback to this design is that you can't turn much away from a sun-ward course, and reversing course would take way too long, even at full fast-forward. But it is good for attaching and carrying payloads of Kerbal landers towards the sun without burning up more precious fuels on the way. Plus it was awesome. They're also useful in smaller numbers to make hover crafts, if you place them right, these are fun to float around with in low to no gravity.