eataTREE

The mod KSP Interstellar Extended gives you a few more propulsion options that you might find attractive. It has a few drawbacks -- it introduces a resource-based "Waste Heat" system that is separate from the native thermal model, it has a huge number of parts, which might be a problem if you are low on RAM, and how to make things work isn't always immediately apparent. However, it still has a reasonable implementation of nuclear fusion-based reactors and spaceship drives which can go the (interstellar) distance. Best choices are either the VISTA inertial confinement fusion drive or a fusion reactor with magnetic nozzle; either way can yield megameters of delta-V on a properly designed craft. Recent versions of the mod let you continue to thrust while the ship is unfocused, which is pretty convenient -- getting up near lightspeed requires that you burn for weeks and months rather than minutes and hours. I would also suggest looking at the Deep Freeze Continued mod. Frozen kerbals don't eat, drink, or breathe, which can cut down your payload mass a LOT on a fifty-year mission. Part count doesn't necessarily need to be an issue if you design your craft well. Whether it's crew cabins, structural members, or fuel tanks, use a few REALLY BIG parts rather than many little ones. Avoid long, spindly designs that require a multitude of struts to hold together. A design which puts the engines first and tows the payload/crew section along behind can be less susceptible to wobble and flex than a more traditional rocket design. Looking forward to seeing your screenshots/results.

So, uh. I think someone needs to explain to Gene Kerman at Mission Control exactly how far away Cercani is from Kerbin(*). I keep getting offered missions to explore various bodies in the Cercani system when, in this career save, I've only just returned from my first chemically-fueled Duna mission. I don't have enough tech to get to Jool, Gene; interstellar travel is not going to happen yet! (*) I changed the Kopernicus config to put Cercani at 0.15 light years from Kerbol, so in my case it's extra far away. Not happening until I research fusion or warp technology.

Yeah, but what about weather on other planets? Dust storms on Duna? The Great Green Spot on Jool? I think one of the major weaknesses of the game as it stands is that while getting to the other planets is a lot of fun, once you get there they seem kinda static and dead. Weather systems would make planets more dynamic, as well as introducing a new factor to base design -- your base must be capable of withstanding conditions on the planet where you intend to put it.

Question -- are there any plans in KSPI's future development that involve retiring the WasteHeat mechanic in favor of stock thermals? It seems like this is a legacy mechanic that is no longer necessary in the modern game. I am so averse to the WasteHeat mechanism that I typically power KSPI parts with NFE reactors, hand-modified to generate Megajoules; not to mention the fact that my parts list has "real radiators" from stock, Atomic Age, and Heat Control, and "KSPI radiators" that in many cases use the same models.

This is my favorite "other star and planets" pack that I have discovered to date. I like that it is mostly compatible with other planet packs, and I especially like that you left Kerbol at the "center", since it avoids a whole slew of annoying bugs associated with reparenting Kerbol (and there is actually no science-based reason not to consider Kerbol the center of our reference frame if we want to). Given the speed at which I progress in this game, I expect to actually visit the Cercani system sometime shortly before I die of advanced old age, but I like looking at it in the tracking station and knowing that it's out there.

Hey man. I love this mod and have been using it for months, but haven't actually visited any of your planets until now! Space travel is hard... My question is, is the surface of Tekto supposed to be this slippery? My rover weighs 18t and crawls on four Kerbal Foundries caterpillar treads. On Kerbin it is sure-footed. On Tekto, it cannot go up a slope of more than five degrees incline without losing all forward momentum and starting to slide backwards. I have to sideswitch like mad just to get over the littlest hill. I know, Tekto is the ideal planet for a glider/flyer and I brought a rover instead, silly me, but this seems a little extreme -- like the whole planet was liberally sprayed with WD-40. Intended?

Just last week I landed a rover on Tekto (Titan-like moon of Sarnus from the Outer Planets Mod), and I consider this to be my crowning KSP achievement thus far. Moho: Successful manned return mission Eve: Manned orbital observation, probe landing Gilly: Successful manned return mission Mun/Minimus: Many successful manned return missions, Great Big Spaceport constructed in Munar orbit Duna: Several successful return missions Ike: Same, Ike is easy Dres: Stranded Kerbals there in unsuccessful mission attempt, haven't been back. D'oh! Jool: Manned return mission to Bop and Pol, but not Tylo, Vail, or Laythe (Here begin the Outer Planets) Sarnus: 65-kilometers-of-delta-V Big Grandiose Expedition currently underway, rover deployed to Tekto, second rover destined for Slate Neidon: Never been Urium: Never been Plock: Never been Cercani system (Other Worlds star pack): Never been All of the above were performed with TAC-LS and RemoteTech installed. When you start considering 20-year missions, keeping your Kerbals fed and breathing becomes a BIG challenge.

