Tomski

I don't feed fuel from the boosters into the core stage, and the rockets work very reliably. When you jettison the boosters, you should only have maybe 1/5th or so of fuel remaining in your core stage. Also, possibly most importantly of all, what engines are you using? If you're using the Tavio CEM( engine for the core like I was, notice that it's set to BOOSTER mode by default when you right-click on it. Change it to CORE mode by clicking the Toggle Mode button. Leave the engines in BOOSTER mode if you're also using them for the boosters. I would highly recommend using Kerbal Engineer (if you don't already) to see the thrust-to-weight ratio and Delta-V capability of each individual stage, so you can ensure your rocket has enough power for the job before you go to launch it.

Why does the ablator on the T-CM "Khleb" crew module start being consumed when I'm in high Kerbin orbit, particularly when I'm using the Farshot engine? (There's a stock decoupler in between the two, if that matters). This almost killed Valentina, I managed to get her down just in time with less than 1/200 of the ablator remaining when she reached the ground. [Edit: the rate at which the ablator is being consumed appears to vary between 0.01 and 0.02, I thought it might have had something to do with exposure to sunlight but rotating the craft doesn't seem to make any difference] [Edit edit: upon further gameplay I noticed that this stops when I time accelerate]

Now that the KSP development team has announced that the next release of KSP (1.0) will have improved aerodynamics, does anyone know if there are plans to implement stock fairings as well? From what I've read about the aerodynamics model that's being developed, it sounds like they will be necessary. The Procedural Fairings mod is great and all, don't get me wrong, but I think as a general rule, the less extra mods that are needed to fill some of the gaps in the game the better (I always end up modding the game until it's on the very edge of stability). On a side note, has anyone come across any mention of possible environmental enhancements to the stock game at some point down the line, such as clouds? I know it's a cosmetic thing and there are other aspects of the game that are a higher priority, but I'm just wondering if there's been any mention of this from the devs.

5 o'clock shadows are not "androgynous features"

Well, I upgraded to 0.90.0 and Firespitter-based mods seem to work now.

Sorry, I posted that before I saw your edit. Thanks again!

Altering the price of the xenon extraction units sounds like a good idea. I'll try that out. Thanks!

I thought this was a new stock part because the manufacturer (Ionic Symphonic Protonic Electronics) is the same as the stock xenon tank and engine and communications antennas. Or does the manufacturer not matter? Otherwise, if it's not stock then it might be Modular Kolonization System. - - - Updated - - - ...completing contracts isn't "free money" in the same sense that this machine is. Completing contracts takes time and effort and actually playing the game. I just let this machine sit on the runway for an afternoon (less than a second on time accelleration) and I had enough money to launch a small mun base.

This is my industrial-scale Money Print-*ahem*.. Xenon Extraction Machine: With panels deployed: So here's the thing. This machine has 48 of those XeEV-01 Xenon extraction units. Leave it sitting out in the sun for less than a day and you get 56000 units of Xenon Gas, which nets you well over 200000 in Kerbal currency when recovered, essentially rendering Career Mode into Science Mode. I know the game balance isn't perfect yet, and maybe this is one of those things, but perhaps this could be tweaked a bit so it can't be used to make free money? Perhaps slowing down the rate of xenon production to the order of weeks or months for such quantities of gas, or increasing the power requirements for the Extraction Units. Or alternatively, if the game allows for this, put the gas produced by these units into some sort of fuel supply at the Space Center that can't be recovered for its cash value. I think this really undermines much of the challenge of Career Mode (e.g. trying to put a modular space station in orbit on borrowed money and not bankrupting your space program). I don't object to the possibility of having your space program pay off economically at some point down the line, but I would rather this become possible after your space program becomes much more mature, after a long and costly pioneering era. (I haven't even reached Duna yet in this game). What do folks think? Anybody else notice this?

Ok, I'm running 0.25. Maybe I'll wait until they update Firespitter.

I used to use asparagus staging, but far less since Career Mode came out. Now, if I'm using liquid-fuelled boosters instead of SRBs, I have the boosters feed into the core stage (is that called Onion Staging?). I try not to use more than 4 LF boosters for cost reasons, opting to use a more powerful core stage instead.

I start at 100% and then dial back gradually to keep accelleration at a controlled rate and not exceed 200m/s below 10000m altitude (note: I can't run FAR yet as it causes problems with the game, so this is for stock aerodynamics). Once approaching 10000m, I push the throttle up to 70 or 80% to prepare for first stage jettison. Then I control the throttle on the second stage to prevent time-to-apoapse from exceeding 1 minute. Usually this means gradually dialing the throttle down to 10% or less and keeping the rocket pointed at prograde, depending on my payload, instead of "coasting to apoapse" the way I used to before. I also do a sort of pseudo-gravity turn (keep it less than 5 degrees below 10000m) just to move downrange from my launch pad, just so any rapid unplanned disassembly doesn't go raining flaming rocket parts all over my fancy cosmodrome. I usually put things into a 72-75km orbit unless the mission demands otherwise.

Everywhere I read recommends not using the Windows 64bit version, especially for mods. The recommendations are to use either the Windows 32bit version or use Linux as suggested above. It sounds like the Windows 64bit version has deeper issues will take more than a patch or a minor "fix" to get working. I wouldn't wait for it. As a side note: not to be a Linux evangelist, but linux (at least Ubuntu in particular) is becoming a pretty reliable gaming system even for Windows games, if that's an issue that concerns you. I use it as my primary gaming OS now. It's not perfect, but with WINE and Play On Linux I've been able to run all of my favourite games, including even the Windows version of KSP (as an experiment).

Hiya folks, I have had persistent problems with Firespitter on every version of KSP. I also can't run any mod that requires Firespitter. It simply causes KSP to crash when it's loading up. It's not a conflict with other mods because it won't even work with a clean vanilla install. This has been going on since the first time I tried running Firespitter, maybe as far back as 0.22. Any ideas? btw, I'm running KSP 64bit on linux.

So I've reverted to a vanilla KSP folder that I keep on backup, and it seems to work. So apparently it is one of the mods. Now I face the long and tedious chore of isolating which mod it is exactly. Hopefully it's not one that I consider essential.