Starhawk

Congratulations Meithan, you have completed the Eve Rocks challenge! This was a very comprehensive mission report and a beautiful mission plan. It was nice to see the separate launches and orbital rendezvous for the Eve lander and the transfer stage. I have to say, I was mightily taken aback for a moment when I saw the pink exhaust from the Nervas! Which mod does that? The phenomenon of an asymmetric kick when dropping the stages during Eve ascent is something I experienced as well in 0.90. Maybe that will have disappeared with the decoupler fix in 1.0. I enjoyed the detail of both your mission plan and your report. Once again, congratulations, and wear your badge with pride. Happy landings!

Welcome brutulbiff! It's always good to see a lurker step out of the shadows. Happy landings!

A very good review. It gives a very accurate description of the Kerbal Space Program experience. The joy, the wonder, and the challenge are all understood and depicted in the review. The review is very well written, and it reflects well on both KSP and on SQUAD, as it should. It's point about career mode is very well made. I think career mode has the makings of something great, but it seems there is still quite a bit of work to do there yet. Congratulations, KSP team, on a great review! Happy landings!

Hello Marlowe345, and welcome to the forums! This is a very good community and I've found it to be extemely helpful. I hope you enjoy yourself here. Happy landings!

Welcome to the forums Jax Pok! You will be able to set an avatar up after you have had three posts. Happy landings!

It becomes simple after you've done it a few times. The biggest tip is to be patient setting up your maneuver node. You may have to play around with it for a while, and the adjustments can be very sensitive. Use the mouse wheel slowly while mousing over the direction to make fine adjustments. Set up a maneuver node using the delta-v required in the transfer planner, and you can slide it around Kerbin's orbit to get the ejection angle just right. (It should be exactly along the dashed purple future orbit line for your craft.) Once that's done, focus on Duna in map mode and turn the camera so you can see the maneuver node in the background. You can now look at the Duna orbit trajectory closely and fine tune it with the maneuver node. Be prepared to make one or more small adjustment burns. As long as you get a good encounter, you can usually wait until you enter Duna's SOI before you set up a maneuver node to fine tune your periapsis. Good luck and happy landings!

Welcome CheckenShark! Good to have you join the forums. There's also exalting the nerfs and complaining about the new features. It's an interesting and fun community. Happy landings!

Sorry about that. I didn't figure out from your post what was going on. I pointed you toward modded because you mentioned you had found some mods. To post screenshots, use a free image hosting service such as Imgur, and post a link to the pic. Once again, welcome to the forums. Happy landings!

Thank you Claw for all of this wonderful information! Three cheers for knowledge! I really appreciate you taking the time to communicate all this info to the forums. Happy landings!

Welcome to the forums, Pinchy! Happy to have you join. The 'Support (modded installs)' section is where you should look for help with this issue. Please take a look around there - there may already be a thread on the issue if others have experienced it. Hope this helps. Happy landings!

Version 1.0.2 - Windows When using the Mk2 to 1.25m Adapter Long in either of the following configurations under high enough heat loads that the gauges appear, the rear section will experience much higher heating than the front section and will eventually explode. It seems like the issue has to do with the rear section not being occluded properly in these configurations. To reproduce this behaviour, fly one of these configurations to 20 km, level out and allow the speed to climb until shock heating begins and the gauges appear. The gauge for the rear section will turn red very quickly and it will explode leaving the other section still intact. This behaviour is not present with the following configuration. I got a craft based on this up to 1555 m/s at 22 km and the only thing that overheated and exploded was a winglet. Happy landings!

Parts The Rapier can reach at least 1555 m/s in air-breathing mode. The only thing that exploded was an AV-R8 winglet. Happy landings!

The most recent update had significant ramifications to aerodynamic effects in the game. Many things, including delta-v to orbit, have changed significantly. Happy landings!

I am still willing to review remaining 0.90 entries, as long as the entrants are wiling to have a bit more patience. I am still rather caught up in learning the new version. Soon. . Happy landings!

Welcome to the forums, Parane! Glad to have you join our community. We are generally a friendly and helpful bunch. Happy landings!

These adjustments to the aerospike's config file set the thrust value for the Aerospike at sea level on Eve as 121.5 kN. I haven't had a chance to test other altitudes yet. Thanks NathanKell! Happy landings!

I hear you Slashy. Thanks for the details. At the moment, if you look at the TWR stats, it would appear that the Mammoth is the go to engine for Eve surface level ascents. I still haven't tried an Eve ascent in 1.0.2. I keep thinking that 1.0.3 must be right around the corner and that will have even more changes I need to learn to account for. Honestly, at this point, all I want is a stable environment to learn to fly rockets and planes in. Happy landings!

Parts Well, I have some new data for engine stats at Eve. Make of them what you will... Altitude(m) ISP(s) Aerospike Mainsail Mammoth 10 041 287.5 282.6 293.2 3 065 232.7 221.1 246.9 2 045 218.5 201.4 232.4 1 043 203.0 177.5 215.0 0 185.6 147.8 193.2 Thrust at Eve Sea Level(kN) 98.3 715.2 2454.0 I can't for the life of me understand the aerospike's stats compared to what I measured in 1.0. The ISP has taken a huge nerf, but the thrust is almost the same very low value I measured previously. Very weird. I thought that the aerospike was supposed to be 'tuned' to be as efficient as possible at all atmospheric pressures (including vacuum), while bell-shaped engines were 'tuned' for their intended operating environment. Happy landings! edit: Looks like I got that ISP number for the aerospike wrong when I checked in 1.0. It wasn't 270. Probably 170. My mistake.

Welcome to the forums, DopeyWomble! Good to have you aboard. Career mode is a good way to introduce yourself to the concepts and the parts you have to work with. There is endless possibility in this game. After you look around the forums a bit, you might be amazed at what people build. Happy landings!

Hi HighSpeedSteel, and welcome to the forums! Once you have three posts, you will not need moderator approval and you can then set up an avatar, if you like. This is a very helpful community and I'm sure your optimism will be justified. Happy landings!

Physics Kerbin's atmosphere now ends at 70 000 m rather than 69 078 m. Eve's atmosphere now ends at 90 000 m rather than 96 708 m. Happy landings!

Well, of course the Aerospike should have a completely different curve than the other engines depending on how realistic the modeling is. The equations for calculating ISP are intimately related to geometry, and the Aerospike uses a very different geometry than a traditional bell shaped rocket. So I'm not surprised that the aerospike's ISP would change very differently with pressure than the other engines do. Happy landings!

Thanks Slashy, I figured it must be related to t/w. I had been thinking about the Mainsail, but it's a little worse on ISP and a little worse on t/w as well, so I guess that one would be a no-go. Happy landings!

No problem. After all, it's for science! That ISP is a far cry from the 270 I saw for the Aerospike. What is it that makes the Mammoth still competitive? Happy landings!

Parts I have a few data points for the Mammoth at Eve. Altitude (m) ISP (s) 30 000 313 20 000 309 10 000 293 3 000 246 0 193 Fired at sea level, the output was about 2500 kN. Happy landings!