I have always found it absurd to suppose that Kerbals can build rockets powerful enough to travel to other planets, but not any sort of computer to help navigate and fly those rockets. IMO, you should do exactly one Munshot and one trip to Duna with pencil and paper and holding a protractor up to the screen. Then your Fo'Realz pass is considered stamped and you can use KER/VOID/MJ for the rest of your life.

You can also install a planet pack. I recommend Outer Planets Mod, which gives you Saturn, Uranus, and Neptune-like Kerbal planets far past the orbit of Jool. I'm not sure that it's strictly impossible to visit these planets without either refuelling or using non-stock Future Engines, but I wouldn't like to try. Of course, for purposes of visiting the outer planets you would want your gas station in Duna's SOI -- Kerbin is just too close to home to matter much.

Spaceplanes are hard. Big spaceplanes are much harder. Do not feel bad about having trouble with them. Okay, so, the performance of air breathing engines is proportional to the amount of air they are able to suck through their intakes. The higher you go, the less air there is. So, if your speed remains constant, you will slow down further and further the higher you go. The way around this is to go faster. The faster you go, the more air gets pushed through your intakes, and the better your engines perform. This effect becomes very pronounced starting at around Mach One (350 m/s, more or less). So, if you are slowing down instead of speeding up, it means you are climbing too fast. It is much more important to maintain your acceleration than is to climb quickly -- set your pitch angle to where your speed is always increasing, and take your time climbing through the atmosphere. Once you hit Mach One or so (depends on which engines you are using) you will have all the thrust power you need and you will be more worried about going so fast you explode before you exit the atmosphere. Remember, spaceplanes are hard. (After all, NASA tried to build one and couldn't, which is why we got the neither-fish-nor-fowl weirdness that was the Space Shuttle.) Keep trying and don't give up.

Oh yes, I'm having this problem big-time. I'm pretty good at keeping the part count of an individual vehicle down to a reasonable sub-300-parts level. My problem is that I design a 300-part cool interplanetary spaceship, then a 300-part lander, a couple of 300-part rovers, and a probe or two, and dock them all together, whereupon the simulation speed slows down to about five seconds per second. Compounding the problem, my current 1000+ part beast is also my first "science fiction tech" craft (fusion drive from KSP Interstellar). It is designed to fly very fast, direct, high-energy, time-optimized transfers, which means burn times of an hour or more. And an hour in Kerbal time is five hours' worth of mine -- from the crew's point of view, they get around in a hurry, but from mine, everything takes way, way, way longer! After a week of real-life time and one completed maneuver per day, I have finally established orbit around Tekto (a moon of Sarnus, from the Outer Planets mod). I can't wait to get my Kerbals into one of the landing vehicles and to get that lander out of physics range, so that KSP stops looking like a slide show. Anybody ever landed on Tekto? I figure the low gravity + thick atmo ought to make it pretty easy, but space is littered with the debris of those who assumed things were going to be easy...

Hell yeah! (The F'thp will feel our wrath!)

Don't let me spoil your fun or anything, but this would be insufficient protection on its own. Magnetic fields only deflect charged particles. That's great for deflecting solar flare emissions, but fission reactors also emit neutrons and high energy gamma rays, neither of which care about an electromagnetic field. The most effective protection from those forms of radiation is distance -- having the fission reactor on the other end of a long pole from your crew module. Of course, that takes a non-zero amount of parts to set up.

Have I told you lately that I love you (in a safely platonic, non-creepy, anonymous, no need to call the FBI sort of way)? It's the little details on your parts, like the doubled yellow-and-black hazard stripes around the service bay door track (or how the ModRocketSys Flingatron is labelled "Do Not Eat").

What's the notional mechanism of operation of the K+ torch drive?

