paul23

Is the antenna activated, and in vanilla the high gain antenna won't reach the distance between earth and mars.

It's easiest to just "start" with a hohman transfer, then if you wish to shorten the time you'll increase you velocity. As you increase your velocity you notice the orbit & target "shifting", you have to counter this shift by starting the burn earlier (or later). If you take baby steps everything stays manageable and you'll get an encounter at your desired duration. Bi elliptic transfers btw correspond to a different maneuver, they typically take a long, long time. (So much that it's considered impractical). The idea is that you travel as far out as you're willing to wait and at apo apsis do a very minimal burn to reach your target. Ideally at the edge of the sphere of influence (which in reality is way beyond voyager's location - and in ksp since there are no other stars it's at infinity). There's a very definitive point where this maneuver becomes "better", it's when a normal hohman transfer takes about 0.4 * escape velocity, roughly 95k delta-v for kerbol. Below that hohman is cheaper as well as faster. To plan this, since it doesn't *really* matter how far out you go, just go out a fair bit, then at apoapsis do a capture burn. If you don't quite reach your target just increase the apoapsis (making sure to keep doing the return burn at apoapsis), at some point you'll have an encounter. The third transfer, a heloid transfer is the hardest to plan. You'll have to calculate this manually using a numerical solution. "luckily" this is almost certainly irrelevant: you can't keep burning while in timewarp so year long burns aren't really possible. I'd wager that if a mod allows this it also add its own planner.

Well since I run a few "near future" systems which are aimed to have "bigger parts", I'm also wondering: are there any "scaled" versions of USI life support mod? I'm mainly asking due to a contract I got from the contract plus mod: to create a space hotel, for 50 guests. The problem is: to make sure the supplies stay roughly "alive" I need a lot of recyclers + argoponics, which need a lot of power (batteries + solar panels). While the solar panel is often solved the rest are not, I need around 400k charge for the location (geostationary orbit), and at least 15 argoponic + recycler modules. And then storing the supplies and other parts will quickly jump me well over the 100 modules. So are there any "scalable" systems which are aimed to keep many kerbals in orbit for usi life support?

I'm using the "tourism plus" mod, and one of the missions is to hold a "space camp" for 18 (15 tourists) tourists, where 15 tourists have to stay in orbit for 40 days. I however am also using USI-LF so 40 days isn't a trivial amount I can just fast forward. For this missions I decided to use my main station "KSS". At the start it's a "T" shaped station, with only a bit of life support (mainly aimed to keep a 3 man skeletal crew for a long time in orbit), every now and then (monthly) bringing a new load of fertilizer. A quick preliminary calculation showed that even with full inventories the supplies only last for roughly 6 days, having to run supply runs faster than I can due to kerbal construction time. So let's up the amount of life support, the module and lifter just after reaching orbit: Even with this amount of reaction wheels, and 16 rcs thrusters I had trouble aligning the docking port. But after some time, I transformed my "T" station into a "+" station: Ready for tourists? - Well a trial run for a single orbit showed that I use 119ish electric charge per tick at full production, while the gigantors can steadily keep up with this, the shadow of kerbin drains charge too fast. Remote tech planner showed that i have 653 seconds of shade, so I need a bit under 80k charge stored. That's a lot of parts! Luckily I was already researching the 300 science electricity branch, giving me access to the 1k battery as well as the 2800 charge battery of near future electrics. So quickly an unplanned extra power module is added to the station, consisting of 3*9 2800 charge batteries. Dark side, but you can see the amount of charge used (only 107 per second there, since the agroponics don't run due to lack of mulch). Finally we're ready to serve the tourists. First group of 8 arriving shortly, the station is passing just in front of the sun. Transfer burn could've been a bit better but this two stage tourist liften is quite maneuverable. And finally the second group docked, taken a shot as we greet the first sunrise. The docking vehicle will stay there for 40 days before bringing the first group down. Docking near the gigantors is quite finicky though, not really happy with those docking ports. (There's also a set at the orange tank, but I kept those open for supply missions later). Now the big question is: I opened the space hotel mission, how the hell am I going to get a hotel for 50 people running. 18 already is bringing my pc to a 4-5 frame per second rate, and I basically have to triple this station.

I don't play realism overhaul, but that isn't standard.. Nor have I ever heard of that happening.

You do realize that space is not "high", it's closer than most cities are. - It's "fast". xkcd shows. An elevator won't really help you there: unless you wish to go to geostationary orbit. But that is just sheer impossible to create, we're going out of the science fiction and into the magical constructs if you go there, there is no molecule able to withstand the forces of itself. And even if you do that, getting the stuff "up there" requires quite a bit of energy: incidentally, exactly the same as an ideal rocket would take. - Only no gravity loss and drag is probably also minimized.

You need to zoom in on the moon, and then you should see her. Also make sure all target types are "on" in the top middle bar (white symbols, the bar is only visible when hovering with mouse near).

What is the exact contract readout? - For rescue it should always be visible.

It means your keerbal is dead, that's what's wrong with it. It's passed on, your kerbal is no more. It has ceased to be. He's expired and gone to see his maker. Bereft of life, he rest in peace. He's run down the curtain and joined the choir invisible. Your kerbal is an EX-kerbal!

So we're all just going to ignore the typo "mum" and all kind of yo momma jokes?

Well "easy to make mistakes" is the very definition of "hard" when doing anything technical. I use sublime text and notepad++ a lot, but when crafts themselves are 10k+ lines with up to a dozen level of indentation just following indentation isn't working anymore, since you already have to spent ages searching for the correct line within the module list.