The Atomic Rockets website is amazing. Every year or so I go there and lose all productivity for a day or two. It would be interesting to see this mod updated for the new heat mechanics. I expect nuking yourself repeatedly ought to warm you up a bit and require a radiator or two. (Or, y'know, just have an onboard iceberg like the Archangel Michael.) Since Kopernicus now supports multiple star systems I'm examining my interstellar drive options. Warp drives are for Trekkies, so it's a choice between this and a fusion drive from KSP-Interstellar.

I am downloading and installing this mod immediately because it is giving me intense 2001: A Space Odyssey flashbacks. The only thing that could make this more epic would be if you collaborated with the MechJeb developers such that, on arrival in the Jool system, MechJeb seizes control of the ship and kills the frozen crew by shutting off their life support. The only way to regain control is for Jeb to disconnect MechJeb's nervous center in an epic spacewalk, while it hauntingly pleads for him to stop. No? Okay, I can dream Great mod seriously.

"No, Jeb, you aren't flying today. As the Program's only four-star pilot, you are far too valuable to risk on routine missions like this, and besides, Teedon needs the experience. But don't worry! You'll command the great Sarnus-5 mission, and the launch window is only... 1 year, 237 days away. So turn that frown upside down, pilot!" This is Jeb's situation in my current career save. Nothing like getting promoted out of the job you love...

I size them up with Tweakscale (if necessary) and use them as spacers to fix it when the launch-stage rocket nozzles aren't exactly level.

I was a schoolboy in Canada at a high latitude. They kept us indoors for a week; it was raining radioactive rain...

This mod is great and I love it. Good thing Kerbals like radiation (it makes their skin glow a healthy green). Any plans to include an ORION pulsed thermonuclear drive (aka "nuke yourself to the stars") or a Zubrin nuclear salt water drive?

So are these coming back then? Hooray! I have been using your interstage adapters from your other parts packs for their fairing-generating abilities in the meantime. The stock fairings have their purpose, but are an aerodynamic nightmare.

I am having moderate problems getting stuff to orbit -- at least, more problems than I ever used to have. Little rockets and simple rockets fly pretty well. Bigger rockets fly sometimes. The biggest problem seems to be getting any sort of big aeroshell-wrapped payload up there. They want to be really unstable, at all speeds and all altitudes, and then flip out at 30,000 meters regardless of current speed or deviation from prograde. As for my spaceplane... well actually it flies like a champ. Even my weird space-shuttle-esque three-stage spaceplane works. I think those of us who are having the hardest problems were those of us who thought of ourselves as working in Rocket Engineering, not the Astronaut Corps. My experience of playing KSP used to be designing the rocket, then handing it off to MJ for all actual flying-related tasks. That just doesn't work anymore -- even if you use MJ, you have to keep a close eye on it and keep tweaking the flight parameters as you go if you want to get to orbit successfully. The days of "Build rocket, press launch button, go make pizza" are over. Notwithstanding the increased difficulty, I set a probe down on the surface of Eve for the first time ever in my current 1.0.2 save. Jeb, Bill, and Bob are chilling out in low Eve orbit waiting for their return window. (To pass the time, I imagine them playing poker with all the science points.) So it's not like the game is now impossible by any means. Just a little harder.

Further testing has led me to believe that you are right, sir. The difference between success and failure seems to be that fairing. My 1.02-era Duna/Eve explorer has about the same payload mass as the depicted craft, and it flew to orbit on attempt #1. The only difference is the fairing size. Flipping the payload around so that it is heavy-end first helped a bit -- but not enough. (The difference between tumbling out of control quickly and tumbling out of control slowly.) I need to make the fairing smaller somehow. Unfortunately, the payload is ridiculously baroque with huge dishes, scanning apparati, and LV-N engine clusters sticking out everywhere. That might have to change.

I am having an enormous problem with this. While my smaller rockets fly just fine using the advice presented, I cannot seem to launch any large payload ( > 90t) in an aeroshell to orbit successfully. They all fall victim to uncontrollable spin in the high transonic range. Fins? Got 'em. Reaction wheels? Got 3. TWR? I have acceleration clamped down to 12.5m/s. Gravity turn? Starts at 125 m/s, 3 km, just like it's supposed to. Nevertheless, my rocket tumbles out of control around 500 m/s no matter what I do at that point. Even if I'm > 30,0000 km, suddenly aerodynamic forces become uncontrollable. Any ideas? This is becoming truly frustrating. I'm already chopping up my payloads into tiny pieces, now I can't even get one piece into orbit!