I wonder how you do these things for larger save files.. My current save file is 200 MB, and just finding the craft takes ages.

What is a windows laptop? I buy hardware and install software. A windows MSI laptop most certainly outperforms the apple version I could get, for 1800 euro I got about the same as a 3k macbook at the time, and those macbooks always thermal throttle (just like hps). Except on weight obviously.

Not really, the tank must be small enough so that the pumps can extract the majority of the fuel.. Size is also dictated by the prevention of sloshing. And the ability to cool/pressurize the tank.

So I finally connected the solar truss structure to the space station, to allow the life support module to run 24(6)/7. Now to reduce the lag. Oh and how am I going to do station keeping and moving this station to different orbits?

Well the famous grand tour of the voyagers was only made possible due to "perfect", once in a 200 year alignment of the planets. Gaining a lot of extra delta V. This was all simulated on fairly bad computers, and mainly by hand. I wonder, how can I plan this in ksp? - Does anyone know of a time when I can launch from low kerbin orbit and all/most outer planets without a lot of adjustment? How do *you* plan these things?

Well things like rcs thrusters have physicsRelevance set to 1 in their part configuration. This means their mass is added to the element they connect to and they are not used for calculations taking moment of inertia into account. (or mass). So I wonder how those compare to other parts when calculating lag.

But giving less options is a charming point of ksp. That you can make with a select few options amazing crafts and compare said crafts. As for your second point: procedural engines "etc" wouldn't be much harder to make. An engine is just a matter of a few numbers: fuel consumption, mass flow rate, total temperature and total pressure (later 2 are just magic numbers for a given combustion and shouldn't change based on engine shape, they are only influenced by the materials and how well the burn process occurs) and mechanical nozzle shape. Those determine the effective exhaust velocity (= specific impulse * 9.81) at different places in the atmosphere) v_e = v_actual_exhaust + (p_e - p_a) * A_e / (m_flow) p_a the atmospheric pressure (here we notice why an engine performs worse at sea level than in space) and A_e the exit area of the nozzle bell (and m_flow the total mass flow). - Oh and obviously the total weight (larger bell = more material etc). with p_e the pressure at nozzle exit, and v_actual_exhaust the actual velocity at nozzle exit. For supersonic nozzles (all engines except juno I think?) this is quite easy: You have two areas of importance, A_e (exit area) and A* (critical area, smallest area, here the flow reaches the speed of sound, before mach 1 a nozzle that becomes smaller increases flow velocity, after mach 1 increasing the size increases velocity but for ksp one could consider the mach 1 point as magical and only design the rest of the bell procedural). Those last two are a bit finecky to calculate, as those depend on the exit mach number. And the exit mach number needs to be numerically approached (formula can't be solved algebraically) but even though that's not trivial (the rest is), since it only has to be calculated once for a given engine - and for procedural parts an accuracy of 1 promille is enough this still isn't a problem. The thermal formulas are a bit hard to write down without latex so I'll just point you to the Source (NASA)

Hmm doesn't the game have the idea of 'physicless' parts to prevent the cumulative lag? My ship station is quite literary covered in kas attachement points and the fixed joints. I'm not yet in the technology bracket for near future stuff, doing the 300 point research.

Well are there any mods that enable more detailed profiling? I'm currently busy creating a self sustaining station, however now that I am getting in the 100 tonnes range with many many parts I'm reaching a lot of lag. I wonder what elements are creating most lag, and could maybe removed without too much negative feedback. IE: shall i remove the redundant solar panels, is it better to keep the surface mounted or the free rotating when comparing processing power / electric power given. -> are the ladders laggy and should I remove them, disabling ability to just crawl accross the entire station; rcs thrusters to rotate the craft? Or most importantly: do parts inside kis containers create lag, or do those parts "not do anything"?

Oh if it is indeed only passive cooled you most certainly wish to invest into a heavy cooling pad. Thermal throttling is with my MSI with extra fans already a big problem. I can only imagine what it is on a laptop with a glued face, with hardly any opening stuff put close together to minimize size. I'd use the advice here to verify your situation.

Well nice thing about solder is, is that it is reversible (in contrast to welding). I've soldered many things to my pi. But besides that, are you sure there aren't extra slots, it's more expensive to make a custom motherboard than to reuse a well known board, which always have quite a few reserve slots for ram. Opening the case shouldn't be a problem: the pc will be out of warrantee anyways if it has trouble running ksp, and you can just use a hot air dryer to make the glue soft again, and then use a screw driver to carefully detach the plastics. It's a good idea to do this yearly anyways, cleaning up the interior by using a brush of cat hair/staticless hair to remove all dirt will actually improve performance of a laptop by 10-20%. Thermal throttling is the biggest bottle neck.

If the VAB is laggy I am afraid there's little you can do; you can delete as many parts as possible so those don't "load", but that only matters for the lag when you enter the VAB. - How much ram does your computer have? And how much free ram during play? KSP really wants 4gb+. So if you have less than that just buy a small ram stick, even for laptops they are typically only 40-50 euro.

Well scansat is quite "lategame" in the techtree, while I am already given tasks like "get xyz data from (small) biome a". Like currently I need to land on the minmus highlands, and I really had trouble finding those, between all terrain that looks similar.

Yes but it won't show while planning, so if I plan a full mission (from LKO to re-entry) I do not know which biome I land. In real life we know these things, the position of landing is a given/top parameter when planning a mission. You don't plan a mission like: "go to the moon and just get all science data while you land, don't really care where". It is: Go to position x or nearby on the moon, and get data. The rest follows from that constraint.